THE first in a series of nationwide studies has concluded that mobile phones pose no increased risk of brain cancer 鈥� at least not after 10 years of use.
Over a two-year period, Helle Christensen鈥檚 team at the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen looked at every new case in Denmark of a type of rare brain tumour called an acoustic neuroma. 鈥淚t鈥檚 located right where the radiation is most intense,鈥� says Christensen. 鈥淚f mobile phones should in some way be able to influence tumour tissue they should also influence acoustic neuromas.鈥�
The team compared the 106 new cases with those of 212 randomly chosen subjects, matched for age, sex and socio-economic status. They found no link of any kind with phone use, though it is too soon to rule out a long-term risk, since too few subjects had used phones for longer than 10 years, says Christensen (American Journal of Epidemiology, vol 159, p 277).
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