Mobile Phones Not Responsible for Brain Cancers

A study carried out by scientists at Tokyo Women's Medical University and written up in the British Journal of Cancer has found no evidence that mobile phone usage leads to a rise in cancer rates in the brain. While there have been many studies on the subject, with often conflicting results - this study is different in that it studied the effects of radiation on different areas of the brain.

The study area encompassed greater and outer Tokyo along with 25 adjacent cities. In a preliminary survey, it was found that 30 of the 172 hospital neurosurgery departments in Tokyo treated approximately 90% of brain tumours in the area. Of these 30 departments, 21 agreed to participate in the study, and so it was estimated that about 75% of the meningioma and glioma cases in the study area would be covered.

To provide control subjects, random calls were made to landlines and volunteers were matched to the study group. In the end, the team were able to compare phone use in 322 brain cancer patients with 683 healthy people.

A standard set of questionnaires were used and the subjects asked to detail their phone use over the past years.

To take into account differences in phone types (clamshell, candy bar etc) and radiation emissions - the phones were categorised into four different types to see if any type of handset was more or less likely to cause cancers.

At the end of the study, the team report that they found no causative link between mobile phone use and brain cancers. Equally notable, no difference in incidence was found between long term users who had had use of analogue phones in the past, and those who had only ever used a digital based phone. There had been claims that the pulsed nature of digital transmissions could be more harmful than the constant analogue signal. That concern seems to have been put to rest with this study.

On the web: The full report at the British Journal of Cancer

Posted to the site on 7th February 2008