No evidence that mobile phones cause cancer

Private medical insurance customers will be pleased to hear there is no evidence that mobile phones can cause harm to health people.

A new study by the UK’s Health Protection Agency (HPA) looked into the effects of mobile signal exposure and could not find a single conclusive link to it causing cancer, brain disorders or infertility as many people have claimed in the past.

However, they did say that the long term effects of excessive mobile phone use were unclear and suggested that children should still be discouraged from using them for long periods of time.

Prior to the late 1990s very few people used mobile phones, so testing the impact over a 20 or 30 year period is at this time not possible.

The study, which is the largest of its kind ever conducted in the UK, said that low-level radio frequencies are now commonplace because in this country we have more than 80 million mobile phones as well as other airwave-based devices such as TV and radio broadcasting and Wi-Fi.

Despite this growth, no links to cancers and diseases are apparent at this time.

Prof Anthony Swerdlow, who chaired the review group, believes continued monitoring is required though.

"Even though it's relatively reassuring, I also think it's important that we keep an eye on the rates of brain tumours and other cancers," he said.

"One can't know what the long-term consequences are of something that has been around for only a short period."

A similar study by the HPA in 2003 also found no cancer link from mobile phone networks.

Also in 2010, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) looked at 10,000 regular mobile phone users and concluded that long term use does not heighten a person’s risk of suffering some kind of disorder.