Mobile phone cancer stories are a trend that never goes out of fashion

Analysis: A costly and comprehensive study on radiowaves' cancer-causing properties is more worrying for rats than mobile-phone users. Alex Matthews-King takes a closer look

Mobile phone use has increased in recent years but this correlates with a sharp decrease in 80s paraphernalia (Getty)

A $30m (£23m) US government experiment to test whether the radio-frequency radiation – which carries calls made on mobile phones to masts – can cause cancers has concluded it can but with some big caveats.

It found this in rats – just the male ones – and only at intensities way above what any person would be exposed to. Even then, the evidence was only “clear” for some heart cancers, but much less robust for brain and adrenal gland tumours.

The conclusions come from the US National Toxicology Programme which spent a decade investigating the risk in the most robust way it could, exposing lab rodents to a lifetime of powerful mobile phone-like radiation.