Loyd Morgan, 68, a survivor of brain cancer and a retired electronics engineer and self-trained epidemiologist has made it his mission to spread the message that cellphone is carcinogenic. He does this more or less as a wireless communications vigilante, however. The American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the World Health Organization all regard the radio waves emitted from cellphones as safe. But another growing body of experts believes cellphone use can promote tumors, and momentum has been shifting to their side. A researcher in Sweden, for instance, recently reported that people who started using cellphones before the age of 20 have four to five times the odds of developing one type of brain tumor. An unpublished analysis by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute shows an increase in brain tumors among Americans in the under-30 age group.





And according to new research, studies showing that cellphones are safe tend to be (a) less rigorously designed and (b) funded by the cellphone industry, while studies showing that cellphones carry risks are (a) produced with better science and (b) have no financial conflicts of interest.





And if the slow spread of distress within the halls of government means anything, the topic no longer causes eye-rolling among lawmakers. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, has recently authorized a $25 million study to analyze rats that have been bathed in cellphone radiation in for a period of 2 years. Both houses of Congress have held hearings on the issue. And in Maine, legislation may soon require warning labels on cellphones sold in that state.





The cellphone industry has responded with studies, mind you -- ones that exonerate the technology, including a new study showing that tumor rates are steady in Scandinavia, where cellphones were adopted early. But if you dig deep, those findings aren't as reassuring as you might hope. For one thing, they tend to limit their good news to people who've been using cellphones for less than 10 years.





And then there's the trouble unleashed by Morgan, an unfunded retiree armed only with personal suspicions and plenty of time to read the fine print. Thanks to his pursuit of answers, we now know the biggest cellphone study of all produced a biologically impossible conclusion: It determined that not only do cellphones not give you cancer, but they protect you from it. Another recent study claims that they ward off Alzheimer's. It makes some people question whether the defenders' cases are riddled with wrong numbers.







In selecting Exponent to argue its case, the Wireless Association has hired the scientific equivalent of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. In its 43-year history, Exponent has defended nearly everything that is bad in American industry: Buildings that fail. Amusement-park rides that exceed G-forces inflicted on astronauts. Soda machines in schools, rocket-fuel chemicals in groundwater, chromium in the workplace. Atrazine, asbestos, even the Exxon Valdez. "Visible light is also part of the electromagnetic spectrum," Erdreich continues, propping up my friend's flashlight defense of cellphones. "But it's at a higher frequency and shorter wavelength than RF."





But Erdreich may be on shaky ground at the troubled intersection between biology and physics. The BioInitiative Report, a research project authored by an international team of scientists, sought to gather all the evidence against RF radiation in one place. Released in 2007, the report cites experiments showing that radio waves can in fact damage human cells, though they do it through indirect means. The damage doesn't happen in every instance, but studies have documented RF radiation causing cells to produce molecules known as "heat-shock proteins," a sign that the cells sense environmental stress. Animal studies confirm that exposure to RF radiation can also cause leaks in the blood-brain barrier, which could allow carcinogens into the brain.





Other studies included in the BioInitiative Report show that radio waves can break both strands of the double helix. "A double-strand break is a big problem," says Henry Lai, Ph.D., of the department of bioengineering at the University of Washington. "The cell loses the information on how to repair DNA."





David O. Carpenter, M.D., director of the institute for health and the environment at the University at Albany and an expert on radio waves, believes it causes some genes to become more active and other genes to become less active. "This may be how cellphones cause cancer," he says. Finally, another theory suggests that radio waves might damage DNA by creating free-radical activity: RF radiation could trigger a chemical process known as a Fenton reaction, a chain of events in which radio waves meet molecular iron in cells, turning hydrogen peroxide into hydroxyl, which is, in the words of Lai, "a very potent and toxic free radical."







The explosive debate of cellphone safety comes down to finding out whether the brains of people who use them grow meningioma, glioma, acoustic neuroma, or parotid gland tumors more readily than those of people who ring up their friends over corded landlines. (Cordless phones emit the same type of radiation that cellphones emit, although at lower levels.) In an attempt to settle the issue, the International Agency for Research on Cancer commissioned an epidemiological study in 1998 big enough for cellphone critics to choke on. The 13-nation Interphone project asked more than 6,000 patients with brain tumors about their cellphone use, and then compared their answers with those of a matched group with no brain cancer.





So what did they find? Nobody knows.





While partial results have been published,the report's final conclusions are in limbo 4 years after its completion. Press accounts have asserted that the coauthors are bitterly divided over what the study found. Published sections have reported no connection between cellphones and cancer, but most of the patients studied used their cellphones for less than 10 years. That matters, because brain tumors could take decades to develop, and widespread cellphone use in the United States began only in the mid-1990s.



"It took 40 years for brain tumors to show up after Hiroshima," says Devra Davis, Ph.D., M.P.H., founding director of the center for environmental oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI). "How can you expect to see effects from cellphones in 10?"





Studies that look at cellphone use for more than 10 years are less comforting. According to a 2002 study of more than 1,400 braintumor patients by Swedish cancer epidemiologist Lennart Hardell, M.D., Ph.D., as well as a review by Dr. Hardell of data from other researchers' studies, regular use of a cellphone for longer than 10 years increases your risk of some types of brain tumors. And that's just the bad news for adults.





A former cellphone-industry researcher from the University of Utah, Om Gandhi, Sc.D., has discovered that children's brains absorb far more RF radiation than adult brains do. Having routinely subjected adult-sized dummy heads to RF waves, in 1996 Gandhi created models of the smaller, thinner skulls of children ages 5 and 10. In what would mark the beginning of the end of his financial relationship with the cellphone industry (its decision, not his) Gandhi reported in the journal IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques that the cellphone radiation that hits an adult brain with 72 mW/kg (milliwatts per kilogram of brain tissue) of wireless radiation, for instance, zaps a 10-year-old's brain with 160 mW/kg. Worse, it invades a 5-year old brain with nearly 240 mW/kg.


Gandhi's research was replicated by the French cellphone industry, and France has joined several other nations in issuing advisories limiting the use of cellphones by children. "We have children running around with these cellphones up to their ears and sleeping with them under their pillows," says Andrea Boland, a lawmaker from Maine who introduced the first piece of legislation in this country to require warning labels on cellphones.





Lest readers over the age of 10 take comfort, the window of increased vulnerability to cellphone radiation may not be limited to kids' Dora the Explorer years. According to Ronald Herberman, M.D., former head of UPCI, it takes decades for the brain to lay down the electrical insulation (known as myelin) that presumably shields the nerves, for the most part, from radio waves. Dr. Herberman thinks our increased vulnerability to RF radiation could extend well into our 20s.


This text was edited from an article in Men's Health Magazine.