Mobile Phones Don't Enhance Cancer Risk: Danish Study
22/10/2011
Comprehensive Study Sheds Some Light on the Correlation Between Mobile Phone use and Cancer Risk.
The largest study carried out to date has found no link between the long term use of mobile phones and tumours of the brain or central nervous system.
Danish researchers examined 358,403 mobile phone users over an 18 year period and found no evidence of raised brain tumour risk.
Past studies regarding this subject have been found to be inconclusive, especially about the effects of long term use.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently classified radio frequency electromagnetic fields, as emitted by mobile phones, as previously carcinogenic to humans.
The latest study was an addition of the nationwide Danish study that examined mobile phone users from 1882 – 1995, then later extended to 2002. The outcomes of these studies found no evidence of enhanced tumour risk.
The most current study, piloted by the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen, continued the study up to 2007.
It examined data regarding the whole Danish population aged 30 and above and born in Denmark after 1925, split into mobile phone users and non users before 1995.
It discovered that 10,729 central nervous system tumours occurred in the period 1990 – 2007. Conversely, when the figures were restricted to those who had used mobile phones for 13 years or more, cancer rates were similar for mobile phones users and those who did not use a mobile phone.
The researchers said they witnessed no enhanced risk of tumours of the central nervous system or for all types of cancers combined in mobile phone users.
The authors of the research stated that “the extended follow up allowed out studies to investigate the effects in people who
had used mobile phones for 10 years or longer, and this long term use was not linked with higher risks of cancer.”
“However, as a small to modest increase in risk for subgroups of heavy users or after even longer induction periods than 10 – 15 years cannot dismissed completely, further studies with large study populations, where the potential for misclassification of exposure and selection bias is minimised, are wanted.”
The study, which is published in the British Medical Journal, was accompanied by an editorial, in which professors Anders Ahlbom and Maria Feycthing at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden said the fresh evidence is encouraging, but continued monitoring of health registers and potential cohorts is warranted.