A recent international study came up with a rather surprising conclusion. According to this work, cell phones do not cause brain tumors in children and young people aged ten to twenty-four. However, the methodology of the study and certain biases fuel criticism.
The Mobi-kids study received funding of six million euros by fourteen countries (40%) and the European Union (60%). Its results were expected in 2016, but were eventually published in the journal Environment International in February 2022. According to the researchers, this is the largest study of its kind addressing the relationship between EMF exposure of wireless phones and brain tumors in young people .
For about a decade, various organizations have believed that radio frequencies are possibly carcinogenic to humans . Among these organizations, we find the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the WHO. We should also mention an INSERM study in France which concluded in 2014 that there was a greater risk of brain tumours among heavy users of cell phones.
The Mobi-kids study aims to become an epidemiological reference For the young. However, it concluded that there was no link between the duration of use of laptops and brain tumors in users aged ten to twenty-four. These results come from a comparison between the exposure of 670 young people with brain tumors and 1,900 control cases.
The researchers indicated that the exposure to the waves was evaluated from the first use of a mobile phone. Moreover, these same assessments are based on the declarations of the young people themselves as well as of their parents. However, the interpretation of the results is not unanimous. Curiously, the first data obtained by the scientists indeed showed a reduction in the risk of brain tumors in the event of an increase in the use of laptops. The researchers therefore excluded results from the first five years of the study and looked for a bias in their methodology.
It must be said that a preventive effect of phones in relation to tumors is very unlikely. The biased results therefore may arise from uncertainties in the data. This can be explained by the answers to the questionnaire given by the parents or even by a change in the use of the devices after the appearance of the first symptoms. The rejection of the initial data is therefore certainly the result of an impossibility of interpreting them, but also of a desire to find realistic results .
Despite these results, some still claim that it is impossible to exclude a possible small increase in risk appearance of tumours. Others feel that the study followed a consistent approach and achieved reassuring results. In an article of March 1, 2022, the magazine Reporterre however pointed out another questionable point concerning these works. In particular, he mentions the presence of an engineer from Orange (Orange Labs) within the scientific system itself. This possible conflict of interest was difficult to detect when the study was first published, but in the most recent article, the engineer (who now works for the Institut Mines-Telecom) is indeed among the authors. In conclusion, if the participation of telecom engineers in this type of study is nothing new or alarming, the work in question here is still to be taken with a grain of salt .
Another highly anticipated study by 2023 could, however, expand knowledge on the subject, namely that of the National Food Safety Agency, the environment and labor (ANSES).
