Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Jun 22:340:c3077.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.c3077.

Mobile phone base stations and early childhood cancers: case-control study

Paul Elliott  1 , Mireille B Toledano, J Bennett, L Beale, K de Hoogh, N Best, D J Briggs
Affiliations

Mobile phone base stations and early childhood cancers: case-control study

Paul Elliott et al. BMJ. .

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the risk of early childhood cancers associated with the mother's exposure to radiofrequency from and proximity to macrocell mobile phone base stations (masts) during pregnancy.

Design: Case-control study.

Setting: Cancer registry and national birth register data in Great Britain.

Participants: 1397 cases of cancer in children aged 0-4 from national cancer registry 1999-2001 and 5588 birth controls from national birth register, individually matched by sex and date of birth (four controls per case).

Main outcome measures: Incidence of cancers of the brain and central nervous system, leukaemia, and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, and all cancers combined, adjusted for small area measures of education level, socioeconomic deprivation, population density, and population mixing.

Results: 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 (1107 (SD 1131) m v 1073 (SD 1130) m, P=0.31), as was total power output of base stations within 700 m of the address (2.89 (SD 5.9) kW v 3.00 (SD 6.0) kW, P=0.54) and modelled power density (-30.3 (SD 21.7) dBm v -29.7 (SD 21.5) dBm, P=0.41). For modelled power density at the address at birth, compared with the lowest exposure category the adjusted odds ratios were 1.01 (95% confidence interval 0.87 to 1.18) in the intermediate and 1.02 (0.88 to 1.20) in the highest exposure category for all cancers (P=0.79 for trend), 0.97 (0.69 to 1.37) and 0.76 (0.51 to 1.12), respectively, for brain and central nervous system cancers (P=0.33 for trend), and 1.16 (0.90 to 1.48) and 1.03 (0.79 to 1.34) for leukaemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (P=0.51 for trend).

Conclusions: There is no association between risk of early childhood cancers and estimates of the mother's exposure to mobile phone base stations during pregnancy.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: MBT, JB, LB, KdH, and NB declare that the answers to the questions on the Unified Competing interest form at www.icmje.org/coi_discolure.pdf are all No and therefore declare that they have no conflicts of interest. PE and DJB obtained funding in support of this work from MTHR. PE was a member of the MTHR programme management committee.

Figures

None
Derivation of modelled power density
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

    1. Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones. Mobile phones and health. 2000. www.iegmp.org.uk/report/text.htm.
    1. Kundi M. The controversy about a possible relationship between mobile phone use and cancer. Environ Health Perspect 2009;117:316-24. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Khurance VG, Teo C, Kindi M, Hardell L, Carlberg M. Cell phones and brain tumors: a review including the long-term epidemiologic data. Surg Neurol 2009;72:205-14. - PubMed
    1. Schüz J, Waldemar G, Olsen JH, Johansen C. Risks for central nervous system diseases among mobile phone subscribers: a Danish retrospective cohort study. PLoS One 2009;4:e4389. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Otitoloju AA, Obe IA, Adewale OA, Otubanjo OA, Osunkalu VO. Preliminary study on the induction of sperm head abnormalities in mice, Mus musculus, exposed to radiofrequency radiations from global system for mobile communication base stations. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol 2010;84:51-4. - PubMed

Publication types