Cell phones and cancer: Who cares what WHO says?

Today’s media hoopla about the World Health Organization classifying cell phone use as “possibly carcinogenic” is much ado about nothing.

The studies the WHO relies on are weak association studies that have zero reliability. Study subject radiation exposure is based on self-report and so is uncertain. No one knows what causes gliomas, so confounding risk factors could not be ruled out. The reported statistical associations are not strong enough to overcome the inherently unscientific nature of epidemiology. Most epidemiologic studies report no link between cell phone use and cancer. That some do is no surprise — just by chance some will. That all the studies basically bracket the no-effect level indicates that cell phone use poses no cancer risk. That the WHO panel was led by Jonathan Samet is yet another red flag of junk science. Hundreds of millions have used cell phones for decades without any detectable health effects. Before that, studies of military radio operators reported no ill effects from more intense exposures to radio frequency waves. The bottom line is that the WHO classification is a political judgment — not a scientific outcome — one that was no doubt pushed by grant-grubbing cell phone researchers and cheered on by the tin foil hat crowd.

Steve Milloy——Bio and Archives

Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and GreenHellBlog.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them

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