Sept. 4, 2024 – You don’t have to worry – there’s no connection between mobile phone use and brain cancer from radio wave exposure.
Researchers in a major new analysis also found no evidence that mobile phone usage was linked to other head and neck cancers. The findings were recently published in the journal Environment International.
Cellphones emit radiation via radio waves, and there are safety limits in place nationally and internationally that limit the exposure posed by phones and other wireless devices.
The latest findings come from a review of 63 research studies published between 1994 and 2022. The review was commissioned by the World Health Organization. The conclusion that there is no cancer link follows a publication more than a decade ago from a WHO group that cautioned that radio waves from wireless phones may be “possibly carcinogenic.” The authors of this latest study noted that several expert panels reached conflicting conclusions when reviewing the basis for the “possibly carcinogenic” assertion.
“When the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified radio wave exposure as a possible carcinogen to humans in 2013 it was largely based on limited evidence from human observational studies,” researcher Ken Karipidis, PhD, of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, said in a statement. “This systematic review of human observational studies is based on a much larger dataset compared to that examined by the IARC, that also includes more recent and more comprehensive studies, so we can be more confident that exposure to radio waves from wireless technology is not a human health hazard.”
Among the links to cancer the researchers looked for in this latest analysis were brain and nervous system tumors, including gliomas and meningiomas, which can occur in the brain or the spinal cord. The researchers also probed the data for any cancer risk impact based on how many years a mobile phone was used, total call time, or total number of calls, and found no links. They also concluded that exposure from broadcasting antennas or base stations were not linked to any pediatric leukemia or childhood brain tumor risks.
