A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

Industry Studies Tend To Come Up Empty

September 18, 2006

There’s an old English saying that goes “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”

This also applies to cell-phone health studies according to a new analysis by a team from Switzerland’s University of Basel. In a paper accepted for publication in Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), Matthias Egger and Martin Röösli and coworkers found that: “Studies exclusively funded by industry reported the largest number of outcomes but were least likely to report a statistically significant result...compared to studies funded by public agencies or charities.”

Their analysis is based on 59 experimental studies published between 1995 and 2005. They note that a majority (68%) of these studies reported biological effects. Egger and Röösli advise that “the interpretation of the results from existing and future studies of the health effects of [RF] radiation should take sponsorship into account.”

EHP is an open access journal and the full text of the paper is available at no charge.

See also our July 31 commentary on RF–genotox papers published in Radiation Research.