You have heard it said before. Your phone can give you cancer. For a long time, tons of research touted radio frequencies as a cancer causing agent. So much that people were advised to hold their phones away from their ears while the call went through. However, a 30-year research has shown that there is no relation between mobile phone use and cancer. The research was done in Australia and examined 3 decades of data collected between 1982 and 2013. As expected it will take more than a single research to determine exactly how safe cell phone use is. Nevertheless, this will steer efforts to substantiate the exact scenario in the right direction.
A place just perfect for the research
The study used data on 19,858 men and 14,222 women who were diagnosed with cancer of the brain in Australia. This data was compared with data showing mobile phone use from 1987- the year mobile phones were introduced to the country, and 2012. Australia was an ideal place to carry out such a research since all cancer cases are recorded by law with plenty of far-reaching information to boot.
The study was led by Simon Chapman and together with his colleagues Qingwei Luo, Lamiae Aziz and Freddy Sitas. They formed patterns from age, gender and precise rates of cancer incidences during the period studied.
Researchers noted a slight increase in cancer cases in men but there was no noticeable increase in women. An increase in cancer rate was noticed in people aged 70 to 84 over the 3 decade time period. The rise could not, however, be attributed to mobile phone use since it began before the devices reached Australia.
The study also calculated the number of cancer cases assuming that mobile phone use indeed caused cancer. In their results the expected number of cases in 2012 was true was 1,866 which was higher than the number actual number of cases which is 1435.
The results are encouraging to those who love their time with their precious little gadgets. However, we cannot yet rest easy as there is a lot more to be found out.