Article publication date
5 November, 2025
ARPANSA review date
17 December, 2025
Summary
This case-control study is a partial replication of the international MOBI-kids study (Castano-Vinyals, G. et al., 2022) and investigates the association between mobile phone use and brain tumour incidence in Japanese youth aged between 10 and 29 years. The study examined 120 brain tumour patients (cases) and 360 controls. The analysis examined potential associations with both the duration and intensity (cumulative number of calls and call time) of mobile phone use while adjusting for age and sex. Exposure was also adjusted based on the variant output power of different generations of mobile phone technology and their historical prevalence in Japan.
An odds ratio and 95% confidence interval was computed for each exposure classification; based on either regular use [0.92 (0.48-1.77)], years of use [0.94 (0.30-2.92)], cumulative number of calls [0.80 (0.32-2.01)] or cumulative call time [0.58 (0.22-1.52)]. In each case there was no association between mobile phone use and brain tumours. These same categories also did not show an association when the exposure was adjusted for mobile phone generation.
Link to
Published in
Bioelectromagnetics
ARPANSA commentary
The original international MOBI-kids study assessed the association between brain tumour incidence and mobile phone use among children from fourteen different countries and it did not find any association. The current study expands on the Japanese subset of that study with key differences being study size, matching of controls and the adjustment of exposure characterisation by mobile phone generation. The adjustment of exposure for mobile phone generation represents an improvement in exposure characterisation as modern mobile phone technology has lower exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, especially compared to the older 2G networks (Iyare, R. et al., 2021; van Wel, L. et al., 2021).
In addition to confirming results from the international MOBI-kids study, this study is in agreement with a systematic review of all the evidence that shows no association between mobile phone use and brain tumours (Karipidis, K. et al., 2024). In Australia, emissions from mobile phones must comply with the limits prescribed in the radiofrequency standard RPS-S1. This study supports ARPANSA’s assessment that there is no substantiated scientific evidence of adverse health effects at levels below those prescribed in the standard.
