24 June 2010
A study says living near a phone tower does not increase the risk of a pregnant woman’s baby developing cancer
The investigation looked at 1,397 children across Britain who developed cancer by the age of five between 1999 and 2001.
The tots were each matched against four healthy counterparts by sex and date of birth, who were selected from Britain’s national birth register.
The researchers then obtained data on all 76,890 mobile phone relay towers in Britain from 1996 to 2001.
Using the child’s household address, they calculated the level of electromagnetic radiation to which the home’s occupants would have been exposed from the phone towers.
Children with cancer were no likelier to have a birth address near a radio antenna than those who were healthy, they found.
"People are worried that living near a mobile phone mast might affect their children’s health," said Paul Elliott, a professor at Imperial College London who led the study.
"We looked at this question with respect to risk of cancers in young children. We found no pattern to suggest that the children of mums living near a base station during pregnancy had a greater risk of developing cancer than those who lived elsewhere."
The researchers said their work cast the widest data net so far in exploring the feared link between early childhood cancer and phone towers.
The authors cautioned that they were unable to get information about individual exposure among mothers–to–be to a mobile phone handset.
Electromagnetic radiation from a handset during conversation is many times higher than that from a phone mast. And they added the predictable caveat that their focus was only on early childhood cancers, not on cancers that develop in later in life.
Oxford University specialist John Bithell said doctors should tell patients not to worry about living close to phone towers.
"Moving away from a tower, with all its stresses and costs, cannot be justified on health grounds in the light of current evidence," Bithell said. AFP
Disclaimer: The news story on this page is the copyright of the cited publication. This has been reproduced here for visitors to review, comment on and discuss. This is in keeping with the principle of ‘Fair dealing’ or ‘Fair use’. Visitors may click on the publication name, in the news story, to visit the original article as it appears on the publication’s website.
