‘No link between mobile phones and brain cancer’

There is no link between increasing mobile phone use and brain cancer, claims a new study that found no rise in tumours over 30 years in Australia despite widespread use of the devices.

Researchers from Unive-rsity of Sydney examined the association between age and gender-specific incidence rates of 19,858 men and 14,222 women diagnosed with brain cancer in Australia between 1982-2012, and national mobile phone usage data from 1987-2012.

With extremely high proportions of the population having used mobile phones across some 20-plus years (from about 9 per cent in 1993 to about 90 per cent today), they found that age-adjusted brain cancer incidence rates had risen only slightly in males but were stable over 30 years in females. There were significant increases in brain cancer incidence only in those aged 70 years or more, researchers said.

But the increase in incidence in this age group began from 1982, before the introduction of mobile phones in 1987 and so could not be explained by it. The most likely explanation of the rise in this older age group was improved diagnosis, they said.