Study Finds No Evidence That Mobile Phones Can Cause Brain Cancer
For a long time, many people have claimed that using a mobile phone can cause brain cancer. These fears were so widespread that the World Health Organization commissioned teams to conduct 13 reviews aimed at establishing whether electromagnetic waves, such as those that enable mobile phones to work, had any health effects. The reviews were commissioned back in 2019.
The World Health Organization hasn’t released its own findings of those reviews. However, a study that was published last week provides an analysis of the WHO-funded reviews. The researchers show that the available data doesn’t provide any evidence to suggest that electromagnetic waves released by mobile phones cause brain cancer or cancer of the neck or head.
For their study, the two researchers analyzed 63 studies that had been published in the years 1994-2022. These researchers were part of the group that had been commissioned by WHO, so their work is also being analyzed by the global health body.
The duo didn’t find any evidence of a causal link between mobile phone use and brain cancer. No such link was found for head and neck cancers either. From their analysis, regardless of how long someone had been using a mobile phone (decades, for example) or their usage habits (calls lasting several hours at a time, for example), the conclusion was the same: there was no evidence of cancer causation.
It should be noted that while commissioning the reviews, WHO asked each team to rate the quality of the different studies they analyzed. For the teams focusing on brain cancer, head cancer and neck cancer, the studies covered were rigorous and their findings were rated as high quality.
Their study also didn’t find any evidence that radio transmission electromagnetic waves or those used to transmit television caused leukemia in children. This concern has also been persistent, which is why the review sought to establish whether any evidence existed to back the fear.
The review authors also point out that if it were indeed true that the electromagnetic waves from mobile phones were responsible for causing brain cancer, then rates of these cancers would have ticked upwards over the years and decades because of how mobile phone usage has proliferated. Since this isn’t happening, then the causes lie elsewhere.
However, the scientists send out a big caution: it is impossible to definitively say no risk exists, and no science can provide proof of the absence of risk.
Until all the causes of brain cancer are fully understood by the scientific community, emphasis will continue to be placed on another key goal: developing treatments that can deliver meaningful clinical outcomes to patients diagnosed with brain cancer. Companies like CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) are focused on doing just that as best they can.
Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the BioMedWire website applicable to all content provided by BMW, wherever published or re-published: http://BMW.fm/Disclaimer
For a long time, many people have claimed that using a mobile phone can cause brain cancer. These fears were so widespread that the World Health Organization commissioned teams to conduct 13 reviews aimed at establishing whether electromagnetic waves, such as those that enable mobile phones to work, had any health effects. The reviews were commissioned back in 2019.
The World Health Organization hasn’t released its own findings of those reviews. However, a study that was published last week provides an analysis of the WHO-funded reviews. The researchers show that the available data doesn’t provide any evidence to suggest that electromagnetic waves released by mobile phones cause brain cancer or cancer of the neck or head.
For their study, the two researchers analyzed 63 studies that had been published in the years 1994-2022. These researchers were part of the group that had been commissioned by WHO, so their work is also being analyzed by the global health body.
The duo didn’t find any evidence of a causal link between mobile phone use and brain cancer. No such link was found for head and neck cancers either. From their analysis, regardless of how long someone had been using a mobile phone (decades, for example) or their usage habits (calls lasting several hours at a time, for example), the conclusion was the same: there was no evidence of cancer causation.
It should be noted that while commissioning the reviews, WHO asked each team to rate the quality of the different studies they analyzed. For the teams focusing on brain cancer, head cancer and neck cancer, the studies covered were rigorous and their findings were rated as high quality.
Their study also didn’t find any evidence that radio transmission electromagnetic waves or those used to transmit television caused leukemia in children. This concern has also been persistent, which is why the review sought to establish whether any evidence existed to back the fear.
The review authors also point out that if it were indeed true that the electromagnetic waves from mobile phones were responsible for causing brain cancer, then rates of these cancers would have ticked upwards over the years and decades because of how mobile phone usage has proliferated. Since this isn’t happening, then the causes lie elsewhere.
However, the scientists send out a big caution: it is impossible to definitively say no risk exists, and no science can provide proof of the absence of risk.
Until all the causes of brain cancer are fully understood by the scientific community, emphasis will continue to be placed on another key goal: developing treatments that can deliver meaningful clinical outcomes to patients diagnosed with brain cancer. Companies like CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) are focused on doing just that as best they can.
Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the BioMedWire website applicable to all content provided by BMW, wherever published or re-published: http://BMW.fm/Disclaimer
