Study links heavy cell phone use to cancer

Feb. 15, 2005
Courtesy Tel Aviv University
and World Science staff

Sci­en­tists claim to have found a link be­tween heavy cell phone us­age and can­cer of the sal­i­vary gland. The re­search­ers sug­gest peo­ple use hands-free cell phones to avoid a risk.

The find­ings by Sie­gal Sadet­zki, an epi­demi­olo­g­ist at Tel Aviv Uni­ver­s­ity in Is­ra­el, and col­leagues ap­pear in the Feb. 15 is­sue of the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Ep­i­de­mi­ology. The group found that heavy cell phone users faced a high­er risk of both be­nign and ma­lig­nant tu­mors in the gland.

Mobile phone radia­tion may have a link to can­cer of the sa­li­va­ry gland, a new study sug­gests. (Im­age © G.F. Gal­li)

Peo­ple who used a cell phone heavily on the side of the head where the tu­mor de­vel­oped were found to have an about 50 per­cent high­er risk for de­vel­op­ing a tu­mor of the main sal­i­vary gland, or parot­id, com­pared to non-cell phone users, the re­search­ers wrote.

The study was done on Is­ra­elis, which is a key be­cause Is­ra­elis adopt­ed cell phone tech­nol­o­gy early and use it heav­i­ly, Sadet­zki said. 

Thus the ex­po­sure to phone radia­t­ion found in this study was high­er than in pre­vi­ous stud­ies.”This un­ique popula­t­ion has giv­en us an in­dica­t­ion that cell phone use is as­so­ci­at­ed with can­cer,” added Sadet­zki.

The study in­ves­t­i­gated nearly 500 peo­ple di­ag­nosed with sal­i­vary gland tu­mors, and com­pared them to 1,300 healthy sub­jects. Par­ti­ci­pants were asked to de­tail how of­ten and how long they typ­ic­ally talked on cell phones. The study al­so found an in­creased risk of can­cer for heavy users who lived in ru­ral ar­eas. Be­cause there are few­er an­ten­nas, cell phones in ru­ral ar­eas need to emit more radia­t­ion to com­mu­ni­cate ef­fec­tive­ly.

Sadet­zki pre­dicts that, over time, the great­est ef­fects will be found in heavy users and chil­dren. Risks from cell phones have been hard to prove, mainly due to the long time it takes can­cer to de­vel­op, she said.

“This tech­nol­o­gy is here to stay,” Sadet­zki said. “I be­lieve pre­cau­tions should be tak­en in or­der to di­min­ish the ex­po­sure.” She rec­om­mends peo­ple use hands-free de­vices, and hold the phone away from one’s body. Less fre­quent and shorter calls are al­so pref­er­a­ble, she added.

Chil­dren may be more sus­cep­ti­ble, so par­ents should lim­it young­sters’ cell phone use and in­sist they use speak­ers or hands-free de­vices, she added. “Some tech­nol­o­gy that we use to­day car­ries a risk. The ques­tion is not if we use it, but how we use it.” 

Pre­cisely how cell phones could af­fect the body is un­clear, but a re­cent Finn­ish Radia­t­ion and Nu­clear Safe­ty Au­thor­ity study found their radia­t­ion might subtly change the bio­chem­i­cal make­up of skin. That re­search ap­peared in the Feb. 11 on­line is­sue of the jour­nal BMC Ge­nomics.