For over a decade, debates and studies regarding the role of cellphone use in cancer or tumor occurrence had been scrutinized, feared and even doubted.  And with mobile users multiplying by the thousands as mobile manufacturers produce millions of these devices, you can’t help but wonder if these devices, the ones you use everyday and call them as an extension of one’s life, could possibly be the cause of one’s demise.

Last June, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer reported that cellphones possibly cause cancer.  Many were doubtful as studies had been mostly inconclusive.  Some doctors not involved with the study stated that there are more environmental factors that could cause cancer than cellphones.

“While experimental evidence and very limited human studies suggest that we should be cautious, people should realize there are many things we are exposed to every day that also is classified by IARC as possibly carcinogenic,” said Dr. Peter Shields, chief of Georgetown University Hospital’s cancer genetics and epidemiology program in Washington, D.C. “The classification used by IARC for cellphones is the lowest of all the carcinogenic classes, and no one should think that cell phones pose the same risk as smoking and asbestos.”

A study by the British Medical Journal may soon put this issue to rest.  From 1990-2007, the group studied and followed up on 358 403 cellphone subscription holders.  During the period of the study 10 729 cases of tumors of the central nervous system were noted.  When the focus was set on those who use cellphones for longer period, 10 years or more, the incidence rate ratio was 1.03 (95% confidence interval 0.83 to 1.27) in men and 0.91 (0.41 to 2.04) in women while those who used cellphones for less than10 years, the ratios were 1.04 (0.85 to 1.26) in men and 1.04 (0.56 to 1.95) in women for glioma and 0.90 (0.57 to 1.42) in men and 0.93 (0.46 to 1.87) in women for meningioma.

Based on the numbers of long term and short term users of cellphones, there’s almost no or very small difference to the ratio of cancer occurrence.  In conclusion, the study found no increased risks of tumors of the central nervous system.

“In general, our findings are in line with most of the epidemiological research that has been conducted to date,” said Patrizia Frei of the Danish Cancer Society’s Institute of Cancer Epidemiology, lead author of the study published today in the journal BMJ. “They are also in line with in vitro and in vivo studies that show no carcinogenic effects on the cellular level.”

Though the study seems compelling some still doubt the study and stated that the study is flawed from the beginning and it was set to fail.

Devra Davis, PhD, MPH, cancer epidemiologist and President of Environmental Health Trust, commented:  “From the way it was set up originally, this deeply flawed study was designed to fail to find an increased risk of brain tumors tied with cellphone use.   In order for any study of a relatively rare disease like brain tumors to find a change in risk, millions must be followed for decades.  By extending an earlier analysis on the same group of cellphone users this new report provides unsurprising, biased and misleading conclusions.    It uses no direct information on cell phone use, fails to consider recent and rapidly changing nature and exposure to microwave radiation from cellphones, cordless phones and other growing sources, and excludes those who would have been the heaviest users—namely more than 300,000 business people in the 1990s who are known to have used phones four times as much as those in this study.”

A professor of epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, Anders Ahlbom, wrote that the research should be continued as there are more things to take into consideration like the size of the study population and previous studies regarding the same topic.

“Many stones have been lifted, but little has been found,” Ahlbom wrote. “While there is little reason to expect anything to be found beneath the next stone, some uncertainty remains. We have learned that studies based on historical accounts of cellphone use are prone to bias. So a reasonable way forward seems to be to follow national statistics and prospective cohorts.”