The World Health Organisation (WHO) is reviewing whether smartphones increase the risk of cancer in an attempt to settle the matter once and for all.
The UN health body is conducting a review of the latest scientific studies in an attempt to put to bed a row among scientists about the link between brain tumours and increased use of mobile phones.
Despite their widespread use, researchers have for decades disagreed about the extent to which mobile phone signals constitute a health risk.
The last report of its kind was released by the WHO in 2011.
It graded high radio frequency, the energy emitted from wireless devices such as cellphones, Wi-Fi routers and phone masts, as a “possible carcinogen”.
New research
Since then, several new pieces of research have been published including a 10-year US study commissioned by the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), which showed clear evidence of cancer in male rats and some in female rats when exposed to the kinds of radiation emitted from 2G and 3G phones.
It was thrown out by the FDA upon its release in November 2018 because the animals were exposed to the highest possible radiation a human might experience from their phone for prolonged amounts of time, something the organisation said was unlikely to happen in real life.
A deadline for the review has not been set but Dr Eric Van Rongen, chairperson of the ICNIRP organisation that is tasked with setting the limit at which phones can emit radio frequency and a member of the WHO, said that his peers were currently looking “at all the high quality papers ever published” with the review expected in 2019.
Guidelines
Industry-wide guidelines limiting how much radiation phones can generate have been in place since 1999, following concerns about the emission of radio waves from phones, which are absorbed by about 1-2cm into the body.
Evidence suggests that those using smartphones infrequently are unlikely to have a risk of cancer and experts point to the fact that brain tumours have not become an epidemic despite the increased use of the technology.
But Joachim Schüz, head of radiation at the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, said there were questions over “heavy users” who are on the phone for hours a day, with some studies suggesting an increased risk. – The Sunday Telegraph