Do Cell Phones Increase the Risk of Brain Tumors?
Does using cellular telephones increase the risk of brain tumors? The short answers it that based on the evidence so far, any increased risk seems so small that it can’t be accurately measured.
Swedish researcher Lennart Hardell made news recently, for example, with a study claiming that people who frequently used cellular phone models popular in the 1980s and early 1990s had a “significantly raised” risk of developing brain tumors. But looking at the actual results, closely, there’s not much to this study.
Hardell compared 1,600 people who contracted brain tumors and survived with 1,600 people with no history of brain tumors. He found that people who used the phones for more than five years were 26 percent more likely to develop brain tumors, while those who used the phones for more than 10 years had a 77 percent higher chance of developing brain tumors. Both results are well below the threshold of risk that can be reliably measured in an epidemiological study of this size.
Moreover, the cell phone models that Hardell studied were older analog models that put out about 10 times as much power as contemporary, miniaturized versions.
Perhaps someday a study will find a robust connection between cell phone use and brain tumors, but so far the odds of that happening do not look promising.
Source:
Mobile phone users ‘at greater risk of brain tumour’. Charles Arthur, The Independent (UK), September 5, 2001.
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