Can mobile phone use increase risk of brain tumor by 40%?

Hyderabad: Social media users are claiming that using a cell phone increases the risk of getting a brain tumor by 40 percent.

"As stated, regular cell phone use can increase your risk of getting a brain tumor by 40%," reads a Facebook post.

The post also backed the claim with a study saying, this was demonstrated in the INTERPHONE study, which was the largest study (5,117 brain tumor cases) on cell phones and brain tumors with scientists from 13 countries.

Click here to view the post.

Can smartphones cause brain tumors? Let's find out.

FACT CHECK

NewsMeter first aimed to debunk the study quoted in the viral claim. We ran a keyword search and found the Interphone Study. According to the claim, this study concludes that 'regular cell phone use can increase your risk of getting a brain tumor by 40%.

On analyzing the study carefully, we found out that the study says, "Interphone is an impressively large study with multiple indices of exposure. However, it has some methodological deficits, largely inevitable in recall-based case-control studies, which limit the interpretation of its findings. Such evidence as it provides, combined with the results of biological and animal studies, other epidemiologic studies, and brain tumor incidence trends, suggest that within the first 10–15 years after first mobile phone use there is unlikely to be a material increase in the risk of adult brain tumors resulting from mobile phone use. At present, there are no data on the risk of childhood tumors."

"The possibility of a small or a longer-term effect thus cannot be ruled out. Nevertheless, although one cannot be certain, the trend in the accumulating evidence is increasingly against the hypothesis that mobile phone use causes brain tumors."

Hence the 'INTERPHONE STUDY' doesn't provide any inclusive result to prove that using mobiles can increase the risk of brain tumor by 40%.

According to, a Danish cohort study, "Cell phone use, even for more than 13 years, was not linked with an increased risk of brain tumors, salivary gland tumors, or cancer overall, nor was there a link with any brain tumor subtypes or with tumors in any location within the brain."

Also according to Million Women Study, "A large prospective (forward-looking) study of nearly 800,000 women in the UK examined the risk of developing brain tumors over an average of about 14 years about self-reported cell phone use. This study found no link between cell phone use and the risk of brain tumors overall or of several common brain tumor subtypes."

But again, there are limits as to how well this study might apply to people using cell phones today

Lastly, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a part of the World Health Organization, also states that there is no conclusive evidence that mobiles or cell phones are carcinogenic (Cancerous) for humans.

It is evident that all the studies lack evidence and have their limitations. It is not yet proven that cell phones can increase pr cause cancer or brain tumors.

The claim is false.