Good news for phone lovers. Photo credit: Jamesmellor, http://flic.kr/p/2WixLY
Here in The Periscope Post newsroom, we’ve become increasingly suspicious of our mobile phones. If they’re not damaging our necks, they’re infecting us with faecal E.coli, but finally there’s some good news: they’re not giving us cancer. A large-scale study based in Denmark, published in the British Medical Journal, looked at over 350,000 people over an 18 year period, and found no significant link between mobile phone use and cancer. The research responds to widespread fears that radiation from phones could be having adverse affects on our health, which had led to the World Health Organisation categorising mobile phones as “possible carcinogens”, the BBC reported.
The paper concludes, “In this update of a large nationwide cohort study of mobile phone use, there were no increased risks of tumours of the central nervous system, providing little evidence for a causal association.”
Strongest evidence yet. The large sample size and long timescale of the assessment mean that the data should be very reliable. Hazel Nunn of Cancer Research UK said this research is the “strongest evidence yet” that mobile phones aren’t causing cancer. An editorial accompanying the paper called the results “reassuring”.
“So there you go, people. Finally you can ditch that dorky Bluetooth headset. Your brain isn’t being microwaved after all”, exclaimed Charlie Sorrel for Wired.com.
Seriously flawed. Not everyone is convinced, and they have not let phones off the hook just yet. The Daily Telegraph reported that Denis Henshaw, from Bristol University, branded the study “worthless” and “seriously flawed”, as it failed to include business users, and “wrongly classified the 88 percent of the Danish population who started using a mobile phone since 1996.” The Daily Mail was also keen that we don’t get too comfortable, and quoted Vicky Fobel, from mobile phone health charity MobileWise, who said, “this study gives false reassurance”. She lamented, “all this shows that this study and the press release promoting its findings are misleading the public by implying that phone users have the all clear.” Oh dear, back in the cupboard our phones go, then.
