Study: Cell Phones Pose No Brain Cancer Risk in Teens

Children and teens who use cell phones doesn't increase the risk of cancer, according to a 'first of its kind' study, which focused on children and found no link between the phones and brain tumors, scientists say.

A study published July 27 in the Journal of The National Cancer Institute concludes that children and adolescents who use cell phones are not at an increased risk of brain cancer compared to their peers who do not use cell phones.

"The results are reassuring, given the widespread use of mobile phones by children and adolescents," said Martin Roosli, an assistant professor at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Switzerland, who authored the research. He noted that five years of cell phone usage, the period studied, does not risk the development of cancer.

The study's authors compared the cellphone habits of nearly 1,000 children in Western Europe, including 352 with brain tumors and 646 without. Kids who used cellphones were no more likely to develop a brain tumor than others, according to the study of children ages 7 to 19, published online Wednesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Scientists have been eagerly awaiting these results, says Martha Linet, a doctor with the National Cancer Institute who wasn't involved in the study. "It's very reassuring," Linet says. The findings, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, showed that cell phones do not cause cancer nor risk the development of brain tumors, especially in the brain regions where cell phone radiation exposure is highest.

The children who were previously diagnosed with brain tumors used cell phones just as often, more or less, in 5 years than healthy children without cancer, further proving no significant gap in cell phone usage.

Researchers, led by Denis Aydin of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, looked at their data in several ways, searching for possible trends with long-term use. They found no increase in brain tumors among children who had used cellphones for five years or more, according to the study, funded by European health agencies.