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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?
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.
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.
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.
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....
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Encrypt Everything
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
Now we'll have to deal with blind people on cell phones in traffic.
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.
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.
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...
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
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.
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'.
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...
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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
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
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?
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.
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
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[root@kgutwin
[root@kgutwin
msdos.sys: fsav (linux) virus (17518-87)
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.
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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...
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?
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.
I'd say the effects of cellphone radiation reach at least as far as the cellphone tower. Wouldn't you say? :)
Read the rest of this comment...
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.
As far as I know the reason why certain types of radiation cause cancer is that they ionize molecules in the cells of the human tissue. The energy carried by microwave quanta, however, is not high enough to cause ionization of the atoms and molecules in a human cell and that's why I've always been sceptical of a direct connection between cell phone use and cancer.
The microwave radiation does, however, excite molecular rotations which increases the temperature of the tissue slightly, but then again the intensity of the cell phone radiation is so small that the temperature increase is negligible (less than the natural temperature variation in a human body).
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.
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).