Workplace exposures cannot easily explain all brain cancers because children never exposed to a workplace get brain cancer. Something occurring during conception, during pregnancy, or shortly after birth must cause brain cancer in young children. Some researchers wonder whether it isn't chemicals affecting the father's sperm. Others wonder whether it isn't electromagnetic radiation--the kind emanating from large electric transformers at power substations, from the backs and sides of many computer screens and TV sets, and from intimate contact with electric blankets.

In addition to chemicals and electro-magnetic fields, exposure to atomic radiation also contributes to brain cancer. Viruses, spontaneous genetic aberrations, and perhaps other factors cause brain cancer as well.

Until the U.S. and other industrial nations, which also appear to be experiencing rising rates of brain cancer [9.], conduct more research aimed at finding the causes of brain cancer, rates of incidence and death seem likely to continue rising.