Objective
The rapid worldwide increase in mobile phone use in adolescents and, more recently, children has generated considerable interest in the possible health effects of exposure to radio frequency (RF) fields. The current project aims to assess the potential carcinogenic effects of childhood and adolescent exposure to RF and ELF from mobile telephones on tumours of the central nervous system. The study will include approximately 1,000 cases of malignant and benign brain tumours aged 10 to 24 years and their respective controls from 15 countries (7 of which have funding under this contract). The project will build upon the methodological experience (both in terms of exposure assessment and epidemiological design) collected within the INTERPHONE study. Particular attention will be paid to issues of: potential selection bias related to the very low response rates of population-based controls – by selecting hospitalized controls with specific diagnoses, representative of the general population and unrelated to mobile phone use –; and potential recall errors – by validating questionnaire responses with the help of network operators and repeat questionnaires. Improved exposure indices for RF will be derived taking into account spatial distribution of energy in the brain at different ages; ELF from the phones will also be considered, as well as other important sources of EMF in the general environment of young people. The proposed age range is the most cost efficient to answer the question (because of latency) of brain cancer risk from exposure in childhood and adolescence. The timing of the project is optimal (2010-2014) because of the increasing prevalence of heavy use among adolescents and, in the last 5-10 years, children, without hands-free kits, particularly in Southern European countries and Israel.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesneurobiology
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationsradio technologyradio frequency
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncology
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunicationsmobile phones
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Call for proposal
FP7-ENV-2008-1
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Funding Scheme
CP-FP - Small or medium-scale focused research projectCoordinator
08036 Barcelona
Spain
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Participants (16)
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08003 BARCELONA
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08003 Barcelona
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3584 CS Utrecht
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92130 Issy Les Moulineaux
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LS2 7UE Leeds
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80539 MUNCHEN
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1090 Wien
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10124 Torino
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54500 Vandoeuvre les Nancy
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10561 Athina
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52621 Ramat Gan
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K1N 6N5 Ottawa
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3800 Victoria
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Participation ended
1010 Auckland
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4442 Palmerston North
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SW1W 9SZ London
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