WASHINGTON-The head of the wireless industry’s cancer research project last week cautioned against reading too much into preliminary findings from a new Finnish study that mobile phones are free of health risks.
Dr. George L. Carlo, chairman of Wireless Technology Research L.L.C., said that while the Finnish study found no mortality differences between mice exposed to 900 MHz phone radiation (analog and digital) and those in the control group, no firm conclusions can be made until animal tissues are examined.
“At this stage, this is not interpretable from a public-health view,” said Carlo. He added that strict mortality studies have limited value.
The study, partially funded by industry and carried out by four Finnish research entities, began in 1994 as part of a broader European study of electromagnetic fields. But it is not scheduled to be completed until 1998.
Until then, Carlo said he would reserve judgment on the research. He said the publicity surrounding the study baffled him, calling it a “non-event” and just one of many studies WTR is monitoring.
The research, according to Reuters’ Helsinki news bureau, was overseen by the University of Kuopio, the Finnish Centre for Radiation and Nuclear Safety, the Occupational Health Institute and the Technical Research Institute VTT.
Helping to pay for it were carriers Telecom Finland Oy, the Helsinki telephone company HPY and cell phone manufacturers Nokia NOKSa.HE and Bene-fon.HE.
Reuters said Finnish researchers at a May 22 news briefing in Helsinki explained that though mobile phones do not pose a health hazard, they do transmit heat to people’s brains. As such, researchers recommended further research because the phone radiation levels-though safe-are near the top of international safety limits.
The research examined the effect of mobile phone radiation on 19 people and mice.
WTR, in the final year of a five-year, $25 million program, hopes to complete its own radio-frequency bioeffects and epidemiology studies during the next 12 to 18 months.
RF cancer research has produced conflicting findings in recent years, which has tended to further polarize the debate over mobile phone safety rather than defusing it. Only recently, an Australian study underwritten by the telecommunications industry, found an increased rate of lymphoma in cancer-prone mice dosed with 900 MHz Global System for mobile communications technology.
A few years ago, University of Washington scientists Henry Lai and Narendra Singh found single- and double-strand DNA breaks in rats zapped with low-level radiation at 2 GHz for two hours.
Yet, Motorola-sponsored research performed by Dr. Ross Adey and Dr. Joseph Roti Roti have failed to find any link between pocket phones and cancer.
The European Union is contemplating a $30 million RF phone study, while the World Health Organization is soliciting money to do its own research.
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), ranking minority member of the House telecommunications subcommittee, is investigating the Food and Drug Administration’s oversight of phone safety. He called for the federal government to get more involved after being informed by FDA that the United States is neither conducting nor sponsoring any major RF phone research.
The health issue also has come into play in the siting of more than 125,000 antennas from new personal communications service providers and existing cellular operators. There at least 200 siting moratoria throughout the country.
Consumer activists in Florida have raised concerns about siting wireless antennas on school grounds and, having succeeded in blocking wireless buildout in several jurisdictions, now want a statewide moratorium on antenna siting.
Last year, the Federal Communications Commissions adopted stricter RF exposure guidelines but the new standard has been challenged by industry as too tough and by environmentalists as too weak.
Health, aesthetics and land value are among the concerns driving the issue at the local level.
