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."

Comments

Incomplete testing

[Lord Grey]

... regions near AM radio-broadcasting towers had 70 percent more leukemia deaths than those without.
...
... also found that cancer deaths were 29 percent higher near such transmitters.
...
... California's Department of Health Services reviewed all the current studies of EMF risks from power lines, wiring and appliances in 2002. It found no conclusive evidence of harm. However, links to childhood leukemia, adult brain cancer and Lou Gehrig's disease could not be ruled out.

Yes, but did they test for lethal amounts of dihydrogen monoxide? It would be irresponsible to not test for everything possible! Alarmists, take heed! Flee to the hills! Watch out for magnetism! Gravity is also especially harmful!

Re:Incomplete testing

[geomon]

Let's see:

First it was microwave towers, then power lines, then cell phones.

And every time, the National Academy of Sciences found NOTHING to warrant the claim of a causal link between elecromagnetics OF ANY FORM and cancer.

Re:Incomplete testing

[localman]

Why is it the replies to this stuff always fall into two camps:

1) The sky is falling, we're doomed
2) There is no way anything I find useful could be harmful

How about a little balance, folks. There are plenty of times throughout history where something in widespread use was later found to be more dangerous than it was worth. Asbestos and DDT come to mind. Hell, some of the early scientists who worked with radioactive materials thought it was neat that they could warm their hands over it.

The world is not doomed. Neither is the world a safe place. I hope they continue the research, take any findings with healthy skepticism, and then implement appropriate measures to improve our quality of life.

An unrelated example: brain disease has tripled in the past two decades in most developed countries. But not in Japan. Aren't you curious as to why? Or would you rather stick your head in the sand and proudly proclaim everyone who is curious to be an alarmist?

Cheers.

Re:Incomplete testing

[Mateito]

or

3. "But think of the children"

I actually worked with a group doing mobile phone testing. We found that the radio waves penetrated very deeply into the skulls of children 12 years and younger. At the time it wasn't a problem because there were very few kids of this age with mobiles.

As to whether it caused damage or not... no idea. We just did the physics.

Re:Incomplete testing

[fiannaFailMan]

That's a very insightful post. It reminds me of something I saw in the Lancashire mining museum some years ago when the employers were proclaiming the health benefits of inhaling coal-dust. Apparently it 'prevented TB.' I kid you not. It always takes a while for the harmful effects of new technology or its implementation to become clear.

When I look around and see the sheer quantity of radiation that we're being bombarded with from mobile phones, mobile phone masts, power lines, terrestrial TV, digital TV, WiFi networks etc. plus the amount of carcinogens in exhaust fumes all around us it makes me wonder if it all adds up in some way that we're not yet aware of and if there's some connection with the number of people getting cancer. I fear that one day someone will do a study that will take into account ALL radiation sources and find that we've gotten a little carried away with the old spectrum.

Re:Incomplete testing

[antiMStroll]

True, but look at the lead time between introdcution of a technology and discovery of its harmful side effects. AM on the other hand has been in common operation for a century, if it had anywhere near the impact of asbestos or DDT (still contended BTW) the correlation would be unambiguous after 100 years and it wouldn't be a Slashdot topic.

Re:Incomplete testing

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Wifi signal: 100mW. (0.1 W)

Cell phone signal: 4 W.

Stepping outside under full sun: 1000 W.

We are exposed to far greater amounts of EM radiation from the sun, in all sorts of unfilitered frequencies. And we have been since before man really groked that it rose every day and set every night.

I might also add that radio operators have been using very high powered equipment for more than a century. There is only one nasty effect from working around microwaves: male sterility if you are dumb enough to stand in front of a microwave tower to keep warm. And the problem there isn't the EM radiation. It's the fact that male testes don't like heat.

Re:Incomplete testing

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Some one beat you to it.

To make a long story short: any link is statistically insignifigant. What elevated cancer risks were found couldn't rule out other causes from chemicals, lifestyles, or location.

Re:Incomplete testing

[SurgeonGeneral]

Yeah, seven years ago it was salmon recovery, recently is has been global warming....

Actually,

about 7 years ago they found that the salmon were no longer spawnng because of fishing in Greenland where the most hearty and mature of the salmon go for the winter. Over fishing of these stock left only weaklings for the fems to mate with. You may make fun of it as alarmist, but the numbers dont lie. The drop from 1.5 million to half a million migrating salmon was enough to convince Greenland to stop salmon fishing altogether. at that time only 100,000 salmon were actually laying eggs. Very funny eh?

Now they have found that the salmon spawns are now increasing in level and things may stabilize. That is, if Global Warming doesnt stop them.

Your comment about warming indicates your age, your lack of historical knowledge, and lack of general education on the environment. Warming has been a public concern since the 50s when the first effects were felt, and when people started realizing the huge effects humans and their chemicals can have on the environment through books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which concerns the pesticide DDT.

But it has been on people's minds since the 1800s when entire cities would be choking to death on the thick black clouds of smoke that hung in the air, the temperature up several degrees due to the insulation of sunlight. You think L.A. is bad? You should read about the factory towns of the Industrial Revolution. but I have a feeling you dont do much reading anyway..

Re:Incomplete testing

[plover]

The way I've looked at it is this:

A handheld cellular phone emits a maximum of 600mW, but rarely does so in an urban setting. (Remotely mounted antennas are allowed to transmit up to 3W or 4W.) The power emitted is adjusted based upon the tower's reported reception strength. Not only does this conserve battery power, but it helps reduce congestion in the cell network by keeping your signal from straying into the next cell over.

"But it's RF!" you say. So, what is it that RF does? It induces current, and mostly in a conductor the same length (or fraction of the length) as the wavelength of the signal. Now, the 350mm wavelength emitted by an 850mHz transmitter (300,000,000 m/s / 850,000,000Hz = 0.353 meters, or a half length of 0.167 meters (~6-1/2 inches) is actually pretty close to the width of the average skull, so we can assume that the skull will effectively absorb some of that energy. How much?

Interesting ... A quick trip to Google found an Amateur Radio RF Safety Calculator and I entered the following values: 600mW, 2.2dBi gain antenna, 0.1 feet from antenna and 850 mHz, and it tells me that I'm not in the "safe zone" -- I need to be 0.22 feet from the antenna. According to the FCC, the maximum permissible exposure in a controlled area is 2.84 mw/cm^2, but the cell phone is exposing me to 8.5293 mw/cm^2.

I may have to rethink my cell phone usage... :-(

This is a conspiracy!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:This is a conspiracy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, what happens is that when people listen to AM radio too much, they start opposing greater access to health care. With more power in the hands of the HMOs, more people end up getting cancer.

Similarly, FM radio waves cause copyright laws to become more draconian, and the frequencies used for television broadcast have been shown to result in lower SAT scores in nearby areas.

Looks like we were right...

[baudilus]

At my job we refer to our two way pagers as 'birth control.' We may have been right all along...

Wi-Fi?

[caluml]

Wonder what this laptop, resting on my lap, cooking my legs with the battery, and my gonads with Wi-Fi is doing to me?

50,000 watts

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there's a difference between living near a 50,000 watt transmitter and a ~1 watt cell phone.

Re:50,000 watts

[tao_of_biology]

I'm no physicist, but that seems easy to figure out. If I'm totally wrong, I'm totally wrong.

1) Assume a cell phone antenna is 1 inch away from your head.

2) Assume a 50,000 watt AM transmitter

3) Assume a 1 watt cell phone.

4) We know radio energy diminishes from the source outward at 1/r^2.

5) The square root of 50,000 is approx 224.

So, the energy being pumped into your head by your cell phone is roughly equivalent to standing 224 times farther away from the AM transmitter than your cell phone is from your head (which is one inch).

224 inches is around 19 feet. A 1 watt cell phone pumps more energy into your head than standing 20 feet away from a 50,000 watt AM transmitter.

It pumps more energy into your head than standing 27 feet away from a 100,000 watt transmitter.

Re:50,000 watts

[Anonymous Coward]

What if that 1 watt cell phone is an inch away and that tower is say 100 ft? or maybe just shy of 19 ft?

I mean, yeah, you don't deserve insightful, which demands I put on my pedantic hat *and* look like a kook. But seriously, "These are not the bad statistics you're looking for."

How much energy does the sun deliver to say a in^2? Well it's a lot more than a cell phone or most in^2 not actually on radio towers where they're concerned. So the em-radiation probably isn't causing cancer. But it might be affecting the kinetics of cancer cells already present and floating around, helping them decide where to set up shop. But even then that would only apply to transmitters very near people, who were particularly sensitive to their effect through what amounts to bad luck.

In this study they more likely discovered those near radio towers lived in old houses, didn't have a lot of money to spend on taking care of themselves, and close to copious amounts of smog. Wow, I wonder if radio towers cause self-inflicted gunshot wounds too?

Re:50,000 watts

[k4_pacific]

/me Runs to the calculator...

Well, the power spreads out at a rate proportional to the square of the radius. So, if your brain averages .10 m from the phone, then the power passing through it is roughly 8 watts / m^2. (Determining the cross-sectional area of a brain and computing actual power is left as an exercise for the reader.) A 50 kW AM transmitter achieves this density of power at a radius of about 22 meters. So, if the tower is more than 22 meters high, it is safer to stand directly under it than it is to talk on a cell phone.

There's at least one Nobel Prize...

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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.

Re:There's at least one Nobel Prize...

[zCyl]

... 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.

I used to agree with you, but a number of studies recently have shown that under these radiation wavelengths, some membranes in the body pass some molecules when they would otherwise block them.

Example here.

It turns out it's insufficient to just consider heating effects and ionization effects, since lipid membranes are composed of dipolar molecules which can be subject to other electromagnetic effects.

Re:Not true.

[Martin Blank]

When is Slashdot going to get "-1, Pointless Political Statement"?

Hrm..

[pclminion]

Given that most AM transmitters tend to be in highly populated areas, it stands to reason that most people who live near AM transmitters live in highly populated areas.

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.

Another loosey-goosey study

[PapayaSF]

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.

To quote last night's Aqua Teen Hunger Force

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Reduce risk by 50%...

[cytoman]

It is well known that

The ionosphere bends signals best at night because the Sun is no longer ionizing the atmosphere then. That's why you pick up distant AM signals at night. An AM signal can hop all the way around the world at night, bending down from the ionosphere and reflecting back up from Earth: hopping in that fashion and ultimately going vast distances.

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%:

no news here.

[Eric Seppanen]

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.

Re:no news here.

[Mateito]

I'm so tired of apologists.

Sorry

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

radio killed.......

[Roskolnikov]

the video star.

AM transmitters live in swamps

[wa1hco]

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???

Someone pointed this out already...

[Dieppe]

But it's another case of misleading statisics.

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..

Something they need to check...

[Black Art]

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.

Epidemiologist's rule of thumb

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

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.

Get it over with

[Deathlizard]

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"