Phone masts cleared of pregnancy risk
Wednesday June 23rd, 2010
There is no link between cancer in young children and their mother's exposure to mobile phone base stations in pregnancy, researchers said today.
A major study may provide reassurance to many women alarmed at the proliferation of phone masts.
Professor
Paul Elliott of Imperial College, London, UK, and his team say this is
the first study to look at phone masts in the whole of Britain. They looked
at mother's proximity to mobile phone masts during pregnancy for 1,397
children who had cancer before the age of five years, compared with 5,588
similar children who did not.
Types of childhood cancer included cancers of the brain and central nervous system, leukaemia, and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas.
Distance from a mast was no different between the groups, the researchers report on the website of the British Medical Journal.
"Mean distance of registered address at birth from a macrocell base station, based on a national database of 76,890 base station antennas in 1996-2001, was similar for cases and controls," they write.
Total power output of base stations within 700m of home address was also similar in the two groups.
They conclude: "There is no association between risk of early childhood cancers and estimates of the mother's exposure to mobile phone base stations during pregnancy."
Dr John Bithell of the Childhood Cancer Research Group at the University of Oxford, UK, writes in an editorial that several studies have looked at the potential health effects of "ubiquitous" radiofrequency fields "with predominantly negative results".
He adds that "the risks are dwarfed by the well known dangers of distraction while using mobile phones, especially when driving - even when using hands-free equipment".
"Clinicians should reassure patients not to worry about proximity to mobile phone masts," he urges.
Tags: Child Health | Childbirth and Pregnancy | General Health | UK News | Women’s Health & Gynaecology
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