Male laboratory mice exposed to mobile phone radiation are more likely to suffer from rare brain and heart tumors. This is the result of a large-scale study supported by the US government.However, don’t throw away your mobile phone yet, because the research results have caused widespread doubts in the scientific community. The risk of cancer caused by mobile phone radiation may be a common concern of "low-headed people". However, this matter is still inconclusive.
A puzzling "wonderful" discovery
The reason why this research has caused ripples inside and outside the scientific community is that there are many puzzles in the research results.
For example, the incidence of cancer in male experimental mice has increased, while that in female experimental mice has not; Compared with the experimental mice that did not receive cell phone radiation, the average life span of the experimental mice that received cell phone radiation was even longer.
This study was published by the project team of "National Toxicology Program of the United States" on the bioRxiv paper pre-publishing platform on May 26th. The National Toxicology Program of the United States is a $25 million project, which was initiated at the request of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), because FDA is also responsible for monitoring the radiation hazards of mobile phones.
It is worth noting that this research report is not the final result of the National Toxicology Program of the United States, because the program is expected to end in 2017. The project researchers said that the experimental data were released in advance before the experimental analysis and final report were completed because they knew that the public was very concerned about it and the experimental results were "wonderful".
Unfortunately, this study did not find a reasonable biological mechanism to explain this "wonderful" discovery. What is even more disturbing is that, like other animal experiments, the report warns that the research results obtained from rodents may be of little significance to humans.
A complex animal experiment
Undeniably, this study is indeed the most complicated experiment so far in terms of the influence of mobile phone radiation on animals.
According to official website, a magazine of Science, researchers set up 21 special rooms in Chicago, USA, to distribute the radiation from mobile phones. They divided 90 experimental mice into several groups according to sex, and then placed them in these rooms and exposed them to different intensities of mobile phone radiation for two years.
After that, the researchers examined the body of the experimental mice. They found that 2% to 3% of the male mice exposed to radiation had rare brain tumors; 2% to 6% of male experimental mice have tumors called Schwann cells in their hearts. The experimental mice that did not receive radiation did not develop tumors. There was nothing unusual in the female experimental mouse group.
In the experimental results, the data about heart tumor is the most clear, and the experimental mice receiving the most radiation have the highest proportion of this tumor. In contrast, the data related to brain tumors did not show this trend.
Although the experiment doesn’t look simple, some researchers don’t buy it. Michael Raul, deputy director of the out-of-hospital research office of the National Institutes of Health, commented that the number of animals conducting experiments was relatively small, which made people worry that the results of this study were "false positive". He said that he could not accept this conclusion.
Can the mouse experiment "translate" to people?
Up to now, the scientific community has been unable to agree on the risk of cancer caused by mobile phone radiation.
In 2011, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer announced that mobile phone radiation is a "possible carcinogen". Part of the reason is that epidemiological studies on people have found that cell phone radiation is potentially related to glioma and acoustic neuroma.
However, some scientists have questioned how non-ionizing radiation generated by mobile phones can cause cancer. Because the energy of non-ionizing radiation is not enough to strip electrons from atoms, it is difficult to do harm to cells. In addition, the FDA has also stated that previous studies only found "limited evidence" that cell phone radiation increased the risk of cancer.
Although the experimental data of "National Toxicology Program of the United States" echoes the previous research results, there is another problem: to what extent can the experimental results of animals be "translated" to humans?
What is worth looking forward to is that some research teams are trying to directly study the risks of mobile phone radiation to human health. One of the studies tracked the mobile phone habits of nearly 300,000 people in five European countries, and monitored the occurrence of diseases such as cancer. However, at present, these studies have not yet yielded results.
Jonathan samit, an epidemiologist at the University of Southern California, predicts that the latest results will stimulate further research. In samit’s view, almost everyone is exposed to the radiation environment of mobile phones, so it is very important to understand it, and people should know where the "red line" of acceptable risks brought by mobile phones to human health is.
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