Download a pdf of our March 2007 "News & Comment"

March 30... After sidestepping the cell phone health controversy for many years, the FDA announced yesterday that it had asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to hold a symposium and to advise what additional research needs to be done. It's déjà vu all over again. This is the same do-nothing strategy that George Carlo so successfully pursued for the CTIA, the wireless trade association, in the 1990s to make sure that very little health research got done. Over a six-year period, Carlo held meetings and wrote literature reviews. In the end, he spent $25 million of CTIA's money and had practically nothing to show for it. Neither Carlo nor the CTIA has ever accounted for where all that money went. Now, the CTIA and the FDA are planning to replay the same charade, albeit on a much smaller scale. (The CTIA will pick up the tab for the NAS contract.) According to a statement posted on the joint FDA-FCC Web site, the NAS will host an "open meeting of national and international experts to discuss the research conducted to date, knowledge gaps, and additional research needed to fill those gaps." It's a waste of time and money. Anyone who has been paying the least bit of attention knows what has to be done. We need to better understand how and when RF radiation induces DNA breaks, causes leakage through the blood-brain barrier and disturbs sleep. Each of these effects has been documented in multiple labs but remains controversial. They all need to be resolved once and for all. And most importantly, we must find out as soon as possible whether the elevated incidence of brain tumors and acoustic neuromas after ten years of cell phone use —which has now been reported by two independent research groups— is in fact a real long-term risk.

March 29... Over the last four years, the number of eight-year-olds in the U.S. with cell phones more than doubled to 506,000 and the number of nine-year-olds ballooned to 1.25 million, according to an analysis by the Yankee Group, a consulting firm in Boston, cited in a "style" piece in today's New York Times. There will be 10.5 million preteen cell phone users by 2010, the Yankee Group predicts. The 31-paragraph Times story does not offer a word about the possible health implications of long-term cell phone use, but there is this view from the deputy director of the Center for Children and Technology in New York City: Cell phones can serve as "transitional objects" for young children suffering separation anxiety from their parents, and that phones with "reasonably interesting games" might have some "redeeming educational value." ... "The only harm is an economic one." What does a preteen use a cell phone for? A mother of a seven-year-old gave this example: "He'd call me from the cafeteria, screaming, 'Mom, I'm at lunch'."

March 23... The government of Ireland released a report yesterday that generally dismisses health concerns over RF radiation from mobile phones and base stations, as well as concerns over EMFs from power lines. The report, Health Effects of Electromagnetic Fields, was prepared by a four-member panel chaired by Mike Repacholi, the former head of the WHO EMF project. The panel concluded that, "So far no adverse short or long-term health effects have been found from exposure to the RF signals produced by mobile phones and base station transmitters" and that "there are no data available to suggest that the use of mobile phones by children is a health hazard." In addition, while acknowledging that "there is limited scientific evidence of an association between ELF magnetic fields and childhood leukemia," the panel goes on to say that this possibility is in fact "unlikely." The other members of the panel are Eric van Rongen of the Health Council of the Netherlands, Anthony Staines of University College, Dublin, and Tom McManus, the former chief technical advisor to the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, the agency which commissioned the new report. McManus is also a former member of the executive committee of the IEEE's International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety (ICES). Among the peer reviewers of the report were Sweden's Anders Ahlbom and the U.K.'s Alasdair McKinlay —Ahlbom is a current member, and McKinlay a former chairman, of ICNIRP. The 55-page report, Health Effects of Electromagnetic Fields, is a free download; See also the press release, which announces a new national EMF research program.