This weekend the British media were all aflutter with news that the World Health Organization had found 30 minutes of cell phone use a day over 10 years to increase the risk of brain cancer. On Monday it hit its stride hours before the study was actually released. The press release from the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer was supposed to be embargoed (that is, noone was supposed to report on it) until the publication of the results by the International Journal of Epidemiology. We had nothing to go on except what the news gave us...and then the press release was public and....the news had been wrong.

The WHO flat out stated that the INTERPHONE study did not find any increased cancer risk.  Though many analysts feel there is some possibility for an increased risk of glioma, the study is already several years old, with second generation cell phones, not the low emission and hands free devices of today. And the 30 minutes a day figure? They misunderstood that the study's 10% of participants who used the phone most often did so for roughly 30 minutes a day. That was the maximum usage, not the minimum.

So basically a media outlet (it's unclear who the first was) didn't read well, thought they had a hot story, and then everyone else ran with it without reading the press release for themselves (at least in the UK and U.S. - France reported it properly).

TIME even had a wtf article about it all.

The INTERPHONE study is the largest epidemiological study of its kind to date. It looked at thousands of cell phone users from 2000-2004. All over the age of 30. I'm sure you see the problems with the study right there, too. The project has been ongoing in 13 countries though, so the recent results are just the old data that they've been trying to frame and publish for years. Cell phone technology also keeps changing, which then adjusts their goalposts. 

The media really screwed the pooch on this one. If they want to read into the results, that's bad enough, but they outright lied about what the WHO stated forthrightly.

So don't believe the hype...the WHO has not said that cell phone use causes cancer. The data is still unclear as to the real risk, or if there even is any from today's phones. Though just for good measure, don't strap your phone to one side of your head.