Risks of Carcinogenesis from Electromagnetic Radiation

Apparently, any technical device was not introduced in everyday human life so fast and so close as mobile phone. Starting from first commercial mobile phone network in Japan in 1979 the number of active users of mobile telephony increased to over 3 billion all over the world. In developed countries the number of mobile phone users today is close to saturation. The initial age of youngest users of mobile phone is estimated as 3 years old [1]. The distinguishing feature of the mobile telephony technology is immediate vicinity of source of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) — handset to the human brain. These specificities lead to public concern about the safety of this technology for human health. From scientific point of view the main problem of a mobile telephony technology can be formulated as the lack of research on biological effects of low-intensive EMR, especially long-term studies, on the moment of active implementation of technology. It suffice to say that safety limits for mobile telephony are based only on thermal effects of EMR [2]. At the same time a principally new data about non-thermal biological effects of non-ionizing EMR have been revealed during the last years. These data are not taken into account by mobile phones manufacturers and most authorities for today. That is why some scientists call the situation with intensive implementation of mobile phone technology the biggest biophysical experiment in human history. In 1996 World Health Organization started the wideranging epidemiological research on the risk of development of some cancer types in mobile phone users. The research was carried out in term of Interphone project and was substantially supported by industry. The project included national researches in 13 countries, and was finished in 2005, but until now the final report was not published [1]. At the same time project data published in some countries and data of the epidemiological studies of independent research groups have indicated statistically significant increase in the risk of development of brain tumors in chronic users of mobile phone. It is clear that safety problem of mobile telephony technology must be a special concern of industry and authorities. This problem must be also the special concern of profile experts and researchers. In this review the main attention is drawn to published data on potential risk of cancer development, and the aim of the review is to discuss the recent publications on the topic and pay attention to the “harmful” effects of EMR. In most cases we used peer-reviewed journal publications. For more comprehensive insight into the problem of biological effects of RF EMF we can recommend some other reviews (see, for example [3–9]).