David Ropeik’s September 13 letter, “Remove Concord’s restrictive cellphone tower bylaw,” relies on a World Health Organization (WHO) review of tumor risk and cellphone use. As someone who helped create Concord’s wireless bylaw and continues to follow the relevant science, I offer the following information to support keeping the bylaw intact.
Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D., director, Center for Family and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, in his article “Biased WHO commissioned review claims no cancer link to cellphone use (Karipidis et al., 2024),”
September 16, 2024, states: “These assertions are highly irresponsible. Substantial disagreement has existed for decades among experts who study the effects of radio frequency radiation (RFR). The WHO-sponsored systematic review of this scientific literature will exacerbate these disagreements rather than alleviate them due to bias in the selection of review teams by the WHO.”
Among Moskowitz’s many concerns of Karipidis, et al: “In most studies ‘regular cellphone use’ was defined as at least one cellphone call weekly over the past six months. One would hardly expect to find any adverse effects with such little exposure to RFR; yet, the primary focus in Karipidis et al. used this definition of cellphone use.”
Moskowitz explains the contrast between Karipidis et al., and a meta-analysis his team conducted: “My colleagues and I (Choi et al., 2020) employed a more conventional approach to the metaanalysis of the cumulative call time data. … We found a significant increased tumor risk … which included 8 studies with more than 1000 hours of lifetime mobile phone call time … which found statistically significant evidence for increased risk of tumors in the brain and salivary glands.”
When a worldwide scientific organization seems to be captured by industry, we need to rely on academic research which is scientific and unbiased.
Virginia Hines
The Valley Road