Mobile Phones Don’t Cause Brain Tumours
Mobile phones are now in very common usage, but the concerns and rumours surrounding the risk of brain tumours that using the phones might cause have abounded for years.
Now a comprehensive, large-scale study has reported that there is no evidence that using mobile phones in the long-term cause any increased risk of developing brain tumours. The study found that, in fact, people who don’t use mobile phoned are just as likely to develop brain tumours as those people who do use them.
The study examined records for all adults in Denmark over a twenty year period (1987 – 2007) and used the data to compare the risk of developing a brain tumour among people who were recorded as subscribers to a mobile phone service as against those people who did not subscribe to mobile phone services. There was no increased risk associated with using mobile phoned in either men or women, even over many years (thirteen or more).
There was a pretty major limitation to the data, though, in that whilst it doesn’t pre-select the people it studied and did not ask people to estimate their usage (relying instead on the actual data of subscriptions), it doesn’t necessarily mean that the people who don’t subscribe to a service do not use mobile phones. For instance, they could be using a work’s mobile phone. However, the results are quite reassuring and reminds us that brain tumours are rare amongst mobile phone users and non-mobile phone users alike: between 1990 and 2007, there were around 122,000 cases of cancer among men and around 133,000 in women. Of those, roughly 10,600 (5,500 women and 5,100 men) were brain or spinal cancers.
There was no significant difference between the incidence of brain/spinal cancer between people who use mobiles and people who don’t, and nor were there any differences in the location of the tumours found (e.g. near to where the mobile is held).
