Review date
November 2023
Article publication date
October 2023
Summary
This study used data from the UK Biobank prospective cohort study to examine the effects of mobile phone use on cancer incidence. A total of 431,861 participants were included, of which 66,266 (35,401 men and 30,865 women) developed cancer after a median follow up time of 10.7 years. The study collected information on mobile phone use by self-administered questionnaires and classified the participants to be exposed if they used a mobile phone at least once per week to make a call. In males, an increase in overall cancer incidence in mobile phone users was found (hazard ratio (HR) 1.09; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.06–1.12). The risk for specific cancers among males were: nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) (HR 1.08; 95%CI 1.03-1.14), urinary tract cancer (HR 1.18; 95%CI 1.05-1.32) and prostate cancer (HR 1.19; 95%CI: 1.13-1.25). In women, increased risk of overall cancers (HR 1.03; 95%CI 1.00-1.06) among mobile phone users was found. The risk for specific cancers among females were: NMSC (HR 1.07; 95%CI 1.01 1.13), and vulvar cancer (HR 1.74; 95%CI 1.00-3.02). The study also reported a linear dose-response relationship between length (years) of mobile phone use and incident of NMSC in men and women (p value =<0.05), and prostate cancer in men (p=<0.05). No association between mobile phone use and brain cancers (HR 1.01; 95% CI 0.80-1.27) was found. The authors concluded that potential association of mobile phone use with the risk of urinary tract cancer in men and vulva cancer in women needs to be further verified.
Link to
Published in
National Library of Medicine
ARPANSA commentary
The study results indicating a slightly elevated risk of cancers among mobile phone users are not supported by other large cohort studies such as the Danish cohort study or the Million Women Study. The Danish cohort study, which investigated the entire Danish population, reported no increased risk for males or females for cancer overall, prostate cancer, bladder cancer or other skin cancers (Johansen et al 2001 and Schüz et al 2005). Skin cancers, particularly non-melanoma skin cancers have been specifically looked into by the Danish cohort study and no increased risk was found among mobile phone users (Poulsen et al 2013).The Million Women study also found no increased risk of cancer in female mobile phone users for cancer overall or bladder cancer (Benson et al 2013). Further, neither the Danish cohort study or the Million Women study reported any dose response relationship between mobile phone use and any cancer types.
Mobile phone use has not previously been identified as a risk factor for vulvar cancer by any study. Furthermore, vulvar cancer already has a well understood risk factor in human papillomavirus (HPV) infection (Bucchi et al 2022). The authors did not account HPV infection as a confounding factor when evaluating the association between mobile phone use and vulvar cancer. Therefore, these particular findings could be questionable.
The study did not have updated information on mobile phone use (i.e., after initial assessment when the participants started using a mobile phone). To overcome this, the study restricted the analysis to people less likely to change their mobile phone habits and it is not clear how the authors would have done this. Therefore, this approach itself may have introduced bias into their analysis and might have affected the results.
Overall, though the results of the study suggest little increase in cancer risk among mobile phone users, the findings are not supported-up by other cohort studies. Therefore, these results in isolation cannot be considered as establishing an association between mobile phone use and cancer. There remains no substantiated evidence of adverse health effects from exposure to RF-EMF originating from mobile phones and other wireless devices, where the exposures are below the public exposure limits set in the ARPANSA Standard and the International Commission on Non-ionizing Radiation Protection’s radiofrequency guidelines.
