Photo Credit – Wikipedia
# 5822
Two months ago the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) issued a new statement (IARC Press Release N° 208) that lists mobile phone use in same carcinogenic hazard category as exposure to gasoline, engine exhaust and lead.
For details on this announcement, you may wish to revisit IARC: Cell Phones `Possibly Carcinogenic’.
For a number of years some scientists had expressed concerns that prolonged exposure to cell phone RF (radiofrequency) electromagnetic fields might cause certain types of head and neck cancers.
And many researchers worried that children, teenagers, and young adults - who rank among the most fervent users of cell phones - could be at particular risk.
While it probably won’t settle the debate, today we’ve a new study that appears in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that reassuringly found no link between cell phone use and brain tumors in children and adolescents.
Mobile Phone Use and Brain Tumors in Children and Adolescents: A Multicenter Case–Control Study
Denis Aydin, Maria Feychting, Joachim Schüz, Tore Tynes, Tina Veje Andersen, Lisbeth Samsø Schmidt, Aslak Harbo Poulsen, Christoffer Johansen, Michaela Prochazka, Birgitta Lannering, Lars Klæboe, Tone Eggen, Daniela Jenni, Michael Grotzer, Nicolas Von der Weid, Claudia E. Kuehni and Martin Röösli
The authors examined the medical records of 352 children aged 7-19 from Norway, Denmark, Sweden, & Switzerland with brain tumors. They conducted interviews with them to determine their cell phone usage, and compared this data to 646 control subjects.
The researchers found no statistically significant increase in the incidence of brain tumors among children and adolescents who were exposed to cell phone radiation, compared to those who were not.
Their conclusion:
The absence of an exposure–response relationship either in terms of the amount of mobile phone use or by localization of the brain tumor argues against a causal association.
Today’s study has some limitations.
It is based primarily on self-reported data, the subjects had been using cell phones for an average of only 4 years, and much of this usage was likely text messaging -as opposed to voice calls – which would reduce radiation exposure to the head and neck.
Since it can take years – or even decades – for brain cancers to develop, the true health impacts from the stratospheric rise in cell phone use over the past decade may be difficult to accurately gauge for some time.
While today’s results are encouraging, the authors believe that it is important to continue to study the issue and be on the lookout for potential negative health effects related to cell phone use in children.
