21/11/2020
Mobile phones and tumours
In a new study, scientists from Korea and the US have found evidence that high mobile phone use increases the risk of tumours.
Yoon-Jung Choi and colleagues performed a meta-analysis of 46 case-control studies conducted before July 2018, including studies on brain tumours, head and neck cancers, leukemia, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, melanoma and testicular cancer.
The authors found ‘significant evidence linking cellular phone use to increased tumor risk, especially among cell phone users with cumulative cell phone use of 1000 or more hours in their lifetime (which corresponds to about 17 min per day over 10 years), and especially among studies that employed high quality methods.’
Interestingly, the study found that the funding source made a difference to the findings. Studies conducted by Professor Lennart Hardell, an oncologist from Orebro University in Sweden, received no funding from the mobile phone industry and found a high correlation between mobile phone use and tumour development.
On the other hand, all studies conducted as part of the INTERPHONE project received partial funding from the mobile phone industry and found lower associations between mobile phone use and tumours.
Choi, Y-J et al, ‘Cellular Phone Use and Risk of Tumors: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis’, Int J Environ Res Pub Health, 2020, 17, 8079,
We investigated whether cellular phone use was associated with increased risk of tumors using a meta-analysis of case-control studies. PubMed and EMBASE were searched from inception to July 2018. The primary outcome was the risk of tumors by cellular phone use, which was measured by pooling each odd...