Pittsburgh cancer institute urges limit on cellphone use
Doctor's warning conflicts with numerous studies
PITTSBURGH - The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff yesterday: Limit cellphone use because of the possible risk of cancer.
The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, conflicts with numerous studies that have not found a link between increased tumors and cellphone use, and a public lack of worry by the US Food and Drug Administration.
Herberman is basing his alarm on early, unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now, especially when it comes to children.
"Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn't wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later," Herberman said.
Herberman's advice is sure to raise concern among many cellphone users and especially parents.
In the memo he sent to about 3,000 faculty and staff yesterday, he says children should use cellphones only for emergencies because their brains are still developing.
Adults should keep the phone away from the head and use the speakerphone or a wireless headset, he says. He even warns against using cellphones in public places such as on a bus because it exposes others to the phone's electromagnetic fields.
The issue that concerns some scientists - though nowhere near a consensus - is electromagnetic radiation, especially its possible effects on children. It is not a major topic in conferences of brain specialists.
A 2008 University of Utah analysis looked at nine studies, including some Herberman cites, with thousands of brain tumor patients and concludes "we found no overall increased risk of brain tumors among cellular phone users. The potential elevated risk of brain tumors after long-term cellular phone use awaits confirmation by future studies."
Studies last year in France and Norway concluded the same thing.
"If there is a risk from these products - and at this point we do not know that there is - it is probably very small," the Food and Drug Administration says on an agency website. Still, Herberman cites a "growing body of literature linking long-term cellphone use to possible adverse health effects including cancer."
"Although the evidence is still controversial, I am convinced that there are sufficient data to warrant issuing an advisory to share some precautionary advice on cellphone use," he wrote in his memo.
A driving force behind the memo was Devra Lee Davis, the director of the university's center for environmental oncology.
"The question is do you want to play Russian roulette with your brain," she said in an interview that she did from her cellphone. "I don't know that cellphones are dangerous. But I don't know that they are safe."
Of concern are the still unknown effects of more than a decade of cellphone use, with some studies raising alarms, said Davis, a former health adviser in the Clinton administration.
She said 20 groups have endorsed the advice the Pittsburgh cancer institute gave, and authorities in Britain, France, and India have issued warnings about children's use of cellphone.
Herberman and Davis point to a massive ongoing research project known as Interphone, involving scientists in 13 nations, mostly in Europe. Results already published in peer-reviewed journals from this project aren't so alarming, but Herberman is citing work not yet published. 