"There's no evidence of cell tower radiation causing cancer or other diseases", the experts explained at an international conference in New Delhi on March 23, 2017. It was a conference with participation from AIIMS and IIT, Delhi.
However, scientists never say something doesn’t exist with certainty. Not for radiation risk, nor for anything else. They won’t commit with certainty even to the claim that drinking water has zero risk of causing cancer.
Now look at the evidence they have collected. There are more than 18,000 research papers indexed by Google Scholar in the field of radiation and its biological effects. Almost three thousand of these papers exclusively focus on cell phone radiation risk.
This field of research is now 70 years old and more research continues. There are roughly 350 papers being published every year, all of which is painstaking and expensive work. One 16 year NTP study on rodents that was released last year cost 25 million USD. It didn’t find evidence of any risk.
The study was criticised by academic community for methodological flaws. But all studies are criticised for similar flaws because that’s how science advances. The criticism doesn’t mean that millions of dollars have gone waste.
India doesn’t produce many papers in this field. Perhaps, no more than 10 or 12 in a year. However, there is no reason to believe that Indians are genetically more prone to these risks, although no studies have been conducted about it. It is equally likely that Indians are less susceptible because they already experience greater thermal stress, one of the mechanisms by which radiation could cause damage.
Because of limited nature of studies and some very poor-quality research (which it would be best if it’s not done), and the methodological flaws that are known to exist in almost all studies, the scientists must express their conclusions in guarded language.
Therefore, they can do no better than to state that the studies do not indicate any statistically significant risk of cancer or other diseases (that we looked for) in all these decades of effort.
You may have heard that birds disappeared from some areas or that people are losing hair (or becoming sillier) since the advent of cell phones. However, you may not conclude from it that the cell towers have caused it. Making conclusion requires a more rigorous scientific investigation, thousands of which have been done, without finding any credible evidence.
Don’t believe poor quality research or dire warning forwarded on WhatsApp or published on social media.
Cell tower radiation is non-ionizing. For research into risks from such radiation look at:
http://www.icnirp.org/
Still worried? Get the radiation level checked in your area:
https://tarangsanchar.gov.in/emfportal
Comment1
Nice Blog