ARPANSA article review date
December 2024
Article publication date
February 2025
Summary
This study was a re-analysis of data from the INTEROCC case-control study and assessed the risk of glioma and meningioma from occupational exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic energy (RF EME) using an updated job exposure matrix (JEM). The study included data from 7 countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom) collected between 2000 and 2004. Participants were aged from 30–59 years and included 1819 glioma and 1758 meningioma cases and 5227 controls. The RF exposure was estimated for both the electric and magnetic fields using a JEM that estimates the exposure for 468 different occupations. The study generally found no statistically significant associations. Overall, the authors concluded there was no risk of glioma or meningioma.
Link to the study
Published in
Cancer Epidemiology
Commentary by ARPANSA
This study was a re-analysis of the INTEROCC study by Vila et al (2018 and 2022) that estimated occupational exposure based on spot measurements. This study obtained similar results, with Vila et al (2018 and 2022) who also concluded there was no clear association between occupational RF-EME exposure and glioma or meningioma. One limitation of the study was that 70% of the occupational exposures relied on data from 5 or less measurements. This reduces the reliability of the JEM and could mean that exposures in the JEM for individual occupations may not be completely represented.
The overall conclusion of this study is consistent with the findings of the recent WHO systematic review by Karipidis et al (2024) that reported no overall increase in the risk of glioma from occupational RF exposure. The systematic review reported there was limited research on the risk of meningioma from occupational RF exposure. However, the review did report that there was no increased risk in meningioma among mobile phone users. The conclusions are also consistent with studies that investigated trends in brain tumour incidence rates over time (Elwood et al, 2022; Deltour et al, 2022), including an Australia study (Karipidis et al, 2018) that have consistently found no increase in the rates of brain tumours.
