WHO finds no link between phone use and head cancer

Alex Angove-Plumb - Digital Content Editor

Last updated 04 September 2024

There’s no correlation between head cancer and the use of mobile phones, according to a recent joint announcement between the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA). The review also found no association between exposure from broadcasting antennas and base stations with childhood leukimia or paediatric brain tumours.

The review, which was commissioned by WHO and led by ARPANSA’s Associate Professor Ken Karipidis, assessed 63 studies with the participants spanning 22 countries. These 63 studies were picked after identifying 5,102 scientific articles from between the years of 1994 and 2022, and discounting many that didn’t meet the review’s inclusion criteria.

But the authors were quick to point out a common factor in assessing these risks, which is a lack of laboratory conditions. Everyone lives life differently, so it’s difficult to conduct research when there are so many uncontrolled variables with regards to exposure and other factors.

The negative results are an effective downgrade from the “possibly carcinogenic” result of a review in 2011 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which Karipidis states had access to less data than this latest review.

“This systematic review of human observational studies is based on a much larger dataset compared to that examined by the IARC, that also includes more recent and more comprehensive studies, so we can be more confident that exposure to radio waves from wireless technology is not a human health hazard,” said Karipidis.

The previous categorisation put radio waves in “Group 2B”, which famously includes such everyday items as “Pickled vegetables (traditional Asian)”, aloe vera extract and, more recently, the globally common artificial sweetener, Aspartame, among other things.

WHO is currently preparing an Environmental Health Criterion Monograph on the subject, which is a publication for the benefit of those responsible for creating and enforcing safety standards and regulations.

Once published, it could also spell the beginning of the end for smartphone anti-radiation accessories. Such useless products include radiation-blocking phone cases (which do little but block your mobile coverage), plug-in handsets for your mobile phone, mesh covers for your WiFi router (if you’re getting WiFi, you’re getting radio waves), ‘EMF-shielding’ headwear (literally all light is EMF), and anti-radiation blankets, among other things.

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Alex Angove-Plumb

Digital Content Editor

Alex Angove-Plumb is a Digital Content Editor at WhistleOut and an award-winning journalist. He's been in the tech publishing industry since 2010, putting him a few short years away from the title of Grizzled Ancient in his chosen profession. He was an original WhistleOut-er before running NBN Co's corporate blog for two years, then moving on to a lengthy stint at CHOICE. Now he's come home.

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