Cell phone study finds no cancer link, but how about kids' risk?

istockphoto

(CBS/AP) Cell phone users have something new to yak about: the biggest study ever of cell phones found no evidence whatever that even long-term use of the devices causes brain cancer.

PICTURES - Cell phones & cancer: 8 dumb ways to boost possible risk

The Danish study of more than 350,000 people showed that there was no difference in cancer rates between people who had used cell phones for more than a decade and people who hadn't.

The findings come less than six months after the International Agency for Research on Cancer called cell phones "possibly carcinogenic." That position grew out of a study of more than 14,000 people that showed a hint of a link between very heavy cell phone use and glioma, a rare but often deadly brain tumor.

In the new research, published online Thursday in the journal BMJ, researchers updated a previous study examining 358,403 cellphone users age 30 and over from 1990 to 2007. Cancer rates in people who used cell phones for about 10 years were similar to rates in people without a cell phone. Cell phone users were also no more likely to get a tumor in the part of the brain closest to where phones are usually held against the head.

Is this the last word on cell phone safety? Probably not.

"This is encouraging news, but it doesn't mean we're at the end of the road," said Hazel Nunn, head of Health Evidence and Information at Cancer Research U.K., which wasn't involved in the study.

Others disputed the study's findings. The advocacy group MobileWise, which believes cell phones pose a health risk, said the study wasn't long enough to gauge long-term risk, since brain tumors can take decades to form.

Nunn agreed that studies with longer-term data were needed and that there was little information on risk to children from cell phones.

The bottom line for now? Nunn said that except perhaps for limiting kids' use of cell phone, there was no need for cell phone users to change their habits based on the current evidence. As she put it, ""There are a lot more worrying things in the world than mobile phones."

9 Photos

Cell phones & cancer: 8 dumb ways to boost possible risk

[JohnPElliott]

Thank you jaguar7117 -- I figure when anyone says "ask any RF engineer", they are assuming that no one reading is in the electronics design business. I also sigh when "scary radiation" is mentioned (without noting the different kinds, as you pointed out).

One thing to consider about any links between cell phone use and cancer is this -- if there was a significant risk, there would be an increase in certain kinds of cancers (i.e. cancers of the brain, inner ear, etc.) that would correspond to the increase in the use of cell phones over the last 30 years.

Of course, even if there were an increase, a _causal_ link would still need to be explained. However, I have not even heard a claim of the former. Without that, there are only two possible conclusions: 1) there is no significant risk; or 2) the effects take more than 30 years to develop. And, by the way, if you want to believe in #2 -- until there is an uptick in brain cancers, it will be very hard to show any connection.

[mackull]

Google "Mobile Phones Don't Raise Risk Of Cancer is Misleading & Irresponsible Say Scientists" and Read why this article is Misleading & Irresponsible

[mackull]

the researchers of this study themselves have admitted the analysis is flawed. It states in the report that: "A limitation of the study is potential misclassification of exposure.

[mackull]

NOTE REGARDING THIS NEW STUDY - Scientists and campaigners condemn new mobile phone study as misleading and irresponsible - But scientists and campaigners both in the UK and across the globe have dismissed the study as being seriously flawed and offering misleading and false reassurance to the media and public as to the safety of mobile phones. Source: http://******/nr5ldj

[trrll]

It was never a very plausible concern. Radio frequency photons simply don't carry enough energy to harm biological molecules. The most they can do is rattle the molecules around a bit, which only warms things up slightly. This is only a danger if the power is so high that it can pump in heat faster than the body can cool itself, heating the tissue to a dangerous. So you don't want to stick your head in a microwave oven or in front of a radar dish. But the dinky little transmitter in a cell phone simply cannot put out enough power to cause any harm.

[mackull]

Go Google. Click on Video Tab. Search This: "Dr. Martin Blank, PhD Speaks At Commonwealth Club" and Watch Video

[mackull]

Go to YouTube.com and search "Martin Blank, PhD - Part 1" Watch Video

[w4csc]

A blogger wipes his pickup truck hood with a clean paper towel in St Louis,MO, where our FOOD comes from. His little radiation monitor, which only detects part of the radiation, goes nuts over 20,000 counts per minute, as he records it for his YouTube videos to warn us of the radioactive fallout raining down in every storm under the Jet Stream from Fukushima, JP, since they melted down 3 reactors last March. CBS, NBC and the rest of the nuclear reactor company-owned media have this IMPORTANT story blacked out, nationwide. They post stories about milliwatt cell transmitters, thousands of times LESS powerful than their own monsterous UHF digital TV and radio transmitters to divert you, the ignorant public, from any dangers to your kids pouring out of GE's old BWR reactors melting into the ground under the worst nuclear disaster in history, as it renders Northern Japan uninhabitable for thousands of years and trashes your childrens DNA forever.

Read Enenews on the net for the real dangers to humanity, nuclear power...

[rspierce]

Don't believe it; the Danish studies use subscriber statistics, which are not necessarily the same as actual user statistics. I've had a cell phone (subscription) for 15 years, but rarely carry or use it. Ask any RF (radio frequency) engineer what that much power so close to your head can do. Consider why cell phone manufacturers are making the phones speakerphone capable (it's because using the phone a greater distance from your head significantly reduces radiation exposure). Cell phone manufacturers will not tell you what the risks are as long as there is some doubt about the issue.

[jaguar7117]

Wow. Somebody needs to re-take middle school physics class so he can wrap his head around what junk science this is.

Manufacturers make speakerphones because people want them.

"that much power" is a laughably low amount, far less than your hairdryer or a desk lamp. Those both produce far more "radiation", but like radio waves it's not *ionizing* radiation, which is all that matters.

In fact, radio waves have wavelengths measured in feet. This puts them on the opposite side of the visible spectrum as cancer-causing radiation, with waves that are about a million times too big AND a million times lower in power than the ones that give you cancer.

But don't let that stop the hand-wringers, trial lawyers, and control freak Nanny State "progressives" from trying to tax and ban and regulate one more aspect of our lives into oblivion, all in the name of saving us from ourselves.

"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants." -- Albert Camus