Australian-led study reveals no link between phone use to the incidence of brain cancers

An Australian-led study has revealed the effect the huge rise in mobile phone use over the past few decades has had on brain cancer.

An Australian-led study has revealed that despite the huge rise in mobile phone use in past decades there has been no link found to the incidence of brain cancers.

The review of 5000 existing studies, commissioned by the World Health Organisation into the potential health effects from mobile phone radio wave exposure found that although the use of wireless technology had massively increased in the past 20 years, there had been no parallel rise in the rate of brain cancers.

The work, by 11 investigators from 10 countries over four years and led by experts from the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, followed a classification in 2011 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that radio wave exposure was a possible carcinogen to humans.

The study found despite the huge rise in mobile phone use over the past decades there is no link to the incident of brain cancers. Picture: iStock

While that warning was based on some observational studies, the new study factored in a final analysis of 63 studies from 1994 to 2022.

“This systematic review of human observational studies is based on a much larger dataset compared to that examined by the IARC, that also includes more recent and more comprehensive studies, so we can be more confident in the conclusion that exposure to radio waves from wireless technology is not a human health hazard,” ARPANSA’s Associate Professor Ken Karipidis said.

The review, described as the most comprehensive and up-to-date assessment to date, considered rates of three types of brain cancer, as well as pituitary and salivary gland cancers and leukaemias.

“For the main issue, mobile phones and brain cancers, we found no increased risk, even with 10-plus years exposure and the maximum categories of call time or number of calls,” review co-author, University of Auckland’s Professor Mark Elwood said.

“The final assessments are that there are no increased risks, with ‘moderate confidence’ (‘high confidence’ results are only available where clinical trials are involved).

“In the scheme we used, this is the most definite category for observational studies.”