Last week the big science news was a new study saying cell phones don't increase cancer risk in kids. It was promptly called into question on The Huffington Post and elsewhere. Several reporters referenced the May 31 release by the World Health Organization about a "possible" link between brain cancer and cell phone use, which classed it in the same risk category as eating pickled vegetables and drinking coffee. In a related move, last week San Francisco passed a regulation requiring retailers to post radiation exposure warnings on every phone and hand every customer educational material counseling them on the possible risks to their health.
Am I a Bad Parent?
My step mom died of glioblastoma multiforme, but I just gave my son a dangerous cell phone to hold next to his developing brain. Am I a bad parent? Physics says no -- and suggests that San Francisco's 10-1 vote ignored basic science in favor of superstitious fear of the invisible.
Is San Francisco Choosing Superstition Over Science?
Cell phones run on microwaves. Light, microwaves and other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum are all forms of radiation. A single unit of radiation is called a photon. A photon can be thought of as a particle and as a wave. In 1905, Albert Einstein showed that the energy of a photon can be calculated as Planck's constant times the frequency of its wave form, or E=hv, one of the reasons he won the 1921 Nobel Prize.
The electromagnetic spectrum starts with radio photons, whose waves can be as long as a football field. They lumber past us with low frequency and low energy. Microwaves stroll about 100 times faster, followed by infrared at 100 times faster than microwaves, and then visible light waves at about a 100,000 times faster than microwaves. Waves at the high end of the spectrum fly past us at much faster frequencies still (and thus have much more energy).
This part of the spectrum includes ultraviolet light, x-rays and gamma rays, whose waves can be shorter than the nucleus of an atom and thus have very high frequency and high energy.
Some Radiation is Healthy For You
We need light radiation to stay healthy. Our own skin gives off infrared radiation, which is how we can be seen using night vision goggles. Microwaves have less energy than the infrared we give off, and far less than visible light. Microwaves, infrared and visible light can all be used to cook food and heat our coffee by concentrating them in an oven. The concentrated waves excite the molecules in a way that increases their vibration, and the friction that produces increases the temperature.
Some Radiation is Not
Like water, it's a matter of degree -- a stream nourishes; a tsunami destroys. It's not until you travel past the visible spectrum into ultraviolet light that you get photons that have enough energy to cause cancer. These photons have about 1 million times more energy than microwave photons, making them able to knock electrons out of atoms, ionizing the atoms and changing their chemical nature. Just imagine the force of a wave the length of a person being concentrated into a wave the length of a molecule and then slamming an atom over and over and over, and you can get a sense of the vast difference in power. That is what can break the bond between two carbon atoms, damaging DNA and causing cancer. But ultraviolet photons still don't have enough energy to penetrate us very deeply, so they only give us skin cancer.
X-rays are sometimes stopped by our skin, but if we are bombarded by enough of them they can penetrate through us, a few of them being absorbed by skin and muscle, many more by our bones, which are denser, which is why we can use them to make images of the inside of our bodies. X-rays can cause cancer, but our bodies can almost always stop it if the exposure is low enough. Gamma rays are so energetic that they can penetrate us, kill cells and cause cancer very easily, and in high exposures they cause radiation poisoning, which kills much more quickly by damaging our bone marrow and gastrointestinal tract.
Cell Phone Use Skyrockets, but Brain Cancer Rates Remain Stable
This all explains why broad epidemiological studies have shown no measurable links between cell phone use and brain cancer -- and the National Cancer Institute has shown no appreciable increase in brain cancer rates since 1987, despite a massive surge in cell phone use. The WHO study is, well, WHOoey, and they have hurt their own credibility by issuing a sensationalist, fear-mongering press release.
What We Cannot Say
It is true that the studies done to date cannot rule out a link, but that is because that's the way science works. We cannot observe the whole universe at once, so science involves making statements about the relative probability that something is true. That's why it uses statistics. And from all the studies done so far, statistically, the "link" is indistinguishable from chance -- which is what the footnote in the WHO press release admits. But none of this seems to matter to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, whose ordinance is an example of governance based on opinion and fear over knowledge and measurement not unlike the Bush administration's false linking of breast cancer with abortion.
What to Worry About
So while it is possible that some mechanism we don't understand could be causing brain cancer at levels that are indistinguishable from chance, I gave my son a dangerous cell phone -- with one caveat: When he eventually gets his license, he promises not to text and drive. That's the real cell phone danger.
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Devra Davis, Ph.D.: More Inconvenient Truths About Cell Phone Radiation
Fortune's Stanley Bing: Cell Phones May Cause Cancer? Who Cares?
Glenn D. Braunstein, M.D.: Cell Phones and Brain Tumors: A No-Brainer
Elaine Shannon: Cell Phone Industry Lobby Threatens City of San Francisco
WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk - CNN.com
No, cell phones don't cause cancer - CNN
Cell Phone Cancer Scare: What Now? : Discovery News
Expert Panel: Cell Phones Might Cause Brain Cancer
Cellphones, cancer: Study links cellphones to possible cancer risk ...
Experts Say Cellphones Are Possibly Carcinogenic - FoxNews.com
Cell phones and cancer: Should you be worried? – The Chart - CNN ...
New Study Says No Link Between Cell Phones and Brain Cancer ...
Forty years ago none of us used cellphones. Even two decades ago fewer than 1 in 5 did. So, of course, there's no surge in brain tumors tied with phones. Yet.
That is not a risk that I want to take.
The cell phone,in my opinion, can be called a life link of Security
Don't fall for that last recourse of defenders of the indefensible -- "what'll you do in an emergency?", as if that is how it ridiculously has to be.
While the media regularly trumpets new studies showing cell phones are completely safe to use, Dr. Carlo points out, “None of those studies can prove safety, no matter how well they’re conducted or who’s conducting them.”
His advice - Always use a headset to minimize exposure to harmful cell phone radiation.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19816647
"The exposure of male mice to radiofrequency radiations from mobile phone (GSM) base stations at a workplace complex and residential quarters caused 39.78 and 46.03%, respectively, in sperm head abnormalities compared to 2.13% in control group. Statistical analysis of sperm head abnormality score showed that there was a significant (p < 0.05) difference in occurrence of sperm head abnormalities in test animals. The major abnormalities observed were knobbed hook, pin-head and banana-shaped sperm head. The occurrence of the sperm head abnormalities was also found to be dose dependent. The implications of the observed increase occurrence of sperm head abnormalities on the reproductive health of humans living in close proximity to GSM base stations were discussed."
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I know ther eis no concrete proof of this harm, but it stands to reason if one cell type is effected, why wouldnt it effected?
There is no mechanism - none - for cellular phones to cause cancer. There are multiple studies that include huge numbers of people that show no correlation and cause and effect has never been even remotely shown. In fact it cannot be shown using the methodologies used. There are a few flawed studies (the Bioinitiative Report being the most egregious) that attempt to show a correlation but can't based on their design.
Do yourself a favor and go to the Lancet and read the WHO report and then read the peer-reviewed articles they based their findings on. A Scandinavian report did a study of over 400,000 long term cell uses and found no correlation. In fact they had odds ratios of less than one for several cancers indicating ( be the pro-cancer causing argument) that cell phone use decreases the incidence of certain cancers.
[split post]
I don't need to read and pseudo- reports or silly business about how the one true researcher can't get his papers published because of the mean state corporate meanies.
You're arguing against gravity.
The Scand. study you mention should hardly reassure, for many reasons, incl I believe exclusion of business users, having been too early for cancer to develop, etc. At IARC, Hardell's studies proved most significant, and the endangered heavy users in that retrospective were what is now average -- we're in very big trouble indeed.
Why not close with anecdotes: a few days ago, an extended family member told of attending two funerals of twenty-something acquaintances -- brain tumours; a few weeks before, another extended family member told of two 12-yr-olds with brain tumours in her school; a few weeks before that, we learned of a neighbour's brain tumour removed. From Australia, neurosurgeons Khurana & Teo are responsibly crying aloud about what they are seeing inside heads.
Yet when the focus is on cancer, tumours, it is stupidly too late, for having ignored a broad and telling symptomology, and 100s even 1000s of studies pointing to harm. And it is not all about the devices, most insidious and immoral of all would be the killing infrastructure.
Hardell's work is flawed by design: correlation studies do not - can not - indicate cause and effect. He could just as easily argue that the cold from refridgerators statistically correlate with the rise in diseases of civilization. He could use the same graphs and the same academic jargon and probably get a few people to follow him here on the Huff.
29. The rapporteur underlines in this context that it is most curious, to say the least, that the applicable official threshold values for limiting the health impact of extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields and high frequency waves were drawn up and proposed to international political institutions (WHO, European Commission, governments) by the ICNIRP, an NGO whose origin and structure are none too clear and which is furthermore suspected of having rather close links with the industries whose expansion is shaped by recommendations for maximum threshold values for the different frequencies of electromagnetic fields.
30. If most governments and safety agencies have merely contented themselves with replicating and
adopting the safety recommendations advocated by the ICNIRP, this has essentially been for two reasons:
– in order not to impede the expansion of these new technologies with their promise of economic growth, technological progress and job creation;
– and also because the political decision-makers unfortunately still have little involvement in matters of assessing technological risks for the environment and health..
Your post here includes a discussion of the basic science regarding radiation. Is it your contention that Dr. Samet and the 30 other scientists working on this issue for the IARC lack a basic understanding of the science of radiation? Relatedly, does the basic science of radiation preclude anyone with scientific integrity from even exploring a possible link between cell phones and brain cancer? Do Dr. Samet and the IARC “ignore basic science in favor of the superstitious fear of the invisible?”
You state that the IARC press release was “sensationalist, fear-mongering.” To me, it reads like everything else published by the IARC. It doesn’t tell people to throw away their cell phones or that cell phones should be banned. It says “the conclusion means there could be some risk” and “it is important that additional research be conducted.” I fail to see anything here that strikes me as sensationalist or fear-mongering.
Relatedly, are you suggesting that Dr. Samet and the 30 other scientists who worked on this subject are either incompetent or deliberately misleading the scientific community and the general public? Dr. Samet is the Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at USC and the founder of USC’s Institute for Global Health. Before that, he was Chairman of the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. These are fairly impressive medical science credentials. It doesn’t mean he is infallible or inerrant, but would you describe him as a superstitious fear-mongerer who doesn’t understand basic science?
"Health Effects of Electromagnetic Radiation" by Andrew Goldsworthy, Lecturer in Biology, Imperial College London:
"Modulated radio waves are not safe. Cell phone signals are modulated. Bawin et al. showed that twhen the signal is “amplitude modulated” so that its strength rises and falls in time with a lower frequency, could drive structurally important calcium from the surfaces of brain cells. Other work showed that pulses with very sharp rise and fall times were even more effective. The loss of this calcium weakens the membrane and makes it more likely to leak and gives unwanted biological effects.
"Electromagnetic hypersensitivity may become a major problem for us all. Although only a few percent of the population are at present electrosensitive, the condition can be brought on in hitherto healthy people by repeated or prolonged exposure to the radiation.
"An effect on the brain is the disruption of the blood-brain barrier, a layer of tissue between the blood system and the brain. Electromagnetic exposure makes this layer leak potentially toxic substances that can cause permanent brain damage. The effects of this may not be immediately apparent because the brain has spare capacity, but are likely to be progressive and lead to early dementia."
Most cellphones operate in the 900MHz band.
Microwave ovens operate at 2.45 GHz.
We have all seen what a microwave oven does to food. Cellphones operate at a fraction of the power of microwave ovens (less than 500mw) but for longer periods of time.
There is a link between cellphone use and massive reduction in bee population. Bees polinate most of the food we eat.
Got to go, my brain is boiling.
/documentation/favre.pdf .
Unfortunately for you, it is not the quantity of studies that support an argument, but the quality of those studies. Having read several of the studies purported to show these dangerous effects of radio waves, there are often major flaws in the methodology or conclusions. How about you post your top 5 papers that support your argument and let's see if the quality of their science supports your arguments?
Simply because radio waves have effects on calls does NOT mean that they can cause cancer or any other detrimenal effects. Breathing has effects on cells and increases glucose metabolism, so would you suggest that we stop breathing?
Prenatal Exposure to Weak Magnetic Fields Leads to Childhood Asthma (August 2011) Kaiser Permanente
ELECTROMAGNETIC HYPERSENSITIVITY: EVIDENCE FOR A NOVEL NEUROLOGICAL SYNDROME.L.S.U. Dept. of Neurology 7/2011
Effects of Wi-Fi Signals on the p300 Component of Event-Related Potentials During an Auditory Hayling Task
Wi Fi Alters Brain Activity; New Study, July 2011
LONG-TERM EXPOSURE TO MICROWAVE RADIATION PROVOKES CANCER GROWTH: EVIDENCES FROM RADARS AND MOBILE COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS July 2011
Most Lethal Frequencies Used With Wi Fi, Cell Phones, Cell Towers — .095 & 2.45 GHz
Carcinogenecity of RF Fields: Lancet, June 2011
The Papers of Alan Frey: EFFECTS OF MICROWAVES AND RADIO FREQUENCY ENERGY ON THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM
than defend science himself. Why compare manmade radiation with its
modulation patterns, to non-man-made? Why assume that the spectrum
range not atmospherically opaque, is for humans to exploit as
they do, rather than must be kept clear for full biological flourishin
g? Why rest content with simplistic linear relationships, when for
decades experimentally-shown phenomena like "windows", "peaks",
temporally cumulative exposures, biovariability, "resonance" etc,
make for a bogglingly complex field, thrust aside in the push for mass
cell telephony? See eg Blackman's section 14 of the Bioinitiative
Report, (via http://www.bioinitiative.org/freeaccess/report/index.htm
), for a glimpse of the complexity esp. re modulation, that this
defender of science totally ignores.
Why not mention IARC dissenters thinking enough evidence exists for
2A? One in France treating very many "electrosensitives", speaks of
the evidentiary trend to class 1 carcinogen? And why focus on
cancer, there are all kinds of other symptoms, by ignoring which
cancer is one result. What about cell infrastructure dangers? Two
fine recent studies -- unreported in the mainstream -- deal with such
broad symptomology, and the deathly cancerous result of ignoring
such: "Specific Health Symptoms and Cell Phone Radiation in Selbitz
(Bavaria, Germany)—
Evidence of a Dose-Response Relationship " &
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969711005754.
How is science defended by ignoring science of high calibre?
Another question I have is, if the radio waves we use for cell phones, wireless, et al, cannot penetrate the human body (as implied by the article) - then how do that travel through walls and homes? It seems pretty clear that these waves *do* penetrate these objects.
Its interest how resistant people are to accepting there may be issues with our wireless technologies. They simply do not want to see it. Why is that?
I would question your assertion that the science is high calibre. You posted links to two studies. If we examine the first one, on health symptoms in Selbitz, there is one major flaw that pops out upon initial examination. In order to observe any effect, they have to lump their groups together and then perform a t-test of the data, when they should have actually used an ANOVA as they collected data from different distances from the tower. If there is truly an effect, then the authors should have examined this over distance looking for a significant effect of a dose-response relationship. Unfortunately, they probably received too few responses for this to be valid assessment which would generate the statistical significance they hoped to achieve.
A second major problem was the very low response rate. They brings up the concern about selection bias.
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/yes/4297_MODULE_19.pdf
If the individuals who responded were more likely to be concerned about cell phone radiation, they may also be more likely to report symptoms based on their concerns and their known distance from the cell phone tower rather than actually having medical conditions.
If you really think that this is science of high calibre, I think that disqualifies you from judging good science.