Cell Phone Tumor and Ten-Year Latency

There seems to be a consistent pattern emerging among studies of long-term effects of cell phone usage: an increased risk of acoustic neuromas and brain tumors for those who have used the mobile phones for ten years or more.

- A Swedish team, Lennart Hardell of Orebro University and Kjell Hansson Mild of the National Institute for Working Life in Umea, found that the long-term, ipsilateral risk (same side of head the phone was used) was two-and-a-half times higher for acoustic neuromas and twice as high for glioma (a type of brain tumor) as would normally be expected. Both risk estimates are statistically significant.

 The German Interphone research team last year also had found an increased risk of gliomas, a 2.2 fold increase, among long-term users (ten years or more).
- In 2004, the Swedish Interphone group reported in Epidemiology a doubling of acoustic neuromas among people who had used a mobile phone for ten years or more.

All these studies stress the need for longer follow-up to assess the long-term health risks associated with cell phone use. Scientists maintain the ten-year latency period is relevant in carcinogenesis because changes in tumor incidence would only follow after at least ten years of radiation exposure.

In the case of tobacco and asbestos, for example, epidemiologists have reported no statistically significant increase in lung cancer and mesothelioma, respectively, until there had been at least ten years of exposure.