Pregnant women who live close to mobile phone masts do not need to move house, scientists said today, following the publication of a study which found no link to early childhood cancers.
There has been public concern over the possibility that living near phone masts could raise the cancer risk of small children and clusters of cases around masts have been reported. But a study published in the British Medical Journal – the first to examine possible links between phone masts and childhood cancer across Britain – found no cause for concern.
Researchers from Imperial College London identified 1,397 children under five who were diagnosed with leukaemia or a tumour of the brain or central nervous system between 1999 and 2001. They compared each child with four children of the same gender who were born on the same day but had not developed cancer.
The researchers studied the distance of the mother's home at the time of the birth from a phone mast, the total power output for base stations within 700 metres and the power density for base stations within 1,400 metres.
"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," said Professor Paul Elliott, one of the report's authors and director of the MRC-HPA centre for environment and health at Imperial.
The authors said they would like to investigate the exposure of the children to mobile phone base stations, which this study did not cover.
In a commentary published with the study, John Bithell of the childhood cancer research group at Oxford University said the risks of cancer from mobile phone masts were dwarfed by those from driving while using mobile phones – even in hands-free mode. Doctors, he said "should reassure patients not to worry about proximity to mobile phone masts. Moving away from a mast, with all its stresses and costs, cannot be justified on health grounds in the light of current evidence."
The use of mobile phones has soared in recent years, the report said, from just under 9m connections in 1997 to almost 74m in 2007. There are 4bn connections worldwide.
However, health fears have grown in parallel. Questions have been raised not only about a possible raised incidence of brain and other cancers but also a suggested increased risk of neurological conditions such as migraine and vertigo.
The few reports there have been of cancer clusters near a mobile phone base station "are difficult to interpret because of small numbers and possible selection and reporting biases", the authors wrote. They added that there is no known radiobiological explanation – although they said it is possible cumulative exposure is important – and the rise in the use of mobiles has not been matched by an upward trend in the numbers of brain tumours.
Dr Eileen Rubery, former head of the public health prevention department at the Department of Health, said: "It is reassuring that no adverse affects have been found and this fits with the anticipated and known biological affects from such sites, and so is consistent with the physiology and biology."