Mobile phones and cancer

Mobile phones and cancer

In 2006 a large Danish study about the connection between mobile phone use and cancer incidence was published. It followed over 420,000 Danish citizens over 20 years and showed no increased risk of cancer. The German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) consider this report as inconclusive.

In order to investigate the risk of cancer for the Mobile Phone user, a cooperative project between 13 countries has been launched called INTERPHONE. The idea is that cancers need time to develop so only studies over 10 years are of interest.

The following studies of long time exposure have been published:

* A Danish study (2004) that took place over 10 years and found no evidence to support a link.

* A Swedish study (2005) that draws the conclusion that "the data do not support the hypothesis that mobile phone use is related to an increased risk of glioma or meningioma."

* A British study (2005) that draws the conclusion that "The study suggests that there is no substantial risk of acoustic neuroma in the first decade after starting mobile phone use. However, an increase in risk after longer term use or after a longer lag period could not be ruled out."

* A German study (2006) that states "In conclusion, no overall increased risk of glioma or meningioma was observed among these cellular phone users; however, for long-term cellular phone users, results need to be confirmed before firm conclusions can be drawn."

* A joint study that draws the conclusion that "Although our results overall do not indicate an increased risk of glioma in relation to mobile phone use, the possible risk in the most heavily exposed part of the brain with long-term use needs to be explored further before firm conclusions can be drawn."
Other studies on cancer and mobile phones are:

* Tumour risk associated with use of cellular telephones or cordless desktop telephones, that states: "We found for all studied phone types an increased risk for brain tumours, mainly acoustic neuroma and malignant brain tumours".

* A Swedish study (2004) concludes: "Our findings do not indicate an increased risk of acoustic neuroma related to short-term mobile phone use after a short latency period. However, our data suggest an increased risk of acoustic neuroma associated with mobile phone use of at least 10 years' duration.".

Electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome

Some users of mobile handsets have reported feeling several unspecific symptoms during and after its use, such as burning and tingling sensations in the skin of the head and extremities, fatigue, sleep disturbances, dizziness, loss of mental attention, reaction times and memory retentiveness, headaches, malaise, tachycardia (heart palpitations) and disturbances of the digestive system. Some people, implying a causal relationship, have named this syndrome as a new diagnostic entity, EHS or ES (electrosensitivity). The World Health Organization prefers to name it "idiopathic environmental intolerance", in order to avoid the implication of causation.

source: wikipidia