Did 6 hours a day on mobile kill executive?
A BUSINESSMAN who claimed radiation from using his mobile phone up to six hours a day gave him brain cancer has died at the age of 44.
Ian Phillips spent the final months of his life warning about the potential dangers of phones.
The £110,000-a-year healthcare executive died this week, a month after marrying his fiancée Claire Jenkins.
Research has shown no certain link between brain cancer and mobiles but Mr Phillips insisted there had to be one.
He spoke extensively on the issue as he campaigned for the brain illness charity Brainstrust while battling his condition.
Mr Phillips, who worked in healthcare diagnostic imaging for General Electric, had said: ‘I spent my working life on my mobile – I would have two-hour conference calls some days. My ear would be red when I left work at the end of the day. I didn’t think what it was doing to my brain.’
He was hit by a blinding headache seven years ago and a brain tumour the size of a lemon showed up on one of his own firm’s MRI scanners installed at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff.
He was given only three to five years to live after he was diagnosed in August 2009. Mr Phillips, of Birchgrove, Cardiff, said at the time: ‘I knew straight away it was due to my excessive use of my BlackBerry – I was on it all the time. I did a lot of research and the number of brain tumours is going up.’
The former rugby player had a nine-hour emergency operation but doctors warned him the tumour would come back.
He estimated he had been talking for more than 100 hours a month on his BlackBerry because of his high-pressure job.
After being diagnosed he stopped holding his mobile to his ear. He said: ‘Strangers ask me why I use a hand-held receiver and I tell them they would too if they had been diagnosed with a brain tumour. I’m convinced my cancer was caused by using my mobile up to six hours a day. I used mine too much, I know that – but people need to be made aware of the risks and start switching to hand-held receivers. It could save lives.’
Mr Phillips’s family in Caerphilly, South Wales, have received hundreds of tributes to him from all over the world.
He raised thousands of pounds for Brainstrust and was backed by Wales and Arsenal footballer Aaron Ramsey as well as Welsh rugby stars Jonathan Davies and Rhys Priestland.
Mourners at his funeral next Friday are asked to donate to Brainstrust. A spokesman for the charity said: ‘Ian was driven to make the world a better place for our brain tumour community.’
The link between mobile phones and cancer is a divisive issue and scientists have failed to agree on the level of risk.
Research at the University of Bordeaux in 2014 suggested there was an increased risk of brain tumours in people who use their mobiles for more than 15 hours a month.
In 2012 Italy’s Supreme Court found a ‘causal link’ between phone use and a businessman’s brain tumour diagnosis.
But the latest study, by the University of Sydney, found there was no link between mobile phones and brain cancer. Researchers found no increase in tumours over the last 29 years, despite an enormous increase in the use of the devices.