Can using mobile phones increase risk of getting brain tumour by 40%?

Hyderabad: A post claiming that using cell phones increase the risk of developing a brain tumour by 40% is being widely shared on social media.

The caption of the viral Facebook post reads, “Do cell phones cause cancer? As stated, regular cell phone use can increase your risk of getting a brain tumor by 40%.”

The post also backed the claim with a study called the “INTERPHONE study,” which it said was the largest study (5,117 brain tumour cases) on cell phones and brain tumours with scientists from 13 countries.

Brain tumours are among the leading causes of death. It is an abnormal growth of tissue in the brain that can seriously harm the function of the brain, and eventually the entire body.

Can smartphones cause brain tumours? Let’s find out.

FACT CHECK

NewsMeter first tried to debunk the study mentioned in the viral claim. We ran a keyword search for Interphone study. According to the viral claim, this study concludes that regular cell phone use can increase your risk of getting a brain tumour by 40%.

On analysing the study carefully, we found that the study actually 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 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 risk of adult brain tumors resulting from mobile phone use. At present there are no data on risk of childhood tumors.”

It concluded, “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 tumour by 40%.

According to 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 the 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 in relation to 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, it added.

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

it is evident that all studies lack evidence and have their own limitations. It is not yet proved that cell phones can increase risk of cancer or cause brain tumours. Hence, the claim is false.