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AM Radio Waves May Be Harmful?
Klar writes "Wired News reports that: 'Korean scientists have found that regions near AM radio-broadcasting towers had 70 percent more leukemia deaths than those without.' The article continues: 'The study, to be published in an upcoming issue of the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, also found that cancer deaths were 29 percent higher near such transmitters.' While 'their study did not prove a direct link between cancer and the transmitters', the FDA and the World Health Organization are urging more studies, especially of radio waves from cell phones."
Although I can't decide if it's a liberal conspiracy against Rush Limbaugh, a government conspiracy against Art Bell, or a gay conspiracy against Dr. Laura. They want them off the air whoever they are!
At my job we refer to our two way pagers as 'birth control.' We may have been right all along...
We liked pop, we liked soul, we liked rock, but we never liked disco
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
"the World Health Organization are urging more studies, especially of radio waves from cell phones."
Isn't it already a known fact that cell phones cause cancer? Over here (Australia) they are always telling us that.
Have you metaroderated recently?
Wonder what this laptop, resting on my lap, cooking my legs with the battery, and my gonads with Wi-Fi is doing to me?
Get your own free personal location tracker
How is AM with their huge power and totally different band have anything to do with any of the PCS bands and their relative piddly power for health effects?
-- dieman - Scott Dier
I think there's a difference between living near a 50,000 watt transmitter and a ~1 watt cell phone.
... in medicine, and one in physics, and probably one in chemistry, waiting for anyone who can demonstrate a possible mechanism of action for health effects of non-ionizing radiation at athermal levels.
Let's see it happen. Personally, I think that if there were a smoking gun here, it would have been found at some point in the last hundred years. There have always been confounding factors in these alarmist studies. Always.
Every one, put on your tin foil hats!
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Rush Limbaugh is broadcast on AM!
(And to balance things out, so is Al Frankin IIRC, but I wouldn't compare the two)
When is Slashdot going to get "-1, Pointless Political Statement"?
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
there isn't such a thing as "AM frequencies". that's the problem - AM/FM/SBB often get mixed with VHF/HF/LF/UHF. one thing (AM/FM/SBB etc) is the method of data transmission, the other thing is the wavelength (i.e. frequency).
Funny how you have to be exposed to things for a few years to get cancer, etc so you can then *prove* that they are harmful. I for one am a proponent of the California "you must use a headset for your cell phone when driving" law just for reasons such as this article pointed out. Tests have shown that using headsets, especially in-ear style ones direct more cellular radio waves directly into your brain. So if the state legislates that headsets must be used if operating a motor vehicle, then I get a huge cancerous lump in my temple and resultant brain cancer, I can sue my state for millions. Of course, it'll inevitably go class action... so all of us with brain tumors will get about $25.00 each when all is said and done.
Nonetheless, after reading about toxic power supply dust from my computer and now AM radio waves, plus the stresses that are added with an always-on, get-it-right-now environment, one must truly respect the simpler life of a few decades ago.
Do not taunt the XM.
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Thus, this study might just be showing that people who live in urban centers have higher a higher rate of certain cancers. Which isn't surprising in the least.
it's making you go blind.
So "near" means "within two kilometers"? Given the inverse square law, isn't that close to meaningless? Someone two kilometers from a tower would get a small fraction of the exposure of someone 1/4 kilometer from it.
There might be something going on, but the cause might be something else entirely: for instance, the best neighborhoods with the best health care tend not to be near radio towers.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Frylock: "It's emitting radition."
Shake: "Yeah, but like, you know, the good kind, right? Like how they find tumors and gave Spider-Man his powers and stuff."
Frylock: "No Shake. The bad kind. The other kind. The kidney losing kind."
and that tinfoil stops RF waves.
To summarize,
Higher density of RF waves at night
Tinfoil blocks RF waves
Putting these two together, we can conclude that wrapping your body in tinfoil when you sleep at night will reduce your risk of developing RF related complications by >50%:
afaik RF does not strip electrons from atoms, create free radicals which cause dna damage.
sure RF (microwaves) can cook you, but that's an entirely different story. afaik heating tissue does not cause cancer -- one would expect stastically significant increase of cancer in burn victims if that were true.
are there other mechanisms for cancer / leukemia other than dna damage?
Repeat after me: correlation is not causation. Yes, people near power transmission towers and antennas get cancer more frequently. But poor people tend to live in the houses next to unsightly power lines or antennas. And poor people have higher cancer risk, because they tend to be exposed to more pollution and hazardous substances, live under higher stress, and are less likely to get proper health care. Besides, you get more radation from your cellphone.
314-15-9265
Comment removed based on user account deletion
the video star.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
for non ionizing radiation to cause cancer
a nobel prize awaits if you figure it out
I work now for an ISP, and before my boss got into the internet business, he worked as a tech for a number of local broadcasters, spending three consecutive days in the "doghouse" as the basxe of the towers. All three of the other men he worked with died of cancer before they were 60.
.5 watts, a car phone or bag phone at 6-ish, and WiFi doesn't take a whole lot more, to my reccolection.
An in respect to the Wi-Fi and cell phone comments, I hate to be a wet blanket, but a cellphone operates at
AM transmitter antennas work best when placed in locations with good ground conductivity...such as swamps and other low places. They also get placed near occupied areas (short range) and where the land doesn't cost much (like old industrial areas)
Doesn't this sound like it might correlate with pollution enough to affect the results???
And don't overlook this point: Poorer neighboorhoods have things like AM radio towers (and high tension lines) in them. Poorer people live less long than wealthy people. (Not a value judgement; it's the sad truth.) I didn't see much in the FA about correcting for this difference.
Best Buy can have you arrested
100,000 live near AM transmission towers.
100,000 live far from AM transmission towers.
17 people who live near AM Transmission tower
get leukemia.
10 people who live far from AM transmission tower get leukemia.
So AM transmission towers cause 70% more cancers?
Don't panic folks. There's probably small sample sizes and correlation may not imply causation.
Sometimes poor, sick people can only afford to live in undesirable places, like next to a AM transmission tower. This doesn't mean that AM transmission made them sick.
Perhaps the population who lives close to AM towers are lower class than those who don't live next to AM towers and as such smoke tobacco more or don't eat salads as much...
Other factors could be contributing after all..
Where "living" means confined to a point? People walk around. They might have friends a few blocks away, maybe they jog.
Radiation might fall with the inverse square, but what happens when you integrate over the 1km radius in which people tend to "live"?
I wonder what Wi-fi will do to us, since all of us are going to be surrounded by it more and more. Here is what Google thinks about +wi-fi +cancer. And then there is Bluetooth...
Simpy
I've long felt that right-wing talk radio was harmful. It's nice to have scientific proof.
So here we have a study that has not even been published yet. It is likely that the article is based on a press release rather than a reading of the study in question. Because the study is not yet published we have no idea whether the methodology used is sound or not.
Furthermore, the few figures in the report are all shown as percentage probabilities. Probabilities represented as percentages can be very misleading. An increase from 1 to 2 is a 100% percent increase, but it is still only an increase of 1.
I'm afraid that, on the basis of this article, we can draw no conclusions about the safety or otherwise of AM transmitters. There simply is not enough information. So move along people, there's nothing to see here.
Funny, I've always wondered about that. My cell phone (Motorola T730) specifically says to use the belt as the distance of the workings of the belt clip are supposed to push the phone out far enough from my body that that the waves shouldn't be an issue. Yet, the aftermarket and alternate/replacement holsters say nothing about distance... they are, after all, just making plastic and not radio type devices are therefore not subject to similar legalities. The reason I only use my headset when absolutely necessary is that tests *have* proven that they act almost like a directional antenna and broadcast waves directly into your ear canal (and consequently, your brain). Anyone with a headset knows they get better reception with one in poor reception areas which gives credence to the directional antenna idea. I too use my cell phone in a holster most of the time and after having a baby with anencephaly have wondered what the waves might be doing to my sperm. Scary stuff if you think about it.
The irony though is that 200 years ago the average life span was 50 to 60 years due to sicknesses, viruses, weather, etc. Now, 200 years later, we have combatted most of the illnesses that threaten our life spans, but might be shortening them again with technological advancements that are *supposed* to improve our quality of life, not shorten it. Perhaps we're too smart for our own good.
I wonder if they took into account the fact that transmitters are usually placed in areas with a high population density. If you have 70% more deaths with 1000% more people, then it could be said that it reduces cancer.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Thalidomide
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Surprise surprise, all the highly rated posts say "those environmental wackos are at it again" and explain away the correlation with a variety of explanations that we are to accept as givens.
Realize this: There will never be a study "proving" the ill effects of non-ionizing radiation. Why? Find me a control group. You can't, not on this planet. A hundred years ago, when a five watt radio signal broadcast from New York could be heard in Miami, you might have been able to perform this study then. But now we're inundated with non-ionizing radiation, and unless you build a Faraday cage into about ten thousand homes and collect data over twenty years, you will never get "pure" numbers.
Why are you all so reluctant to even entertain the notion that non-ionizing radiation might create a health risk? Are you that in love with broadcast TV and Radio? Based on the attitudes I see here about the MPAA/RIAA, I find that hard to believe. So what is your explanation? A general love of all things electronic? The chance to pass down the mockery you got from the jocks onto the tree-hugging hippies?
I simplly don't understand the attitude most of you put forward regarding this issue. It's reckless and driven by emotion.
But don't worry, even if a study or three come out demonstrating a link between non-ionizing radiation and cancer risk, the EPA will sweep it under the rug when Infinity Broadcasting supresses the evidence under the Bush Administration's Data Quality Act.
"What I don't know can't hurt me" is not a particularly effective survival mechanism. Who knows, maybe we should be buying stock in Reynolds this very minute.
... in medicine, and one in physics, and probably one in chemistry, waiting for anyone who can demonstrate a possible mechanism of action for health effects of non-ionizing radiation at athermal levels.
There are plenty of such mechanisms. For example, just about any circuit with a nonlinearity (like most biological cells) near a radio station will pick up a small audio frequency signal. Those signals are strong enough to be audible in stereo equipment, telephones, etc. that aren't well shielded. And low frequency electrical signals definitely have biological effects.
Your problem is that you think of the radio transmitter just as a source of steady, high frequency radiation. That would indeed probably not have any biological effects. But that's not what real-world RF signals are like.
The question I have is what was used to clear the brush under the antennas.
The problem could be something other than the radiation, it could be the nasty chemicals used to keep the plants from taking over the tower.
This has been found to be a problem with powerlines in some cases, it could be part of the problem here as well.
The first thing that comes to mind is not always the real cause of the problem.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
The article says AM broadcasting towers, which means very little. TV signals (at least the NTSC based broadcast over the air in the States) use an AM like signal for the Video and an FM based audio, so depending on your definition they are both a FM and AM broadcast tower. .5 - 1.8 MHz), or do they mean shortwave (I think 3-30 MHz)?
For the AM broadcasting, do they mean the broadcast band (which I think for most of the world is in the range
Light pulsing at certain intervals can give you a fit. Who's to say that certain modulations at certain frequencies can't interact with your bone marrow in some -as yet undiscovered way- that can cause cancer?
It's a little shocking to see so many bright people here with clamped shut minds. Let these guys do their study. I'm sure they know as good as any ego here that "non ionising radiation doesn't cause cancer...blah blah blah". If we all went around not bothering to study things because we already 'knew' better, where the hell would be be today? They've found something, and they're going to study it. And then we'll know a bit more about the possible causes of cancer. Good!
When you have statistics as your only data and no matched control group, most of the correlations you can find will be coincidence or garbage.
Epidemiologists use the heuristic that they start paying attention when one group has three or more times the risk of another group.
>maybe we should be buying stock in Reynolds
Smoking is a good example: the risk of lung cancer among smokers is about thirty times higher than among nonsmokers.
>Find me a control group. You can't, not on this planet.
That's what lab studies are for. You can shield one group of rats from RF and microwave a genetically identical group. You can start from conception and have useful results in a year.
>Why are you all so reluctant to even entertain the notion that non-ionizing radiation might create a health risk?
After a hundred years of experience and a zillion negative lab studies skepticism is indicated. I'm willing to be surprised but I don't expect to be.
Honestly, I'm just waiting for this statement to come out of a Scientist. It would get it over with and wouldn't spend millions of Dollars.
"If it is or uses either Electricy or a Chemical, and/or its not found in nature in any way, it will kill you slowly"
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
From the article:
Moreover, many lab studies show low-frequency EMF disrupt living cells, Milham asserts. Critics like McBride say such results are often difficult to reproduce at other labs. Milham says that's because of differences in the Earth's magnetic field and stray EMF.
Difficult to reproduce is sign No. 1.
I remember one swedish study that found if they simply drew the lines a little different, living near low frequency RF sources actually decreased the likelyhood of cancer. More importantly, once Sweden decided to move all schools away from low frequency RF (just in case), they were fortunately stopped when someone pointed out the additional milage on school buses would make the move away from RF sources more dangers (higher chances of car/bus accidents vs. any potental decrease in cancer risk.
I think 'effects too small to measure' is sign No. 2 of junk science.
Of course, all these AM radio antennas are probably on towers, and all these towers have red flashing lights.... The real culprit.TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
In any case, the amount of power the human body absorbs from a 1500kHz AM signal is phenomenally small. The body is small compared to the signal wavelength (2m/200m=0.01 wavelength), which means it absorbs almost none of the radiated power. The only way it is likely to be a hazard is if you touch a conductor with considerable RF voltage on it. That could give you an RF burn.
Actually, a study or three demonstrating a statistically significant link between nonionizing radiation and cancer is exactly what I would expect, even in the absence of real harmful effects.
This is epidemiology--hardcore statistics. When determining the risk associated with some factor, you can never be entirely certain that the effects you see are 'real', and not just due to random clustering. Toss a coin ten times--you'd expect to get heads five or so times, but occasionally (1 time in about a thousand) you'll see ten heads in a row.
By making (generally reasonable) assumptions about the nature of the randomness in the data, scientists and epidemiologists tend to come up with one or more measures of how likely an apparent result is to be genuinely significant. Generally, a result is taken to be 'real' if there is less than a 5% chance that the result is the result of noise (a P value of less than 0.05). Alternately, a study may state an odds ratio and 95% confidence interval ("If you take drug foostatin you are 1.7 times more likely to have symptom bar (95% CI 1.4 to 1.95)") denoting that the relative risk is 95% likely to fall in the stated interval.
Under those circumstances, if the scientists do everything correctly, and account for every possible confounding factor, and do all their math correctly...that still leaves as many as one study in every twenty potentially reaching the incorrect conclusion.
The journal in question here--The International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health--isn't exactly a top-flight journal, either. I'm not at work at the moment so I can't check their archives, but their impact factor is fairly low. (Down to 0.924 in 2002, declining steadily since 1997.) Yes, impact factor is by no means the only criterion by which a journal should be judged--but Nature they are not. Unfortunately, the Wired article refers to an 'upcoming' paper, so I can't get at the publication cited.
Looking at the other paper mentioned in the Wired article demonstrates that Wired can't be trusted to accurately report the findings of scientific papers, either. Wired says:
The abstract of the original paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology says: (in part, emphasis added)
~Idarubicin
ever been to a US transmitter site? no? well, there are big yellow signs with a red triangle on them at the perimeter fence, saying that excessive amounts of RF energy found within the boundaries can be disruptive and may affect health. I forget what the radiative standard is, something on the order of a half millivolt per meter, at which the FCC requires these signs be posted.
long-term transmitter engineers, like HV and VHV linemen, tend to have a lot of cancer deaths. but when I grew up around all these guys, they smoked like chimneys and cleaned tools with gasoline as well. they sprayed lots of pesticides. they changed transmitter tubes without wearing masks (beryllium ceramics used in the tubes can cause berylliosis with the tiniest breath of chips or dust.) amazing any of them got to retirement parties.
also, notice how everybody says they need more studies when they publish a study. although "cell phones cause brain cancer, so fscking hang up and drive!" has been screamed from the treetops for 15 or so years, and "power lines cause childhood leukemia" has been around for 30 years, a funny thing happened on the way to publication. the only two large double-blind environmental studies to tackle these issues found no effect at all. none.
the power of microwaves to cook food was discovered in alaska when microwave techs with candy bars in their shirt pockets found after adjusting the dishes that their pockets were full of melted chocolate sludge on a cold tundra work shift. it is well known that directed or exceptionally strong RF fields, such as would be found in the open transmitters of the 20s and 30s or on broadcast towers, will cause cataracts. so there are federal limitations on exposure now in broadcast, and you can't go up a tower while the buzzbox is lit unless it's a pennywhistle station with a few hundred watts.
these are for the folks who are drowned in the beam, whose iPods wouldn't work and who, if equipped with pacemakers, cannot work the transmitter any more.
joe average on the other side of the fence? no problem.
another scare study, get fifty of them with good double-blind methodology and large enough controlled study groups to mean something statistically past four nines, and call me in the morning.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
shows that if you are located in a region where a study be being conducted you are 70% more likely to die.
Being next to other Humans are dangerious to your health!
A recent Danish study shows that the total dose of radio energy received by people using cell phones decreases if the distance to the (fixed) antennas decreases. Even if they only use the cell phone for a few minutes per day. Why?
Because a cell phone is a two-way device. It must transmit stronger to reach a distant antenna and it has no sense of direction. The GSM protocol provides a power control which makes the cell phone reduce power as much as possible, the goal is just enough to reach the closest antenna tower.
Parents demanding that cell phone antennas are removed from the school roof are NOT doing the children a favor.
-- From Denmark
Well, we're talking biochemistry here, so there's really no cause or need to invoke the Incompleteness Theorem.
Further, no--it's not possible to demonstrate every ill health effect. A thought experiment, if you will...
If Wired saw thirteen cases in LA, they'd say that compound Y causes a dramatic (thirty percent!) increase in disease X. If a scientist saw thirteen cases in LA, they'd say that's interesting, but easily attributable to noise.Clearly a jump from 4 to 8 leukemia cases means practically nothing -- statistically. But I don't think it's always good science, esp. when dealing in real-world non-controlled systems with intangible variables, to rely on statistical analysis as the impetus for public policy decisions.
If there is sound evidence (good animal or at least biochemical models) that particular conditions are harmful, then by all means such evidence should be considered. Controlled trials in the laboratory are very useful for sorting out cause and effect. In the absence of demonstrated mechanisms for harm in the lab, epidemiological data are all that we have. If sound statistical analysis reveals a significant correlation--that cannot be reasonably explained by other means or attributed to confounding factors--then it may be a fair basis for policy decisions.
I suppose the problem arises when one asks what constitutes a 'sound' analysis...and in some cases that's a difficult question.
~Idarubicin