Once More: Cell Phones and Brain Cancer?: A new Swedish study may have found a link between long-term, heavy cell phone use and the risk of brain tumors.

Designtechnica News
Apr. 11, 2006

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Cathy Ross

My 15 year old daughter was just diagnosed with a "lifestyle" ADULT brain tumor, Oligodendroglioma. She has had a cell phone since her 12th birthday. She does talk with it on the right side of her head, which is the side of the cancer. She also charged it overnight on her nightstand also to the right. This Cancer is so rare. 4 in 1,000,000 and out of that 7.5% are children. We live in Ohio and I am investigating everything.I am on the Board of Health in our town and thus far radiation seems to be most likely cause. Anyone like to comment I'd love to hear other cases.A new study from the Swedish National Institute for Working Life published in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health examined mobile phone user among 2,200 cancer patients between 20 and 80 years of age, and an identical number of control cases. Among the cancer patients, 905 were diagnosed with malignant brain tumors, and about a tenth of those patients were heavy mobile phone users. "Heavy" mobile phone use was defined as 2,000 or more hours of mobile phone use, which the study says approximates using a mobile phone for an hour a day for ten years.

The study also found an increase in cancer risk on the side of the head where the telephone was typically used: according the Kjell Mild, the research leader, the results indicate heavy phone users have a 240 percent increased risk of a malignant brain tumor on the side the head where they most often use their phone.

The Swedish study is the largest to date to study the long-term effects of mobile phones on the incidence of cancer. Mobile phones first went to market in Sweden in 1984, earlier than many other countries, so the population of heavy mobile phone users is proportionately larger than many other nations.

The study contradicts recent conclusions from the Dutch Health Council, which conducted an overview of research studies and concluded no research showed radiation from mobile phones and TV towers caused harm. A four-year British study published in January 2006, also found no link between long-term cell phone usage and the most common type of brain tumor.

One way to avoid any risk of developing brain cancer from use of mobile phones might be to use a handsfree headset to get the phone's radio emitter away from the skull…of course, one might want to consider what parts of the body might be proximate to the phone's emitter when using such a headset.