Cell phone use not seen to increase risk of brain tumors among adults

cell-phone-talking

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Cell phones and risk of brain tumors: What’s the real sci­ence? (CNN):

…In 2011, the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion clas­si­fied the kind of low-ener­gy radi­a­tion that cell phones emit as “pos­si­bly car­cino­genic” because of a link between cell phone use and a type of malig­nant brain tumor called glioma and a benign brain tumor called acoustic neuroma…Although the WHO clas­si­fi­ca­tion sounds omi­nous, it puts cell phones on the same lev­el of can­cer risk as caf­feine and pick­led veg­eta­bles. The posi­tion of numer­ous health orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety and the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, is even more mea­sured, stat­ing that cur­rent evi­dence is not con­clu­sive and more research is needed…

The Inter­phone study is the largest study to date look­ing at cell phones and brain tumors…The study found no asso­ci­a­tion between cell phone use and glioma rates, except in the group of par­tic­i­pants who report­ed using their cell phone for at least 1,640 hours in their life­time with­out a head-set. Those par­tic­i­pants were 40% more like­ly than those who nev­er used a cell phone to have a glioma. How­ev­er authors of the Inter­phone study stat­ed that peo­ple with brain tumors might be more like­ly than healthy peo­ple to exag­ger­ate their cell phone use, and thus the link between heavy phone use and brain tumor risk in the study might not be real…

There are a num­ber of ways to reduce expo­sure to cell phone radi­a­tion, if users are wor­ried about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of health risks, includ­ing using a head­set and tex­ting instead of talking.”

Study: Mobile phones, brain tumors, and the inter­phone study: where are we now? (Envi­ron­men­tal Health Perspectives)

  • BACKGROUND: In the past 15 years, mobile tele­phone use has evolved from an uncom­mon activ­i­ty to one with > 4.6 bil­lion sub­scrip­tions world­wide. How­ev­er, there is pub­lic con­cern about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that mobile phones might cause can­cer, espe­cial­ly brain tumors.
  • OBJECTIVES: We reviewed the evi­dence on whether mobile phone use rais­es the risk of the main types of brain tumor—glioma and meningioma—with a par­tic­u­lar focus on the recent pub­li­ca­tion of the largest epi­demi­o­log­ic study yet: the 13-coun­try Inter­phone Study.
  • DISCUSSION: Method­olog­i­cal defc­its lim­it the con­clu­sions that can be drawn from the Inter­phone study, but its results, along with those from oth­er epi­demi­o­log­ic, bio­log­i­cal, and ani­mal stud­ies and brain tumor inci­dence trends, sug­gest that with­in about 10–15 years after first use of mobile phones there is unlike­ly to be a mate­r­i­al increase in the risk of brain tumors in adults. Data for child­hood tumors and for peri­ods beyond 15 years are cur­rent­ly lacking.
  • CONCLUSIONS: Although there remains some uncer­tain­ty, the trend in the accu­mu­lat­ing evi­dence is increas­ing­ly against the hypoth­e­sis that mobile phone use can cause brain tumors in adults.

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About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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