Long-term danger from mobile phones cannot be ruled out
Long-term cell phone users may be at slightly increased risk of developing brain tumors. At the same time, there is no evidence that people are at risk who have used their cell phones less often and for less than ten years. These are the conclusions of a study that examined telephone users from five northern European countries.
The work of the researchers led by Anna Lahkola from the Finnish state radiation protection authority is the eleventh partial publication of the international Interphone study, which has been running since October 2000. The partial results from Scandinavia with a total of 4822 study participants essentially confirm earlier data that could not prove a general risk from mobile phones. However, as part of the current work, 222 people were recorded who had been using mobile phones for more than ten years, which is more than before. Overall, the risk of this group developing a glioma on the side of the head preferred for telephone use was found to be slightly but statistically significantly increased. The suspicion that the incidence of tumors could increase after long-term use of mobile phones was also discussed in earlier works, but not proven.
The authors consider their current results to be insufficiently meaningful. The slightly increased risk calculated could have been caused by unavoidable, statistically distorting errors in the composition of the test group. The researchers point out that only the final evaluation of the Interphone data from all 14 participating European countries, which is still pending, can provide greater clarity about the dangers posed by mobile phones.(yo)
