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Mobile Phones And Danger
Trishank Karthik writes: "Have you been wondering whether those quirky, little, fashionable and convenient things are dangerous to you? Paranoid about cancer from mobile phones? Wanna know the latest findings? Cast your mobile phone aside for a while, read this, and have some coffee or tea."
Secondly, the chances are that it's not an EMR effect at all. The magnetic fields of cell phones are probably much more important than microwave emissions.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
But... but... how would they be able to tell? Most couch potatos act like vegetables anyway!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I can only imagine that's due to the danger of talking on the phone while driving.
Studies have shown that a person can hold up their end of a conversation without hurting their driving abilities one bit. That is, unless they are asked something that requires spacial or mathematical thought. It appears that talking and driving use different areas of the brain that can can work on seperate things without any trouble.
Driving with a cell phone is likely dangerous because of the dialing and then using one hand for the phone.
So a headset with a voicerec autodialer ought to make it perfectly safe to use a cell phone.
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http://www.tecsoc.org/persec/persec.htm#cell
http://www.tecsoc.org/persec/archivepersec.htm#9
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
Washington, D.C.
Digital cell phones typically output much less power. My Motorola Timeport has a max power output of 0.2 watts when operating in digital mode. My old analog Nokia 252, by contrast had either a .5 or .6 watt maximum power. So right from the start, digital phones emit half or less of the power that analog phones do.
:)
Second, the distance from the cell tower is going to affect the amount of power needed to transmit. Newer cell phones will probably adjust their transmission power to the minimum needed in order to maximize their battery life. As the number of cells increases to handle more traffic, the cells will get smaller, and help cut down on phone emissions.
Third, the phone's design is going to have some effect on the amount of radiation actually absorbed by your brain. A straight-up-and-down phone with the antenna right next to your head is going to fare MUCH worse than something like a StarTAC, where the antenna is angled away from your head by a couple of inches and, in fact, your head is shielded somewhat by the "flip-up" that blocks the antenna. Since the radiation obeys an inverse-square law with respect to distance, even a slight increase in antenna distance from the head drastically cuts the radiation your brain absorbs. It doesn't take much if the antenna is half an inch from your head! At 1", you'll see a quarter the radiation. At 1.5", 9X less, at 2", 16X less. And so on.
PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong on any of this! If I'm an idiot, I need to know so I don't do it again.
After millions of dollars spent on research over the last decade no correlation has been proven yet between cellular phone usage and any damage to the health of the user. If such correlation does exist, though, one thing is sure: it's so low that it is difficult to spot against the background noise of normal health problems.
Compare this to the damage of air pollution that is very easy to spot statistically.
I am not saying that there is no risk in cellular phones, it's just a matter of proportion. We take risks every day: the risk of living in a polluted city, the risk of being hit in a car accident, the risk of being mugged etc.
I would like to have better information about the amount of risk I am taking when I use my cellular phone, but it's pretty certain that it's much lower than other risks I take every day with barely a second thought.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
I wonder whether the decreased reaction time could be a result of stochastic resonance.
This is a phenomenon in which injecting noise into a weak signal can increase its detectability.
It has been shown that crayfish use this in the nerve cells of their tail hairs, possibly to improve their ability to detect vibrations from the motion of predators they are escaping. I've seen some pretty dramatic examples of low contrast images that were impossible to interpret are made very plain by adding some white noise to them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"Repacholi, who is now coordinating the WHO's research into the health effects of electromagnetic radiation, says..."
Things really took a turn after Keith Moon died.
**>>BELCH
More recently, there was a nice summary of research done over at Medscape which I discussed at my website. Since I'm an oncologist and an electrical engineer, I happen to have a keen interest in the issue from both sides.
If you take a look at my comments on the matter, you may find some food for thought. Basically, this sort of radiation may well pose a threat to our health, but it may do so at such a low rate and take so long to show effects that it may not even matter.
Look at smoking: if you smoke, you have a 7000% increased risk of developing some sort of aerodigestive cancer (oral cavity, larynx, esophagus, lung, etc.) as well as a much higher risk of cervical cancer in women, increased risk of skin cancers, bladder cancer, pancreatic cancer, yadda yadda yadda. That data was easy to find and tease out due to the incredible rarity of these tumors in nonsmokers.
However, now you're talking about much more rare tumors, and not a very large rate of increased risk. You don't even need statistics to see that smoking has a high association with cancer, but when you look at human tumors that only affect 1 in 100,000 people, then try to see if the rate is 2 in 100,000 among those exposed (or, as is more likely, 1.1 in 100,000 among those exposed) you are in a different world. You will need amazingly large populations in order to show a statistically significant difference of even 100% higher risk. And then, even if you do, your research is subject to criticism because you aren't going to be able to do a randomized trial. All retrospective, cohort, or other nonrandomized trials can be picked apart by either the phone manufacturers or consumer interest groups (the two sides, as I see them, in this debate).
In the end, you also have to ask yourself if it matters to you. I know lots of patients who continue to smoke because they just damn like it, and forget trying to get them to quit. They'd literally rather get another cancer than give up their favorite habit. Lots of cell phone (or insert your favorite high tech device here) users will just say to hell with it and continue to use the devices. After all, I still love to ride motorcycles, even after working in an ER. ;-)
Isn't there a safety issue in the petro station when your car pulls up with a hot exhaust pipe sitting low to the ground? There should be millions of gas station explosions a day if there is any risk, as any concentration of gas fumes strong enough to explode (which is accually a relativly narrow range of concentration compared to most explosives) would be easally ignited by those high tempatures.
No, they use *far* less transmitting power because they only need to transmit a few hundred feet.
The volunteers were quicker at pressing a matching button if the headset was switched on
:(
The improvement was small--about 4 per cent.
Hmmm still not quite enough to counter the 900ms ping times i get playing halflife over my nokia
You're already being fried by all sorts of waves. CBs/radio stations/towers/computers/walkie talkies/cordless phones/PA systems/computer screens/pencil sharpeners/power generators/amplifiers...[insert everything electronic here]
You bring up a good point, but the only other option is to move to the mountains in some remote part of the world. Its a factor of our society today..kinda ironic. Life expentancy has grown thanks to all our technology...wonder if it will start to decrease soon by the same reason?
Sig it.
If direct experiments on tissue involving microwaves are difficult to perform because the microwaves interfere with the delicate measuring devices used in the experiments, why would anyone think that the same microwaves would have no effect on neurons - which are themselves delicate electrical measuring devices?
Most slashdotters are not old enough to remember this, but when I was growing up back in the 50's many shoe stores had these 'magic boxes' - about half the size of a refrigerator that a shoe salesman could use to check to see if your new shoes fit properly. The way the boxes worked was the child put his feet into an opening in them and the shoe salesman looked into a visor and he could see how the shoes fit by actually looking inside of them as though he had X-ray vision like Superman!
That was because he DID have X-ray vision; the 'magic boxes' were fluoroscopes driven by a powerful X-ray generator. Unlike a dental X-ray, the fluoroscopes did not use a brief burst of radiation which exposed a sensitive piece of film - they used a continuous beam of X-rays which were strong enough to light up a fluorescent screen with an image of the child's foot!. The poor salesman's head was in line with the X-ray emissions. When a bunch of 50's versions of Al Bundy started 'glowing in the dark' (yes I know biological tissue doesn't glow in the dark when exposed to X-rays) the machines were pulled out of service. My dad - who was a physics major in college - wouldn't let us get near those machines.
We may someday view mobile phones with the same horror that we view those shoe store 'magic boxes' today. As an electrical engineer I am quite happy to let the rest of you run the safety experiments on your own brains; that is an experiment I decline to participate in.
I'll remind people that King James I wrote a leaflet where he mentioned how doctors knew smoking tobacco was injurious to health.
And today, there are more tobbaco smokers as a percentage of population in Britain than there were when it was written.
So, how exactly did the tobacco companies supress data released by a soverign hundreds of years before they were organized?
Steven E. Ehrbar
Having been cut off by jackasses in SUVs yacking on their mobile phones (And undoubtedly on their way to a starbucks where they'll get a latte and pay for it with their credit card) I can only say that I hope the radiation from mobile phones is, in a few years, proven to cause some bizarre and disfiguring disease. And sterility.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
When a microwave photon hits a molecule of water and gets absorbed, that molecule is suddenly ionized with great force. Sure, this doesn't amount to much heat in a material, but if this molecule happens to be in a sensitive position, it can cause trouble. Look at bread heated in a microwave. Why does it get hard when it cools? Because the dissolved sugars in the bread were subjected to great energies at the molecular level, and carmelized.
Cancer can happen when a DNA strand is damaged in one of a few particular locations, turning off the growth-regulation in a cell. The cell starts to divide uncontrolled, eventually making millions of copies of itself and forming a tumor.
One microwave photon can cause this if it happens to hit the right spot. The force of the ionization of that water molecule is like a tiny explosion occuring within the DNA strand. More powerful transmissions just increase the chance that this will happen.
DNA isn't the only sensitive molecule in our bodies. There are many important proteins and ions that can be badly damaged by a stray photon at the right energy. We can't possibly stop all naturally-occuring radiation damage to our systems, but we certainly shouldn't add to it.
They could make a report saying that cell phones turn people into complete vegetables and I would doubt that the majority of people would stop using them. Hell, they probably do turn people into vegetables.
three other teams have failed to find similar evidence of increased cancer rates among mice exposed to microwave emissions
They did admit however that they taste rather like chicken.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
they used a continuous beam of X-rays which were strong enough to light up a fluorescent screen with an image of the child's foot!
/.'ers out there, if you want a real treat - try to find a copy of "The Boy Electrician" by Alfred Morgan. A rare classic, this book actually shows the kid of yesteryear how to build the device spoken of above (a fluoroscope, back when one could buy an x-ray tube nearly anywhere), as well as a host of other fascinating devices from the time (mostly motors, and other electrical gadgets)...
I am too young to remember them, but I do know of them.
All you
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Home phones that use 900KHz and 2.4GHz seem to operate in the same frequency range as mobile phone so are they dangerous too?
Why?
And while the results on the activity of the brain are too new to have been subjected to the same scrutiny, the consensus is: don't panic . . . but watch this space.
Because I just can't help establishing a relation between this article that says "perhaps no" and this one:
- Phones cells are diminishing
- There are few new cellular phone features attracting people as most of them now have WAP, DATA and FAX
- People are keen on ecology provided its applications make them smarter
- New phone make people smarter
- No "low-radiation" phone have been released yet
So, I just can't help imaginating a marketer's mind: OK, if we have a doubt then there is something to sell to make peopl feel more secure.Get it ?
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
Actually, it was found out in some study that the headset acts as an antenna, and that its radiation to the brain is three times as powerful compared to using only the phone. Well, I sometimes use a headset anyway, and I trust no study anymore. :-)
In one series of experiments, the team found that larvae exposed to an overnight dose of microwaves wriggled less and grew 5 per cent faster than larvae that were not exposed, suggesting that the microwaves were speeding up cell division.
Just keep talking on that mobile after you've had the mandatory car accident due to yakking in traffic and you'll get back in shape in no time.
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Violence is necessary, it is as American as cherry pie.
H. Rap Brown
I didn't see any mention of it in the article, nor have I read any studies about it, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that automobile accident rates are higher for mobile phone users. I'm pretty sure some states/towns here in the US ban driving while talking on mobile phones. I can only imagine that's due to the danger of talking on the phone while driving.
I think all you would need is a properly designed headset with a 100 Ohm resistor to prevent the wire from becomming a giant antenna, no?
Information is much more free now; while the tobacco companies actually hid the information about ill-effects for marketing reasons.
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First, microwaves (and indeed any EMR) affects ONLY those molecules that correspond to that wavelength.
Actually, this turns out not to be the case. Any insulating material will absorb EM radiation in the microwave range or at lower frequencies (and any conducting material will reflect it). While materials with an absorption band in the right place will absorb _more_ radiation per unit distance, you still get absorption no matter what you're sending the microwaves through.
Absorption is an exponential drop-off in intensity within the material. The rate of drop-off depends on the incoming signal's wavelength, which is why the older longer-wave cell phones aren't as bothered by walls as the new, higher-frequency (and shorter wavelength) cell phones.
For both types of phone, the wavelength is short enough that you'll still get a substantial amount of absorption within the user's head - which will have the sole effect of heating it up by a few thousanths of a degree. I'm not too worried.
I am very uneasy about cell phones (and wireless networking) - they should have been proven (as far as possible) to be safe before even being considered for general use. I'm sufficiently uneasy that I refuse to have a cell phone.
I support the Precautionary Principle:
"When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof."
In this context, it should be up to the industries selling such things as cellphones and wireless networks to give evidence, rather than assurances, that it is safe, and to show (including the research data) that any fears are groundless, or at least be clear on possible risks, so that we can make informed choices about what we use.
Instead, they are reaping the profits on such technology, while we the public are exposed to whatever hazards may be involved (and there may well turn out to be none, but there is a poor track record on this), while adequate reseach on hazards is not a high priority, because it does not meet the financial/economic objectives of research funders.
Getting back to the article, all it says is that "there's still no evidence that mobile phones will mangle your memories or give you cancer". That is really not good enough - it is part of the "line up the bodies" (require proof that it is harmful before doing anything to stop it) approach that is usually taken when there is big money involved.
Reminds me of a "study" I saw once in which the researcher proved that kids in elementary grades with bigger feet scored better in standardized tests. :)
This was met with great awe until it was explained by him that this was due to the fact that kids with larger feet are older
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
I expect that the power diminishes somewhat, but I don't know how it varies inside the "near field" distance? I would also imagine it depends on the particular antenna's shape. Is there a place on the web I could find more info about this?
In any event, the law holds for larger distances (a foot or so)... so get a headset and put your phone on the desk or the passenger seat in your car, and you'll cut the radiation you absorb by an enormous factor.
Support for the idea that microwaves can trigger biochemical stress at low energies comes from a team led by Henry Lai at the University of Washington in Seattle. He claims that rats exposed to microwaves produce natural painkillers called endorphins and are more likely to binge on alcohol or react strongly to morphine and barbiturates.
Actually, the stress comes from the rats using the cell phones to make appointments, sell/buy stock, and to try and get a date for this saturday party with morphine and barbituates!
Actually, I don't trust Cell phones yet, and will wait a few more years to see how others have reacted to them. Luckly, being a programmer, I don't have to (or want to) be connected to people 24 hours a day.
Although the article never mentioned driving and cell phones, I think that's more dangerous than anything else. I've witnessed two people blow through red lights and one women run off the road all because they were too busy chatting on their phone instead of watching the road.
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
Quote: Graeme Jacobs, editor of Which? magazine said: "If you're worried about levels of radiation from your mobile phone, you shouldn't rely on a hands-free set. The two models we tested triple the radiation to your brain, though we still don't know for certain whether that radiation is harmful."
See: This article for details.
Baz
Regardless of what the scientists eventually find out, there is no drawback whatsoever to using a headset for your cell phone. It frees up your hand to do whatever, and for the most part, they are more comfortable (and easier on your neck) than the phones themselves.
They're definitely a good idea if you feel you must use your phone while driving.
A lot of people, however, use headsets while their phone is in their pocket or clipped to their belt. It has been found (I forget where I read it) that just being those three feet closer to the ground means poorer reception, so the phone has to switch to a more powerful broadcast mode more often -- and this while the phone is close to your reproductive organs. How pleasant. This will also have an effect on battery life of course.
Ah, I remember the old days, when if you saw someone walking around a city street talking to themselves, they were mentally ill. Now they're probably just using the handsfree kit for their mobile...
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See, when people smoke in front of you, you cough and tell them to go away since you could die in his smoke.
But then what about mobiles?
Mobiles are so commonplace today,every second person next to you is yapping on his cell. What do you do? tell him to go outside? I think you should. Because smoking is avoidable, you can use a hnkerchief to screen out some of the smoke. But what do you do about mobiles? Use leadhelmets?
Another thing. Know Bluetooth? yeah, any device 3m away from you will have radio on it. And so, effectively, in office or any civilized area, you're fried in Radiowave. How's that.
How's that for the future?
If anything's gonna be great in the future,this place is.
You could do worse than check this link at the BBC, which fully explains proven health theories and the fiction behind the others.
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I have a cell phone and... err... I forget what my point was.
The problem with extrapolating effects from microwave radiation is that, although it is "radiation", it is non-ionizing radiation. In other words, the photon energy is too low to strip electrons from atoms. Thus it can only cause heating, and low levels at that. Sure, it is slightly possible that resonance effects may cause differential heating that could cause a slight problem, but I doubt there is any *significant* risk here. This subject has been studied for many decades, and there is no significant evidence that RF exposure at levels much higher than you get from a cell phone has any negative effects.
If you want to worry about something, worry about how your driving skills decrease while you are using the microwave. The risk is orders of magnitude higher.
The only good weather is bad weather.
They said that the cell phones do heat the brain, but that thinking and mind exercises would do this more intensly. I wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that they also mention that when these devices are on they respondants answered 'faster'. It would make sense. If your brain is already warm then it would not have to warm up to the exercise.
Personally I think that if you have a cell phone glued to your head all the time this constant heating is going to have some effect on the brain. Probably negitive. Think about it logically , long term exposure to the sun can cause cancer if you are out tanning (skin cancer). However short term exposures don't. If you are out side each day and walk around you probably wont get skin cancer, it is only when you are in the sun for long terms. Maybe the heating of the brain by the cell phone is the same thing. Maybe what they need are long studies of several years.
I have a cell, but I uise it maybe once a week, or less. It is more of an emergency thing in case I am stranded somewhere or attacked or something. But I imagine that those people that drive , walk and use cells virtually 24/7 are at some sort of risk to brain cancer. the problem is that it would take years to prove and none of these studies has been done for more than 5 years. ;-)
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I don't want a lot, I just want it all
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
For my part, the hype over the last few years has caused me simply not to bother about whether phones are really damaging to my health. Everyone has one, so at least we'll fry our brains en masse, if at all.
Perhaps it's not exactly on topic, but a far more worrying issue that doesn't seem to receive enough press is the distraction that mobile phones cause to their users. To my knowledge, several EU countries have already passed laws forbidding the use of mobiles while driving for example. We will never know the true statistics of fatal accidents due to mobile phones, but I'm willing to bet that they account for a lot more than we think.
That said, some of the reasons used to justify banning the use of mobile phones (e.g. on buses, in the cinema, at petrol stations (?)) are so ridiculous that it's obviously just for the reason that mobiles cause a public disturbance. How many times have YOU seen a movie projector getting shut down because the guy on the back row made a call?
`Theoretically they microwaves should have no effect, so they obviously don't cause cancer, but wow, they *do* have this other cool effect!'
Huh?