Mobile phone users face ‘brain tumour pandemic’, say campaigners

Mobile phone users face ‘brain tumour pandemic’, say campaigners

Mobile phone users face a “brain tumour pandemic” according to campaigners who say that the health risks of using handsets have been under-estimated.


By Martin Beckford
Published: 7:00AM BST 15 Jun 2010
Mobile phone users face ?brain tumour pandemic?, say campaigners
The world?s 4billion mobile phone users are advised to keep handsets away from their heads Photo: GETTY

A study warns that the danger of heavy mobile use is 25 per cent greater than was suggested in a recently published landmark investigation.

The new report claims that the £15million, decade-long Interphone study was so flawed that all of the risk levels it produced must be increased significantly.

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It says that the world’s 4billion mobile phone users should keep handsets away from their heads and bodies to lower the increased risk of developing cancer, and that governments should strengthen their public health warnings on the topic. However cancer charities said the new claims were “overblown”.

Lloyd Morgan, a member of America’s Environmental Health Trust lobby group, said: “What we have discovered indicates there is going to be one hell of a brain tumour pandemic unless people are warned and encouraged to change current cell phone use behaviours.

“Governments should not soft-peddle this critical public health issue but instead rapidly educate citizens on the risks.

“People should hear the message clearly that cell phones should be kept away from one’s head and body at all times.”

Interphone, the long-delayed study into the potential health risks of mobile phone use set up by an agency of the UN’s World Health Organisation and carried out in 13 countries, concluded last month that making calls for more than half an hour a day could increase users’ risk of developing brain cancer by as much as 40 per cent.

But the researchers admitted the results were not conclusive and could have been affected by statistical error or bias.

Now Mr Morgan, an electronic engineer, has re-assessed Interphone’s findings to take into account its flaws.

He believes its main problem was “selection bias”. Many of the healthy subjects chosen for comparison with tumour sufferers were likely to be mobile phone users themselves, while others whose experience would have been useful to the study were either too ill to take part or refused to do so.

Mr Morgan believes the “systemic underestimation of risk” in Interphone means that the true risk of developing brain tumours for mobile phone users is at least 25 per cent higher than previously thought.

One of the Interphone studies found a 24 per cent increased risk of glioma - the most common type of brain tumour - from "regular" use on the same side of the head as the handset was held.

But this rose to 55 per cent under Mr Morgan’s analysis, and after 10 years or more the risk doubled for those who use mobiles just at least once a week.

However Ed Yong, head of health information for Cancer Research UK, said: "The warnings of a ‘brain tumour pandemic’ are overblown.

“The majority of studies in people have found no link between mobile phones and cancer, national brain cancer rates have not increased in proportion to skyrocketing phone use and there are still no good consistent explanations for how mobile phones could cause cancer.

“Even after the minor adjustments reported in this new analysis, the results from the overall Interphone study are still either not statistically significant, or right on the borderline.

“This means that any link between mobile phones and cancer that the conference presentation quotes could well be down to chance or anomalies in the data they collected.”