4 September 2024 – You don't have to worry – there isn’t a link between cell phone use and brain cancer attributable to radio wave exposure.
Researchers also found no evidence that cellphone use is linked to other kinds of head and neck cancer in a brand new, comprehensive evaluation. The results were recently published. published within the Journal Environment International.
Mobile phones emit radiation in the shape of radio waves, and there are national and international safety limits that limit exposure from phones and other wireless devices.
The latest findings come from a review of 63 research studies published between 1994 and 2022. The review was commissioned by the World Health Organization. The conclusion that there isn’t a link to cancer follows a publication by a WHO group greater than a decade ago that warned that radio waves from mobile phones “possibly carcinogenic.” The authors of this recent study noted that several expert panels reached conflicting conclusions when reviewing the idea for the “possibly carcinogenic” claim.
“When the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified exposure to radio waves as possibly carcinogenic to humans in 2013, it was based largely on limited evidence from observational studies in humans,” said researcher Ken Karipidis, PhD, of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency in a opinion“This systematic review of observational studies in humans is based on a much larger dataset, including more recent and comprehensive studies, compared to the data reviewed by IARC, so we can be more confident that exposure to radio waves from wireless technology does not pose a threat to human health.”
The links to cancer that researchers searched for of their recent evaluation included brain and nervous system tumors, including gliomas and meningiomas, which may occur within the brain or spinal cord. The researchers also examined the info for effects on cancer risk depending on what number of years a cellphone was used, how long the phone was on in total, or what number of calls were made in total, and located no links. They also concluded that radiation from broadcast antennas or base stations was not linked to the chance of leukemia or brain tumors in children.