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Drowning in a Sea of Microwaves
luciensims writes "The Independent is running an article on another study of the long-term effects of mobile phones. Given how widespread mobile phone use has become, will we even have an adequate control group 50 years from now to gauge what the effects have been?"
the Amish come to mind, they don't seem to make much use of cell phones.
Tinfoil hats
I don't own a cell phone, but with all the microwaves floating around major metro areas I wonder if even those of us who shun this technology will be affected.
- It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times. Stupid Monkey!!
Do any of these studies include WiFi effects? I just went wireless in the house and the last thing I want to do is cause brain bleeding in my kids. Seriously.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I read somewhere that in the early 50's, Motorola would strap two way radios on the heads of live pigs and expose them to *much* more radiation than a typical cell phone would emit. No ill effects were reported.
The big question there is was the work done with a layer of bone and skin that the microwaves would have to pass through to get to the blood brain barrier.
Given how widespread mobile phone use has become, will we even have an adequate control group 50 years from now to gauge what the effects have been?"
No, of course not. Cities (everywhere) are full of mobile phones. The country (everywhere) is not. However, people living in the city get much different carcinogens than those living in the country, so people in the country aren't a good control group. Any place where people are packed but there aren't mobile phones is likely to be very poor, and thus, different living conditions. So no control group.
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
I've been using a cell phone for 10 years and and and ...
Mobile phones and the new wireless technology could cause a "whole generation" of today's teenagers to go senile in the prime of their lives,
;-)
No, no, teenagers have always been half-cocked.
The coolest voice ever.
I'm in college and I've chosen not to own a cell phone because i am still afraid of possible health-related side effects. however just about everyone else i've seen is constantly clutching the darn things to their ears and it is here that i recently realized that it is hard to avoid exposure to it. can also goto other countries and find a control group depending on what is being researched....
Nerve cell damage in mammalian brain after exposure to microwaves from GSM mobile phones.
Salford LG, Brun AE, Eberhardt JL, Malmgren L, Persson BR.
Environ Health Perspect. 2003 Jun;111(7):881-3; discussion A408.
Department of Neurosurgery, Lund University, The Rausing Laboratory and Lund University Hospital, Lund, Sweden. Leif.Salford@neurokir.lu.se
The possible risks of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields for the human body is a growing concern for our society. We have previously shown that weak pulsed microwaves give rise to a significant leakage of albumin through the blood-brain barrier. In this study we investigated whether a pathologic leakage across the blood-brain barrier might be combined with damage to the neurons. Three groups each of eight rats were exposed for 2 hr to Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) mobile phone electromagnetic fields of different strengths. We found highly significant (p 0.002) evidence for neuronal damage in the cortex, hippocampus, and basal ganglia in the brains of exposed rats.
PMID: 12782486 [PubMed - in process]
From PubMed
Look at communities that are small and fairly laid-back, and you won't find the need for phones. Look at countries that are considered third-world, and most of the infrastructure needed to have cellular phones won't be in place. Granted, finding people who are otherwise similar in lifestyle or health might be more difficult, but that's always been a difficulty in trying to work with control groups, since frequently people who engage in one behaviour also engage in several others, which makes it hard to isolate these behaviours separately to determine which actually is the problem or issue under study.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
The more important question to answer is "how many have died or been injured while using a cell phone." The number of cancers will pale in comparision. Well Harvard studied it and came up with a new point of view that there is a risk to benefit to be considered that precludes all of the above.
To myself it it is all about improving the quality of life and the cell phone does not improve my life.
Given how widespread mobile phone use has become, will we even have an adequate control group 50 years from now to gauge what the effects have been?
You're kidding right? Isn't it true that 20% of people (1 billion) on this planet don't even have access to clean water, never mind mobile phones. And how long have we had clean water? More that 50 years.
Don't panic. Your control group will be here.
I like microwaves from cell phones... Gives me a nice and warm feeling inside my head during those cold winter days!
Hate me!
1. Raise children in microwave-proof boxen
2. ???
3. Profit!
- It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times. Stupid Monkey!!
What part of 1/d squared don't they understand?
Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of physics knows that there are no effects.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The Amish do use cell phones for business.
Now why would Motorola want to advice the Government and others conducting the experiment how to spend their money? hmm... I wonder!
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
"stop wasting money" by looking for health damage.
I don't regard research into health issues as wasted money. I rather waste money and find nothing than know nothing about the possible effects and slowly die ignorant.
And every (decent) research that denies any effect, simple puts to rest any concerns. It would simply say that it is save to use a mobile.
Unwilling to do research might cause unnecessary concern and can give the impression that there is something to hide.
After smoking, drinking, driving, pollution, domestic violence, disease, war, invasion, drought, famine, and falling tree trunks.
Some relativity is perhaps in order. The most extreme effects of the GSM that I've seen are (a) a lowering of concentration while driving, which has surely caused many deaths by now, and (b) the total destruction of the planned social agenda. People simply live ad-hoc these days.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
When the population is subjected to a change in the environment, pressures of natural selection will inevitably come into play. The weak will die, the strong will survive to reproduce. The species will become immune to these nasty effects so I wouldn't worry to much about it.
Hasn't anyone taught you about the Inverse Square Law? When you double the distance between a radiation source and its target, the power over the same target area is reduced to 1/4 what it was. So, if you are 100 times farther away from the cell phone as the idiot using it, you receive 1/10,000 the signal dosage.
If there's enough power at that distance to fry your brain, the obnoxious twit using it will be dead in a couple days of an overdose. But, since he won't be dead in 2 days, or even a month, from the radio signal in his phone, you won't be dead either.
Get a sense of proportionality, dude!
I'm skeptical about this. First, there are microwaves everywhere, all the time. Microwaves are part of heat.
A physicist friend of mine and I did the numbers. There is so much energy available everywhere at room temperature that a little bit more has no effect, as the article says.
The chemical processes of the body are not fragile. We couldn't see any way that a little bit of outside energy could couple to a chemical process and make a difference.
...is annoying other people:
Cell phones involve ignoring whoever's around you while making them painfully aware there is a conversation occuring that they may not join. Cell phones cause cancer.
WiFi involves sitting quietly, tapping away, but easy to interrupt on a whim. WiFi does not cause cancer.
Smoking involves making other people smell you. Smoking causes cancer.
Nobody wants to see you get your colon checked for polyps. Not going to the proctologist doesn't cause cancer.
So says those who can't shut up about cancer.
Don't take annoyance for granted -- a large part of the law, a much larger part than you'd expect, is purely devoted to preventing people from bothering eachother excessively. But never, ever forget the true meaning of statements like "the intense use of mobile phones by youngsters": It is great for me, but I do not like it for you.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Put all the people in a place no-one else goes. Euro Disney for example
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Robert A Heinlein wrote a story about the pervasive effects of broadcast electricity. One of the characters wore a lead coat and subsequently was in much better physical shape than the other characters.
This guy is way out there
It's important for studies to be peer reviewed and duplicated. If this is real, other scientists will say its real, and they'll duplicate the results.
(Here's a little pop-quiz to see if you were paying attention in science class. What's wrong with this Princeton project? The answer is that no one else can duplicate their results. Peer review and duplicable results are key, even with studies coming out of big name institutions.)
There have been quite a few studies on the effects of cell phones, and dramatic evidence that they cause problems has not jumped out at anyone.
And people have been using cell phones for a long time. I got my first one about 10 years ago, and they were already common back then.
There's a doctor named Dean Edell who does a radio show, and he wrote a book called "Eat, Drink, and Be Merry." In that book, he spent a lot of time talking about how bad most medical reporting is. He makes a pretty persuasive case.
Almost everything you hear on the radio or see on tv about supplements, studies, etc., is either totally false or based on weak science.
I don't know anything about this particular study, but I do know that a study that doesn't find anything isn't news, while the opposite story -- we're all going to have our brains turn to mush in our middle years! -- is sensational news.
And its news to say that the evil cell industry has used its vast power to suppress studies (that's a big red flag in this story for me). Apparently the cell companies aren't just evil, they're stupid, because if they did that they'd be sued out of existence. But hey, corporations are evil, and they're lust for immediate profits knows no bounds.
This story got hyped mostly through a link on Drudge. I love Drudge, but you have to read him with a critical eye. He says outright that he'll put questionable stuff out there and let the readers decide. And I've heard him wax paranoiac on the dangers of cloning, he's kind of whacked out on some biological and medical stories.
Simply put, the third world has huge IMF debts to pay, high taxes, and laws giving the world's telecoms monopoly power. So phones were pretty expensive. However, the cell phones have allowed this to be bypassed in some cases: in such countries, cell-phone use has skyrocketed.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
why worry, evolution will take care of this :)
As you will surely know the electro-magnetic waves used for cell phone communication are just the same a radioactive waves used in nuclear power plants
Firstly, wrong. Only gamma rays are electromagnetic. Alpha and beta rays are highly energetic helium nuclei and electrons, respectively.
Secondly, visible light is electromagnetic rays. Think about how much of that you absorb in an average day. Augghhhh, the light!! The horrible light! Won't someone think of the children?
Thank you for the troll. Please move along.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Perhaps a little offtopic but meh..., the only conclusively proven risk of using mobile phones is using them while driving a car or in any other potentially hazardous situation which requires your full attention.
"Given how widespread mobile phone use has become, will we even have an adequate control group 50 years from now to gauge what the effects have been?"
Of course we will! People in the rainfore..
oh. nevermind.
Yes, we will, and they are called the Amish. I doubt that there will be many cell towers built in areas where they live. Other rural areas, yes, because a cell phone is so damn convenient when you're out on the back forty, but not in areas where the land owners don't believe in any new-fangled technology more complicated that in-line roller skates.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
The manual for my rather crappy new Sprint/Nokia 3585i states that if you are concerned about microwave emissions, holding the phone an inch away from your head (rather than mashing it into your ear) would result in virtually nil radiation reaching you.
Malarkey? Or effective way?
weeoooweeoooweeoooweeooo
In a word "Amish", those people don't use anything that has been invented in the last 100 years.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
While we're at it, it should also be mentioned about monitors.
/.ers sit in front of the computer screen! We'll probably soon start wearing something like this
Sure, many of us don't use cell phones much, but how often do
Despite your sig, you are apparently an idiot. Gamma radiation is ionizing radiation. RF radiation, which lives all the way on the other side of the spectrum, with visible light radiation in between, is non-ionizing radiation. If you don't know the difference, you have no business pontificating on the subject. And what's with the "energy adds up" thing? Are you trying to say that damage is cumulative? Even assuming that english is not your first language, this doesn't explain your total lack of understanding of the principles involved. Get behind me, troll, get behind me!
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Ageing professor calls teenagers "dumb"!
In other news: the sun rose this morning.
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
So what happens when the entire country has a good case that they've been unwillingly (in some cases) exposed to dangerous radiation, and 'deceived' into using a dangerous device? (There's wisdom in the adage that says that if you don't know how dangerous new technology is, a little prudence- how does it go? Oh, right- something about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure...)
Well, it's simple, unfortunately. Since those suits would bankrupt the nation (except for the lawyers), regardless of how justified some of the suits might be, most people are going to find that they
a.) have been banned from suing by 'reformative' legislation,
b.) have already been represented in an 'opt-out' class lawsuit that they may have known nothing about and may not be able to collect from, or can collect a five-dollar coupon from, or
c.) are told by the courts that they had the choice to not use the technology, and vote at a town meeting about whether to put the tower up.
On the other hand, they would still have to change the technology. And does anyone remember the big stir about police officers getting testicular cancer from holding the early radar guns on their lap while they waited at speed traps? while i wouldn't say that anyone 'deserves' to have it, i would say that there are times when illnesses can be a bit... ironic. Like if the tumours from cell phone use tend to take out the speech center...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
cell phones have been proven so many times not to cause anything, but no, they do it again. and won't stop until some effect is found, say brain cancer after 150 years of continuous usage, and nobody would actually care about it.
Here's a good "how to" page.
computerlady - a brand new Slash-daughter - alone, but no longer invisible, in the
I don't know if exposure to cell phone radiation is dangerous or not, but while the pointy heads are studying the issue it's probably not a bad idea to:
1. Only use your mobile for outgoing calls and emergencies.
2. Try not to live or work in buildings containing base station antennas (I'm amazed at the prevalence of these).
3. Never use a phone in a car, not even with speakerphone or headset.
The energy from a base station is limited to around 100W IF ALL CHANNELS ARE AT MAXIMUM POWER. This is a highly improbable senario. Typical power, AS MEASURED IN REAL LIFE is about 0.1W. Since microwaves are similar to those from a bar fire - the effect on a bystander is approx 1/1000 that of a bar fire at a similar distance. Think of how close you normally sit to a bar fire in winter. (assuming you live in a country which has winter - if not, the sun definitely delivers more power at the same wavelength for much of the day.)
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
between 1950 and 1995, the rate of breast cancer in American women rose from 1/50 to 1/8
It's my bet that the sun, you know, that big ball in the sky that emits so much radiation that it can heat an entire planet, burn you in less than 30 minutes, and make you go blind if you look at it for too long, has so much more of an effect on our bodies that any longterm study on the dangers of cell phones will prove pointless.
Besides, any type of reasonable fear of cell phone radiation is only logical after you've quit drinking, smoking, lost your extra weight, and started a low stress level lifestyle.
being like your grandfather at age 40.
Just check on deaf folks. I don't know many who use cell phones. All this talk about third world countries being a haven for control groups is absurd; their adoption rate for cellular telephony is incredible. What you will find in the deaf community is a lot of users with Blackberries and, more recently, Danger Hiptops. If you start seeing tumors sprouting among deaf folks at the waistband, you with the cell phones better get your heads checked.
The 13 September 2003 issue of New Scientist has a special report on this topic:
Special Report
No one has yet proved that cellphones are bad for you. Is it time to give up on the hunt for potential dangers? p.12
Unfortunately it isn't online (yet?). The interesting point from the article (I got it in paper form) is that the WHO is going to stop researching into the health effects of mobile phone use in another ~3 years unless a link is discovered; the article says that they have many other things that could do with the research funding, and the lack of credible or reproducable evidence so far is perhaps evidence in itself?
-- Mike
Whether cellphones actually might, through prolonged exposure, cause anything is totally irrelevant when you consider how important cellphones are for personal freedom.
You can turn them off.
You can use them to send messages that others will read when it's convenient for them.
You can use them to go online from anywhere, giving you the freedom of communication without wires.
But most importantly, you can call your friends for help - wherever and whenever you are. Someone who is trying to take your cellphone away is your enemy, as some people learned the hard way - because he is trying to leave you without a way to call for help.
the other half are chicks!
I don't use cellphones.
I am a trained telecommiunications technician. I noticed that *ALL* of my instructors, who had worked in the telecom industry for years and were
retiring into teaching telecom, had developed some form of soft tissue cancer or had been treated for tumors.
There is a very high ratio of soft tissue cancer in telecom techs who dealt with RF systems from 1920's through to the 1980's.
In class we were taught not to get *too close* to
the antenna. This was why.
For these reasons I avoid exposure to RF radiation. I have seen and been told the results.
I'm not sure why any informed person in thier *right mind* would put a device like a cellphone
next to thier head (soft tissue->brain).
Would you also put your head in front of a radar beacon or inside a microwave oven?
Incidentally, the 'Speed' of microprocessors is very near to the frequency of microwave ovens now.
Make sure you have *ALL* of the shielding on your PC case if you plan to have children and live a healthy life.
Not to be totally alarmist about RF, I should point out that pumping your own gasoline or diesel
can also cause cancer. The modern environment is
such a toxic stew of chemicals that you could possibly never do an accurate statistical survey of persons exposed to RF. Your control group would need to come from societies who are not exposed to chemicals either.
Anyway, tip the gas station attendant well. That person is putting thier life on the line so that you can drive your car. It really bothers me to see young people pumping gas as a job.
I've been watching the cell phone risk debates for a long time. And the risk debunkers are steadily losing ground. In the comments today, you can see all the old popular debunker memes being reflexively thrown up and failing.
And its news to say that the evil cell industry has used its vast power to suppress studies (that's a big red flag in this story for me).
How to build a bridge of communication across such a vast chasm of ignorance? Let the first plank be Monsanto, who poisoned an entire Alabama community for a quarter of a century AFTER having meetings which included the cost/benefit ratio of poisoning the community and getting caught versus not getting caught.
Let the second plank be trans-fatty acids, which clog arteries worse than lard and make people fat being pushed as "healthy" for over a decade and being placed in so many varieties of food that one might starve before coming close to eliminate this additive from their diet.
Let the third plank be the tobacco industry, who used have doctors appear on TV shilling the health benefits of smoking.
But even still, I look over that chasm over to your little world out there and wonder how you have avoided knowing these things already with a world of information at your fingertips. It's raining information in 2003, go out and absorb some!
If you are concerned about these issues, you should regularly consult prof John Moulder's site Cellular Phone Antennas (Mobile Phone Base Stations) and Human Health. There you can find for instance, that there are other studies on the same subject that find no effect on the blood-brain barrier.
Cheers.
You'll notice that the article didn't talk about actual scientific proof, but supposition on the part of one "scientist" who could be a crackpot for all we know, especially if he is convinced that non-ionizing radiation and the extremely puny increases in temperature due to the exposue to such radiation is enough to change a person's brain chemistry and cause senility (a condition which is only now beginning to be understood by researchers) some 30-40 years from the exposure. The only thing that the article succeeds in doing is creating the impression that lots of research is being "suppressed" by cell phone companies, a device used to advance your typical conspiracy theory. The reporter is just going through the motions here, serving us FUD instead of news, but not by accident.
There is no theoretical basis for any of these claims. None. The only real reason for this research is to keep mediocre scientists from being unemployed.
You'd think there would be enough data on humans by now to show practical consequences, if there are any. I would expect reducing the brains "reserve capacity" to reduce scores on some cognitive test.
The radiation came from a real cellphone, except for a modification to the antenna that provided controllable radiation levels for the rats.
I would like to understand their experimental setup better. I suspect the antenna in their experimental setup might be much larger than the antenna on a real cell phone. I don't know if that matters. I don't know how realistic their power levels are. I bet the phone dissipates more power if you hook it to a larger antenna; I hope they got their power estimates by measuring the intensity of the radiation, instead of by consulting the manual for the telephone (which surely assumed a smaller antenna).
To view this article from the source, go to http://www.alternativemedicine.com/ and search
for cell phone. The name of the article is "You
Make The Call." -- Usurper_ii
-=-=-=-=
Alternative Medicine
ON THE EDGE
With Burton Goldberg
You make the call
Studies show that people who don't think cell phones have adverse health effects need to have their heads examined.
Cell phones are not just here to stay. They have evolved into ever more versatile and powerful devices and have become indispensable to our way of life. Why, then, can't we make these technological marvels safe?
Of course, according to the cell phone industry, cell phones are perfectly harmless: "After a substantial amount of research, scientists and governments around the world continue to reaffirm that there is no public health threat from the use of wireless phones," says Tom Wheeler, president and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA).
According to numerous prominent researchers, that statement is nonsense. Henry Lai, Ph.D., is a research professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington. Over the last several years he has conducted cell phone studies funded originally by the U.S. Navy and Air Force and later by the National Institutes of Health. "I have a list of about 600 research papers from the past ten years alone, 70 percent of which show definite effects from exposure to this kind of radiation," says Lai, "but the industry continues to say that there is nothing to worry about."
What about cell phones and cancer, the most publicized concern? "Studies have been conducted to determine whether there is an association between cellular telephone use and an increased risk of certain types of cancer," according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). "Although the majority of these studies have not supported any such association, scientists caution that more research needs to be done before conclusions can be drawn about the risk of cancer from cellular telephones."
"More research" is the mantra of all three groups - industry, government and scientists - each with their differing motives. And, in fact, more research is needed - but not to prove that cell phones do pose a health threat: That has been proven beyond any doubt. Swedish researcher Clas Tegenfeld, who is writing a book on biological effects of electromagnetic fields, says "Already there are at least 15,000 scientific reports on the subject. I am afraid the truth is that we don't want to know."
There have, in fact, been several studies that show no correlation between cell phone use and cancer. These studies were conducted by respected institutions and researchers and the results published in peer-reviewed journals. However, these were all simple statistical studies that compared the incidence of brain cancer among cell phone users to that of the general population. Typical of these studies is an oft-cited one from Sweden that was published in the July 1999 issue of the International Journal of Oncology. According to the NCI, "This study compared cellular telephone use in a group of 209 individuals who had brain tumors (the case group) with a group of 425 people without brain cancer (the control group). The study reported a statistically nonsignificant increased risk for brain tumors on the side of the head on which the cellular telephone was used. However, researchers found no overall increase in the risk for brain tumors with cellular telephone use."
Does this prove that cell phone use does not lead to increased risk of brain cancer? No. As the NCI itself points out, "Cancers that take a long time to develop would not have been detected by these studies." What has been shown in numerous studies, however, is that the radiation coming from cell phones does have measurable effects on brain cells that can lead to cancer, as well as neurological diseases.
Lai's experiments are instructive in this regard. One of his main findings was that radiation
Ron Paul
>I'm working on a l337 h4ck that will permit me >to turn my 'normal' telephone off.
Get back to me when you come up something that will allow me to turn off the cell phones of everyone at the movie theather.
zeke
Due to an existing pathway from the outside to our garage (which I've plugged since) we had some mice inside the house. While most of them died in the mousetraps, I've managed to catch one alive.
What to do with it ? Feed it to the cat ? Throw it back outside ?
Can't be sure enough that the critter that has learned his way into our home is 0xDEAD.
So, into the microwave it went. Two (2) seconds at 600W does the trick.
The morale of this story: do not buy 600W cellphones.
Now I'm paranoid. Any research being done on WiFi lap tops ... ? Them being "lap tops" I'm wondering if any particular "manly" parts of my body have been microwaved beyond functionality.
"No, because my brain is cooked."
Table-ized A.I.
what 6+ hrs a day of staring at a computer screen is going to do to my brain especially those old mono screens
So let's look at numbers:
300 xmitters * 50mw = 15w
In my book, 15w in the microwave bands, is enough to cause problems in your eyes or lenses of your eyes which have little ability to dump heat.
The FCC's power limit commentary formed through National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 yielded this RF Guidelines which makes for very good reading compared to the /. stream on this article.
-- Multics
No offence, but you might be on the wrong track. Quality not quantity. This article talks particularly about microwave radiation. Do you know how much of that the sun puts out, and how much makes it down to sea level? Neither no I. You got any data for your statements?
Then point being, if in our evolutionary history, we were not exposed to these levels of this kind of invisible light, then it is entirely possible that it can damage us in ways that we have no defences against.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
i keep hearing people say that cell phones have been "proven" not to cause any damage. i must've missed that memo. someone care to provide a link?
With a Sea of Microwaves floating around, I'm worried one of them will hit me in the head. They are bloody heavy y'know!
Oh well at least we can capture them and cook instant popcorn whenever we like.
What's your GCNSEQNO?
as all the grass I smoked in my 5 years of college at UWisconsin.
Microwave and radio frequency radiation are not going to give you cancer. They are not of sufficient energy to be considered ionizing radiation. To actually break a chemical bond in a cell(a necessary step for formation of cancer at the cellular level) requires energy greater than what is contained in microwave or radio wavelengths. Ultraviolet radiation is where sufficient energy begins, with it being a minor threat. The worst is of course gamma radiation which carries the most energy of the spectrum.
At a cellular level, cancerous cells are developed when an electron-deficient material bonds with free electrons on nitrogen atoms in DNA. Then when the DNA replicates on cell division, a mutation is formed. If the immune system cannot detect and destroy the rogue cell, it may be able to replicate on its own, depending on how badly the DNA is damaged. This replication is what we call cancer.
Ionizing radiation creates positive ions and free radicals in the cells that can react as mentioned above. High energy radiation like x-rays and gamma rays can also penetrate past the skin and react with organs further in the body. (UV cannot, this is why skin cancer is about the only kind you can get from solar radiation) Organ cells reproduce quite more frequently as well, which makes them more susceptible to mutation. Radiation such as microwaves, radio waves, visible light, and the like will not break chemical bonds and hence cannot cause cellular mutations.
Microwaves DO have the ability to vibrate the bonds of polar molecules (such as water) causing them to heat up. This is how your microwave oven works...water in your food is heated which inductively heats your food. Excessive heat can cause proteins to denature (i.e. cook) but will not break them into ions or free radicals.
There's your lesson in cellular biology, chemistry, and eletromagnetic physics. Now quit worrying about your cell phone or microwave giving you cancer.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
If they didn't worry about this, they would have to go back to worrying about a killer asteroid wiping out the Earth's population. The problem with that phobia is that they can't sue the manufacturer of asteroids.
I have a new invention the lead body condom. It will shield you from those nasty microwaves all those cell phones put out. The only draw backs are it's kind of hard to move around in it's a hassle when you have to hang a piss but we are working on those.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
... have been around for many decades, and are spewing *mega*watts of signals in the same general frequency range as cell phones for all that time.
This would have much, much more health effects for those living nearby than all the microwaves we're "drowning" in ever will. To the best of my knowledge, it's zip.
In case you forget, the electromagnetic spectrum consists of the following (in increasing amounts of energy).
Electromagnetic radiation only does damage to biological matter when the energy contained with a photon is equal or greater than the energy involved in a chemical bond of any molecule within a cell. When any radiation meets this criteria, it is also known as ionizing radiation.
It is only within the ultraviolet range or greater where electromagnetic waves becoming ionizing.
In other words, your household light bulb produces far more energy than a cell phone. Personally, I would be far more concerned from overexposure to sunlight, as the degradation of the ozone layer is letting in more ultraviolet radiation than that present approximately 10-15 years ago.
But it ain't go nothin on the electron beam staring you right in the face at this very moment. How far way from that are you again?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The research will demonstrate conclusively that not using a mobile telephone gives you a red neck.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Cell phones and all that kind of stuff creating harmful "waves" and similar statements, both scientific and not, are a really great way to get people going. But let's be real about this. Here are a few things to think about when you read articles like this:
-Electromagnetic waves are everywhere and always have been, the sun itself puts off all kinds of electromagnetic radiation - visible light, UV rays (known to cause cancer), infrared light, and even some interesting radio waves. All things considered, you are getting well into the 1,500 watts per square meter of energy coming at you from the sun in full sunlight.
-Microwaves have been around for years, yet nobody is worrying about them. They have the potential to put off a thousand watts of 2.4 GHz radio waves, which isn't far the from 1.9 GHz frequency many cell phones use.
-Modern cell phones fight to put off as little energy as possible - for battery life maximization and interference reduction purposes. All of them emit less than 1 watt, often in the dozens or low hundreds of milliwatts and sometimes even zero if you aren't speaking.
-Home cordless phones often emit way, way more energy than cell phones, yet nobody worries about them. I've seen 900 MHz phones do 2 watts, continuously - and this is in the same frequency range as many cell phones run. Typical people talk more on their cordless phones than their cell phones, although this is changing.
-Phones aren't the only thing that emits electromagnetic waves - CRTs emit lots of interesting types of electromagnetic radiation, radio/TV stations frequently broadcast into the hundreds of thousands of watts. And that's just a few things.
So there aren't these massive problems caused by all these forms of electromagnetic radiation. It's worth, however, considering that there are some very interesting and extremely subtle reactions between biological processes and electromagnetic energy, but nothing that's proven to be a problem - yet. I think we should be doing massive studies of electromagnetism and biological organisms (perhaps similar to the massive medical studies, and in a similar format), but, for gosh sake, STOP targeting cell phones. There are SO many other things that create SO much more radiation and are certainly much more likely to cause problems if you spend a few minutes to think about it and have a few facts in front of you.
OK, now I feel better. I've been wanting to talk about this for a while. Hope this informs a few readers of reality with all these various cell-phone-electromagnetism-kills style hype.
Maybe I'm reading too much into things, but it struck me as somewhat ironic that this story came up with a Sprint ad for "advanced wireless devices". :-)
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
In the early 50's, Radio was just getting into VHF. Very little stuff used UHF except for some television. I don't think any of the tests were done on the 800, 900Mhz and gigahertz bands. Other than Radar, there just wasn't much in the Gigahertz bands. I don't think a VHF 160 MHZ or UHF 460 MHZ police radio has the same heating as a microwave PCS phone of the same power to organic tissue.
Do you know what frequency was tested? Was it HF (3-30 MHZ), VHF (30-300 MHZ) or any UHF? I don't think they had any reason to test microwave frequencies. That was strictly Radar and not communication equipment that anybody would carry with them.
The truth shall set you free!
... there is something to the blood-brain barrier leakage that keeps getting mentioned in these news articles. Of course, we won't know, if the research doesn't get done.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Moot point.
It is true light is EM radiation, just as the frequency range cells use, microwave ovens use etc.
But we know that some frequencies are bad for us humans. More specifically the higher freq. above some threshold. We just don't have conclusive evidence what that thresold is.
Many studies, quite a few of them funded by the cell phone industry, insist they do know, and that cell phones are ok.
Personally I agree that more independent work should be done in this area.
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Basically, because SMS has become such a huge hit among European children, deaf children have become much more integrated in the social life of their peers. They can SMS on equal basis. Whatever else cell phones may do, they have made life a lot brighter for a generation of deaf kids.
Various alarm agancies (the people behind 112, the European 911) have also created numbers where you can SMS alarms, especially for deaf people.
But we know that some frequencies are bad for us humans. More specifically the higher freq. above some threshold.
Correct, X rays and Gamma rays with very high frequencies are known to be ionizing, and hence harmful. However, microwaves and cell phone channels have very low frequencies, far lower than visible light. About the only effect these frequencies can have is heating of tissue. After inconclusive study after inconclusive study, I think quite enough has been done on the question of whether cell phones cause cancer.
However, I will be closely following work related to the current article.
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The problem is not entirely one of cell damage or destruction due to powerful EM. The problem is that cells, particularly those of the nervous system are able/designed to react to vanishingly small quantities of EM signal. --People argue that Sunlight puts out more radiation than a cell phone. True, but cell phones modulate their signal on frequencies which are close to or within the range that the brain is most susceptible.
There are demonstrated mechanics (Cyclotronic Resonance) through which non-ionizing radiation can deliver a signal to a cell. --I have posted a page regarding this which goes into that process in finer detail.
Everything from accelerated tumor growth to narcotic effect in subjects has been very clearly demonstrated to result directly from low-power modulated EM radiation.
It is important to note that, with a few exceptions, it's often not any single vector through which the 'civilized' human is subjugated. However, when one adds up the dozens of draining and damaging methods and poisons and such which have been inflicted upon us, one begins to understand why the phrase, "Knowledge protects, Ignorance endangers," makes a lot of sense.
-FL
The problem is not entirely one of cell damage or destruction due to powerful EM. The problem is that cells, particularly those of the nervous system are able/designed to react to vanishingly small quantities of EM signal. --People argue that Sunlight puts out more radiation than a cell phone. True, but cell phones modulate their signal on frequencies which are close to or within the range that the brain is most susceptible.
There are demonstrated mechanics (Cyclotronic Resonance) through which non-ionizing radiation can deliver a signal to a cell. --I have posted a page regarding this which goes into that process in finer detail.
Everything from accelerated tumor growth to narcotic effect in subjects has been very clearly demonstrated to result directly from low-power modulated EM radiation.
It is important to note that, with a few exceptions, it's often not any single vector through which the 'civilized' human is subjugated. However, when one adds up the dozens of draining and damaging methods and poisons and such which have been inflicted upon us, one begins to understand why the phrase, "Knowledge protects, Ignorance endangers," makes a lot of sense.
-FL
I believe microwave radiation used for communication utilizes a much higher frequency than visible light.
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That is not correct. The frequency spectrum looks like:
a violet
AM/FM/TV (lowest)
Microwave/cell
Infrared
Visible
Ultr
X Rays
Gamma rays (highest)
See also this page.
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thanks for pointing that out, you're right. you're right.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW