Personal radio use and cancer risks among 48,158 British police officers and staff from the Airwave Health Monitoring Study
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Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Background
Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) from mobile phones have been classified as potentially carcinogenic. No study has investigated use of Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA), a source of RF-EMF with wide occupational use, and cancer risks.
Methods
We investigated association of monthly personal radio use and risk of cancer using Cox proportional hazards regression among 48,518 police officers and staff of the Airwave Health Monitoring Study in Great Britain.
Results
During median follow-up of 5.9 years, 716 incident cancer cases were identified. Among users, the median of the average monthly duration of use in the year prior to enrolment was 30.5 min (inter-quartile range 8.1, 68.1). Overall, there was no association between personal radio use and risk of all cancers (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.98, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.93, 1.03). For head and neck cancers HR = 0.72 (95% CI: 0.30, 1.70) among personal radio users vs non-users, and among users it was 1.06 (95% CI: 0.91, 1.23) per doubling of minutes of personal radio use.
Conclusions
With the limited follow-up to date, we found no evidence of association of personal radio use with cancer risk. Continued follow-up of the cohort is warranted.
Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) from mobile phones have been classified as potentially carcinogenic. No study has investigated use of Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA), a source of RF-EMF with wide occupational use, and cancer risks.
Methods
We investigated association of monthly personal radio use and risk of cancer using Cox proportional hazards regression among 48,518 police officers and staff of the Airwave Health Monitoring Study in Great Britain.
Results
During median follow-up of 5.9 years, 716 incident cancer cases were identified. Among users, the median of the average monthly duration of use in the year prior to enrolment was 30.5 min (inter-quartile range 8.1, 68.1). Overall, there was no association between personal radio use and risk of all cancers (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.98, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.93, 1.03). For head and neck cancers HR = 0.72 (95% CI: 0.30, 1.70) among personal radio users vs non-users, and among users it was 1.06 (95% CI: 0.91, 1.23) per doubling of minutes of personal radio use.
Conclusions
With the limited follow-up to date, we found no evidence of association of personal radio use with cancer risk. Continued follow-up of the cohort is warranted.
Date Issued
2018-12-26
Date Acceptance
2018-11-05
Citation
British Journal of Cancer, 2018, 120, pp.375-378
ISSN
0007-0920
Publisher
Springer Nature [academic journals on nature.com]
Start Page
375
End Page
378
Journal / Book Title
British Journal of Cancer
Volume
120
Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative
Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless
indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
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org/licenses/by/4.0/
Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless
indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sponsor
Home Office
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Medical Research Council (MRC)
National Institute for Health Research
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust- BRC Funding
UK DRI Ltd
Grant Number
PG0484
MR/L01632X/1
MR/L01632X/1
MR/L01341X/1
RTJ6219303-1
RDF03
N/A
Subjects
1112 Oncology And Carcinogenesis
Oncology & Carcinogenesis
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
EP-2018-1118R1