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Digital mobile phone or cordless phone users living in rural areas appeared to be 50% more likely than urban dwellers to be diagnosed with a brain tumour. This increased to an average threefold risk after they had lived in a rural area for more than five years.

If confirmed, the increased risk of a brain tumour may be linked to the fact that mobile phone masts are usually further apart than in towns, and therefore need to emit stronger signals.

Ed.- Guardian Unlimited’s Tim Radford wrongly reported the study’s findings as “Those who had used a mobile for five years ran four times the risk .... and people who lived in rural areas and used digital mobile phones were eight times more likely to contract malignant brain tumours”.

It’s not just brain tumours
Media attention may be focused on brain tumours, but more organs are being fried by mobile phones. One of these is the parotid gland, the largest salivary gland, situated in front and below the ears and behind the jaw bone. The largest study to date concluded that:

• regular users of hands-on mobile phones significantly increased their risk of developing a parotid gland tumour on the side of the head they used for making calls
• people making hands-on calls in rural areas (where the average signal level has to be higher to connect) are more at risk than people making calls in urban areas

The increased risk appeared to have been:

Urban areas

• 34% if you had been a regular mobile phone user for five years
• 58% if you had made/received more than 5,479 calls during your lifetime
• 49% if you had spoken on the phone for more than 266.3 hours during your lifetime
• 47% if you had used a mobile phone for five years or more and had made/received more than 5,479 calls in your lifetime
• 50% if you had used a mobile phone for five years or more and had spoken on the phone for more than 266.3 hours

Rural areas

• 81% if you have made/received more than 18,996 calls in your lifetime
• 96% (i.e. nearly double) if you had spoken on the phone for more than 1,035 hours in your lifetime

N.B. All of the time periods above refer to ‘hands-on’ rather than ‘hands-off’ use of mobile phones.

Cooking the books
It is important to note that, when presenting their study, the researchers were careful to open with ...

"For the entire group (studied), no increased risk of parotid gland tumour was observed for (people who had ever) been a regular cellular phone user" i.e. taking the average of everyone who had ever been a regular mobile phone user, even only for three months, there was no significantly increased risk of developing a parotid gland tumour. This was the overall message the researchers wanted the Media to transmit and, indeed, the overall message transmitted at the time (2008).

Why did the Media not splash around the really worrying/selling newspapers-type news? One can only guess. At least the researchers had had the guts to go into more detail later in their presentation.

Some studies hide the truth in a different way. They deliberately study groups of people and time periods which are highly unlikely to show evidence of harm. A study of 100, 000 people who had ever smoked ten cigarettes a day, even for just a year, for instance, is much less likely than a study of 1,000 people who had smoked 20 cigarettes a day for 20 years to show an ^I+average^I- increased risk of developing lung cancer.