home > news > health

Call Me! Cell Phones Not Correlated with Cancer

Study finds that there is no connection between cell phones and brain tumors

By Annie Geffroy

| Friday, Dec 4, 2009 | Updated 3:00 PM PST

Call Me! Cell Phones Not Correlated with Cancer

Getty Images

Los Angeles residents who love their Blackberries and iPhones can breathe a sigh of relief -- and keep on using their minutes.

A recent study conducted by The Danish Cancer Society concluded that there is no connection between the use of cell phones and the development of brain tumors.

According to Reuters, researchers compared rates of cell phone usage, which increased dramatically in the 1990s, with the number of patients diagnosed with brain tumors over a 30-year period from 1974 to 2003.

They found that despite the increased prevalence if mobile phones, cancer rates remained relatively steady.

Researcher Isabelle Deltour wrote, "We did not detect any clear change in the long-term time trends in the incidence of brain tumors from 1998 to 2003 in any subgroup."

The experiment tested adults aged 20 to 79 in Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway for two types of brain tumors, glioma and meningioma. Data was collected for nearly 16 million people.

Rates of glioma increased less than one percent in both men and women while rates of meningioma increased .8% in men and 3.8% in women. However, there are many factors that contribute to this, including technological developments that make tumors easier to detect.

Scientists have yet to find any biological explanation of how a cell phone would cause cancer in the first place.