Cell Phones Don’t Cause Brain Cancer
April 12, 2005
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The jury is coming in on the link between cell phones and brain cancer. The verdict so far? There isn’t one.
The latest evidence comes from Danish researchers who compared cell phone usage and brain cancer rates among 427 people diagnosed with brain cancer and 822 healthy controls. Results showed no greater risk of brain cancer among people who used cell phones, despite how often they used them or how long they’d been using them.
Researchers also tested a smaller group of the patients and controls on their ability to remember past cell phone use to ensure against “recall bias” -- specifically, that people with brain cancer might overestimate their cell phone usage. The two groups performed similarly on the test, suggesting the study was not affected by recall bias.
Investigators also found no link between the side of the head where the brain cancer occurred and the side the patient used to talk on the phone.
“These results are in line with other large studies on this question, including a recently published large-scale, population-based study by the Swedish Interphone Study Group,” says Christoffer Johansen, Ph.D., DMSc, M.D., one of the study’s authors. The current findings refute earlier, smaller studies suggesting the radiofrequency fields emitted by cell phones might raise the risk of brain cancer. Scientists have questioned those findings because the radiofrequency fields emitted by the phones are not strong enough to affect DNA. Previous studies have also had methodological errors.
The investigators do call for long-term studies on cell phone use and brain cancer, however, noting studies to date have not been able to look at large groups of people who have used cell phones regularly for more than 10 years.
SOURCE: Neurology, 2005;64:1189-1195
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