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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.
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.
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
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!
Many, if not all, Third World countries are adopting cellular as a cheap alternative to a land-line infrastructure. Countries as "poor" as India, Pakistan and Iraq (to pick three easy examples) have (or had) extensive cellular infrastructures. The one in Iraq even expanded under 12 years of UN sanctions. As such, populations without cellular coverage are likely to get harder and harder to find.
ELITISM: It's always lonely at the top. Uninvited company is rarely welcome.
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
The difference is that the mobile phone signal is much, much stronger. Using a mobile phone near a radio will give you an idea (and you'll see why their usage is always prohibited on airliners, as oposed to other electronic devices, which are allowed after takeoff)
The Raven
"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
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
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.
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.
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I believe one of the reasons it is banned in aircrafts is you can hit so many base stations from air and create havoc on the infrastructure. Telecommunication companies don't like you messing with their hardware. Most of the cell phones are pretty low powered devices, max. 5W to my knowledge. 5W is nothing compared to what other in-flight equipment radiate. A 144-146MHz (in US 144-148MHz) amateur radio handheld can hit over 100 miles with 1W. As long as your receiver is sensitive enough and you are line-of-sight with the transmitter, you will hear it. It is common to bounce radio signals off the moon and receive them back (called EME - Earth moon Earth) and there are guys who do this with 5W hand held transmitters (and lots of pre-amps on the receiver side and huge antennas but I hope you get my point). In many countries (including UK), using amateur radio transmitters on aircrafts is banned. Not because it is dangerous - it isn't. It is because you can create havoc with the repeaters. This morning there was a nice lift and I could hear french stations calling on 145.5. Unfortunately I had a low power radio in the car so I couldn't get them hear me. I live in Cambridge, UK. France is quite a distance away.
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.
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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!
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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