Study Links Cell Phones to DNA Damage

Amit Malhotra was one of several readers to point out a story running on numerous sites about a study linking cell phone use to DNA Damage. Of course, a recent gammaworld campaign has served to remind me that mutations are almost always beneficial, so there is nothign to fear.

Comments

Stop that train...

[fimbulvetr]

recent gammaworld campaign has served to remind me that mutations are almost always beneficial
Any one have a link? I find this extremely hard to believe.

I don't see a problem

[hsmith]

you have to die of something...

but do you think this will make people stop using their damned cell phones? no way, they need to figure out a way to make them less harmful yes, but what incentive will they have to do that if this isn't hard fact.

remember teh craze a few years ago when they thought it gave you cancer? how many scares are we going to have. do people realize how many radio waves go through your body every single day? i am sure sitting infront of a computer monitor each day is a bit worse than me using my cell.

Evolutionary biology says the contrary

[Flubu!]

to remind me that mutations are almost always beneficial

Most mutations are harmful, or neutral at best. To use the watchmaker analogy, chipping away at the gears of your watch is more likely to break something than to make your watch into an atomic clock.

Let's remember some basics...

[Ancient_Hacker]

If radio waves caused DNA breaks, then we should see lots of tentacled zombies walking out of taxicabs, radio stations, TV stations, cruise-ships, diathermy clinics, radio shacks, microwave oven companies, airline pilots, airport birds, aircraft carrier deck crews, TV reporters, NIST personnel, base-jumpers, helicopter pilots, metal-forging shops, police, fire, utility workers. Cell site repairpersons, microwave signal repeater tower workers, cell-phone testers, walkie-talkie repairfolk, CB radio aficionados, FM and TV tower painters. TV tower red flashy light bulb changers, Pierce Brosnan (fought at the focal point of the Arcibo dish in some paltrily above average Bond movie) If the damage was proportional to the absorbed dose we should see about one out of 23 cell phone users with huge tumors by their ears, smaller suppurating pustules down their cheeks, and just raw purplish open sores over the rest of their heads. I must be hanging around with the wrong crowd.

Re:Radiation

[P-Nuts]

Conduct the radiation up to your head? Its radiation, from the word radiate! It goes out in all directions! Radiation (at least certain types) needs thick lead to block it. Other types are stopped by your skin. Now why in the world would radiation be conducted by a wire? It would either pass through the wire or be stopped by it.

Okay, I've probably been a bit careless in my use of word "conduct". A wire can channel radiation by acting as an aerial - in that radiation induces currents to flow in the wire, and these subsequently cause reradiation. So the wire conducts an electrical signal, capabable of reradiating, rather than strictly speaking conducting radiation. Read this link to understand what I'm trying to say.

Risk analysis

[LordEd]

The biggest things about all of the 'you are going to die' studies is what are the actual odds of getting the negative effects? One in 10? One in 1000?, One million?

Everytime the news says that if you do something you like doing, you increase your risk of such a horrible side effect that even though it would be more likely that you win the lottery, you immediately change your lifestyle to avoid it at all costs.

But put it in perspective. Lets say the odds of getting a harmful side effect from a cell phone is 2%. One statistic pegs driving a car as the leading cause of death for people aged 6 - 27.

Will you put away your cell phone, but contine driving? Everyone knows there are risks driving, but we take it as a reasonable risk because we are aware of the perils involved (bad drivers, weather, etc).

As soon as somebody says that xxxx has a severe side effect, we can't make an informed judgement about it because the media focuses on the horrible death we are all about to receive. Its their job to keep you interested by raising the alarm about evertying

--There isn't anything good in this world that isn't immoral, harmful, or fattening.

Junk Science at it's Best

[RapmasterT]

[blockquote] None of the world's top six mobile phone vendors could immediately respond to the results of the study.[/blockquote] What??? you mean you called the receptionist at a random office of cell phone companies and she didn't have a prepared scientific study to refute this tripe? shocking!!!

Re:News Flash: The Sun Emits Radio Waves

[Idarubicin]

It's interesting that they don't offer up an explanation for the cellular damage. Last time I checked, microwaves were non-ionizing. The worst you should experience from a cell phone might be a little heat. I'm skeptical, as usual.

Skepticism is certainly warranted, but I haven't had time to look at the published paper. (Lay articles are always skimpy on details and often get them wrong anyway....)

Even though heat won't directly cause DNA breaks, it might muck up DNA repair machinery so that breaks formed by other processes aren't repaired. Thermal radiosensitization, for instance, is a phenomenon we've known about for at least thirty years. Mild, otherwise non-fatal heating can dramatically increase the sensitivity of cells to other, ionizing radiation. This is sometimes a useful effect (see below) but might increase cancer risk in otherwise healthy individuals.

Moderate heating (to four or five degrees above normal body temperature) will dramatically but reversibly alter the supercoiling of DNA as well as alter the phosphorylation of some of the core histones. It will also trigger a temporary upregulation of the heat shock proteins, which directly interfere with apoptosis. Hyperthermia actually has a whole pile of effects that are not well understood. This is not to say that I'm going to start carrying my mobile phone in a lead pouch, but I think it will be interesting to see where this research leads.

Interestingly, there are a number of clinical trials in Europe right now that take advantage of thermal radiosensitization by combining local heating with radiotherapy for cancer treatment. (See for example the Phase III Dutch Deep Hyperthermia Trial, link. )

Rude

[mariox19]

People seem to talk louder on cell phones than when talking to one another. Also, I remember reading an article that said it is easier for us to tune out a conversation when we hear both sides of it than when we are hearing only one side. Apparently, a natural reaction is to try to piece together the other side of the conversation.

What bothers me most though is the damn Nextels. These people having their walkie-talkie conversations on speaker phone, punctuating ever sentence with a chirp piss me off. There are times when I've wished they would literally drop dead.

Re: beneficial Mutations

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Hmm...I thought high energy waves are dangerous because they collide with the chromatin (since it is the thickest material in the cell and therefore the most likely for them to collide with) either severing it completely by fragmenting a huge portion of it (in which case the cell will either die or be destroyed by the immune system, it has almost no chance of survival here thus no mutation occurs) or damaging a small portion which if the proper enzymes are available, will re-attach on the 5 prime end, but the re-attachment doesn't leave the DNA in its exact previous state, thus an effective mutation can occur (be it good or bad.)

But then the previous case could also be good as well though. The most widely held theory about the difference between males and females is that a huge segment of chromatim simply broke off and the resulting organism was able to thrive. I could see why 99.9999% of them would have negative results (since you have several million energy waves hitting the chromatim at a time,) as opposed to the 90% of natural mutations. But I would guess that there should still exist the possibility that a mutation triggered by high energy waves could provide some benefit (although I would strongly advise against exposing yourself to high energy radiation if you wanted to become superman.)

'Course I am not an expert in biology.