A quarter of a million cellphone users will have their medical records tracked for more than 20 years in the world’s largest study of the health effects of the devices.
Network operators have agreed to invite a random selection of customers aged 18 to 69 to take part in the study, which will look for increased rates of cancer, dementia and other conditions, such as depression and sleep disorders.
The cohort study on mobile communications is the latest to be funded by the British government’s mobile telecommunications health research programme, set up after the inquiry into cellphones and health chaired by Sir William Stewart, the former chief scientific adviser to the government, in 2000.
It was concluded there was no evidence that cellphones were dangerous but more research was needed to rule out an increased risk of brain tumours and other cancers in the long term. The report cautioned against children using cellphones unless essential.
Cellphone ownership has soared since the mid-1990s. Because cancers grow slowly, any increase due to cellphone use is unlikely to have become apparent yet.
‘The balance of scientific evidence to date does not suggest that mobile phones cause cancer but, because of the uncertainty, we cannot rule out the possibility that they might,” said Professor Lawrie Challis, of the programme’s management committee.
‘With many cancers it takes 10 or 20 years for symptoms to show and most of us have not had mobile phones that long.”
The £3.1-million British arm of the study, running alongside others in the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, will follow the health of at least 90 000 people.
With the participants’ approval, scientists, led by Paul Elliott at London’s Imperial College, will gather information from network providers about how much people use their devices for making calls, texting and surfing the net, and compare this with their medical records for the duration of the study.
Scientists will look for an increased risk of a broad range of medical problems, including brain tumours, leukaemia, multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, heart disease and psychological conditions. A report on cancer risk is expected within 10 years.
The study will not look at the effects of cellphone use on children, although some experts believe they may be especially vulnerable to cellphone radiation because they have thinner skulls and still-developing immune systems. —