Cell phone towers not dangerous to pregnant women

Los Angeles: Expectant parents may have one fewer thing to worry about. British researchers say a new study shows that the children of women who live near cell phone towers during pregnancy do not, contrary to belief, have an increased risk of childhood cancer.

The researchers, from Imperial College London's School of Public Health, identified all 1,926 cases of childhood cancers in Britain from 1999 to 2001. In 529 cases, either the mother's whereabouts during pregnancy or the radio-frequency exposure from nearby cell phone towers could not be determined.

Demographic features

Each of the remaining 1,397 cases was matched with four healthy children of the same age and gender. All of the kids had similar demographic characteristics. The team also gathered detailed data about all 81,781 cellphone towers that were operational in the country during that time, including each tower's location, height, output power and how many antennas it had.

In virtually every permutation of their calculations, there was no correlation between the cell phone towers and the cancer cases. For instance, the mothers whose children were diagnosed with cancer lived an average of 1,173 yards from a cell phone tower while they were pregnant, statistically indistinguishable from the 1,211 yards that separated the other pregnant women from their nearest cell phone towers.

Tallying up the total power output of all cell phone towers within 766 yards of each pregnant woman's home, they found that both groups had nearly the same exposure -2.89 kilowatts for the mothers of cancer victims and 3.00 kilowatts for the other mothers.

Only one of their models revealed a difference that was statistically significant, though just barely. In that case, higher radio-frequency exposure was associated with a reduced risk of cancer of the brain or central nervous system.

This survey calls to mind a mouse study from last year that found that electromagnetic radiation from cell phones actually protected mice from Alzheimer's disease. The results were published online on Tuesday by the British Medical Journal.

The British researchers admitted however that their study would have been stronger if there had been some way to determine the actual radiation exposure for each pregnant woman, instead of relying on mathematical models. The British researchers admitted however that their study would have been stronger if there had been.