By Sree Sreenivasan
DNAinfo Contributing Columnist
An hour before I read last week’s big news (on my cellphone, naturally) about the possible link between cellphones and cancer, I was on an especially bumpy flight into JFK. I turned to my wife and said how remarkable it was that the wings of jetliners didn’t just fall off, considering how violently they were shaken, thousands of times a year. She promptly told me to shut up and not scare the kids.
For years, I’ve said that our widespread, frequent and increasing use of cellphones (5 billion and counting) is the largest human experiment in history. Decades from now, I’d say, we might likely find out that, like cigarettes before them, cellphones should not have been used the way we are using them now. One day, we might likely find out that cellphones cause sterility (though, "since I already have twins, that's not an issue," I’d joke).
So the news out of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, was classifying the electromagnetic fields emitted from cellphones as "possibly carcinogenic" felt like a wake-up call that came decades earlier than expected. Here’s the exact wording from the press release:
The WHO/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless phone use.
The group didn’t quantify the risk, but says "one study of past cell phone use (up to the year 2004), showed a 40% increased risk for gliomas in the highest category of heavy users (reported average: 30 minutes per day over a 10‐year period)."
Think about it: 30 minutes per day on a cellphone — I know lots of folks who do just that, and will be doing so for decades to come.
So, here’s what I’ve learned so far.
• THERE ARE FIVE SETS OF CARCINOGENIC CLASSIFICATIONS. Group 1 - "Carcinogenic to humans" (107 agents, including arsenic, X-rays and tobacco — smoking, smokeless and second-hand smoke); Group 2A - "Probably carcinogenic to humans" (59 agents, including diesel engine exhaust); Group 2B - "Possibly carcinogenic to humans" (266 agents, the one we’re discussing); Group 3 - "Not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans" (508 agents, including jet fuel, crude oil, ); Group 4 - "Probably not carcinogenic to humans."
• THE 2B CLASSIFICATION PUTS CELLPHONES IN SOME NASTY COMPANY. This means it's one of 266 things that are "possible carcinogenic to humans." The group includes things you will want to stay away from as much as possible, including chloroform, DDT, lead and welding fumes.
• THERE ARE SOME SURPRISING THINGS ON THE CARCINOGENIC LISTS. The WHO list (linked above) includes things you would not expect to be there. These include coffee (Group 2B - "there is some evidence of an inverse relationship between coffee drinking and cancer of the large bowel"); salted fish, Chinese-style (Group 1); pickled vegetables ("traditional in Asia"); working as a firefighter (Group 2B — a dangerous occupation, no doubt, but a cancer danger?) and even alcoholic beverages (Group 1 — I need to look into that).
• JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS CLASSIFIED AS 2B DOESN'T MEAN WE SHOULD STOP USING IT. Coffee and alcohol are on the list, people. Case closed. Cellphones are critical for our modern lives and I am not going to stop using mine. I am, however, going to try being more conscious of its use.
• THERE ARE SPECIFIC THINGS WE CAN DO TO USE CELLPHONES MORE SAFELY. There is specific information on what you can do to be safe, including texting more often; and using a headseat or the speakerphone whenever possible. Here are excerpts from a PBS Newshour interview by anchor Jeffrey Brown with Dr. Keith Black, chief neurosurgeon at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center in LA:
JEFFREY BROWN: ...I can't resist asking you, Dr. Black, what about you yourself? You use a cell phone — or does this change how you see it?
DR. KEITH BLACK: No, I use a cell phone. But I always use it either on speaker mode or use it with an earpiece or text. I don't put it next to my brain. You know, I think to — also just to put this in context for your viewers, you know, the risk of developing brain cancer is about six per 100,000 in a population per year. So, even if the risks were to double, you're looking at about 12 cases for 100,000 in the population.
It doesn't mean that, you know, we're going to be walking down the streets and people are going to be falling over dying of brain cancer. You know, the overall number of people that develop brain cancer, you know, it is not like lung cancer or breast cancer. It's a little smaller.
But what's important to recognize is that, if you do develop brain cancer, it's one of the most devastating illnesses that you can have. So, if you want to take precautions, at least you're aware that your cell phone is not necessarily a safe device, and using the things that we have outlined... earpiece, speaker mode, you know, can be a safer way of using it.
• EVEN FACED WITH SCARY INFORMATION, PEOPLE'S HABITS DON'T CHANGE. So it's been a few days since the news came out and I’ve not bothered to find track down my headset. And since so many cellphone conversations take place in public, it doesn’t make sense to be even more obnoxious by using the speakerphone all the time.
• ANY HOPES MY KIDS HAD OF GETTING A PHONE IN THE NEAR FUTURE HAVE EVAPORATED. My twins are only eight, but a couple of their friends already have cellphones as do some nine-year-olds we know. This news is going to cause me to delay, even more, the day they get their own cellphones.
• I NO LONGER THINK PEOPLE WHO SPORT BLUETOOTH EARPIECES ARE DORKS. I thought those earpieces were a little dorky, and the first steps toward electronic implants we might all get one day. Now, it turns out those folks are smarter than all of us. The dorky ones are just the guys who forget to take 'em off when they are done.
• THERE’S A WAY TO TRACK HOW MUCH RADIATION YOUR PHONE GENERATES. I had heard vaguely of some stats that tell you how much radiation a phone generates, but I hadn’t paid attention to it. The number you need to look for is called SAR, or “specific absorbtion rate,” which tracks how much of the radiofrequency energy your body is being exposed to. The lower the number, the better. CNN has worked with the Environmental Working Group to create a searchable database of popular phones. And EWG has a list of the best and worst phones in terms of SAR ratings. Where does your phone rank?
If you haven’t read it, the definitive piece of journalism on this topic - so far - is by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,” who wrote an in-depth New York Times Magazine piece in April 2011, "Do Cellphones Cause Cancer?"
His final paragraph: To keep ourselves on the right path on environmental carcinogens, then, we need not just standards to rule carcinogens "in" but also standards to rule them "out." The final, definitive trials on phone radiation may settle this issue — but, as of now, the evidence remains far from convincing. Understanding the rigor, labor, evidence and time required to identify a real carcinogen is the first step to understanding what does and does not cause cancer.
We may not change our habits because of this latest news, but I hope that it will cause all of us to pay more attention to the science of this issue. I know it has for me.
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Every week, DNAinfo contributing editor Sree Sreenivasan, a Columbia journalism professor, shares his observations about the changing media landscape.
