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A systematic review into the potential health effects from radio wave exposure has shown that there is no evidence that cell phones cause brain cancer.
This backs up previous findings that the prevalence of brain tumours among those spent the most hours on a mobile phone did not differ significantly from those who used the mobile phone significantly less.
People who had used a mobile phone for more than 15 years did not have a higher risk of developing the disease than those who had used a mobile phone for a shorter period of time.
The latest review was commissioned by the World Health Organization and was published yesterday in the journal Environment International.
Mobile phones are often held against the head during use. And they emit radio waves, a type of non-ionising radiation. These two factors are the main reason why there have been fears that they could cause brain cancers.
The possibility that mobile phones might cause cancer has been a long-standing concern. Mobile phones – and wireless tech more broadly – are a major part of our daily lives. So it’s been vital for science to address the safety of radio wave exposure from these devices.
Over the years, the scientific consensus has remained strong – there’s no association between mobile phone radio waves and brain cancer, or health more generally.
Despite the consensus, occasional research studies have been published that suggested the possibility of harm.
In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified radio wave exposure as a possible carcinogen to humans. The meaning of this classification was largely misunderstood and led to some increase in concern.
Observational studies are the best tool researchers have to investigate long-term health effects in humans, but the results can often be biased.
This new systematic review of human observational studies is based on a much larger data set compared to what the IARC examined in 2011.
It includes more recent and more comprehensive studies. This means we can now be more confident that exposure to radio waves from mobile phones or wireless technologies is not associated with an increased risk of brain cancer.
The new review forms part of a series of systematic reviews commissioned by the World Health Organization to look more closely at possible health effects associated with exposure to radio waves.
This systematic review provides the strongest evidence to date that radio waves from wireless technologies are not a hazard to human health.
It is the most comprehensive review on this topic – it considered more than 5,000 studies, of which 63, published between 1994 and 2022, were included in the final analysis. The main reason studies were excluded was that they were not actually relevant; this is very normal with search results from systematic reviews.
No association between mobile phone use and brain cancer, or any other head or neck cancer, was found.
There was also no association with cancer if a person used a mobile phone for ten or more years (prolonged use). How often they used it – either based on the number of calls or the time spent on the phone – also didn’t make a difference.
Sources: The Conversation, KFF Health News, Environment International.
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