Are mobile phones linked to brain cancer?

Findings from an Aussie-led, WHO-commissioned review on the topic have been released today.

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An Australian-led systematic review into the potential health effects from radio wave exposure has found that mobile phones are not linked to head cancers.  

The World Health Organization-commissioned, Australian-led review examined more than 5000 studies of which 63, published between 1994 to 2022, were included in the final analysis.

It found that although the use of wireless technology has massively increased in the last 20 years, there has been no rise in the incidence of brain cancers.

The study was led by experts from the Australian Government’s primary radiation protection authority, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), and is to be published in the journal Environment International.

Lead researcher Associate Professor Ken Karipidis, ARPANSA’s Health Impact Assessment assistant director and vice chair of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), said it was the most comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the evidence to date.

“When the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified radio wave exposure as a possible carcinogen to humans in 2011 it was largely based on limited evidence from human observational studies,” he said.

“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 in the conclusion that exposure to radio waves from wireless technology is not a human health hazard.”

He said health effects from wireless technology was one of the most researched health topics.

“The findings of this systematic review align with previous research conducted by ARPANSA showing that, although the use of wireless technology has massively increased in the last 20 years, there has been no rise in the incidence of brain cancers,” said Professor Karipidis.

Study co-author Professor Mark Elwood, an honorary professor of Cancer Epidemiology at the University of Auckland, said the study had 11 investigators from 10 countries and had taken four years from design to publication of results.

“For this report, cancers of the brain (three types, and in children), pituitary gland, salivary glands, and leukaemias were included. Other cancer types will be reported separately,” he said.

“None of the major questions studied showed increased risks. For the main issue, mobile phones and brain cancers, we found no increased risk, even with 10+ years exposure and the maximum categories of call time or number of calls.

“We also assessed 13 studies from 12 countries studying whether more brain cancers were occurring in recent years, along with more cell phone use: these studies showed no major increases.

“Similarly, we found no increased risks of leukaemia or brain cancers in children in relationship to radio or TV transmitters or cell phone base stations. We also found no increased risk of brain cancers with occupational exposures in the manufacture or operation of equipment.”

There were no major studies yet of 5G networks, but there were studies of radar, which had similar high frequencies, and these did not show an increased risk, said Professor Elwood.

“Some questions cannot be answered as there are not sufficient studies available: for rare types of cancer or unusual types of exposure. Small increases in risk cannot be assessed,” he said.

“The final assessments are that there are no increased risks, with ‘moderate confidence’. In the scheme we used, this is the most definite category for observational studies. The only higher category, ‘high confidence’ is only used for questions where randomised experimental studies (clinical trials) have been done.

“We are monitoring new studies published since our main cut-off, December 2022. There have been several, including the first report on cancer from the COSMOS international cohort study, with over 250,000 participants. These studies are in general consistent with our conclusions.”

Professor Keith Petrie, of the University of Auckland’s Department of Psychological Medicine, said worries about the health effects of new technology were common and tended to increase when a new technology is adopted widely or adopted quickly.

“This was seen during the Covid-19 pandemic when people attacked cell towers believing a baseless theory that 5G towers spread the coronavirus,” he said.

“Similar anxieties were evident after the rapid development of the COVID vaccines based on new messenger RNA technology. For example, there was widespread anxiety based on misinformation that the covid vaccines caused disease or contained a microchip.”

Professor Petrie said there was also a small group of people who attribute physical symptoms to electromagnetic fields from cell phones or Wi-Fi or believed they are hypersensitive to electromagnetic fields.

“There now have been a large number of controlled double-blind studies, where the individuals do not know when they are being exposed or not to electromagnetic fields,” he said.

“The results of this work show that participants and even ‘hypersensitive’ individuals cannot reliably tell when they are exposed. There has also no detectable differences on physiological responses or performance between the exposed and non-exposed groups.”

ARPANSA will continue to undertake research and assess all the available scientific evidence that underpins its radio wave exposure standard and public health advice.