New Study on Cell Phone Use and Brain Cancer Inconclusive

A large, international study to determine whether cell phones cause cancer – in particular – brain cancers, is coming back inconclusive once again.

The report, which is due to be published in a medical journal, looked at 13,000 cell phone users over a 10-year period. The report looked specifically at number of calls and length of calls and whether users had an increase in cancerous brain tumors.

According to the authors, there were some suggestions that frequent, lengthy phone calls over 30 minutes did show a higher risk for glioma – a deadly type of brain cancer, according to the study by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

However, even with this, there still seems to be no conclusive evidence that increased cellular use is harmful. The study did not look at the effects of hands-free devices, location to the brain (such as in a pocket, on a nightstand, etc.) or other contributing factors.

So, once again, we don’t know what to expect from the increased use of cell phones. It seems with so many studies that are definitive in showing “positive” effects of medicinal therapies, we can never get conclusive evidence on how other facets of our lifestyle affect our health.

I guess we will have to wait for another study to tell us what to expect. What is probably definite, is that we will never truly know what effect cell phone use has on our brains.