Slashdot Mirror
Study Links Cell Phones and Eye Cancer
Sara Chan writes "There have been lots of claims that cell phones might cause cancer. The Sunday Times of London reports that there now seems to be real evidence to show these claims are true, at least for cancer of the eye. A study found a strong statistical link and a feasible mechanism is known: microwave radiation is absorbed by
certain cells (melanocytes) in the uveal layer of the eye (which affects their growing/dividing). The study
appeared in the journal Epidemiology
and the abstract is available here."
Point-blank microwave radiation from personal communication devices is not a problem if you use an earpiece and microphone that plug into the side of the cellphone.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Most cell phones these days have an "off" button.
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Nope, you don't have to damage DNA to cause uncontrollable mitosis. Increased production of growth factors and/or signal transduction elements can cause neoplasias as well (look what happens in the case of goiter, for example) While a neoplasia might not necessarily be cancerous, I'd imagine it would be rather problematic to have even a benign tumor in your eye.
Who knows what sort of effects even just a slight local temperature increase can cause. Perhaps it might stimulate cells to release autocrine growth factors. Perhaps it is enough to significantly speed up the delivery of growth factors via blood or the diffusion of signal transduction elements intracellularly. Of course, the key thing needed to cause a panic is to find the exact mechanism.
But I really can't see why thermal effects alone can't destabilize DNA or RNA. While the molecules themselves are stabilized by covalent bonds (albeit weakly) and very regular hydrogen bonds (in the case of dsDNA), both of which take a lot of energy to break, their interactions with other molecules, such as those responsible for DNA replication or RNA translation, are much more tenuous and don't necessarily need ionizing radiation to be broken.
This leather case claims to reflect all radiation back out the backside of the phone and cut down 99% of the radiation. They have all sorts of 'proof'. Any know if these things are bogus?
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
In fact, the back-to-nature-and-avoid-all-technology hermit types tend to have SHORTER lifespans than city dwellers.
Well, yes. And I'm not anti-tech in general. You're right that some people are of the 'romantic' notion that "before we got civilised, we lived in harmony with nature", but there are those who argue (and I humbly agree), that primitive societies appeared 'in harmony' only because their tech was limited. You can't genocide with bows and arrows... but primitive cultures, it seems, certainly had their tyrants who would have nuked other tribes if only they had had the bomb.
But as for, "we're living longer anyway"... are we? It depends on the perspective... a pig may feel really well fed... just before the slaughter. The trouble with the greenhouse effect, GM, contaminants in the food chain etc. is that their prescence is very subtle, and they accumulate gradually...
Are we heading, with stomachs full, for a disaster?
If you had bothered to actually look at the article, you'd realize that it was written by Germans ;-)
If you are actually concerned that the heating effects of microwave radiation from your cell phone are going to be dangerous to you, you should seek to remove other heat sources from near your head. The following may be reasonable precautions for you to take:
- Never wear a hat
- Carry a parasol
- Keep your curtians closed at all times
- Set your thermostat no higher than 55F
- Avoid physical activity
- Eat all your food cold
I could go on with other ways in which to prevent your head from being heated, but it's getting a little silly. If there is anything about cell phones that warms your head, it's simple conductive heating from the power amp and battery discharge. If your cell phone gets too warm for your comfort, talk less and/or use a headset. I just ask that you remember that this is a comfort recommendation and not a saftey requirement unless you're operating a motor vehicle._____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Good for him. It sounds like he's a responsible scientist who's found a correlation worthy of further increase. He also has at least the beginnings of a mechanism to explain the correlation. Unfortunately, the Sunday Times has done the usual media thing, and overreacted. One study does not a fact make.
Early epidemiological studies of breast cancer indicated that multiple pregnancies had a protective effect. Women with many children were less likely to get breast cancer than women with only one or two kids, and women with no children had the highest risk. Additional studies confirmed this. Then someone noted that women with larger families usually start having kids at a younger age than women with smaller families, and researched that connection. They learned that the preventive effects were not tied to family size, but the woman's age at the time of her first pregnancy. Pregnancy before age 20 reduces the risk of breast cancer, regardless of the number of pregnancies that follow.
The early studies were carefully done, peer reviewed, widely accepted, and wrong. The correlation did not prove causation. An overlooked confounder caused the effect.
If you can only remember one fact from about epidemiology, remember this one, as it is the most important: Correlation Does Not Prove Causation.
HAM radio operators have been concerned about the affects of rf radiation for a long time. Look through some of the older mags and you will find a lot of articles dealing with transmitter power and how far away the antenna should be from the operator. Talk to rf engineering profs and you will get the same story. The reason HAM's weren't all dying from cancer is that they generally did not hold the antenna up to their head.
The affects of large ammounts of rf radiation have been well known since WWII and the advent of radar. The question today now is not: "Does rf radiation cause cancer?" but rather "Do cellphones produce enough radiation (enough power) to cause cancer?"
How far away from the cell phone does the effect of microwave radiation reach? I'm betting it could go all the way across the universe (given billions of years) if it's not blocked by anything. Like a previous post mentioned, the power of electromagnetic waves diminishes with the inverse square of the distance, so it would be very faint by the time it travels through the universe.
-Trucidation
Since centi (c), in the SI means 10^-1, this means that 5 cm = 0.05 m
Since radiation intensity (e.g. W/m^2) is inversly proportional to the square of distance from the source, this means that;
P1 = (r0/r1)^2 * P0
P0, P1 are radiation intensities at r0, r1 respectively distances from source.
Doing some algebra, we get;
N= P1/P0= (r0/r1)^2 . I have used N to represent the power ratio of the two points (P1/P0)
Using the above data we have;
N=([0.05m]/[1m])^2 = (0.05)^2 = 0.0025
This means that at one meter (r1) from the source, the radiation is 0.0025 (ie. 0.25%) as intense as it is at 5cm=0.05m (r0)
And remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Even more likely than the production of microwaves is just that battery discharge causes heat and so does the operation of a power amp. Amazingly enough when you hold a warm object near to your ear, your ear begins to feel warm. See my previous post for a complete discussion.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
When you add up all the exposure to different cancer enhancing products you can end up with the possibility of dying of cancer at forty as opposed to dying of old age at ninety.
The little things add up, look at whats happening to overall cancer rates(not cancer deaths): up, up, upOoops, I should have said centi means 10^-2, or in a form that computer people will recognise, 1e-2
And remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life.
I agree with this but don't you think that the people carrying out the research thought about it ? The research was done by reputable scientists, I know that doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes but it would surprise me if they overlook stuff like that.
You haven't read many research papers, have you?
Check out the last two lines of the paper's abstract:
This is the first study describing an association between radiofrequency radiation exposure and uveal melanoma. Several methodologic limitations prevent our results from providing clear evidence on the hypothesized association.
In a nutshell, this says (1) we're the first ones to do the research and (2) we couldn't prove our hypothesis to begin with.
In other words, No valid conclusions may be drawn from the experiment!
This is a perfect example of the unfortunately common method of gathering a sizeable amount of data, performing some flashy statistical analysis, and publishing, ignoring the fact that there is little signal amongst the noise.
An unfortunate trend in science, primarily in this country, but apparently also found in Germany, is the lack of attention paid to research methodology. At the same time, the quality of scientific journals is decreasing more and more, so poorly done research is getting published more and more.
Add in incompetent and irresponsible journalism, and the end result is a bad article, a headline that is even worse and misleading Slashdot stories....
----------------
Encrypt Everything
You can prove something is true to someone, if they're willing to accept it as truth.
You can't prove it to those who will not accept it as truth though.
That's my definition of proof, anyways.
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
What I'd like to know is whether lower radiation phones would make a difference...
People that are plugued 24h/day on their cell phone will probably end up having problems, human body can adapt and most studies shows that little exposure (few minutes a day) can't hurt. Anyways, we're exposed to a lot of radiation, sunshine, radio waves, etc etc.
:) Same applies to a cellular, and that's why I don't run my buisness on it, but rely on it for quick calls and use a pay-per-minute scheme instead of a monthly fee.
The technology is good, and here to stay, but like everything, abuse isn't good, well in this case. It's kinda like smoking... smoking 1 cig a day won't give you cancer unless you're really weak or prone to get cancer, but smoking a pack or more a day, well good luck
As for the secondary exposure, it's totally lame, the energy level halves at ^2 of the distance, so a few watts becomes milliwatts only a few feets away, you get more standing near your microwave watching food cooking.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Well, I can understand that happening. Accidents caused by people talking on a cell phone while driving are just as common as drunk driving accidents.
--
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
The field of the analogue cell phone is orders of magnitude stronger than that of a digital phone.
But it's not pulsed - which (IIRC) is one of the major reasons people use against digital cell phones. I have to admit that I don't know very much about the different modulation techniques used in the analogue or digital cell phon networks - but neither do the people who cry out loudest about those "dangerous" digital phones.
--
Cthulhu fhtagn!
I guess it won't be long before the GM people come out with a procedure to replace those defective genes in our melanocytes with genes that don't go cancerous when jiggled over a billion times per second by a cell phone transmitter.
I just wonder if the cost of the procedure will require the selling off of my first-born, or my first- and second-born.
I'd rather be a unix freak than a freaky eunuch
Ewige Blumenkraft!
Since uveal melanoma starts within such cells, there is a ready-made mechanism by which mobile phone radiation might help to initiate cancer, especially in people with a genetic predisposition to the condition.
This isn't a poor explanation at all. Excessive mitosis alone can lead to cancer, even if one isn't exposed to ionizing radiation that causes mutations. Mutation occurs at a given rate, even in normal individuals. It's up to the DNA replication error correction machinery to catch them.
Let's pick a random tumor suppressor protein, such as p53. It needs to be at a specific concentration in the cell to be effective at catching replication errors (which occur at a regular frequency even in normal individuals) Protein synthesis only occurs during G1 or G2 while DNA replication occurs in S phase and cell division occurs in M phase. Protein breakdown will continue at a relatively steady rate throughout the cycle, however. If the rate of DNA replication/cell division outstrips the rate at which p53 is synthesized (i.e., the length of time the cell spends in G1 and G2 phase decreases) and the breakdown rate stays constant, you've possibly effectively decreased the concentration of p53 in the cell.
But regardless of what the actual mechanism is, anything that can cause increased rates of mitosis (growth factors, signal transduction elements, whatever) can cause cancer because of the baseline error rate. Notice that the most common cancers occur in tissue with rapidly dividing cells such as skin and the colon. And it's not necessarily because they're more exposed to ionizing radiation.
While you're right in saying that it would take ionizing radiation to break the phosphate bonds between adjacent nucleotides, it does only take thermal energy to break the hydrogen bonds that link the base pairs. While you'd need to be at 95C to completely denature double stranded DNA, you'd only need much lower increases of temperature to just partially melt dsDNA enough. At physiological temperatures, dsDNA melts spontaneously all the time. This is why helicase can work, and that's why you need histones to stabilize dsDNA (and the hydrogen bonding between histones and DNA is much weaker than that between strands of DNA--much more easily broken by heat alone.)
But you're right in saying that a correlation is not necessarily meaningful. Without a mechanism, there's no need to panic yet. But if you take the scientific method to the extreme, nothing is ever true, you can only determine what is false.
Cellphones have a power output of 600mW. Since milli (m) in the SI means 10^-3, 600mW = 0.6W. The radiation intensity (assuming isotropic radiation) at 1 meter is only;
[0.6W]/(4 * pi * [1m]^2)=0.047 W/m^2 or if you prefer, 47mW/m^2.
since a dipole antenna is 2.14dB above isotropic in directions of maximum radiation, the radiation intensity at 1 meter is 78 mW/m^2 or 7.8 uW/cm^2 (microwatts per square centimeter)
And remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life.
> poorly done research is getting published more and more.
>
> Add in incompetent and irresponsible journalism,
> and the end result is a bad article,
> a headline that is even worse and
>>>>>>>>> misleading Slashdot stories....
Misleading Slashdot Stories! That's the last straw.
And here I thought I was getting unfiltered news. What is the world coming to?
(Don't be-lieve, don't be-lie-ee-ee-eve, don't be-lieve.)
Just prior to the discovery that Polio was caused by a virus, which led to a vaccine, I say a report that used statistics to show a correlation between drinking Coke and contracting Polio, to a 95% confidence level.
Caused all sorts of hysteria among the mommies.
Correlation does not equal cause.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
it says something important that most people dont know about statistics: ie cause and effect relations _CANNOT_ be determined from correllary data. this is pretty basic and one of the first things you learn in a statistics class.
That old chestnut is only true in a theoretical sense. In practice, cause and effect relationships are determined all the time by correlations, because.common sense can also be applied in addition to mindless equations. Consider -- what would be the alternative to cell phone use causing cancer? Cancer causing cell phone use? While mathematically possible that explaination is just silly,
This is a poor explanation. If microwaves cause unusual growth rates among the melanocytes, then microwave radiation could act as a promoter, not an initiator, of cancer. Ultraviolet light is both a promoter and an initiator, because it is high-enough energy to ionize DNA molecules and cause mutations. Microwaves are non-ionizing, so there is no known mechanism by which they could act as an initiator.
I've seen quite a few posts mentioning this "ionizing radiation" thing. Shall I assume that it's only possible to cause uncontrolled cell division (e.g. Cancer) through damaging DNA directly, and not through indirect molecular mechanisms, such as causing RNA molecules to be built improperly? Is there a biologist out there who can confirm this, since it seems to be a common complaint about this article.
Even if microwave radiation didn't act as an initiator, just promoting the growth of any cancerous cells which develop is still a pretty bad thing. And cancerous cells don't really need an initiator. As long as cell division is an imperfect process, DNA will be damaged. Perhaps a pre-cancerous mass which would otherwise have died out (due to insufficient blood flow or something) could survive with regular exposure to growth-promoting radation? (Okay, that's a complete guess. Still, I probably know more biology than this guy. Not that I know very much either...)
Incidentally, the Stang article doesn't actually say anything about microwaves causing rapid cell division. There's just a mention in the article about "other research [which] shows..." that microwave exposure causes rapid cell growth. The abstract of his article does say that "visual display terminals" (e.g. computer monitors) and several other radiation sources were not correlated with the appearance of eye Cancer. So we can all relax now (ha!)
It'll certainly give new meaning to "Watching the game, havin' a Bud..."
--
Do I play Hockey?
What you say!!
Now we'll have to deal with blind people on cell phones in traffic.
Back pocket would be safer, especially for the more weighty folk - plenty of padding as protection.
:-)
As for the chest, we put our hearts through enough strain as it is (what, with all that American fast-food and all)
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I can't believe we're comparing cellular phones to the long and great radio hobby tradition better known as "Ham" radio. I've been a Ham for quite a while now, and this crap is apples to oranges. Cell phones operate generally with 0.8 watts output at around 830mgz. This is a minute power amount, and if people would stop talking sooooo much on their phones, the question of cancer would not exist. Cell phones cause cancer about as much as living under the e/m field of powerlines, or living les than 20 miles(which we ALL do) from commercial radio stations with 50,000 watts(400,000 watts effective radiated power!) pumping day and night. Sure, with distance the field strength falls off very quickly, but its about the same radiation you're getting from cell phones and commercial transmitters. As far as this idiot saying there should bo no licensing for amateur radio, you're crazy! That is what makes ham radio a viable hobby, and keeps some order...look what happened to the 11m band('CB' for you invalids)!!!
Through the perception of illusion, we experience reality.
Can I sue cell phone users if I go blind from second-hand radiation?
BilldaCat
Given the current saturation of cell phones, there could be a study that showed they cause instant death or mutations, and I doubt that many people would stop using them. That's pathetic.
It's much easier to prove that cell phones cause ulcers and car accidents.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Thanks.
I'm guilty as sin, I didn't read the article properly.
I had a cell phone for my previous job. If I used it for any more then 3 minutes or so, my ear would get somewhat warm, even if the phone was not in direct contact with it. This has to tell you that something is happening to your body thats not normal, and probebly not good for it. The reason people are attacking cell phones is they most likely cause harm.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
The radiation from directional antennas also decreases
with the sqare of distance. In the case of a directional
antenna (e.g. an antenna with a paraboloid reflector) the
radiation is limited to a portion of the surface of the sphere
repressenting all points equidistant from the source.
Actually the radiation is more greatly directed in direction.
The angle of radiation is taken to be the angle between
directions that are 3.01dB (half power points) below the
direction of maximum radiation. Since the surface area of
a given amount of spheradians of surface angle (as
opposed to arc angle which is measured in radians) is
indeed proportional to the square of the radius of said
surface angle.
For clarity, the spheradians of a given area on the
surface of a sphere is the ratio of this area, to the square
of the radius of said sphere. This means that there are 4*pi
speradians in a complete sphere (just as there are 2*pi
radians in a complete circle).
The area of a given surface angle (s_a) is given by;
A=s_a * r^2, where r is the radius of curvature for this
surface area. This means that the amount of area in this
surface angle is proportional to the square of radius. Since
the power that the antenna has outputed still spreads out
over a surface area that increases with square of radius,
the intensity of the radiation decreases with the square of
distance
The amount of power relative to a dipole antenna that
the antenna outputs in the direction of maximum radiation
(expressed in db, and notated by dBd) is the gain of the
antenna.
It is true that the directionality/gain of the antenna
increases the risk do to increased radiation in a curtain
direction (at the expense of the other directions), the
intensity is still inverely proportional to the square of
distance.
And remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Several methodologic limitations prevent our results from providing clear evidence on the hypothesized association.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
People like the believe that everyone's out to get them (like cell phones). That's why studies like this get so much press. Once the study is repeated I'm sure the rates will go down.
Given a reasonably level playing field, who would win a fight between a bear and a shark?
Funny you should mention power lines. In my home town there is a high-tension wire running the length of the town through dedicated lots located in the middle of the blocks (the wires are perpendicular to the street direction). Seems that houses located on either side of the lots are mostly (at least half of them) vacant, and the resale value of them is down. People simply don't want to take that risk, given the choice.
However, even though there is a possible link between aluminum consumption and Alzheimer's Disease, I don't see many people boycotting soda drinks.
What I learned about Risk Theory: 1) the unknown is scarier than the known. 2) you can't gauge the reaction of the public because they collectively don't think logically.
And this news is very similar to news linking mobile phones to brain cancer in the, oh what, eighties?
Now, I had a friend who used those old phones extensively. He died of brain cancer about 10 years ago at 42. Should this convince me that cell phones are bad? Do I want toys at any price?
I haven't bought a cell phone yet, but I drink out of soda cans nearly every day. At least I think I can recall I did... And no, I probably wouldn't buy a house under high-tension lines. They tell me you can stretch a long wire underneath one of them suckers and light a small bulb with the inductive energy.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
but we'll never know, now that cellphones have supplanted ham radios (and at much greater cost).
One question... can a ham radio fit in your pocket and weigh only 4 ounces?
"And like that
Disclaimer: I'm a physics student. This means I know a bit about the subject, but certainly not everything.
The mechanism by which the radiation might cause cancer is uncertain but it is known that the watery contents of the eye assists the absorption of radiation.
The watery portion of the eye would only experience very mild thermal effects (heating). Microwaves aren't ionizing radiation.
Other research showed that cells called melanocytes found in the uveal layer started growing and dividing more rapidly when exposed to microwave radiation.
Since uveal melanoma starts within such cells, there is a ready-made mechanism by which mobile phone radiation might help to initiate cancer, especially in people with a genetic predisposition to the condition.
This is a poor explanation. If microwaves cause unusual growth rates among the melanocytes, then microwave radiation could act as a promoter, not an initiator, of cancer. Ultraviolet light is both a promoter and an initiator, because it is high-enough energy to ionize DNA molecules and cause mutations. Microwaves are non-ionizing, so there is no known mechanism by which they could act as an initiator.
As for increasing growth rate of melanocytes, this is hardly surprising. Melanocytes reproduce and produce pigment in response to electromagnetic radiation (this is how you tan). It would have to be shown that melanocytes reproduce at an unusually high rate when exposed to microwaves (of the levels emitted by cell phones), as compared with the reproduction rate from exposure to sunlight. In short, until someone shows that melanocytes react more strongly to cell-phone level radiation than to sunlight, this is a straw man.
When the results were analysed they found the cancer victims had a much higher rate of mobile phone use,
They found a correlation. That's not the same as cause-and-effect. One strong factor that many people overlook is socio-economic effects. For instance, perhaps affluent Brits are more likely to own cell phones and more likely to go on vacations to places to sunny places. People who are normally exposed to low levels of ultraviolet light (i.e. Brits) who suddenly find themselves in sunny climates have very little skin pigment, and are much more prone to get cancer-causing sunburns (or perhaps eye damage) than those accustomed to those levels of sun.
though Stang cautions that his study needs confirmation
Good for him. It sounds like he's a responsible scientist who's found a correlation worthy of further increase. He also has at least the beginnings of a mechanism to explain the correlation. Unfortunately, the Sunday Times has done the usual media thing, and overreacted. One study does not a fact make.
Sadly, the lawyers will probably jump all over this. It's not like science, truth, or facts ever had any place in the courts...
forget about eye cancer, i'm more worried about people who use cell phones while driving! this may sound stupid, but i know it's right to be concerned because _i_ had an accident (my first) because of a stupid cell phone. if i hadn't been trying to shut the dang thing off, i wouldn't have smacked into the guy in front of me. even my parents can't drive while talking on a cell phone and they've got thirty years of driving experience on mine. people, shut them off before something regrettable happens!
As someone living in a country where over 50 % of the entire population has a cell phone, I find it odd that somewhere talking on the cellular phone while riding a bus or in a restaurant could be seen as rude behaviour. Or that someone would think that owning a cell phone also means that you have to be available to your boss/wife/whoever all the time. Then I remember that we had exactly the same debate several years ago when the cell phones weren't yet the everyday utility they are now. Just give it time and the people will get used to them.
it is really spooky! In Polish, okulary means "glasses" and that is just one step from an eye...
Of course, if you want to see what ham radio would be like without the license requirements, I repeat: Get a CB. Or read Usenet.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
The major concern with cell phones and the potential health risks comes from a combination of power and antenna location.
Originally cell phones operated at as much as 4watts! That's a helluva lot of power to be radiated right beside your skull. Current cellphones max out at 0.6watts.
Given that most Ham systems are using externally mounted antennas that are not located within an inch of your skull, the exposure is far lower. Even with clam-shell style cell phones they have measured significantly lower exposure ratings as the antenna is being tilted away from the users head.
Ham radio has to adapt now. We have to get rid of all those stupid restrictions like morse-code tests for liscenses. Anyone can buy and operate a cellphone without a liscense. The same should be true for ham radios.
As far as cell phones supplanting Ham, and Ham's need to adapt to compensate, this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. They are two very different technologies offering very different forms of communication. Ham is great for some kinds of communication, but is a one to many medium rather than the one to one communication of telephone (cellular or otherwise). Cellular phones also have the advantage of integrating with the existing phone system - it's inherent in the design. Yes, I know you can patch into phones with a Ham if such a repeater is available.
Getting back to the one to many aspect, it has several problems when you talk about the scale of cellular communication. Since only one person can talk at any given time on a given frequency (within their transmitters range) you quickly consume the available resources. And we don't want to forget responsibility, getting a licence forces Ham opperators to behave themselves (and assumes a certain level of maturity). Think of Usenet in the early days, it was a valuable resource. Now that anybody can post it's degenerated into noise (yes, everybody has always been able to post, but before net communications got to be point-and-click the learning curve acted a lot like a licence). Do you like the idea of people trolling the Ham space? Or having people just keying for the sake of it? Yetch... You also have the problem of privacy: none with Ham. True you can monitor cellular activity with a scanner, but with digital phones and spread spectrum technologies, it's much harder to get anything useful out of it. Besides, I have get to see a hand held Ham anywhere near as tiny as current cell phones.
Ham is a valuable tool, but planning to use it as a cellular replacement seems like a bad plan to me. But that's just IMO.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think the point he made was that CB radio shows us all why wome restrictions are needed on broadcasting. Well worded leet speak. Offer an alternative, and point out why the alternative is restricted like it is. Who wants, or needs, all that speed trap and road condition noise broadcast the world over? CB does a good job for that, and provides an outlet for wanna be radio operators that would act less than responsibly.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As I said, even if the phone is not in contact with my ear.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
Most cell phones these days have an "off" button.
Makes no difference. If you have one, people expect you to use it, and will guilt trip you if you don't. If you don't have one, it's not even an option.
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
Also see "How to lie with Statistics". A great little book we were given to read in college.
Anothger very good book is "Flim Flam" by the Amazing Randi-- a stage magician who has amde a career out of debunking psuedo-science.
Yup, I agree with you. For an in-depth look at the evidence, take a look at the Cellular Phone Antennas (Base Stations) and Human Health FAQ maintained by Dr. John E. Moulder, Prof of Radiation Oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He goes through the available literature and issues in exhaustive detail. It may be a while before the Epidemiology article is included, though.
Short answer: There is no replicated and verified risk factor found with the radiation from cell phones. Enough studies have been done over the years to limit any potential risk to a very small value. The known risks due to distraction from driving are much greater. (Although I find the distraction from a cell phone conversation much less than 2 or 3 kids fighting in the back seat. ;^)
Executive Summary of Short Answer: Don't worry about it. It's not a problem. All the uproar is just to sell books and push certain political agendas.
--
"You've crossed my Line of Death!" "What? No! Where is it?" "Here in the fine print...."
We hear about all the dangers of cellphone.. Err, rather, we hear certain groups of people proclaiming the dangers of cellphones.
But what I want to see is where are people keeling over dead. People keel over dead of heart disease, of lung cancer, of smoking. But, millions have been using cell phones for YEARS, and yet, we don't hear about tens of thousands of people dying over it.
Now, maybe cell phones, like smoking, don't cause death quickly, maybe they take years/decades to find out for certain. But, any technology runs this risk, the only way to find out for certain is to wait 50 years and look for people keeling over dead. Even if it does cause some increase in disease in 50 years, do people really want to give up such a powerful and valuable technology? If we have to give up cell phones, why not give up electricity, the light bulb, and such.. Is there any evidence that the light bulb will not cause cancer after 50 years? Where are people suing GE over their soft-white light-bulb caused cancers? How about the automobile, there is proof that it kills thousand of people a year.
IMHO, IANAL, and I am unqualified to say this, but, I think this is just a case of a few people who want something to blame for whatever disease they have. ``It's not just bad luck that I got this cancer, it must have been caused by XYZ.'' Healthy people get cancer too.
*Most* of us are adults and able to take the risks of any technology we use. We should not ban a useful technology because some people are dessperate for a reason for their disease other than 'bad luck'.
Ha, you think that you have it bad...
I live in Adelaide, Australia, and our only newspaper is the Adelaide Advertiser, the very first newspaper (and news medium of any form) to come under his clutches. I cant really remember what a real newspaper is like.
Read Carefully: "Several methodologic limitations prevent our results from providing clear evidence on the hypothesized association. "
OK, you met me so far. Let me throw in a few more things a cell phone can do:
- easy to use, even for a beginner
- convenience features abound
- direct calls to anyone
- new features like wireless web access, paging, etc.
"And like that
Outrageous per-minute fees
Roaming Charges
Contracts which hide the true cost of the service.
Etc.
And why is easy to use for a beginner important?
To summarise for US citizens: Our biggest-selling daily paper is a supermarket tabloid, with tits in. It's published by an Australian gangster.
You don't think we have to deal with him too? Granted, his only large circulation newspaper here is the New York Post, which is fortunately pretty far down on the list (it's only in 4th place in New York, and 14th nationally), but he has a pretty strong presence on TV. The weird thing over here is that while conservative groups love to blame the entertainment industry for all the ills in society, they leave him alone (even though his company produces the worst of the slush). Would I be overly cynical in chalking this up to his financial support of far right-wing causes?
I can understand how bitter you must be, though, I know how upset I'd be if the News Corporation bought the New York Times...
--
With ham radio, the antenna is not right next to your head. In fact if it's a high power rig, chances are it's strung up in a tree outside your house. Also, cell phones haven't supplanted ham radios, since 98.44% of the people using cell phones now never used a ham radio in the first place. Hams are used for a completely different purpose. It's the free and easy way to talk to somebody in, say, Nepal. Or those stupid Survivor people down in the Outback. Or the Space Shuttle.
Also, there wouldn't be a point in showing that there's a correlation between ham radio and tumors, because... there's nobody to sue! So why even study that? Sad but true.
And lastly, you don't need Morse Code to get a license these days. You still have to know the theory, which is good. Actually there are now 3 classes of licenses (as of 4/15/2000), code is optional for the "technician" class. The general and extra classes require code but it's only 5 words a minute. Anybody can learn that in a day, and those licenses have greater privileges.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
...that doesn't have the antenna right next to your ear. The signal will go further with it on the roof of your car anyway, and bag phones have more power and a lot more range than handhelds while exposing your head to less radiation.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
- MOBILE phones have been linked to human cancer in a scientific study for the first time. The research suggests there is a threefold increase in eye cancers among people who regularly use the devices
Ok, so the first statistic is that cell phone users are three times as likely to have eye cancer.-
he had examined 118 people with uveal melanoma and obtained details about their use of digital mobile phones. This was compared with a control group of 475 people
So my question is, exactly how many of those 118 people used cell phones? 100? 50? 20? 10?118 people is a very puny test group. The fact that they don't reveal the amount of cell phone use amongst those people shows that something is being hidden here. Also, why didn't the researcher seek a more quantitative value for how much these individuals used their cell phones - certainly the information is held by the cell phone companies (and could be retrieved with permission).
Add on the fact that we don't know what type of cell phones these people used (of those 118 people that we don't know how many used cell phones), whether these individuals wore glasses, we don't know any ages, how he picked his control group, the ethnic diversity of the 188 people.... the list goes on and on.
I'm really starting to hate the media. What is it with these "journalists" that they think we don't want to know any details? What is it with these researchers that they think they can produce a study with 118 people?!
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Just another reason why you should NOT EVER have a cell phone. I refuse to wear one, and have passed over good jobs that require it. My time is MY TIME and I will not be at anyone's beck and call 24/7. Cell phones are nothing but hi-tech chains that hold you down.
I also think that any cell phone that plays 'dixie' or any other beepy melody ought to be immediately dunked in a bucket of water.
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
there is a slight difference between a 250 W microwave oven and a 0.6 W cell phone
Yes, but the food in a microwave is much further away.. Intensity Falls off with 1/x^2 (because of the spherical expansion). Assuming a 6-inch radius to the center of an oven and 1-inch from phone to eye, you have 36 times the intensity.. Roughly equiv to a 36W oven. Additionally, how often do you cook "eyeballs" for several minutes at a time at 36W? The study suggests that they're affected much more severely than say raw steak.
Incidently, I got into this sort of conversation with a friend, and I didn't know the exact frequency ranges for cell phones nor ovens. I know the chordless phones are around 2.4GHZ. I heard rumors that ovens are around 2.7GHZ or something like that, even though the microwave spectrum runs up to like 30GHZ or so.
-Michael
-Michael
>One question... can a ham radio fit in your pocket and weigh only 4 ounces?
Sure, try 3 ounces:
http://www.alinco.com/Products/DJC5T.shtml
Ok, it doesn't have the range of a 50W mobile rig, but in many places it'll get you to a repeater...
Put a high gain directional antenna on it, and you might even be able to use one of the Amateur Radio satellites to increase your range...
Oh, sure. Then clip the phone to your belt and irradiate your lower abdomen. Good idea. "I may have intestinal/ovarian/testicular/spleen/ass/whatever cancer, but at least I can see!"
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
I've read the articles that have come out in the past two years or so about cell phones and possible epidemiological links to brain tumours, and so far I've felt reassured that I wasn't taking any big risks. Several of the studies have had serious methodological shortcomings and the problem of "multiple comparison bias" (if you make 100 comparisons between samples which are unrelated, you will find 5 "significant" correlations, and if you only highlight those in your report it will give many people (and less scrutinous daily papers) the same impression as if you'd done a study specifically to examine those and actually found correlations).
Something to be remembered is that uveal melanoma is a very rare type of cancer; its incidence (in Europe) is about 1/30 of that of melanoma of the skin, or around 8/million/year. However, since it's a tumour which causes unilateral visual disturbances/blindness once it expands enough it's one that's unlikely to be underdiagnosed to any significant extent. Thus, the next few years' worth of uveal melanoma incidence figures should point a finger at whether we're doing anything that's increasing the melanoma risk. I don't recall how strong a risk factor sun exposure is for uveal melanoma (compared to other melanomas, for example), but I'd check whether any increase in uveal melanomas was disproportionately larger than the increase in all melanomas. In summary, if cell phones do increase the risk of UM, we'll be able to detect it quite reliably in a few years. Also, the results of a pilot study with little biological rationale to explain it doesn't warrant any particular caution while on the cell phone in my book, though of course that's a political decision that can easily swing either way.
For those who are interested in reading up on biological effects of cell phone RF "radiation", the British Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones came out with its report in May of 2000, and it goes through (complete with references) the case for and against there being significant adverse health effects of cell phone use. So far the case against cell phones seems to be weak, and most of the evidence that's piling up (a whole bunch of articles in major publications in the past two months alone) seems to cement it that way.
The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals --Sir William Osler (1849-1919)
I'd like to believe that when the right woman comes along I'll have the courage to say, "no thanks, I'm married."
AND AAAAAAA PARTRIDDDDDDGE IN A PEEEEEEEAAAARRRR TRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
Oh shit.. a bit late for that. Sorry.
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
In short, the inverse square law says that a bystander 1 metre away will receive 0.25% of the radiation of the cell phone use. Read my earlier post for details.
I have to say, though, I've seen people walking down the street talking into their earpieces, and I'm having a hard time adjusting to the sight. Maybe we'll get used to that sight after time, though.
Do domain names matter?
It sounds like he's a responsible scientist who's found a correlation worthy of further increase.
Uh, that should be research, sorry.
No, cigarette smoke does not follow the inverse-square law. Cigarette smoke occupies a volume of space (and drifts according to air currents, etc.), while a radiation pulse occupies a spherical shell (think surface area). Cigarette smoke also persists in the air.
It's also worth noting that the risks of second-hand smoke have apparently been greatly exaggerated. The EPA changed their normal risk threshold for declaring something a dangerous carcinogen with second hand smoke (probably political reasons).
Normally, the threshold is a doubling of risk of cancer over the course of long-term exposure. With long-term exposure to second-hand smoke (i.e. someone living for 40 years with a smoker--a lot more than most people get), the risk is only 1.4 times normal. By comparison, drinking pasteurized milk is, over the course of your lifetime, a higher cancer risk. My source for this is the Wall Street Journal (although not perfect, probably more reliable than the Sunday Times).
Finally, the jury is still out on whether first-hand cell phone radiation causes cancer. Leaping to conclusions about second-hand radiation is incredibly premature.
According to the abstract the conclusions are based on intreviews with volunteers (self-selection being one confounding factor). The only source of informatiuon is the interview script, making it likely that many other corrolations were missed in questions unasked.
No mention was made about conmtrolling for even such obvious effects as family medical history
The "control" is an interpretation control but not a test grou pcontrol. Given that herte is no control on the writing of the questions, control on the interpetation of the results is of minimal value.
In short, this looks like very very very BAD science.
Having a cell phone is a no win proposition: you either talk on it, in which case it is jammed up against your brain (and now, apparantly, gives you eye cancer, too). Or you don't talk on, and leave it your belt clip. Right next to your reproductive organs.
On second thought, never mind, it's an easy choice. I'll go for the three headed babies.
Why? Because there is an easy solution to the entire 'problem' already! Use a hands-free (earpiece/microphone) set: it's safe in traffic (heck, in lots of countries it's The Law) and you can keep your cellphone away from your precious brain cells.
I keep my Nokia in my pocket all the time, and apart from people who are confused about who exactly I'm talking to, all is fine...
The same logic applies to lazers. Althouth the angle of is very small with lazers, the area of illumination still increases with the square of distance, and so this means that the intensity decreases with the square of distance
And remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Other things ham radio lacks:
Outrageous per-minute fees
Yeah, like the outrageous 7 cents a minute I pay for my SprintPCS phone? BTW, ham radio might be free to use, but with cell phones you are paying for a superior service.
Roaming Charges
Switch to SprintPCS. I haven't roamed in years.
Contracts which hide the true cost of the service.
Hmmm, well the only surprise on my bill is the taxes charged by the government. My service costs $49 a month, never more + taxes.
Ham radio? It's nice to play with, but not convenient or nearly as useful.
What a dumb conversation this is.
"And like that
Invicta{HOG}
And I always thought cell phones cause cancer of the ear...
There have been many great cultures in africa. The Egyptian empire, the phenicians were african. There were also many other great african kingdoms. You sir, are completely ignorant of world cultures.
Because you are not aware of any african phylosophers does not mean that there are no african phylosophers.
I really think that school children should learn about world history and culture. This could probably prevent a lot of ugly racism, ans the above poster has amply demonstrated/
And remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life.
They acknowledged this.
"We're the hardest working band in the business, I don't care if we're the best!- Iggy Pop with the Stooges.
Hey, you think your house is cool?
So it does seem to be the first for eye cancer.
The abstract briefly mentions the other studies to which you refer:
You have to realize that before this was published in "some limey tabloid", it was published in Epidemeology, which is a quite reputable scientific journal. We should never take any of these studies as "truth" - in fact, no amount of scientific studies can ever prove something as true. They only offer more or less correlation between two things. The study offers a possible correlation between microwave radiation and cancer - that's all. It warrants further investigation.
/dos]# file msdos.sys
-Karl
----------
[root@kgutwin
[root@kgutwin
msdos.sys: fsav (linux) virus (17518-87)
Eyeballs and testicles are especially susceptible to microwave heating because both are poorly cooled (iirc)-> by blood flow
OK, this may be a bit offtopic... testicles are sensitive to heat, because sperm needs a temperature several degrees lower as the usual body temperature to remain fertile. That is the reason mother nature considered it necessary for most male mammals to carry them around in a highly kick-sensitive bag...;-)
On the other hand, your standard cell phone antenna isn't located right next to your eyes when you use the phone. The electromagnetic waves have to pass several layers of skin, fat tissue and bone to reach the eye. The distance from the antenna to the brain parts right above the inner ear is several centimeters shorter - why should it just be the eyes which suffer from the radiation? One would think that the danger of a brain tumor near the ear should be about an order of magnitude higher than the danger of eye cancer. I've never heard about a significant increase in the number of such brain tumors with cell phone users, though...
--
Cthulhu fhtagn!
With those now popoular headsets the phone isn't next to the hear anymore.
Too bad that one looks like a complete idiot shouting behind people's back (man, do I hate that). Plus most people still hold the cellphone by the crotch area.
Dunno if you want to have a cancer there instead !
MOBILE phones have been linked to human cancer in a scientific study for the first time
This is not the first time. I've read about several studies that have linked mobile phones to cancer before. None of the results of those studies, however, have been found to be reproducible, and were thought perhaps to result from conditions in specific labs, background radiation etc etc.
Unfortunately I have no references and I'm too lazy to dig some up, so my post is equally meaningless. I do remember reading about these things though.
This guy's results also remain to be verified.
The Assayer - free-information book reviews
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I've always wondered why America was so much behind Japan and Europe when it comes to cell phones. Dammit, I know now.
There have been endless studies of exposure to non-ionizing radiation, and the fact is that there has never been a confirmend mechanism or result that has held up with time that any such radiation causes cancer.
A sample size of 118 positives and 475 negatives, along with speculation of a mechanism which itself may not actually be proven, and is only one involving growth rate, not initiation hardly looks to me to outwegh all the previous work in this field.
In all the years that we communicated with ham radio instead of cellphones, not one study showed that anyone was getting cancer from radio spectra. Part of that might have to do with the weaker-energy radio waves (longer wavelengths) and the positioning of antennas relative to the body, but we'll never know, now that cellphones have supplanted ham radios (and at much greater cost).
Ham radio has to adapt now. We have to get rid of all those stupid restrictions like morse-code tests for liscenses. Anyone can buy and operate a cellphone without a liscense. The same should be true for ham radios.
Read the rest of this comment...
Even in the early 1980's, hand held radio users were warned not to have the handset antenna near their eye. The handsets I know used a different frequency (around 160 MHz), had more transmitting power (about 5 W) and were analogue (transmitter always on when you talked on the radio). BTW, the last centense of the quoted study says: "Several methodologic limitations prevent our results from providing clear evidence on the hypothesized association."
How far away from the cell phone does the effect of microwave radiation reach? Could it be dangerous just like the second-hand smoke? Maybe one day we'll have public places divided not only in sections for smokers/non-smokers but also cell-phone-users/non-cell-phone-users :)
I know that WCDMA systems produce much less EM interference with electrical devices because they emit a continuous noise-like signal, without the sudden jumps in signal level which characterise TDMA systems. I wonder if this would alter the effects seen here. I guess 3rd generation phones might prove to be less of a health risk.
I can see the form now:
Do you smoke (yes or no):
Do you use a Cell phone (yes or no):
...
Pal, these are so-called "thermic effects", meaning that it is just heat produced by the microwaves in your ear. These effects are about the same as if you were wearing a warm cap and as your mommy might have told you, that is basically not a bad thing ;-)
-- Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
Seriously...(sorry if people have posted about this a gillion times already). When I'm on my cell phone (nokia 6160) for over 5 minutes or so, my face and the whole arm I'm using to hold it start to hurt....a burning sensation I guess. And it lasts for awhile after I get off the phone, too. How about SKIN cancer? How come nobody ever mentions that??
And my eye on the side of my head where I hold the phone often starts hurting, too. *shudder*
Time is fun when you're having flies.
-Kermit the Frog
actually, you better watch out there because I think what you meant was:
39^2 sq. in. = 1521/(144sq"/sq') = 10.5625 sq ft. (i.e. 3.25^2 sq ft)
but yeah, the original post made little sense. and of course, both sound and EM waves drop off as r^2. (think surface area)
Looking at the diagram in the Sunday Times, one sees the little "radiation waves" emanating from the earpiece, as opposed to the antenna. Perfect ammo for those selling the ineffective protective earpieces that completely ignore the antenna.
:(
You want protection against a danger that may or may not exist? At least use something that actually addresses the problem like an earpiece that lets you put the cell phone at your waist. Of course there's always plenty of dangerous cancers down there as well
~Ill
From what I was able to extract from the abstract, they have a 95% confidence level requirement, and they checked a variety of possible causes:
So, they checked at least half a dozen different possible factors. Each time they sliced the data a different way, and only once did they get a probability less than 1/20. Naively, you would expect them to get this result about one time in three if there is no real effect. It wouldn't surprise me if there are two other studies, testing other sets of patients or other random diseases, that found no correlation and did not get into the tabloids.It is a simple example of lunchmeat statistics-- No matter how you slice it, it's still baloney.
Does anyone else find it somewhat disconcerting that the biggest fear this report seems to raise is that of law suits? Wouldn't it be better if this research led to the study of safer cell phone technology, rather than act as an excuse for "short-sighted" freeloaders to jump on a band wagon and sue their favorite cell phone company?
I would expect this sort of mentality from some parts of the world, but surely The Times would be above this?
The European states have already got their money. They knww that a lot of these wireless companies probably WILL go bankrupt, so demanded payment up-front.
"My, what big eyes you have!"
My source for this is the Wall Street Journal (although not perfect, probably more reliable than the Sunday Times).
.uk people buy the (Murdoch owned) paper called "The Sun" than buy a newspaper. The Sun isn't a newspaper. It is a daily rag based on the (very profitable) concept that a lot of people with 35p (==$0.5) are happy to spend that on a paper that has headlines like "Phwooarrr! Look at the tits on that!!!". Page 3 of The Sun (Every day) has a topless photograph of a young woman (aged 17-20).
As a Brit, I tried to work myself into a state of righteous indignation over that statement. Then I realised that you're right.
There was an era, in the dim, distant past, when The Times was the 'newspaper of record', and The Sunday Times was the paper that did serious, well researched investigative journalism. Then, Rupert Murdoch happened.
It is a sad fact that more
It is very hard to gain the moral high ground about *anything* when you live in a country where the highest-selliing daily paper is largely filled with young women's breasts, and salacious, inaccurate and often inflammatory stories about sexual misdemanours of priests.
To summarise for US citizens: Our biggest-selling daily paper is a supermarket tabloid, with tits in. It's published by an Australian gangster.
Ye Gods. We *deserved* to lose our Empire.
Second-hand cell-phone radiation is not a threat, due to the inverse-square law. The cell phone is 5 cm (2") from the user's head, whereas it's probably at least a metre (3'3") from your head. That means you recieve about one quarter of one percent of the radiation the user does. Hardly significant.
I think that whilst such links are very much open to interpretation, it can do no harm to use mobiles in moderation. One cannot journey on a train without hearing at least 5 people talking to eachother on them. Whilst understandably invaluable for business and personal security, they should not be used to such an extent that they cause cancer- such usage must be excessive. For the everyday user, there is precious little threat from them, no more so than other every day devices.
Let's examine your logic. First, the English study was not as sound as others. This is most likely true, since European scientists don't regard methodologies, such as double-blind studies, as important as their American counterparts do. Does that automatically mean that their conclusion was unsound? Of course not. Second, there was an American study that denied a link with brain cancer. All right, fine. Brain cancer is not caused by cell phones. Now, for the normative evaluation: it's better to have eye cancer (or "eyeball cancer" as you informally refer to it) than brain cancer (or glioma, or meningioma, as you clinically refer to it). I'm not a doctor, and I don't play one on television, but yes, I do think brain cancer would be much worse than eye cancer. After all, with eye cancer, you can usually can remove the eye. Brain cancer is more serious. If you get brain cancer, you've gotta be counting your days. Brain cancer is nasty. Umm wait. Did we miss something? Hmmm. What would that be? Oh yeah. It's not Hobson's choice. We don't have to pick eye cancer or brain cancer. In fact, we really have little choice in the matter. You might even say that cancer chooses us, but let's not anthropomorphize it. Our choice is whether to use a cellular phone. According to the horrible British study, cell phones triple incidences of eye cancer. That's a lot of business for the glass eye manufacturers, but otherwise it kind of sucks. So, at least you won't get brain cancer. I mean, brain cancer would *completely* suck. What a relief that you won't get brain cancer. So go ahead, and use cell phones! They're healthy. Party on.
I am not a lawyer.
They should call the disease it causes "Jack-ass disease."
In the next month or two, the following will probably come out:
6 articles saying "I told you so."
5 articles claiming this study was flawed.
4 studies claiming that cell phones are harmless.
3 studies claiming that this study is accurate.
2 major cell phone companies releasing statements to the effect that their products are safe.
1 person trying to sue a cell phone maker for assumed dammages.
My sister has had her cell phone for over a year, and already she's wearing glasses. We're doomed.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
The essence of the difference is that light travels at a constant (damn fast) velocity in a straight line, while smoke diffuses through a volume.
You blow a puff of smoke. For the sake of argument, we'll assume there is a discrete "smoke front", and that, inside this, the smoke is evenly distributed. When the smoke occupies a sphere of radius 1, we'll say the concentration of smoke within the sphere is 1. When it occupies a sphere of radius 2, the concentration has dropped to 1/8.
You emit a pulse of radiation. When it reaches a distance of 1, the power is 1. When it reaches a distance of 2, the power is 1/4.
If you have people smoking in a poorly-ventilated room, the level of smoke exposure is nearly constant, no matter where in the room you are. The same is not true of cell-phone radiation, unless the walls are perfectly reflective of the radiation (not gonna happen).
Could it be because they haven't got their own cell phone industry? Sour grapes and all that...
But it's probably not only the phone manufacturers which will get sued... and the British have got phone companies of their own (Vodafone et al) whose bancruptcy would't be at all in the interest of the state... especially after all those *really expensive* UTMS licenses in Europe.
It's probably a conspiration led by the operators of the old analogue cell phone networks...:-)
--
Cthulhu fhtagn!
Insurance companies are already finding it more expensive to insure drivers who use cellphones while driving, so companies like Travelers and Geico are already planning to charge them more. Partly, it's just another excuse to boost the bottom line, but at least it's rooted in sound theory.
Read the rest of this comment...