Science and Health

Australian researcher dismisses mobile phone cancer link

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-11-16 15:58

SYDNEY: An imminent World Health Organization (WHO) report will declare mobile phones safe, an Australian expert predicted on Monday.

Professor Rodney Croft, executive director of The Australian Centre for Radiofrequency Bioeffects Research (ACRBR), said concerns over the location of mobile phone base stations should similarly dissipate over time.

"There really isn't a great deal of difference between your basic FM radio antennae and your base station's antennas," Croft told Australian Associated Press.

"... radio transmissions have been around for a long, long time and people don't seem to mind being exposed to that."

Croft, who is also professor of Health Psychology at the University of Wollongong, said people tended to be suspicious of all new things.

Previously there had been health concerns about microwave ovens and mains electrical power, he said.

Croft's comments comes ahead of the imminent release of the World Health Organization's Interphone study, a decade-long investigation into the health implications of mobile phone use.

The report could be released before the year's end, and there is speculation that it will draw a definitive link between long- term mobile phone use and an increased risk of brain tumours.

Croft rejects this, saying WHO was expected to discount some of the research which had highlighted cancer links as methodologically flawed and "clearly not correct".

"Our perspective is that we don't see any science indicating a health effect ... It really looks very safe," he said.