June 23rd, 2010 
Living close to a mobile phone mast does not increase the chance of a pregnant woman’s baby developing cancer before he or she reaches the age of five, a study has found.
Researchers from Imperial College London looked at almost 7,000 children and found those who developed cancer aged four or younger were no more likely to have a birth address close to a mast than their peers.
The study included 1,397 British children aged up to four who were registered with leukemia or a tumor in the brain or central nervous system between 1999 and 2001.
The proximity of their birth address to a mast was compared to that of four healthy children of the same gender who were born on the same day, chosen randomly to act as controls.
Professor Paul Elliott, director of the MRC-HPA Centre for Environment and Health at Imperial College London and the study’s lead author, said: “People are worried that living near a mobile phone mast might affect their children’s health.
“We looked at this question with respect to risk of cancers in young children. We found no pattern to suggest that the children of mums living near a base station during pregnancy had a greater risk of developing cancer than those who lived elsewhere.”
