Government Admits Cellphones Cause Cancer

The government just made a startling admission — cellphones can cause cancer. After years of sidestepping the public's concern, a $25 million study conducted by the National Toxicology Program (NTP), a branch of the National Institutes of Health, found that cellphones increased the risk of two types of tumors — gliomas, a type of cancerous brain tumor, and schwannomas, a rare tumor of the heart.

Chris Portier, former associate director of the NTP, calls the study a "game changer." For the study, rats were exposed to different levels of radio frequency radiation or RFR: The highest was up to seven times the amount humans usually receive when using a phone.

Although there was no increase in risk among female rats, male rats exposed to radiation had a 2 percent increased risk of malignant gliomas, and about 3.5 percent developed a schwannoma in the heart.

“The NTP report linking radio frequency radiation (RFR) to two types of cancer marks a paradigm shift in our understanding of radiation and cancer risk," said Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. "The findings are unexpected; we wouldn’t reasonably expect non-ionizing radiation to cause these tumors.

"This is a striking example of why serious study is so important in evaluating cancer risk," said Dr. Brawley. "It’s interesting to note that early studies on the link between lung cancer and smoking had similar resistance, since theoretical arguments at the time suggested that there could not be a link."

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