No link between mobile phone use and brain cancer, major report shows

In news that should reassure those glued to their mobile phones all day, a new international review finds no link between mobile phone use and brain cancer.

Commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO), eleven experts from ten countries covered decades of research – to be precise, 5,000 studies published between 1994 and 2022. The final analysis was published in the journal Environment International.

What exactly were they looking for? They sought to determine whether greater exposure to radio frequencies commonly used by wireless electronics, including cell phones, could increase the chance of a brain cancer diagnosis.

What did they find? In the 63 studies they relied on, the risk of brain cancer did not increase even with long-term cell phone use (defined as 10 years or more), among those who spent a lot of time on their cell phones, or among people who had a many phone calls. They also saw no increased risk of leukemia or brain cancer in children exposed to radio or TV transmitters or cell phone towers.

“These results are very reassuring,” lead study author Ken Karipidis told reporters, according to the Washington Post. Although cell phone use “has skyrocketed, there has been no increase in brain cancer rates,” he noted.

Concerns about a possible link first emerged in 2011 when the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the WHO’s cancer agency, classified radio wave exposure as possibly carcinogenic to humans, the Post reported, but that was based on limited evidence from observational studies.

Karipidis explained that “many more studies have appeared” on airwaves since then and that they were “quite extensive,” prompting the WHO to order the latest review.

Karipidis said the problem with some of the early research was that it relied on case-control studies that compared the responses of people with brain cancer to those of people without the disease – which can be “somewhat biased.”

Not only that, but newer generation mobile phone networks, including 3G and 4G networks, actually produce “substantially lower” radio frequency emissions than older networks, review co-author Mark Elwood, honorary professor of cancer epidemiology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand , the Post told us.

“There are no major studies yet on 5G networks, but there are studies on radar, which has similar high frequencies; these do not show an increased risk,” he added.

Karipidis noted that having more cell phone towers actually reduces the amount of radiation emitted by cell phones because they don’t have to work as hard to get a signal.

One expert noted that new technologies that spread rapidly often raise fears of health problems.

“Concerns about the health impact of new technology are common and increase when a new technology is widely or rapidly adopted,” Keith Petrie, a University of Auckland expert who was not involved in the study, told the Mail.

“This was seen during the COVID-19 pandemic when people attacked cell towers believing 5G towers were spreading the coronavirus in a baseless theory.”

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