A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

cancer trends: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )

February 17, 2020

Smartphones Irradiate the Thyroid:Is This a Cancer Risk?

Thyroid cancer among women is skyrocketing all over the world. Incidence is growing faster than for any other cancer. This has been going on for a long time, and the reasons why remain elusive.

The prevailing view is that there’s been an “epidemic of diagnosis” —that is, overdiagnosis— particularly following a screening program. The tumors have always been there, the argument goes, but new and better detection tools (ultrasound, for example) have made it easier to spot small ones, many of which would likely never present a real threat. In any case, thyroid cancer is not one of the bad ones; 98-99 percent of those diagnosed survive at least five years, the highest for all cancers. Watchful waiting is often the best prescription.

The only recognized cause for thyroid cancer is ionizing radiation.

December 20, 2019

“Changes in Trends in Thyroid Cancer Incidence in the United States, 1992 to 2016,” Journal of the American Medical Association, December 24-31, 2019.

“Between 2009 and 2016, after 3 decades of rapid increase, the incidence of thyroid cancer incidence in the United States reached a plateau and possibly started to decline.”

June 11, 2019

GBM Rising in Denmark,Much as in England

GBM is going up in Denmark. The steady rise is very similar to what has been seen in England.

New government data, released in May by a member of the Danish Parliament, show a near doubling of this fatal brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme, since the year 2000. You can see the trend by following the orange line in the histogram …

January 2, 2019

Aussies Claim No Brain Tumor Link; Skepticism Abounds

The incidence of brain tumors in Australia did not increase between 2003 and 2013, according to a new analysis by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) and the Australian Centre for Electromagnetic Bioeffects Research (ACEBR). This means that there can be no link between the use of mobile phones and brain cancer, they claim.

If such an association were true, “then the brain tumor rates would be higher than those that are observed,” states an ARPANSA press release that accompanies the new paper published in BMJ Open.

“People say mobile phones can cause cancer but our study showed this was not the case,” said ARPANSA’s Ken Karipidis, the lead author.

Others are skeptical. The work is incomplete and misleading —or worse, they say.

January 31, 2017

Changing Mix of Brain Tumors in U.K.

The incidence of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most virulent and deadly type of brain cancer, is going up in the U.K., while the incidence there of other types of malignant brain tumors are declining, according to some newly published raw data.

Take a look at the two plots below and the trends are immediately apparent.

The incidence rates are not corrected for age, or...

November 8, 2012

Spike in “Aggressive” Brain Cancer in Denmark

The Danish Cancer Society is reporting that the number of men diagnosed with glioblastoma —the most malignant type of brain cancer— has nearly doubled over the last ten years. Hans Skovgaard Poulsen, the head of neuro-oncology at Copenhagen University Hospital, is calling it a "frightening development...

August 14, 2012

“Increasing Incidence of Brain and Nervous Tumours in Urban Shanghai, China, 1983-2007,”

Asian-Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention, 2011 (open access).

March 3, 2011

Cell Phones & Brain Tumors: Burying the Link

A couple of weeks ago, the University of Manchester in England issued a press release on a new paper on brain cancer trends in the U.K., under the headline, "Mobile Phone Use Not Related to Increased Brain Cancer Risk." Clear and catchy — but wrong. Frank de Vocht and two collaborators actually saw a statistically significant...

December 21, 2010

Game Changer?

It's only a short letter buried in the back pages of a journal, but it could change the entire cell phone–cancer controversy.

A group at Hebrew University in Jerusalem has reported a sharp increase in the incidence of parotid gland tumors in Israel over the last 30 years. Rakefet Czerninski, Avi Zini and Harold Sgan-Cohen found that these tumors have quadrupled since 1970, "with the steepest increase" after 2001 (see plot below). Their letter appears in the January 2011 issue of Epidemiology; it's a free download. They are with the Hadassah School of Dental Medicine at the university.