Mobile phone base stations do not increase the risk of childhood cancer, even if a child’s mother lived close to a mast when pregnant. That’s the message from the largest study looking at the health effects of mobile phone base stations in the UK.
The new research, published in the British Medical Journal, should provide reassurance to parents, especially expectant mothers, who are worried about living close to such stations.
The authors concluded:
“In summary, we found no association between risk of childhood cancers and mobile phone base station exposures during pregnancy. The results of our study should help to place any future reports of cancer clusters near mobile phone base stations in a wider public health context.”
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Yes. As we have said before, there is no strong evidence that mobile phone radiation can increase the risk of cancer. The majority of studies in people have not found a link between mobile phones and brain cancer, although weaknesses in these studies mean that more research needs to be done.
National trends also argue against such a link. The incidence of brain cancers in countries around the world has not significantly increased, despite the skyrocketing rise in mobile phone use over the last few decades. However, brain cancers can take many years to develop, so it is possible that such trends would only start rising after more time.
Most importantly, there is still no consistent or convincing explanation for how mobile phones or their base stations could actually increase the risk of cancer. The ‘radiofrequency radiation’ that they emit does not have enough energy to damage DNA directly. Many other possible explanations have been investigated but no consistent pattern has emerged.
Base station exposures are even less likely to affect our health than phones themselves as their emissions are many times weaker. These extremely low emissions are between 1,000 and 10,000 times lower than values set in international guidelines.
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