Our phones are like an appendage.
They lie close to us while we sleep, always awake, collecting texts and emails. They live in our pockets when we're on the go. They stare up at us while we work and eat. We often hold them against our heads or in front of our faces, not far from our brains, for long periods of time.
There are over 260 million million of them in the United States right now, and perhaps over 5 billion in use globally, so naturally, scientists want to know if they can do us harm. And after two decades of research, they have repeatedly found no conclusive evidence tying mobile phone use to any adverse health problems, like brain tumors.
But, this doesn't mean we're out of the wireless woods just yet.
Many of the same science and health agencies, like the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which say there's no confirmed link between cell phones and cancer, also admit that we still need more information.
This is especially true today, as the latest research suggests that we still don't know if mobile phones are harmful, primarily due to the type of radiation they emit when transmitting and receiving information.
"I hate to be the guy that says more research is needed — but it’s true in this case," Jonathan Samet, an epidemiologist and dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, said in an interview. Samet previously chaired an IARC committee that examined the biological effects of cell phone radiation.
There's no silver-bullet solution to determining if there's a risk, and if so, how much. Reputable researchers in the U.S. and Europe have studied possible links between cell phone use and cancer for years. Scientists say they need to keep at it to see what trends appear over time. After all, cell phone adoption in the U.S. has only become extremely widespread in the last decade, increasing over threefold since 2000.
The iPhone X, which scans your face while emitting low-level non-ionizing radiation.
Image: lili sams/mashable
"It's something that we just need to study better," said Rimas Lukas, a brain tumor researcher and associate chief of the Neuro-Oncology Division at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, said in an interview. "And that takes funding and time and effort."
Last week, an in-depth investigative story by The Nation presented evidence that cell phone companies and service providers had interfered with the scientific process by funding studies that sowed uncertainty about the long-term safety of cell phone use. The Nation argued that Big Wireless took a chapter or two from the Big Tobacco and Big Oil "playbooks" about creating scientific doubt: If the science remains uncertain, no one can conclude long-term mobile phone use poses any risk.
Today, however, Big Tobacco and Big Oil are in hot water. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that cigarettes kill and burning fossil fuels warms the planet. That fate could one day await "Big Wireless," as The Nation refers to the industry.
However, wireless companies are still in a legitimate position to argue that cell phones are safe, since the research is not yet conclusive.
Why is cell phone science so messy?
Scientists have published over 60 peer-reviewed studies that have examined how cell phone use affects our health. More of these studies are needed because the National Cancer Institute concedes that previous results from over a dozen credible, peer-reviewed studies have found "inconsistent" results about cancer risk from cell phone use.
"If you look at the literature, it’s a little bit all over the place," said Lukas.
What's more, there's no clear understanding of how cell phone radiation might harm the human body. The type of radiation emitted from cell phones is called "non-ionizing radiation," meaning it lacks the energy to kick an electron off an atom, and thus turn it into an ion.
"This means it doesn't deliver enough energy to damage a cell, we think," Samet said. Other common forms of non-ionizing radiation are things like radio waves, heat from heat lamps, and your microwave.
The National Cancer Institute officially maintains that "there is currently no consistent evidence that non-ionizing radiation increases cancer risk."
Lukas, who treats brain tumors, mostly agrees.
"In general, this does seem to jive with the truth," he said. "At this point in time there is inadequate evidence to say cell phones are clearly associated with the development of brain tumors."
It's not just scientifically unethical to subject humans to radiation — it's illegal
Yet, Lukas also acknowledges that studying how low-level radiation affects people is difficult. Not only are we an unreliable source of our own mobile phone histories, but researchers can't actually experiment on us. It's not just scientifically unethical to subject humans to radiation — it's illegal.
At the same time, as health agencies, public health experts, and studies conclude, past research is both inconclusive and inconsistent. This isn't stable scientific ground from which to establish there is no risk.
Lacking better options to more directly assess risk, researchers have recently exposed mice and rats to doses of non-ionizing radiation. One such study, undertaken by the National Institute of Health's National Toxicology Program (NTP), found that some rats exposed to non-ionizing radiation did develop heart tumors.
Cell phone towers emit non-ionizing radiation, too.
Image: LightRocket via Getty Images
Now, the rats' radiation experience was a bit different than what people on their phones typically experience: The animals received doses of non-ionizing radiation for longer periods of time and at higher levels than what people receive from their cell phones.
So, "these findings should not be directly extrapolated to human cell phone usage," John Bucher, a senior scientist at the National Toxicology Program, said in a statement last month.
But Bucher found parallels between the rat cancers and the cancers seen in people who use their phones a lot. "We note, however, that the tumors we saw in these studies are similar to tumors previously reported in some studies of frequent cell phone users."
This leads epidemiologists, like Samet, to question the assumed safety of long-term doses of non-ionizing radiation.
"The animal studies say 'well, look there’s something happening here, even if we may not understand it'," said Samet. "It would be harder for anyone to now say, 'listen, this type of radiation has to be safe'."
Future research, past problems
Future research, however, will invariably involve people; cell phone safety science can't be supported on the backs (or tumor-ridden bodies) of rats alone.
Like in earlier studies, people won't be experimented on directly, of course, but asked to recall their past mobile phone use.
"It would harder for anyone to now say, 'listen, this type of radiation has to be safe'."
One massive research undertaking, The Interphone Study, interviewed over 5,000 people with brain tumors in 13 different countries about their cell phone use. But the results were inconclusive.
"An increased risk of brain cancer is not established from the data from Interphone," Christopher Wild, Director of the IARC, concluded. But Wild said that "further investigation of mobile phone use and brain cancer risk is merited."
Studies like this one come with a host of problems, however.
The Interphone study was largely plagued by "recall bias," or the inability of people to accurately remember how often they used their phones. Cell phone studies are also "moving targets," said Lukas, since the ways people use their phones change over time — so there's no standard user profile that could be associated with the development of tumors.
"These things will shade the interpretation of the data that we’re getting and how we’re gonna make sense of it all," said Lukas.
Low-level radiation, when we hold it up to or near our heads, may prove to be worse than we know — or not. But as we understand it today, non-ionizing radiation still has no known risks.
"I still cook my kids' food in a microwave oven without any trepidation," said Lukas, the tumor researcher.
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