Mobile phones may NOT increase cancer risk as most brain tumours 'not within radiation range'

Mobile phones are unlikely to cause cancer because brain tumours are not clustered within the radiation range emitted from most devices, a new report finds.

Researchers also found people who spent the most time on mobiles were no more likely to experience tumors located within five centimetres of the phone, where '90 percent of the radiation' is emitted.

The findings from the University of Tampere in Finland were revealed as the World Health Organization announced that, upon review of available scientific evidence, mobile phones should be classified as 'possibly carcinogenic.'

Study author Dr Suvi Larjavaara said although the results may be reassuring, they are certainly not conclusive.

She said cancer could take a long time to develop and only five per cent of the people included in the study had been using mobile phones for at least 10 years.

Larjavaara acknowledged that these latest findings contradict the WHO's latest announcement, which placed mobile in the same cancer risk category as coffee and chloroform. 

Overall, the evidence remains conflicted.

Last year, a study including 13,000 mobile users over 10 years found no clear answer on whether the handsets cause brain tumors. However, another study from last February suggested that using a mobile phone can change brain cell activity.

Use of mobile phones has increased hugely since their introduction in the  mid-1980s. About five billion mobile phones are currently in use worldwide.

One issue that arises when studying the risks of phone use is that people often don't recall how much time they spend on the phone.

Larjavaara and colleagues decided to look at the location of tumours, reasoning that an excess of tumours close to the phones would implicate the devices.

Ninety per cent of the radiation released from phones is absorbed by the brain tissue located within five centimetres of the handset. 

Researchers mapped the exact location of 888 brain tumors diagnosed between 2000 and 2004 relative to where people would hold their mobile while talking. They found no correlation between the two.

The study was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

However, another scientist who has also performed studies on long-term mobile phone users advised caution about the results.

Dr Elisabeth Cardis from the CREAL-Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona, said the definition of exposure 'is overly simplistic, in my opinion.'

She said previous studies have found that the most exposed area is generally located around the ear.

'I expect there is substantial misclassification of exposure in the analyses published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, and hence it is not possible to draw conclusions about the presence or absence of a risk,' she concluded.

16.06.2011 - DailyMail

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