Parotid cancer trends in England between 1986 and 2008 were examined to evaluate whether exposure to mobile phones increased the risk of parotid cancer.
Registration rates of malignant neoplasms of the parotid gland increased from 0.5 to 0.8 cases per 100,000 between 1986 and 2008 in men and from 0.4 to 0.6 per 100,000 in women. The number of new cases in this same time period more than doubled from 112 new cases in 1986 to 247 in 2007 in men, and increased from 116 to 199 cases in women. Whereas for men a gradual linear increase of an additional 4-5 cases per year is observed, this is less clear for women. Registration rates of malignant neoplasms of other and unspecified major salivary glands remained stable in men and increased only slightly in women.
Whereas the number of mobile phone subscribers exponentially increased from about 50,000 in 1985 to over 52 million in 2003, malignant neoplasms of the parotid gland still remain relatively rare. The increase in incidence had already started before mobile phones started to be used widely and differs in magnitude by sex. The data suggest that mobile phone use is not the main driver of the increase of malignant neoplasms of the parotid gland, although, based on these data only, it cannot be excluded as a contributing factor either.
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