Government Study: Cell Phone Radiation Boosts Cancer Rates in Animals – $25 Million NTP Study Finds Brain Tumors

U.S. Government Expected To Advise Public of Health Risk

The cell phone cancer controversy will never be the same again.

via Microwave News

The U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) is expected to issue a public announcement that cell phone radiation presents a cancer risk for humans. The move comes soon after its recently completed study showed statistically significant increases in cancer among rats that had been exposed to GSM or CDMA signals for two-years.

Discussions are currently underway among federal agencies on how to inform the public about the new findings. NTP senior managers believe that these results should be released as soon as possible because just about everyone is exposed to wireless radiation all the time and therefore everyone is potentially at risk.

The new results contradict the conventional wisdom, advanced by doctors, biologists, physicists, epidemiologists, engineers, journalists and government officials, among other pundits, that such effects are impossible. This view is based, in part, on the lack of an established mechanism for RF radiation from cell phones to induce cancer. For instance, earlier this week (May 22), a medical doctor in Michigan wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal stating that, “There is no known mechanism by which mobile phones might cause brain tumors.” He went on to argue that there is no need to warn the public about health risks.

The NTP findings show that as the intensity of the radiation increased, so did the incidence of cancer among the rats. “There was a significant dose-response relationship,” a reliable source, who has been briefed on the results, told Microwave News. No effect was seen among mice. The source asked that his/her name not be used since the NTP has not yet made a formal announcement. The rats were exposed to three different exposure levels (1.5, 3 and 6 W/Kg, whole body exposures ) and two different types of cell phone radiation, GSM and CDMA.

An Amazing Coincidence?

Importantly, the exposed rats were found to have higher rates of two types of cancers: glioma, a tumor of the glial cells in the brain, and malignant schwannoma of the heart, a very rare tumor. None of the unexposed control rats developed either type of tumor.

A number of epidemiological studies have linked cell phones to both gliomas and to Schwann cell tumors. The Interphone study, for instance, found an association between the use of cell phones and gliomas.

The sheath that wraps around cranial nerves —such as the one that connects the inner ear to the brain— is made of Schwann cells. Tumors of those cells are called acoustic neuromas. That is, an acoustic neuroma is a type of Schwannoma. At least four different epidemiological studies have found an association between the use of cell phones and acoustic neuromas.

Ron Melnick, who led the team that designed the NTP study and who is now retired, confirmed the general outline of the results detailed by the confidential source. “The NTP tested the hypothesis that cell phone radiation could not cause health effects and that hypothesis has now been disproved,” he said in a telephone interview. “The experiment has been done and, after extensive reviews, the consensus is that there was a carcinogenic effect.”

“These data redefine the cell phone radiation controversy,” Melnick said. The safety of cell phones has been debated for more than 20 years, especially after the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RF radiation as a possible human carcinogen in 2011.

“This is a major public health concern because the cells which became cancerous in the rats were the same types of cells as those that have been reported to develop into tumors in cell phone epidemiological studies,” Melnick added. “For this to be a chance coincidence would be truly amazing.”

The NTP radiation project, which has been underway for more than a decade, is the most expensive ever undertaken by the toxicology program. More than $25 million has been spent so far.

Another interesting coincidence is that the Ramazzini study of rats in Bologna exposed to extremely low frequency (50 Hz) EMFs also developed a significant increase in malignant schwannoma of the heart.

Continue reading at http://microwavenews.com/news-center/ntp-cancer-results