#704: T-Mobile buries “inconvenient truths”
Phone cancer report ‘buried’ ‘ by Daniel Foggo
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article1655012.ece?pr
int=yes
T-MOBILE ‘BURIED’ CANCER REPORT
See: http://omega.twoday.net/stories/3586360/
From Omega News:
The Sunday Times April 15, 2007
Phone cancer report ‘buried’
Daniel Foggo
T-MOBILE, the mobile phone giant, has been accused of “burying” a scientific
report it commissioned that concluded handsets and masts contribute to
cancer and genetic damage.
The report argued that officially recommended limits on radiation exposure
should be cut to 1/1000th of those in force. The suggestion has not been
taken up by the company or by regulators.
Campaigners claimed T-Mobile’s handling of the report was part of a wider
pattern of behaviour by the industry in its efforts to keep discussion of
the health risks off the agenda.
The Ecolog Institute, which has been researching mobile phone technology
since 1992, was paid by T-Mobile to evaluate evidence on its potential
dangers.
But Dr Peter Neitzke, one of the authors of the report, has accused
T-Mobile, which has about 17m British customers, of diluting the findings by
commissioning other studies from which it knew “no critical results or
recommendations were to be expected”.
Guidance from the Health Protection Agency states that, while there is no
conclusive evidence phones or masts jeopardise health, the technology has
been in existence for only a relatively short time. It recommends that
caution should be exercised in siting masts and using phones a lot,
particularly where children are affected.
The Ecolog study, drawn up in 2000 and updated three years later, has only
been published in Germany and was unknown to British campaigners until it
was recently leaked to the Human Ecological Social Economic project (HESE),
which examines the effect of electromagnetic fields on health.
Andrea Klein, a member of HESE, said: “T-Mobile tried to dilute and bury
it.”
Ecolog’s report, which analysed dozens of peer-reviewed studies, stated:
“Given the results of the present epidemiological studies, it can be
concluded that electromagnetic fields with frequencies in the mobile
telecommunications range do play a role in the development of cancer.
“This is particularly notable for tumours of the central nervous system.”
Neitzke said that once T-Mobile realised the likely outcome of his study it
commissioned further research.
The phone company said: “It was the aim of T-Mobile to engage four different
institutes with the same questions to guarantee an independent and objective
discussion. All the institutes and people involved are well known and
respected experts.”