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hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

A systematic review into the potential health effects from radio wave exposure has shown mobile phones are not linked to brain cancer [sciencealert.com]:

Mobile phones are often held against the head during use. And they emit radio waves, a type of non-ionising radiation. These two factors are largely why the idea mobile phones might cause brain cancer emerged in the first place.

The possibility that mobile phones might cause cancer has been a long-standing concern. Mobile phones – and wireless tech more broadly – are a major part of our daily lives. So it's been vital for science to address the safety of radio wave exposure from these devices.

Over the years, the scientific consensus has remained strong – there's no association between mobile phone radio waves and brain cancer, or health more generally.

Despite the consensus, occasional research studies have been published that suggested the possibility of harm.

In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified radio wave exposure as a possible carcinogen [who.int] to humans. The meaning of this classification was largely misunderstood and led to some increase in concern.

IARC is part of the World Health Organization. Its classification of radio waves as a possible carcinogen was largely based on limited evidence from human observational studies. Also known as epidemiological studies, they observe the rate of disease and how it may be caused in human populations.

Observational studies are the best tool researchers have to investigate long-term health effects in humans, but the results can often be biased.

The IARC classification relied on previous observational studies where people with brain cancer reported they used a mobile phone more than they actually did. One example of this is known as the INTERPHONE study [oup.com].

This new systematic review of human observational studies is based on a much larger data set compared to what the IARC examined in 2011.

[...] It is the most comprehensive review on this topic – it considered more than 5,000 studies, of which 63, published between 1994 and 2022, were included in the final analysis. The main reason studies were excluded was that they were not actually relevant; this is very normal with search results from systematic reviews.

No association between mobile phone use and brain cancer, or any other head or neck cancer, was found.

There was also no association with cancer if a person used a mobile phone for ten or more years (prolonged use). How often they used it – either based on the number of calls or the time spent on the phone – also didn't make a difference.

Importantly, these findings align with previous research [bmj.com]. It shows that, although the use of wireless technologies has massively increased in the past few decades, there has been no rise in the incidence of brain cancers.

Journal Reference:Karipidis et al., The effect of exposure to radiofrequency fields on cancer risk in the general and working population: A systematic review of human observational studies – Part I: Most researched outcomes, Environment International, Volume 191, September 2024, 108983. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2024.108983 [doi.org]

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