People who use a mobile phone for hours a day are 50 per cent more likely to develop mouth cancer than those who do not talk on them at all, new research has shown.
The study also suggests that mobile users who live in rural areas may be at an increased risk of cancer because handsets need to emit more radiation to locate fewer antennas.
Research author Dr. Siegal Sadetzki, a cancer specialist at Tel Aviv University, investigated the cases of nearly 500 people diagnosed with benign and malignant tumours of the salivary gland.
The study is regarded as significant as it was conducted on the Israeli population who were among the first to widely adopt mobile phone technology and are among its heaviest users.
Dr Sadetzki said: “Unlike people in other countries, Israelis were quick to adopt cell phone technology and have continued to be exceptionally heavy users.
“Therefore, the amount of exposure to radio frequency radiation found in this study has been higher than in previous cell phone studies. This unique population has given us an indication that cell phone use is associated with cancer.”
Sadetzki’s findings are sure to add to confusion surrounding the already contentious debate about the health effects of cell phone radiation. Many other studies in recent years have found no increased risk of cancer due to mobile phone use, but a
few have stopped short of ruling the possibility out and a few have said increased risk of cancer is small but real.
However, many other studies in recent years have found no increased risk of cancer due to mobile phone use.
The U.K. Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme last year “found no association between short term mobile phone use and brain cancer,” and noted that “the situation for longer term exposure is less clear.”
Professor Kjell Mild of Sweden’s Orebro University, however, also published a study last year and found that using a cell phone over a period of more than 10 years raises the risk of brain cancer and that children are particularly susceptible to this risk because of their developing skulls.
In 2006, the American Journal of Epidemiology published a Swedish salivary gland study, “Mobile Phone Use and Risk of Parotid Gland Tumor,” and the authors found no increased risk of tumors caused by cell phone use.
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