A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

Cardis: Interphone due by the End of the Year

August 1, 2008

The results of the Interphone study may finally surface by the end of the year. In an interview with Le Monde, published today, Elisabeth Cardis said the paper with the combined data from the 13 participating countries should be submitted for publication in September. If the peer-review process proceeds smoothly, it should then be available in the late fall. Cardis, the leader of the Interphone project who is now at CREAL in Barcelona, confirmed the schedule to Microwave News.

A couple of weeks ago, Martine Hours, the head of the French Interphone team, explained the reason for the delay to L'Express, a news weekly. While the Interphone data do point to an elevated tumor risk among long-term cell phone users, Hours said that one-third of the Interphone researchers believes the observed excess is an artifact due to bias in the study. Another third thinks that the observed effect is in fact real, while the others are agnostic, arguing that it is impossible to reach a conclusion. Cardis agrees with Hours's breakdown. "There are indeed three groups of roughly similar size," she told us.

"It's high time to publish the results and air our disagreements," Hours said in her interview wth L'Express. "The longer we wait, the more the rumor mill will keep on growing."