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Long-term mobile use

Using mobile phones for more than 10 years doubles the risk of brain cancer, newspapers reported. They suggest that the risk may be greater in children whose thinner skulls and developing nervous system make them more vulnerable. The Daily Mail reported that “researchers found that long-term users had double the chance of getting a malignant tumour on the side of the brain where they held the handset”. The stories are based on a review of studies that looked at the difference in mobile phone usage between people with and without brain tumours for more than a 10 year period. The authors found 11 studies on people who had used mobile phones for more than a decade. Some of these showed that mobile phone use significantly increased the risk of some types of brain cancer while others did not. Further perspective is given to this by data from Cancer Research UK, which suggests that “brain tumours” are rare and occur in less than seven in 100,000 people. Contrary to newspaper reports, this review did not find that children are at greater risk of cancer from mobile use. The review did not look specifically at children and it would not be possible to come to this conclusion. These headlines originated from a comment by one of the authors. However, the Stewart Report, a government sponsored independent review, recommended in 2004 that the use of mobiles by children should be minimised as a precautionary measure. This recommendation is endorsed by the findings from the 2007 MTHR Report, which found that although there was no evidence that mobile phones were associated with adverse effects in adults, further research is still needed for their use by children, and for their long-term use by adults. Proposals for the MTHR 2 study that begins in 2008 include epidemiological studies of the risk of brain tumours in children.

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