Thanksgiving is just a few months away, so it’s time to start studying for the annual screaming confrontation with weird relatives. This year, you can come prepared for a possible topic of conversation: An expansive review of scientific literature has concluded that cellphones do not cause head cancers.
The recent paper, published in the journal Environment International, is not based on any new experiments or studies. Instead, it is a systematic review of 63 studies published between 1994 and 2022 on the connections between radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF), the type of non-ionizing radiation emitted by cell phones, and common head-based cancers.
Those cancers included ones found in the brain and its protective membranes, the pituitary gland, salivary glands, as well as brain tumors and leukemias. The review, led by an international team of doctors and medical researchers, and commissioned and partially funded by the World Health Organization, found exposure to RF-EMF from mobile phones did not lead to an increased risk of numerous types of cancers and tumors, nor were they tied to pediatric brain tumors, or childhood leukemia.
The studies used in the analysis were diverse, conducted in 22 countries, and examined RF-EMF from various sources. These included radiation originating close to a person’s head (like holding a cell phone), from further away (such as a cell phone tower), and from both (as with people exposed to radiation via a hand-held transceiver or workplace device). They also examined the length of time people spent exposed to the radiation.
In virtually no cases was a link detected between the radiation and elevated cancer risks, even for people who spent nearly all day in close proximity to their phones. The one exception was for glioma, a form of brain or spinal tumor, for those exposed to an occupational level of the radiation. Even then, the risk “was not significantly increased,” and the risk did not go up even if the cumulative exposure level did, according to the researchers.
The idea that cell phones cause cancer is one of those beliefs many people are uncertain about, but it feels plausible. After all, we’re holding a small radiation receiver next to our head for minutes, or even hours, at a time. It didn’t help that the data was often confusing. On its website, the American Cancer Society says studies into the ties between phones and different types of cancer have had “mixed” results, but added that many of these studies have had limitations.
Some studies into rising rates of head cancers have been taken wildly out of context by conspiracy theorists, bad faith actors, and the simply misinformed. The theory has been so pervasive that the New York Times and Washinginton post both ran stories with the headline “Do Cell Phones Cause Brain Cancer?”, with the articles running 13 years apart. The theory has been advanced by lawyer/failed presidential candidate/sellout Robert Kennedy, Jr., who has thrown his support behind other discredited medical beliefs.
In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified RF-EMF as possibly carcinogenic to humans, but that decision was “largely based on limited evidence from human observational studies,” said Ken Karipidis, assistant director of Health Impact Assessment at the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, who led the study, in a statement.
“This systematic review of human observational studies is based on a much larger dataset compared to that examined by the IARC, that also includes more recent and more comprehensive studies, so we can be more confident in the conclusion that exposure to radio waves from wireless technology is not a human health hazard,” he added.
There you have it. Now you can prove, as definitively as science proves anything, that phone radiation isn’t causing brain tumors. Your weird cousin, or uncle, or whatever, will have to bow down to the unyielding might of your facts and science. Which they will surely do, before quickly pivoting to adrenochrome and Bill Gates’ vaccine nanobots. Well, you tried.
