For years now, mobile radiation has been a topic of concern. Scientists and enthusiasts have always believed that the microwave radio frequencies emitted from mobile phones could be harmful to human tissue, resulting in cancer and other health hazards. Loads of research and findings till date haven’t been able to prove any link between human health hazards and mobile radiation. However, a surprising news comes in from a two-year study which was funded by $25m.
According to a report by Tech Crunch, a major study conducted by the National Toxicology Program has found that there are significant, positive correlation between radio-frequency radiation exposure (like that given off by phones) and certain cancers in rats — though only male ones.
The two-year involved thousands of rats and each received carefully controlled doses of radiation, daily, for two years. A set of rats also received no radiation at all. Of those who did, around 2 – 3 per cent of rats developed glioma in their brains and around 1 – 6 per cent developed schwannoma of the heart.
Strangely, the results revealed that only the male rats showed the results. What was also surprising was that the rats that received no radiation lived a shorter life.
Experts are still working on these results and the National Cancer Institute is updating its cellphone radiation fact sheet to reflect the news.
The study:
In a previous study, this laboratory reported a statistically nonsignificant trend for shortened latency of ethylnitrosourea (ENU)-induced brain tumors in Sprague-Dawley rats exposed to an 860 MHz pulsed radiofrequency (RF) signal. The present study was designed to investigate further any promoting effect of the pulsed RF signal on latency and other characteristics of neurogenic tumors in the progeny of pregnant rats treated with 6.25 or 10 mg/kg ENU. The resulting 1080 offspring were randomized equally by number, sex and ENU dose into pulsed RF, sham and cage control groups. The rats were exposed to the pulsed RF signal 6 h per day 5 days per week; the sham-exposed group was similarly confined for the same periods, and the cage controls were housed in standard cages. An essentially equal number of rats from each group were killed humanely every 30 days between the ages of 171 and 325 days; 32 rats died and 225 rats were killed when they were moribund. Postmortem examinations on the 1080 rats revealed 38 spinal cord tumors, 191 spinal nerve tumors, 232 cranial nerve tumors, and 823 brain tumors. A methodical study of the tumor characteristics disclosed no evidence that exposure to the pulsed RF signal affected the incidence, malignancy, volume, multiplicity, latency or fatality associated with any kind of neurogenic tumor.
At present, the research and study is continuing and there will be a lot of work to assess if it causes problems in humans. The $25m study is executed by the US government.
