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Mobile Phone Use And Acoustic Neoroma
meeiw writes "A study from the Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM) at Karolinska Institute, Sweden found that 10 or more years of mobile phone use increase the risk of acoustic neuroma (slow-growing tumor) and that the risk increase was confined to the side of the head where the phone was usually held."
Considering that cell phones have been out for more than twenty years and that digital cell phones (higher frequency but lower power) have been out for more than ten, are we seeing significantly higher rates of acoustic neuroma?
Let's face it. We have a sample size in the hundreds of millions. It would be pretty easy to pick out pathology rates with any significance.
And is it the radio frequency that would cause the problem? The power output? The heat? The volume level?
I applaud these researchers for looking into it, but I am not looking forward to the crackpots who will inevitably come out of the woodwork proclaiming this to be proof that cell phones and cell towers are obviously the cause of every ailment that plagues them from toothaches and bed head to their 89 year-old grandmother's lumbago and lactose intolerance.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Note that the study was performed with analog-phones only.
Analog phones (which survive mostly in the US) transmit 100% of the time during a call (actually it starts transmitting even before the other party answers).
GSM phones transmit at 1/8 of the time - maximum (if you are not using data - but then when you are doing GPRS/EDGE, you don't have the phone in your ears). If you use half-rate it's 1/16 of the time. If it's AMR and DTX (discontinuous transmission), it can be even less.
TDMA phones transmit at 1/3 of the time.
CDMA (IS2000) phones transmission can vary (similar to DTX), but its more than the GSM minimum - max power is lower, frequency is spreaded, yaddayadda, but its more RF per time.
So, if you take GSM at it's 1/8 of the time, would that mean 80 years of usage? Maybe not. Max GSM handheld power is higher than max Analog handheld power (but then, you only use it if you are FAR from a cell site), and I bet we use cell phones more and more often if compared to 10 years ago.
So let's say 60 years to be safe? And let's alternate the cell phone ear, so it's 120?
I'll take it.
Oh, wait... They're doubled from one case in 100,000 to two cases in 100,000... So, talking on a cell phone for ten years changes my chance of getting one of these (cureable) tumors from slim, to... slim. (assuming they can even get that accurate given a sample size of 600)
So what?
heard as I pull ou my roll of tinfoil and start constructing helmet....
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
No, the "line-of-sight" from the phone to my testicles is through more than six inches of flesh and bone. Not much 1.9 GHz RF is going to get through that.