Cellphone - clip artYou can stop worrying about getting brain cancer from your cell phone. A massive study of just about every private cell phone user in Denmark shows no link between gabbing on your mobile and the development of brain tumors.

The 420,000 participants averaged about 8.5 years of cell phone use, although some of them had been using cell phones for as long as 21 years. But there was not even a hint of an increase in brain cancer incidence the longer they used the phone.

A closer examination of different types of brain cancer -from gliomas to acoutsic neuromas- showed no increase in brain cancer subtypes either, according to investigators, led by Joachim Schuz of the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology of the Danish Cancer Society in Copenhagen.

Bizarrely, the cell-phone study, which was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, showed some unexpected benefits. Male cell phone users were less likely to develop lung cancer. But that’s probably a result of the fact that the first people to use cell phones in Denmark were quite well-off, and rich men are less likely to smoke cigarettes than poorer men. Rich women are just as likely to smoke as poor women in Denmark and so female cell-phone users were just as likely to develop lung cancer as their non-cell-phone-user counterparts.

More difficult to explain is the finding that women who had used cell phones for a long time were more likely to develop cervical cancer and kidney cancer. Since cervical cancer is typically caused by a sexually transmitted virus, it’s possible, the study authors say, that early adopters were also more likely to have sex with several partners. But researchers have no explanation for why there was an uptick in kidney cancer.

The study was funded by the Danish Strategic Research Council and the Danish Cancer Society.

What it Means:
The largest study to date has found no link between brain cancer and cell phone use. So if a link does indeed exist, it is likely to be very small.

The results do not necessarily apply to children since anyone under the age of 18 was excluded from the study.

By Christine Gorman | December 5th, 2006
Source: TIME Online Edition