Israeli scientist links cell phones, cancer

By · February 18, 2008

A Tel Aviv University scientist has found a link between cell phone use and the development of cancerous tumors.

Dr. Siegal Sadetzki, an epidemiologist and lecturer at Tel Aviv University, recently published the results of a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology that found heavy cell phone users were subject to a higher risk of both benign and malignant tumors of the salivary gland. She and her colleagues investigated nearly 500 people who had been diagnosed with these tumors.

The fact that the study was done on an Israeli population is significant.

“Unlike people in other countries, Israelis were quick to adopt cell phone technology and have continued to be exceptionally heavy users,” Sadetzki said. “Therefore, the amount of exposure to radiofrequency radiation found in this study has been higher than in previous cell phone studies.”

Sadetzki’s main research on this new study was carried out at the Gertner Institute for Epidemiology and Health Policy Research at the Sheba Medical Center. Her research is part of the international Interphone Study, which attempts to determine an association between cell phones and several types of brain and parotid gland tumors.