Azara Blog: Heavy mobile phone use linked with an obscure cancer

Date published: 2008/02/18

Heavy mobile phone use may be linked to an increased risk of cancer of the salivary gland, a study suggests.
Researchers looked at 500 Israelis who had developed the condition and compared their mobile phone usage with 1,300 healthy controls.
Those who had used the phone against one side of the head for several hours a day were 50% more likely to have developed a salivary gland tumour.
...
Cancer of the salivary gland is a very rare condition. Of the 230,000 cases of cancer diagnosed in the UK for instance annually, only 550 relate to this area.
Dr Siegal Sadetzki, who led the research, said while mobile phone use in Israel was much heavier than in many other parts of the world, this gave an insight into what the long-term, cumulative impact could be.
...
One of the key findings of the study was that heavy users in rural areas had an even higher risk that those in cities, due, the team suggested, to the fact that mobile phones in areas without strong signals need to emit more radiation to work properly.
But Dr Sadetzki stressed one study was not enough to prove a link, and that further research was needed.

This seems to be one of the first bona fide studies which has actually claimed to find some effect. But at least Sadetzki pointed out this is only one study, although she failed to point out the extra caveat that correlation is not the same thing as causation. Sadetzki implies that it is the radiation that is at fault, not the physical pressing of the phone to the head, but this study seems not to have addressed that issue (so this is a specific example where a link could be misleading). And is there any physiological reason why salivary glands should be liable in this way? Also, it seems that Israelis are much heavier mobile phone users than elsewhere, and this is an extremely rare cancer even with the alleged extra 50% likelihood, so all in all this seems not to be that serious a concern. But no doubt the mobile phone haters will latch onto this as a reason to get hysterical about mobile phones (and in particular mobile phone masts, which had nothing to do with this study).

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