Cell phones and cancer: What is the evidence for a connection?

There have been allegations in the media and in the courts that cell phones and other types of hand-held transceivers are a cause of cancer. There hav e also been numerous public objections to the siting of TV, radio and cell phone transmission facilities because of a fear of cancer induction. A rece nt publication in Radiation Research by Repacholi et al, (147, 631-640, 199 7) which suggests that exposure to radiofrequency (RF) radiation may increa se lymphoma incidence in mice has contributed to this controversy. The goal of this review is to provide biomedical researchers a brief overview of th e existing RF radiation-cancer studies. This article begins with a brief re view of the physics and technology of cell phones, It then reviews the exis ting epidemiological studies of RF radiation, identifying gaps in our knowl edge. Finally, the review discusses the cytogenetics literature on RF radia tion and the whole-animal RE-radiation carcinogenesis studies, The epidemio logical evidence for an association between RF radiation and cancer is foun d to be weak and inconsistent, the laboratory studies generally do not sugg est that cell phone RF radiation has genotoxic or epigenetic activity, and a cell phone RF radiation-cancer connection is found to be physically impla usible. Overall, the existing evidence for a causal relationship between RF radiation from cell phones and cancer is found to be weak to nonexistent. (C) 1999 by Radiation Research Society.