Mobile phones given a clean bill of health

Dec 6 2006

A team of Danish researchers have found that using a cellular phone does not increase a person's risk of cancer.

This will be of some relief to the two billion mobile phone users worldwide and will possibly settle the on-going debate over the whether the long-term use of cellular phones is linked to a greater risk of cancer, in particular tumours of the brain and nervous system.

The team from the Danish Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen used data garnered from the entire population of Denmark for their study, which is one of the most comprehensive ever done and the results serve to endorse the safety of mobile phones.

Lead researcher Joachim Schuz says the results of the nationwide study are quite reassuring.

The data available to the researchers meant they were able to look at a large number of cell phone users and assess potential risks many years after the people initially started using them.

It seems that mobile phones emit electromagnetic fields that can penetrate into the brain, and some scientists have thought this could possibly cause cancer or other health problems.

For the study Schuz's team studied data on 357,553 men and 62,542 women Danish cell phone users. They all first subscribed for mobile service between 1982 and 1995.

The group was then monitored until 2002 which meant some were tracked for two decades.

The researchers then compared their cancer incidence to the rest of Denmark's population and found that a total of 14,249 cancer cases were seen among the cellular telephone users.

That number was lower than would be expected for that population, and the research team say they were not able to identify any increased risks of any cancers that could be related to the use of the cellular phones.

The study reinforces the general consensus among the majority of scientists and health organisations that cellular phones are not harmful to a persons health.

However the researchers do say the study was limited to some extent because no difference was established between people who used the phones frequently and those who did so sparingly, meaning the researchers could not rule out the possibility that some type of increased risk exists among heavy users.

The study was funded by the Danish Cancer Society and Danish Strategic Research Council and is published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.