Mobile Phones Don't Cause Brain Cancer?

A study conducted in Japan recently has suggested that use of mobile phone does not raise the risk of brain tumors.

The research, the first of its kind to examine the effects of radiation levels of mobile-phone handset on different parts of the brain, compared 322 brain-cancer patients and 683 healthy people. The cancer patients had one of the three most common types of brain tumor – glioma, meningioma, or pituitary adenoma.

Professor Naohito Yamaguchi, lead researcher, wrote in the British Journal of Cancer: “Using our newly developed and more accurate techniques, we found no association between use of mobile phone and cancer, providing more evidence to suggest that the device does not cause brain cancer.”

The Japanese researchers evaluated subjects on the basis of the number of years of mobile phone use and the time spent on the calls. They also studied the radiation emitted from various types of mobile phones, and placed them into one of four categories relating to strength of radiation. How each mobile phone was likely to affect different areas of the brain was analyzed.

However, many researches conducted earlier had suggested that use of mobile phone does lead to brain cancer. Yet, most of them had found no link between use of mobile phone and an increased risk of brain cancer.

Some studies had showed that while the use of mobiles has increased rapidly in the past two decades, the number of cases of brain cancer hardly changed.

In 2007, a research team from the United Kingdom found no link between use of mobile phone and health problems in the short term. However, experts could not rule out a risk in the long term.

Public concern over the safety of mobile phones has grown as increased numbers of both adults and children are using mobile phone for everyday communication.