Mobile phones not a threat to health?

 Campaigns against mobile phone masts still seem to create waves locally, something which I might have a touch more sympathy for if those campaigning against them placed their phones in the nearest recycling bin. Some schools have been affected by the issue too over the installation of wireless networks being opposed by parents. One would have thought that the exponential growth in mobile phone use would have resulted in a similar growth in the types of cancers that one might associate with the placing of a source of microwave radiation near the brain, namely brain tumours and the like. This is precisely what the Danish Cancer Society studied recently. Looking at 59,684 brain tumour cases diagnosed over 30 years from 1974 to 2003 among 16 million adults they measured the rate of increase in the disease over the same period resulting in a rate of increase that was so low as to be insignificant, moreover the number of tumours potentially caused by phones was undetectably small.

The scientists concede that more longitudinal studies need to be carried out, but it's hardly the smoking gun that the nimbies campaigning aginst phone masts might have hoped for.

Image under a CC licence by Freakdog on Flickr