Mobile phone use and possible cancer risk: Current perspectives in India

Abstract

Mobile communication is now essentially ruling our daily lives through better connectivity and intelligent smartphone services. There has been a tremendous growth in Indian communication industry along with growing concerns regarding health effects of mobile radiation exposure. Concerns posed are especially regarding carcinogenesis and other health-related effects of mobile radiation exposure. In the effort to establish or refute any such concerns, many studies have been undertaken in the past three decades, mostly case-control designs or cross-sectional surveys. However, most of them considerably failed to establish causal association primarily owing to potential biases and errors in their conduct and analysis. Past cohort studies have provided contradictory results leading to continued uncertainty regarding tumorigenic potential of mobile radiation exposure. In India, there remains a huge knowledge gap pertaining to this particular topic and only few studies are presently underway such as the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) cell phone study in the National capital region (NCR). International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields associated with wireless phone use as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), causing major concerns worldwide among mobile companies and subscribers equivocally. The World Health Organization (WHO) is presently carrying formal risk assessment of all studied health outcomes from radio frequency field's exposures and is likely to publish it by the year 2016.

Keywords: Cancer; India; mobile phones; radiowaves; review; risk assessment.