Is brain cancer related to mobile phone use?

The incidence of brain cancer in the Britain has not increased following the period of rapid adoption of mobile phone technology. From this we believe that you can conclude that radio frequency exposure from these phones does not appear to increase the risk of developing brain cancers.

There is an ongoing controversy about whether exposure to radio waves from mobile phones increases the risk of brain cancer. The IOM, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Manchester and Drexel University in the USA, analysed official data from the Office of National Statistics to look at trends in rates of newly diagnosed brain cancers in England from 1998 to 2007. The results, published in the scientific journal Bioelectromagnetics [1], reported no statistically significant change in the incidence of brain cancers in men or women during the nine-year time period under observation.

The researchers argue that because there is no plausible biological mechanism for radio waves to directly damage our genes and initiate cancer, if this type of exposure was linked to cancer it would more likely accelerate the growth of an existing brain tumour. If this was the case then we would expect an increase in the number of cancer cases five to ten years after the introduction of mobile phones and that this increase would continue as the popularity of mobile-phones increased. The time interval we studied would correspond to a risk period from about 1990, which was when mobile phone use increased from essentially zero to about 65% of households owning a phone.

"Our research suggests that the increased and widespread use of mobile phones, which in some studies was associated to increased brain cancer risk, has not led to a noticeable increase in the incidence of brain cancer in England" said Dr Frank de Vocht, who led the research.

"It is very unlikely that we are at the forefront of a brain cancer epidemic related to mobile phones, as some have suggested, although we did observe a small increased rate of brain cancers in the temporal lobe corresponding to the time period when mobile phone use rose from zero to 65% of households. However, to put this into perspective, if this specific rise in tumour incidence was caused by mobile phone use, it would contribute to less than one additional case per 100,000 population in a decade."

From our research we cannot exclude the possibility that there are people who are susceptible to radio-frequency exposure or that some rare types of brain cancer are associated with it but we interpret our data as indicating that there is no pressing need to implement public health measures to reduce radio-frequency exposure from mobile phones.

[1] de Vocht F, Burstyn I, Cherrie JW. (2011). Time trends (1998-2007) in brain cancer incidence rates in relation to mobile phone use in England. Bioelectromagnetics, DOI: 10.1.002/bem.20648.