A major study of 2,782 people across the UK has found no link between the risk of glioma - the most common type of brain tumour - and length of mobile use, and concludes that Mobile phone use does not lead to a greater risk of brain tumour.

However, the study only looked at brain cancers and not other effects that mobile phone radiation may have on individual users health. Nor does it change the situation regarding the 'known' heating effect upon brain tissue and the caution stated by the 'Stewart Report' with regard to children using mobile phones.

But she acknowledged that there appeared to be an increased risk among brain cancer sufferers on the side of the head where they held the phone.

The team, however, did not put this down to a causal link, because almost exactly the same decreased risk was seen on the other side of the head, leaving no overall increase risk of tumours for mobile phone users.

Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on.

Fellow research team member, Professor Anthony Swerdlow of the Cancer Research Institute, is quoted as saying: "It would be very misleading to the public to say that because there was a positive that this (mobile phones) causes brain tumours."

He explained: "If we had found a raised risk overall and it was all coming from one side, I would believe there was a real case.

"But as there is a drop on the opposing side - the overall risk is not raised. That makes it rather unlikely that there is a raised risk."

But he added that epidemiological studies could never show there was no risk of an activity, they could only suggest there was no raised risk.

No clean bill of Health

The National Radiological Protection Board said it did not give mobile phones a clean bill of health, and it would not be changing its advice that children should not make unnecessary mobile phone calls.

Dr Kat Arney, science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said research such as this was vital for getting to the environmental causes of cancer.

"This is the biggest and most thorough study into mobile phones and glioma so far, and it adds to the growing evidence that there is no link."

However not everyone agrees:

Alasdair Philips, director of campaign group Powerwatch, claimed the study "doesn't really prove anything".

"I think they should have waited another couple of years and recruited more people with brain tumours so they could have interviewed them, because the trouble was they went back a few years and the people had died.

"If you get a grade four glioma you can die within a year or 18 months of it being diagnosed, and these people are just gone, so they couldn't get their mobile phone history."

It is also clear that further, sustained and more detailed research is required before we can say that mobile phone radiation is not simply a resurrection of the 'smoking and health' debate which has taken well over 40 years to conclude with the industry now known to have falsified research results into the effects of smoking upon health.