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Cancer risk ruled out by new mobile phone study

New research into the possible link between mobile phone use and brain tumours contradicts previous studies by dismissing suggestions that prolonged use of the devices is unsafe.

Scientists in Scandinavia concluded that using a mobile phone for over ten years does not increase the risk of an individual developing cancer.

They studied the populations in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden – all nations known for their heavy mobile phone use – over 20 years. Just under 60,000 brain tumour cases were looked at, diagnosed between 1974 and 2003 in adults aged between 20 and 79.

From 1998 to 2003, when mobile phone use in Nordic countries went up, the team found no change in cancer rates compared with the previous two decades.

In the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the researchers confirm: "From 1974 to 2003, brain tumour incidence rates in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden were stable, decreased, or continued a gradual increase that started before the introduction of mobile phones."

They continue: "No change in incidence trends was observed from 1998 to 2003, the time when possible associations between mobile phone use and cancer risk would be informative about an induction period of five to 10 years."