Have you ever worried sleeping next to your phone, might be giving you brain cancer?
Recent reports published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) have announced that mobile phones are not linked to brain cancer or other head and neck cancers.
This finding puts to rest decades of concerns about the potential health risks associated with mobile phone use.
It’s official – your mobile phone isn’t giving you brain cancer
On today’s The Briefing, assistant director of Health Impact Assessment at the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, Ken Karipidis, joins us to unpack the findings and what we should take from them.
Dr Karipidis said the research found no overall association between mobile phone use and cancer, no association with prolonged use (if people use their mobile phones for 10 years or more), and no association with the amount of mobile phone use (the number of calls made or the time spent on the phone).
“People who have brain tumours are very eager to find out what caused their brain tumours, and especially when it comes to mobile phone use, they tend to overreport their mobile phone use,” Dr Karipidis said.
“In other words, they report using the phone more than they actually did,” he said.
Mr Karipidis explained that when people hear “radiation,” they often mistakenly equate it with nuclear radiation.
“As soon as people hear the word radiation, they straightaway think of nuclear-type stuff. All the word radiation means is energy that travels. There are many different types of radiation, different forms,” he added.
“It’s important to inform people that radiation is not just one thing.”
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