The use of handheld cellular telephones is not associated with risk of brain cancer according to a paper published in
Between 1994 and 1998, Dr Joshua Muscat and colleagues from New York conducted a case-controlled study on the effects of cellular phones in 5 US academic medical centers. They interviewed 469 patients with primary brain cancer and 422 matched controls. They found that the median monthly hours of cellular telephone use was 2.5 for cases, not statistically different from the 2.2 hours of use for controls. The mean total duration on the phone was 2.8 years for cancer patients and 2.7 years for controls, demonstrating no significant association with brain cancer (p=0.54). Some of the cerebral tumors occurred more frequently on the same side of the head where cellular phone had been used (25 vs 15 cases, p=0.06), but this was not true of patients with temporal lobe cancer.
The current study is based on cellular phones that operate on analogue signals. Most of the European countries are using digital cellular phones and the radio frequency fields emitted from these phones may have different effects on the biological tissue. The debate is set to continue.