Mobile phones don’t cause brain cancer, massive 30-year Australian study finds

Good news, selfie addicts. A new study published in the medical journal Cancer Epidemiology suggests that mobile phones, or excessive use of the critters, don’t cause brain cancer, or cause a marked rise in new cases.

For 30 years, researchers in Australia (the University of Sydney, to be exact) examined nearly 20 000 men and 14 222 women diagnosed with brain cancer between 1982 and 2012, and compared this to Australia’s mobile phone usage data from 1987 to 2012, noting the spike in the latter.

Essentially, the researchers couldn’t find a correlation between the booming mobile phone usage rate in Australia to the rate of brain cancer diagnoses in the country within this period.

While there was an increase for the age group of 70-84, this spike began well before mobile phones were introduced in the country. Also, researchers suggest that the increase could be the result of technology actually improving diagnoses’ accuracy..

If you’re interested in the entire study, have a look at the article published in Cancer Epidemiology here.

Feature image: Garry Knight via Flickr