Mobile Phones Don't Cause Cancer?

Not that I ever thought they did, but finally there's some solid research to back this up.

Mobile phone use does not lead to a greater risk of brain tumour, the largest study on the issue has said.

The study of 2,782 people across the UK found no link between the risk of glioma - the most common type of brain tumour - and length of mobile use.

[...]

The research, which was carried out by the British arm of an international project called Interphone, reiterates the findings of most earlier studies in saying that there is no connection between cancer and mobile phone use.

So how exactly did this urban legend gain so much credibility anyway?

Research author Professor Patricia McKinney, Professor of Paediatric Epidemiology at the Leeds University, said: "For regular mobile phone users, there was no increased risk of developing a glioma associated with mobile phone use."

She acknowledged that there appeared to be an increased risk among brain cancer sufferers on the side of the head where they held the phone.

The team, however, did not put this down to a causal link, because almost exactly the same decreased risk was seen on the other side of the head, leaving no overall increase risk of tumours for mobile phone users.

Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on. (emphasis added)

This conclusion is hard to dispute unless one wishes to argue that cell phones magically redistribute over one's head a fixed probability of brain cancer arising. The allegations of a link between brain tumors and cell phones are pure garbage, and it says something about the sheer extent of public ignorance of elementary physics that such claims were ever taken seriously: low frequency electromagnetic particles simply don't have the energy required to damage DNA, no matter how intensely they're being emitted, and anyone with even the most passing familiarity with quantum mechanics ought to be able to understand why. Once the importance of threshold frequency to radiation's capacity to ionize molecules is grasped, it becomes obvious why one needn't await studies like this one reported by the BBC to dismiss allegations of cancer-inducing powerlines and mobile phones as so much quackery lapped up by ignorant hordes who take fright at anything with the word "radiation" associated with it.