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The Story Behind Cell Phone Radiation Research
XopherMV writes "A study by Lai and Singh, published in a 1995 issue of Bioelectromagnetics, found an increase in damaged DNA in the brain cells of rats after a single two-hour exposure to microwave radiation at levels considered "safe" by government standards. The idea behind that study was relatively simple: expose rats to microwave radiation similar to that emitted by cell phones, then examine their brain cells to see if any DNA damage resulted.
The news was apparently unwelcome in some quarters.
According to internal documents that later came to light, Motorola started working behind the scenes to minimize any damage Lai's research might cause even before the study was released. In a memo and a draft position paper dated Dec. 13, 1994, officials talked about how they had "war-gamed the Lai-Singh issue" and were in the process of lining up experts who would be willing to point out weaknesses in Lai's study and reassure the public.
To this day, the cell phone industry continues to dispute Lai and Singh's findings although half of about 200 studies say there is a biological effect from cell phone radiation.
Read more in UW Columns."
Use a headset. Leave the phone in your pocket or on your desk. You also get the benefit of having your hands free (for typing, or other activities)
Is there more radiation emanating from my cellphone or from the rest of the city ?
Is it safe ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
P.S. I see this study was done at my alma-matter, the University of Washington. I wonder if my old roommate Jim Oliver might have been affected, since he did handstands from our 7th floor balcony railing - maybe he should have been wearing a tin-foil hat? ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
quite a bit of difference between the minimum "safe" level of gigahertz RF and what a present day cell phone emits. Now those "brick" phones of my college days, those are another matter.....
We'll all find out later in life when we're 40 and slobbering all over ourselves and mumbling incoherent nothings.
Cell phones kill! Digital technology kills! Analog is our only hope to survive long enough to see our planet be eaten by outer space monsters.
Take off every ZIG.
What is this, global warming?
So 100 studies say there are no problems. And 100 say there are problems.
So there must be problems!
Have there been any similar studies on effects of the electromagnetic radiation from regular landline phones?
--JLockard - "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." - Emo Phillips
Turns out it was the phone itself, and not the bills that were trying to kill me.
cmd-q.co.uk - some sort of stupid fucking internet bullshit
This is almost tinfoil hat territory, but this sounds remarkably similar to the way tobacco companies once behaved. I wonder if any cellular companies have undergone their own private tests, and if so, I wonder what they have found.
Save the galaxy!
me loose brain? why me laugh?
hack a day
"in a 1995 issue"
how old does it have to be before the editors realise it is NOT NEWS?!?!
...is in the form of constant noise pollution. There is nothing so important that I have to take a call while driving or at a theater.
Science validates my tinfoil beanie.
: Radiats Biol Radioecol. 2003 Sep-Oct;43(5):541-3. Biological effects of mobile phone electromagnetic field on chick embryo (risk assessment using the mortality rate) [Article in Russian] Grigor'ev IuG. State Research Center-Institute of Biophysics, Ministry of Health of Russian Federation, Moscow, 123182 Rissua. yugrigor@rol.ru Chicken embryos were exposed to EMF from GSM mobile phone during the embryonic development (21 days). As a result the embryo mortality rate in the incubation period increased to 75% (versus 16% in control group). PMID: 14658287 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE
Thats why i always hold my phone away from my "private" region when sending text messages!
Yep, Motorola was a "good guy" ages ago but will bullshit for profit at the sake of the public health. Heck, see the link in my sig for xbox cable info. It was a faulty power supply, not a cable, that caused the problems. A recall of millions of boxes would have been too expensive.
Trolling is a art,
I just switched from a land line to a cell phone only when I moved. It seemed like a good idea, and I wasn't too worried about the radiation because I hadn't read anything about it in a year or two. Good timing for this article, *looks at his two year contract*...
I guess I'll just use a headset and speaker-phone as much as possible.
I fully understand the use of vivisection; I'm even going to say that I am pro animal testing (lets watch the flames now :S)
However, a human is NOT a rat. Our skulls are thicker, our neurons interconnect differently, there is different bloodflow around the cranial cavity and the meninges is more complex in humans. We are not looking for research related to biochemistry, we are looking at physical abstraction.
I would give this research a second look if it were performed on primates, but a rat just isnt a proper comparitive test.
Reminds me of the internal cigarette documents that came to light in the tobacco trials. I wonder if there will be enough people injured to have massive class action suits.
Althoguh from what I understand the new digital cells are nothing like analog phones for the amount of energy they put out. I know when I'm in an analog only area my phone goes flat in less than a day, compared to 3-4 days when I have digital service. So anecdotally I'm seeing maybe 1/3 to 1/4 of the power output with digital.
The poster implies we should all worry because half of the studies say it's a health risk...
But by that same logic none of us should worry because half of the studies say there is no damage.
I'm a minimalist w/ my cellphone for reasons other than radiation... but seems to me we need something better than "50% of studies say it's an issue."
Ah hell, who am I kidding, this is slashdot. I'm going to go burn my T610 now. That Bluetooth probably already killed my sperm anyway.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Yes, many scientists performs studies on the same things, and draw their own conclusions...
an increase in damaged DNA in the brain cells of rats after a single two-hour exposure to microwave radiation at levels considered "safe" by government standards
So, just how much radiation *does* the government consider to be safe for rats?
I also remember see graphics that showed that the rad / cell phone leakage goes further into a teenagers (or small childs) brain then that of an adult for the obvious reason that a child's head is smaller...
.0001 of the time they really need it as opposed to the 99.999% of the time they are on the phone with their friends yapping worthlessly...
and guess who is the phone company's biggest new target over the last 3 years....? yep. teeenagers....
but who buys these phones for their kids? Adults...
Of course its for "safety" you know that
If i had a kid i would not let use one... yet parents don't even spend time to think of the health effects on their kids...
yet another sad statement on society...
To those annoying people that do, here's to your brain in a frying pan!
Now, if only I can get my hands on the 50 foot radius cell phone blocker....
I shouldn't be talking on my cell phone while waiting for my eats infront of the microwave oven?
Some aim to please, I aim to tease.
Maybe it's true maybe it's not. In either case I suspect it's a little bit like NYC banning smoking in a city where walking down the street will get you a lungful of fried hydrocarbon rot bus diesel fumes. I tend to look at the actual effects in a world where the cell phone using population went from about zero to 800 million in 15 years. Is it really that big a risk given the huge numbers of users who aren't manifesting extremely and obviously high incidences of disease?
In Soviet Russia, cellphone class-action sue you.
just use a headset.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
my daughter's school has two cellphone masts on the roof... the pub down the road has got a mini transmitter hidden in the sign... and the local church has got a transmitter array built into the spire
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Hmm. Last I checked humans have a thicker skull than the rodents probably had. Radiation 'like' those used in cell phones will not have the same effect on human brain cells because most cells will have a greater distance (the entire mouse brain was probably within an inch of the antenna) and the thicker skull we enjoy.
;)
And yes, we do enjoy our thick skulls here on slashdot!
Let's issue standard cel phones to one group, placebo cel phones to another and see if there's any difference in cancer rates.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Russia has long had LOWER emission requirements than Western countries. Russian scientists are not stupid. See: http://www.gallawa.com/microtech/Ch3.html Quote from this site: "Rather than concentrating on the effects of high-intensity levels, 'Soviet scientists were focusing their efforts on the lesser-known effects of prolonged or repeated exposure to low levels of microwaves. Their research, which began quite some time before that of their Western counterparts, has yielded some rather unsettling reports. Soviet studies show that long-term exposure to low levels of microwave energy could result in unpleasant effects that are not attributable to over-heating (or thermal effect) alone. These effects could be seen at exposure levels at and below 10mw/cm2, which is the occupational safety standard in the U.S. The USSR, and other European countries, has thus set their own strict guidelines for microwave safety, concluding that Western safety standards are simply not safe. For example, Russian workers are required to wear protective goggles any time they are temporarily exposed to a microwave radiation level of 1mw/cm2, a level routinely allowed to leak (although in recent years, rarely does) from U.S. microwave ovens." Personally I think the Russians know a lot we don't....
A cell tower was recently installed very near our home. A level-head and concerned neighbor went around with a petition, not to force the removal of the tower, but, restrainedly, just to demand that the community be involved in any such future decisions that may impact health and well being, him noting his concerns about the health impact of the tower. We signed the petition. Is there any research showing negative health effects of nearby cell towers, especially on children?
--- What?
It's a sad day for any community when the interests of the few are put well above the well-being of the many.
Oh wait. That's the whole bloody human history, and I do mean the term literally. Did the crusader knights cared about the well-being of the sarancens? Or perhaps Attilla was concerned about all the gold that burdened the lives of Roman citizens?
Fool that I am, I thought XXI would be different. All around us there were signs that people start to care. Ecology. Human rights. Open source. The fabled enlightment of the human race seemed to be closer than ever. Perhaps even achievable in my lifetime.
Sadly, that's not going to happen. For every Linus there's going to be a Bill. For every Gore there's going to be a George. For every researcher like Henry Lai there are 5 CEOs willing to bury both him and his research into the ground, because his findings will disturb the rule of the almighty buck.
After all, if our ancestors did it, that can't be such a bad thing. Right?
Just
does anyone know if a bluetooth headset is just as bad as just holding the cell phone up to your head?
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= anything anti-government and anti-corperation
Also the base stations (GSM, UMTS) are reported (scientifically) to cause brain damage.
www.stopumts.nl is a good dutch site of one guy fighting against these types of radation, after noticing health problems himself.
I look at this as the thing that we will be laughed at by people in 100 years. Think 100 years ago, people used to wear radioactive radium watches, and 60 years ago, people exposed themselves to harmful amounts of radiation to make sure their shoes fit properly. Hell, Marie Curie, the father (mother) of modern radioactive theory kept a beaker full of radium next to her bed because it made a swell nightlight. Now, nobody is going to accuse her of being stupid, seeing as how she developed the initial scientific theory leading to most of what we know about physics today. It's just that they didn't know any better. Nowadays, we say "She did WHAT?!?"
I think in 100 years they will be saying "They did WHAT?!? They put microwave transmitters RIGHT NEXT TO THEIR BRAINS! What morons!" The cell phone industry can fight it all they want, but the cigarette industry didn't acknowledge that cigarettes were addivtive until the 1990's.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
The energy per photon is just too low to break covalent bonds, so there is no way microwave energy could break DNA directly, unless you pump in enough energy to cook it.
So you really have to resort to some fancy hypotheses to rationalize this. Well maybe, just maybe, there is some kind of a resonance of the current through an ion channel (although I'm not entirely sure that this is even plausible), which somehow alters its coupling to some intracellular kinase or other second messenger system, which activates an enzyme that happens to produce free radicals, and those break DNA. But I'd have to see some definitive evidence before I take that kind of hypothesis seriously.
The point is that "microwaves damage DNA" is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. "Some studies support it and some do not" simply doesn't qualify.
I'm skeptical of "DNA break" assays, anyway. There is a long history of people finding DNA damage by this and that, and others failing to reproduce the result. It's easy to break DNA--you can even break it by rough handling.
But in the early 90's the computer industry and U.S. military quashed a paper to be released by the U.S. EPA that listed low frequency electromagnetic radiation from, among other sources, desktop PC power supplies as a Class B Carcinogen.
m
http://www.mercola.com/article/emf/emf_dangers.ht
Everybody's all up in arms about cell phones, but if you're parked in front of a desktop you might possibly have at least as much to worry about from other sources.
Well-balanced site which gives several takes on the issue:
http://www.ehso.com/ehshome/emf.htm#dangerous
yeah, that's what he did, in the end, AFTER he realized that heavy cell phone usage was bad!
I know there will be a lot of calls of bullshit, but here goes.
My first phone was an analog Nokia. I don't recall the model but I still have it here someplace. It took me awhile to realize the cause, but every time I used it, I'd get a headache and a weird sensation on that side of my head. A tingly hot feeling, almost felt like a hairdryer when it's too close to your head. Also slightly scattered in my thinking. Like it was hard to concentrate.
This was before I ever heard a peep about even the possiblity of radiation being a problem so it wasn't in my imagination. I never felt anything like that outside of using that phone. Never happend again after I stopped using it either (about 7 years ago)
After the realization, I was like Kirk and his communicator. I'd say something quickly and then hold it away from my head as far as I could while still being able to hear. My calls also got amazingly terse.
I hung on to it thinking of getting it tested one day. How could (where would) you go about measuring the radiation?
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
Cell phone makers will be the tobacco companies of the next generation.
I stay as far from my cellphone as possible, and try not to leave it on when it's in my pocket.
Then again, we all spend 8-16 hours a day in front of computers. I have a nice little radiation box sitting on my lap, of all places, right now.
Fifty years from now our grandkids could be laughing at us for holding such dangerous devices up to our heads.
That's why I keep my mobile in my front trousers-pocket. There's no chance I'll be laughed at by grandkids.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
To the famous quote:
"Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day"
We should add:
"Human beings were not meant to have an electromagnetic emitting device shaking their braincells at high frequencies all day"
Funny this got posted now but lastnight i was watching an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!. The episode focus was on Safety Hysteria. One of the items they mentioned was our fear of Brain Cancer from a Cellphone. Anyway the jist of the experts was that the waves produced from the cellphone where two big to damage DNA. Hench no damaged DNA then no cancer.
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
This cell damage shit just keeps coming up. I have to wonder when it is going to impact cell phone purchases....but it does not seem to have done that yet.
I wonder if there are any studies on wifi/wimax antennas. I would not think they would have any effect...
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The tactics employed by Motorola seem quite the same as the tobacco industry used regarding nicotine and tar levels and the effects of smoking on someone's health.
So can we expect Motorola (or other portable phone makers) to deny possible health damages to the same extend (with all the dirt etc) as the tobacco industry?
(I'm not sure myself of the effects of prolonged exposure to cell phones, but I think putting a 2W sender very close to your brain can't be very healthy...)
This site has a list of SAR ratings. For a phone to pass FCC certification, the phone's maximum SAR level must be less than 1.6W/kg (watts per kilogram). The SAR levels shown in the linked chart represent the maximum SAR level with the phone next to the ear.
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
First of all, IANAS!
If I recall correctly, this is called the Texas sharpshooters fallacy: A sharpshooter who wishes to impress his friends shoots at a barn from a huge distance, then walks up to it, and paints a circle around each bullet-hole.
If you examine 100 people without a single well-defined goal, you are almost guaranteed to find an extreme anomaly.
From a statistic point of view, if you perform a standard examination of cell-phones on a population regardless of it's size, you perform a "Type I"-error if you reject a hypothesis ("Cell phones don't have any biological effect") when the hypothesis is correct. You generally accept a conclusion if the probability of having made a Type I error is less than 5%. So if the quoted studies have 20 different "biological effects" (Like destroyed DNA), we should expect to see roughly half the studies finding at least one biological effect, and the rest not finding one.
I'm not saying mr Lai did make this mistake - but the article is written so it seems it's author made that mistake. If there's anyone with a better grasp of statistics than me, I'd appreciate a reply.
Xel'Naga
There are two major issues here. The first one is reproducibility. If you look hard enough in the literature you can find a study that can support any conclusion. Errors are made and statistical variations will occur but if an effect is real it needs to be reproduced consistently. This has not been the case for effects from non-ionizing radiation in general and seeing that this is a paper from 1995, for this case in particular.
Now one can argue that maybe the few positive results are the real ones and that experimental technology is just not very good. Fair enough but there is a second issue here. There is no plausible mechanism for DNA damage from non-ionizing radiation aside from possibly heating. Again, it doesn't mean that one doesn't exist but this is in stark contrast to damage from ionizing radiation where the basic mechanisms have been known for decades.
With no body of reproducible results and no plausible mechanism, the null hypothesis that there is no effect is the one is generally accepted. You should, of course, pass your own judgement on the risk involved - I'm just trying to explain why these results are consigned to Electromagnetics rather than gracing the front pages of Science and Nature.
I used to. I used it a lot. I got rid of it and life is simpler now. I'm not sure I'd want one again, even if it was free.
Get some facts, stop the lore: http://skepdic.com/emf.html
1. Digital cell phones use much lower power than analog cell phones, even at peak power. The study was simulating analog headsets, so this problem is already reduced by more modern technology.
2. Rat's skulls are considerably thinner than human skulls. You would think this would make a significant difference in the effect, as PSD falls with the square of the distance (cellphone antenna is omnidirectional).
Just my thoughts on "the truth".
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Every dingy blonde I've dated this year had her ear glued to her cellphone, EVEN AT DINNER! Is this a coincidence or is there really something to this? As long as the quantity of neural synapses in a woman's brain are superfluous to a man's, women will inherently talk more than men, but at the same time, women are more likely to have malformed DNA. So, the next time your wife gripes about wanting a girl instead of the boy you have, point out the fact that when you're kid turns out to be an idiot, its your wife's fault! ;-)
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
Radiation drops off in some sort of inverse cubed relationship, so unless you are right next to a transmitter it's going to have very little effect on you.
Holding a cellphone an inch from your brain is way worse than being 40ft from a tower.
Does anyone know if this only applies DURING a phone call, or do cell phones constantly emit this radiation ? Does keeping it in a leather pouch on my belt increase the risk to my internal organs ?
This is a Nobel Prize-category topic. Our existing understanding of physics and biochemistry is simply insufficient to account for any interaction between microwave radiation and DNA.
The last time anyone observed an interaction that dramatic and unexpected was a hundred years ago, when Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus by bouncing alpha particles off a piece of gold foil. Discovery of a mechanism of interaction between cell-phone RF and DNA strands would be that big a deal.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
In the case of global warming, of course, basically it's unanimous among scientists who aren't bought and paid for by the energy industry. (Even the Bush administration admits global warming is happening -- they just say we should "study" what to do about it for a few more decades.) The only holdouts are people susceptible to the industry's disinformation campaign.
So hey -- good analogy, way to go.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
As Woody Allen said in Sleeper, my brain is my second favorite organ. Ever since I read about this research and saw a few before and after pictures:
protectingourhealth.org
I have used the headset pretty much exclusively. I also try to hold it away from my first favorite organ as well; I haven't noticed any research about this but I'm sure I don't want to see THOSE pictures.
Maximum Pain is Aim of New U.S. Weapon
So, when can I have my cellphone equipped with one of these?
I want a beam-gun with my cellphone!!
Cnet maintains a chart comparing radiation levels of many of the various phones on the market here:5 -1.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6602_7-502035
If you have a phone you like, it doesn't show well on that chart, and you are concerned about radiation, you don't have to throw the thing away. Get a headset for it and keep the phone on your belt. It will not have an effect on your brain tissue from down there, inverse square law and all.
I have an oncologist in my family who insists on using her phone this way, due to her assessment of the studies regarding cell phone safety.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
The long wire between the phone and the headset can also be a source of signal, sometimes stronger than what is measured from the intended antenna as I recall. Searching for info is needle-in-haystack right now with all the crap being published about this, but it was discussed a few years ago.
You have to actually test for the situation, not assume that making a change will solve the problem.
One relatively likely solution is using a hollow tube instead of a wire for the earpiece; sound travels fine from phone to ear that way. And the microphone for voice-to-phone should (test!) be electrically isolated from the phone's amplifier.
Heck -- just put optical transducers in, use a little light guide instead of a wire for the entire headset. Problem solved.
But maybe making a safe headset would be like making a safe cigarette -- the lawyers would never let it happen if it could be considered an admission of liability.
A lot of people have posted that, because 100 studies found effects and 100 studies didn't, we shouldn't be overly concerned. Simply because 100 studies didn't find any signs that organic material is affected by this radiation, doesn't mean that it isn't, just that they didn't find it. The fact that 50% of studies DID find effects, is quite alarming. However, as another poster pointed out, the effects on humans are likely to be quite different to those on rats.
But I remember watching Penn & Teller's show "Bullshit" on Showtime last year and they lined up a bunch of scientists that showed that the microwaves created by cellphones are too honking big to create damage at cellular level in our heads.
I don't see why they'd lie about something like that...but then again, I'm not certain about how thorough their research was, so do what you will with their theory.
That cell phones are capable of damaging biology doesn't come as a surprise to me. Two friends, one close and the other just someone I've known from the OSS community, may have been amoungst the first test cases for heavy cell phone use. One friend recently died of brain cancer. The other friend is in the end stage of dying from brain cancer. In both cases, the cancer is/was on the side of the brain where the phone was used. Which is why I don't own a cell phone. YMMV. :-(
You're thinking politically here.
Think as a researcher instead -- you can't prove a negative in science (you apparently can in politics, at least for decades at a time while avoiding action).
200 studies. At the standard for significance, five percent of those -- ten -- would be expected to show an effect by random chance alone.
100 studies -- ten times what you'd expect from random chance -- reported an effect.
--> There is an entire field of industrial chemistry using microwave pumping of chemical reactions to selectively favor one reaction path or another, changing the yield and outcome of batch production. There is no doubt at all that moving molecules around with microwaves changes chemical reactions. Nobody's sure HOW yet.
--> "No proven mechanism" -- it works, they don't know how it works, whether rearranging the pattern or movement of molecules alters the rate at which certain reactions happen.
--> "No proven mechanism" -- legally, you can't prove HOW it could happen so it can't happen (that's the legal/regulatory approach).
So we have an effect that's solid enough to build industrial chemical plants on, but not solid enough to believe is possible legally.
------
What do you think of intelligent life on earth?
I think it would be a good idea.
Currently they rolling this out in Silicon Valley itself; and have managed to sneak this by (without School Board approval) up until litterally one week ago in the Fremont Union High School District. But they have been doing this nation wide.
The bottom line here is that, if you have kids, you NEED to make certain that your school doesn't have a microwave transmitter on your site, if you are concerned about this. There is little to no oversite after a tower goes in, and your children may be exposed to levels of radiation far higher than the levels that these studies have seen damage at.
The Cell Phone companies have become extremely adept at figuring out how to get these towers onto school sites, without requiring public input.
Furthermore, according to section 704 of the 1996 Telecommunciations Act, environmental and health concerns CANNOT be a consideration in turning down their request for a tower. It is against the law for the School Board to even discuss health effects. Nor can you sue the Cell Phone companies, or the School Board later, if your child develops cancer.
If you are in the Silicon Valley area, check out: www.protectedschools.org
The site is brand new, but more research and a discussion forum will be on line shortly.
Full Disclosure: I am associated with the above site.
"although half of about 200 studies say there is a biological effect from cell phone radiation."
....and what did the other HALF say? I'm betting they said the opposite.
I'm not a researcher but I'd say with confidence that the scientific community is not exactly unanimous on this issue. Of course, from the write-up, it appears at least one person has made up their mind.
It is very alarming but lately government and various industries and in bed and if you want to secure yourself any future funding you better produce the results they expect.
2: Mobile phone antennas are designed to use your skull as part of the antenna system; they DELIBERATELY radiate into your head!
I call bullshit on this.
Some years ago I heard a story about an older handheld device from Motorola. I have absolutely no reason to believe it is true. But it's funny - in a black humor way. (Also: This was 'way back around the Vietnam engagement era, when both police and suppliers of equipment to police and military were quite out-of-favor with the bulk of people of my age, and the butt of many jokes and character assasination stories.)
The device was the early 5-watt VHF police handytalkie - perhaps the first device to use a "rubber duckie" antenna.
There was some question as to the effects of habitually using a 5-watt transmitter with the antenna next to your skull. So when a policeman died from unrelated causes, the person performing the autopsy looked at the brain as well. And found small burns on the brain lining on the side of the policeman's dominant hand.
Motorola's response (so the story goes) was to introduce a 10-watt model.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Umm - why did you decide to exclude the rest of the information?
Because it's just like global warming to him!
People who desperately want the scientists to be wrong will quote bad statistics to support the industry shills who say that everything's really okay and that we can continue living like we are now with no need to inconvenience ourselves.
There is just a certain mentality -- a personality type, if you will -- that will desperately cling to any dissenters from mainstream science as the real bearers of the truth if these "scientists" claim that the person has always been right to do what they've done. Facts, methodology, and improper influence mean nothing compared to conviction in one's way of life. You see this in the global warming "debate," the smoking "debate," the cell-phone driving "debate," and now the cell-phone radiation "debate."
Never mind that the article documents intimidation by the industry against researchers. Never mind that industry funding comes with all sorts of strings to try to ensure pro-industry findings. Never mind that research from non-tainted sources is overwhelmingly in favor of there being a problem while the majority of naysayers are subject to pro-industry conflict of interest and intimidation. It's an even split! Therefore, the science must be inconclusive! Just like all that silly nonsense about cigarettes being bad for your health or humans affecting the planet!
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I asked him how the current standards were arrived at. One would think that it was based upon physiological research. Nope. Not at all.
He basically said that it is industry driven. "You can't put industry out of business" he said. So, in a nutshell, the companies are asked what is the minimum level that they can live with, and the process starts from there.
Considering the general decline of manners and overall public behaviour, we can confidently say that cellphone usage has caused cerebral damage.
Not commonly known outside scientific circles, the radiation specifically targets the cellula oblongata. Keeping it in the pocket, on the other hand, causes the Ericsson dysfunction syndrome.
For some reason cell phone radiation seems much more damaging than 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g eventhough most studies are designed to prove the lack of effects for cell phone rather than WiFi radiation. Any ideas what might be the reasons?
Absolutely, I was going to post this response myself until I saw you had preempted me. Just consider the difference in bodyweight involved, and scale up to the kind of microwaves you would have to send into a human to replicate the same.
It reminds me of that pretty poor study about the effects of GM potatoes on rats that caused a huge stir in the UK. To be fair, Motorola has to respond to this kind of study, what else are they going to do? I hate having to carry a mobile phone, and I'm no shill for Motorola but I'm not surprised they acted the way they did - anyone would.
As for animal testing, well, I've had some experience of the type of tactics the animal righters use to intimidate scientists in this country (UK). We're not a high profile target (thank God for Huntington Life Sciences), but still we get phone calls seeking information on staff, people outside our place of work overtly protesting, taking down number plates, or once or twice trying to follow people home and find out where they live. It's unpleasant.
Animal testing is so rarely used as the bureacracy involved and expense mean that these experiments would be done another way, if there was any way we could possibly get decent results. I've heard pseudoscientists on the radio promoting cell models over animal models and I just have to laugh at the ignorance shown by someone who says they would be any use at all.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
Red dye causes cancer in white rats...
red meat causes cancer in white rats...
smoking causes cancer in white rats...
CRTs cause cancer in white rats...
and now cell phones may cause cancer in white rats.
Has anyone considered that cancer may be hereditary in white rats?
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
Let's be realistic about this.
Cell phones (particularly digital phones) operate at the gigahertz range. Microwaves are a natural frequency to travel through space with minimal loss or interference (one reason why seti@home looks at those frequencies). So do microwave ovens. The reason why microwaves work is because the energy they pump into the microwave get absorbed into and excite the water molecules, producing heat. My 600 watt microwave takes 2 minutes to heat up a cup of water to the boiling point, and that's in a space designed to trap and to preserve the entire microwave energy. A cell phone peaks at about 4 watts and radiates the energy in every direction, most of it not to return to the operator of that phone and if it all did, would take probably 5 hours to heat that same cup of water. Given that the average human body contains many many many more cups of water than what I put in my microwave, any extra heat produced by 4 watts of microwave energy is easily transformed and radiated away from the skin.
In order to damage DNA it usually requires far more energy as it means breaking the molecular bonds. UV-B on up to XRays for example have sufficient engery to penetrate the skin with the energy required to break those molecular bonds. UV-A is not sufficient to cause skin cancer, but UB-B is. If the entire electromagnetic spectrum is sufficient to cause cancer, we might as well live in a lead box, because we'd all be F**KED before we even got to puberty and the entire gene pool would be done for in a single generation.
Although I can't dismiss the possibility of microwaves giving someone cancer, it's far more likely to do nothing more than give you that warm fuzzy feeling of having one.
We're going to look back and saw, how could we not have known? It will be just like tobacco all over again. I've been trying to explain the cell phone issue to people for years. Any good electrical engineer should also be able to explain it to you if he's honest. Look at it this way. The microwave oven in your house operates at 900mhz or 1.2ghz or 2.4 ghz, guess where your cell phone operates? 900 on analog, 1.2 on digital and now even 2.4 and above. The 900mhz phones cook your brain because your brain is physically RF resonant at those frequencies freq/462 = inches. At ghz freqs the phones start cooking parts of your inner ear. Other studies have shown the growth of benign tumors in the ears of people who have been using them actively for 10 years. I rarely if ever use a cell phone, and frankly I don't see why anyone should.. so what did we do before we had them? hmmmm?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No, the current status is not the same as cold-fusion at all. Did you read the actual article? It sounds like you're just spouting off.
There are numerous international studies which have seen various effects. This is unlike cold fusion, where the results couldn't be reproduced.
Furthermore, if you had read the article, you'll see that researchers are explicitly facing harassment by the industry. Many are being driven out because of this harassment.
It's one thing to have an open and honest scientific debate. It's another to censor any effort to do so.
So no, this isn't like Cold Fusion whatsoever, and your linking it helps the current censorship.
Please, let us support open scientific evaluation and discussion.
My head hurt before the media scare kicked in.
We were taught never look at UHF radio masts in radio class, now we stick them to out head.
They could bloody well start making phones in 2 parts without this bluetooth pushed down our throats. Greed blinds
A blog I run for the wealth
The wave length emitted by cell phones is too long/short (I can't remember) to do cellular damage. Period. Next problem.
There is MORE radiation leaked from your microwave at 2.4 GHz than your digital cell phone creates. Digital cell phones also transmit in bursts of data not a continuous wave. Even our 802.11a/b/g wireless cards have the about the same or more energy as the average cell phone and 802.11 is a higher frequency 2.4 GHz. My GSM cell phone uses 890-915MHz and 1805-1880MHz or if I'm in the UK its 1930-1990MHz and it only transmits about 1 watt at peak situations, cell phones only use the power level it needs to communicate with the tower. ( click here for spectrum info ) Let's see... Cops have had Motorola 800-900 MHz 5 Watt radios on their sides with the antennas at the end of the mic sitting on their shoulders for years and they DO transmit continuous waves.. Have you heard of any cops being killed from their talkies? nope... Don't believe the QRM the technophobes feed you. 73 All! Nikropht KD5QLN
just what we need, more of the same short-sighted skin-deep brain-dead responses that totally side-step the issue. if your phone can get a signal it means that microwave radiation is being beamed through your brains 24/7 regardless of phone location. your phone is just an amplified transceiver, not a magical on and off switch for ambient radiation. it's no surprise that wireless "services" can get away with poisoning the masses, when the average user can't even put 1 and 1 together.
I just have to comment.
Two things:
Cell phones emit a pretty powerful signal. Speakers near the phone can be modulated on an incoming call. Nothing else I own does that. And this happens when the speakers are off. (And yes, the frequencies in use have a lot to do with that and that's my point!)
My second accidential observation is even more spooky. Back when I was short of cash, I fixed a microwave that was broken, but was afraid to use it without a way to be sure it was still safe. Someone got me one of those little microwave radiation detectors, sold at Radio Shack. It's a little handheld device with no batteries, just a flat antenna you point near the microwave.
Happened to be testing a friends new microwave because the cheap ones are pretty loose in front. (Don't put your face near the glass on one of the low end models, unless you don't enjoy the current state of your frontal lobes.) The cell phone was nearby and received a call. I could hear the *click* as the needle went off the high end of the scale. --That has made me think a little harder about this since it happened a few months back.
Of course, the windings in the meter could have been responding as the speakers did. Either way, that's enough RF saturation to be considered unsafe by Amateur radio standards.
I agree with the eariler poster that pointed out we used to wear radioactive watches and X-ray our feet. My gut says we are going to find something wrong with the phones in the future.
My symptoms, after longer cell use, are ringing in the ears. I don't use my cell as much as I used to and my right ear will, on occasion, just start ringing for no reason. That's the ear I most often choose when I am not thinking about things and just answer the phone.
Ok, so that's three things, whatever.
Blogging because I can...
All those anti-cell phone health nuts will fell stupid one day, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
You were holding the phone to your ear, but were unaware how poorly it fit, and how hard you were pressing it against your ear. Why must it be "radiation"?
Of course, simple ergonomic issues (which were epidemic with old phones) will be dismissed, because people must believe what they want.
Me, I had the same problem you did, but my solution involved a newer, better designed phone that fit my ear.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Cell phone towers come in different arrangements. The Cell Phone company will tell you that it's "like a 100 watt light bulb". What they won't tell you is that that's per band, and there can be more than a dozen bands involved. More recently, we're seeing 2,000+ Watt stations going in. And multiple stations can be in one site.
So the claim that the radiation is less than your cell-phone is at best misleading; and at worst flat-out wrong. It really depends on what the tower is like, and where you are.
It's difficult to conduct studies under these situations; but it is easy to exceed the levels at which negative health effects have been discovered.
All I'm saying rats are nasty creatures to begin with, they may of had brain damage before the study even began. I refuse to believe a creature that can abe immune to poison can be affected by radiation waves :)
you can't do an accurate study on how cellphone radiation affects the brain by increasing the power of the microwave to speed up results. Its like testing to see if a pan at 75F will ever burn you, but to speed up time, you turn it up to 150F.
Another trivial solution to the potential of the hands-free wire acting as an antenna is simply ton /gee20050 126028849.htm
loop the wire around a small magnet.
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2005Ja
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Actually, I think a better question is "does the electromagnetic frequency used for cellphones have the ability to interfere with biomechanical processes AT THE POWER USED BY CELL PHONES".
Just about any electromagnetic frequency hs the ability to interfere with biomechanical processes. Have you stared at the sun lately?
But wired headsets not necessarily - the wire partially waveguides the microwaves from the phone. See here You should be able to block this effect by putting a ferrite bead on the wire.
With GSM networks (and probably cdma), the phone dynamically changes it's power output. The cell tells the phone how well it can be recieved.
;)
The main reason for this is improved battery life.
The other good thing is that in areas with good network coverage, the phone RF output is far less than it's maximum.
The other amusing thing is that if people tamper with the antenna (putting things on it to reduce the power), all that happens is the phone will compensate for it, so you get shorter battery life and worse network coverage...and probably more irraditated
There is an entire field of research in industrial chemistry right now to see how microwaves can affect chemical reactions and promote certain reaction paths over others. You don't have to break an molecular bond to have an effect on chemistry. Microwave heating, even at very low levels, can significant speed up certain reactions. Enzymes in particular seem subject to this effect at very low power levels. (Read this, look for a paragraph 2/3 down.)
Futhermore, I remembered some of Lai's more recent research just a few seconds ago. Remember an article several months ago about 50-60 Hz magnetic fields doing DNA damage to rat brains? That was the same guy.
Basically, in his paper, he put forth the theory that an iron-mediated reaction is going wrong when rats are exposed to alternating magnetic fields. Even though the fields are not enough to break covalent bonds, there is an iron-mediated reaction that turn hydrogen peroxide into hydroxyl free radicals that they theorize is affected by the magnetic fields. When they introduced an oxidative free radical chelating agent into the mice, DNA damage from magnetic fields ceased.
You can read more on it here.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Check this FAQ for good reference material. I started reading the author's work about power lines and antennas several years ago and he is a fact based resource for information about the effects of radio radiation. http://www.mcw.edu/gcrc/cop/cell-phone-health-FAQ/ toc.html
I know a woman who has electromagnetic field sensebility. She can feel a CRT Monitor being switched on in the other room or on another floor and feels it especially intense at certain angles (yepp, it's the vertical and horizontal coils). She's allready had the effect scientifically examined. :-)
She also senses mobile radiocell handshakes nearby (5-7 meters) and has a habbit of anouncing a phonecall just a second before a mobile rings. Quite irritating for people not knowing this/ believing her and funny to watch aswell.
However, her life is hell most of the time. People usually don't believe her and think she's crazy. She's having a hard time asking the neighbor that lives above her (a copmuter geek) to switch of his CRT when he's not using it. Basically she's one of those candidates who would be best of sleeping in a faraday cage.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Um... Significant coupling by the wire seems rather unlikely...Blocking this with a bead on the wire seems even more unlikely.
.... that's why he provides metal foil to milliners.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Nah, that test will fail. Show a chimp how convenient cell phones are and you'll never get your phones back.
I've read about Russian research, and other research, on the non-thermal biological effects of EM radiation. Apparently, the non-thermal effects depend sensitively on the pulse-shape, i.e. frequency spectrum, of the incident radiation. Appropriately pulsed EM radiation is able to effect biological processes, particularly neural, by coupling to "resonant" frequencies. Effects often depend on the frequency of the carrier which is beig modulated, and also on the carrier's amplitude, so it is all extremely complicated.
In the early 1980's, Dr. Eldon Byrd, working for the US Marine Corps, investigated these these weird, non-thermal effects, presumably for possible military purposes:
Another weird effect that occurs at microwave radiation exposure levels much, much lower than the US safety standard of 10mW/cm^2 , is the ability of a high-intensity microwave beam, when turned on and off in a pattern corresponding to a sound, to cause a person to actually hear that sound when his head is illuminated with the beam. Although the beam is high-intensity, the average power level can be much lower than US safety standards because the beam is only "on" for a small fraction of a cycle. It's easy to understand how it works -- the beam causes tissue heating during its "on" moments, and the tissue, as it heats and cools, naturally expands and contracts, giving rise to a pressure wave, i.e. sound:
It's obvious that cell phones cause mutations. Ever watch anyone talk on a cell phone while driving a car? They are turned into inconsiderate, oblivious assholes.
"Wonder twin powers, Activate! Form of a cell phone user driving a car! Oh, wait. Make that from of an asshole."
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH?t=26020&p=~br ,IHW|~st,24479|~r,WSIHW000|~b,*|
After all no transmitter is perfect.
The grandparent is a dumbass.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Well, I might agree about the utility of the smoking ban but
New York City buses are actually pretty clean.
They haven't used plain old diesel in a while.
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
It's no use - headsets just act as a big radiation antenna.
or else!
There are about 200 studies that sought to determine if radiation from cell phones had an effect. 1/2 say they do, 1/2 say they don't...
If we assume that they are equally tainted by wanting to find a particular result, and that the validity of the methods amongst the positives and negatives are roughly evenly distributed (a big if)...
Well, then, the only thing you can determine is that, in general, is that the experiments are poorly conceived and the results worthless. You cannot claim a cause-and-effect relationship across a large number of studies if the studies don't agree and results not reproducible.
The question is really one of dosage, frequency, and risk. I would guess that contemporary cell phones are probably a very low risk. Radiation exposure for humans in general is quite high and comes from many sources, cell-phones probably contributing a marginal amount of high-frequency exposure. As far as brain cancer goes, I'm fairly certain that what you ingest and inhale probably have a higher risk associated with them.
I am absolutly no expert in DNA or medicine - I probably know less about this subject than most lay people even.
When DNA is damaged and the cell replicates, I assume that the damaged DNA is carried into the new cell (or at least could be). Is that correct?
Does this always cause cancer? I assume that it does not. Do other healthy cells always attack and kill the cell with damaged DNA? Again, I assume not (but that it can happen that way).
So let this reproduction happen a few generations and let the body do it's thing and you have damaged DNA working its way into a person here, there and everywhere.
On occasion, the damaged DNA manages to replicate itself in to another human being the old fashioned way. If the DNA is strong enough, then it stands a chance of becomming a new line, it will have resulted in a kind of evolution. Right? I assume that the odds of this are really quite remote, that it would take a pretty potent bit of DNA to pull this off and to acutally make a change that would be locked into a percentage of the human race. But could it happen?
The one thing we humans seem to keep underestimating is nature's ability to adapt, to deal with adversity and change to meet it head on. If we use cel phones, maybe the genetic changes they cause will be adapted to and "harden" us against that damage?
Re: page 4 of the article:
"When you look at the non-industry sponsored research, it's about three to one--three out of every four papers shows an effect," Lai says."
Furthermore, since the article points out that Industry has been lobbying to get the funding cut from the efforts that they don't like, just the numbers alone are misleading. There would probably be even more studies done which would confirm the negative effects of microwave radiation.
No wonder cell-phone using drivers' traffic skills are getting even worse!
Both the normal protein, called PrP^C for prion (related) protein cellular, and diseased form, called PrP^Sc for scrapie, are the same stereoisomer as far as we know. They are different conformations, different foldings of the same protein. Stereoisomerism and chemical conformation are not the same. Read more about prion.
Lai notes that if you split up the studies into publicly and industry funded studies, you see that 75% of publicly funded studies show a problem and 80% of industry funded studies show no problem.
So 20% of industry funded studies show a problem? Man, is industry getting ripped off...
Article said "DNA damage," not cancer.
Oh wait, not RTFA is "insightful", i always forget.
Funny this got posted now but last night i was watching an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! [tvtome.com]. The episode focus was on Safety Hysteria. One of the items they mentioned was our fear of Brain Cancer from a Cellphone. Anyway the gist of the experts was that the waves produced from the cellphone were too big to damage DNA. Hench no damaged DNA then no cancer.
-- just because you're a schizophrenic doesn't mean people aren't really out to get you
IF it really is important, someone will try and repeat it. Otherwise there probably wasn't much to see in the first place.
I totally agree with your points- the studies so far don't show enough of an effect to show anything. I also think that the huge numbers of cellphones in use with no noticable increase in cancer/tumour rates is significant. It's been about 7 or 8 years since cell phones really started to take off big. Where's the big increase in cancer rates? That's enough time for an effect to begin to show itself. 675 MILLION cell phones were sold last year. A lot of people have phones.
I think the phone companies have shot themselves in the foot slightly. By seeming to repress studies they give them more weight.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
To this day, the cell phone industry continues to dispute Lai and Singh's findings although half of about 200 studies say there is a biological effect from cell phone radiation.
So half says there's an effect, that means the other half says there isn't. But we're supposed to just swallow it hook, line and sinker?
Not surprising, considering the neo-luddite/antibusiness readership here on slashdot.
C'mon, at least read the article. Lai is still at UW, it was the Loma Linda guy that moved to Colorado.
Yes, but not for the reason you imagine.
Brick mobiles were that size because the analogue design didn't lend itself to the ASIC design behind modern mobiles. The output power BTW was of the order of 100mW.
Time change, and cometh the mass market, and digital transmission; the result is a tiny phone which delivers 1W+ RF output. Impressive, no?
Either way the real issues are these:
1) Consider the inverse-square law, and therefore the effective dose of 1W of RF very, very close to the skull.
and also
2) Showing that such non-ionising radiation is actually deleterious.
Hint: the second point is not exactly a straightforward task.
I wonder about this everytime I go to the top of Mt. Diablo in California. At the summit is a giant cell phone tower, and the 10' domes are at ground level: you can stand 3' in front of one. I stood in front of one and didn't feel any warmer, so I'm guessing the levels aren't that high. ;-)
;-)??
But seriously, isn't it a bit dangerous to have these towers at ground level (er, ground level at the summit
Actually, you may be affected by radiation directly below an antenna. While there is a null in the far-field pattern in this direction, you must consider the near-field effects. Assuming a vertical dipole, there is a 1/(R^3) field in that very direction!
An example:
Verizon recently wanted to put a cell station on top of the engineering building at my campus. The EE department is on the top couple floors, and a professor was very concerned about the 200 kW station that Verizon wanted to install interfering with experiments in the labs which are about 20 feet below where the antennas would be located. The professor had to convince the Verizon people that the far-field pattern did not completely describe the field, especially at such close ranges. In the end, Verizon put a less-powerful cell station on another building on campus (I believe it is where the school's administrators offices are housed).
I'll take you to the ball, Barbara Manitee!!!
Microwave News, edited by Louis Slesin is a prime example of a publication with only one purpose: to show the world that microwaves are dangerous.
Slesin has been criticised for years and years by the very same folks who gave us the ANSI standard for RF exposure.
The problem with so much of this research is that it's very difficult to get similar results from similar experiments. Once you're below the ANSI exposure standard, the apparent risk drops to something just barely observable from the usual daily afflictions. Every now and then someone comes up with a study which shows a positive correlation. However, to date, none of these experimental results have been reproduced --either in attempts to repeat the experiment, or in complementary approaches.
The important thing to understand here is that if there is a risk, it is extremely small.
The other thing to keep in perspective is the effects of big money on research. The big money works both ways: Governments love to throw money at research like this so that they can control industry with regulation "for the good of the people." Industry loves to throw money at these researchers to show that their products are safe.
The problem with obvious funding sources from either side is that the researchers have to fight very hard to stay independent and continue studying this phenonmenon.
These behaviors have been documented in many sources. The one I like best is The Great Betryal: Fraud In Science. A review of this work can be found here.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Just because you cant see an antenna sticking out doesnt mean the housing the antenna....Yeah, Im sure you would get a very nice pattern out of that. They are called internal patch antennas mate. They are made in such a way as to point AWAY from your head. Use a GSM phone and you'll be fine. They have an 8 to 1 crest factor.
If you used a housing as a antenna, any time you touched it, it would change the properties. The math alone to make an antenna like that would be insane. Motorola had a hard enough time back with the v60 figuring in the load of your fingure when you naturally touched the antenna sticking out. this is several factors more complex then that.
They do nothing!
That cell phone radiation does cause problems in brain tissue....in rats. I can't help but shake my head in dismay when I read one of these sorts of "findings". Where they take some rats, or other animal, do some tests, claim something and expect us to extrapolate that to humans accurately. It reeks of bad scientific methodology to me. Of course, that doesn't mean that cellphone radiation doesn't cause problems in people, it just means they should do real, scientific tests.
Do we really need a research study to tell us the obvious?
But suppose studies really come out, the public sees them and realizes cell phones are bad for us, do you really think people would stop using cell phones? I don't think they would, not until there is a better alternative. Hm, this just make me think of Windows. We have alternatives there, and it is still very hard for a lot of people to stop using Windows and switch to something better.
Simpy
That's very interesting; although I'm not sure I believe you. Can you provide any links to any information on the internet to anyone else that can demonstrate this ability?
If not, this woman could be a key scientific link between EMF radiation and biological organisms. (EMF actually causes or changes neurological activity.) Better make sure she doesn't "take a long vacation" and no one hears from her again.
The sky can crack and leak radiation. Its called the ozone hole and such holes are now a factor above both poles, although more of a factor over the southern pole.
I don't know about the cancer part but it seems there is abundant evidence to suggest that cell phone seems to impair the ability of drivers.
I'm pretty sure that accidents caused by cell phones by drivers is way up, but I don't think it will produce any legislation until some mobile phone company CEO or politician is killed by one of them, before there is much discussion about fixing the problem.
Why should they give a shit about US consumers when there are a zillion Chinese consumers ready, eager, and waiting to replace them?
Get real man, its the new republican religion, f--- the sukers and to hell with the consequences. As long as it makes money, its great stuff.
They nuked a rat for 2 hours and its DNA was damaged. Well hell. What a freakin' shocker.
Really now. This is kinda like artificial sweetener research, and any other research performed on rats. If you replace a rat's blood with artificial sweetener, of course it'll die. I'm amazed this method is still acceptable as solid scientific research.
that the cels are malignant.
There is no reason to assume that a thicker skull would diminish the kind of radiation damage we are talking about here, because it passes relatively unimpeded through the the differences in skull thickness at issue here. There may be some magnitude difference, but one might expect that it only need to exceed some small threshold level to initiate cancer. Besides, if you look at Li's studies he did not force the rats to hold the head sets directly next to their crania to acheive the effect, so his radiation does are likely to be in fact much lower than most cell phone users exposed themselves to.
As for your arguments with regard to blood flow and a more complex meninges, its difficlt to see how these are relevant to DNA damage at a cellular level. While we may not be rats, we are genetically extremely similar to them. It is for that reason, and the facts they are largely unloved creatures that reproduce quickly and are easy to grow in large numbers for research purposes, that their study has revealed much of what we know about HUMAN biology.
I just love it when non-scientists try to play scientist. At a cellular level one would be hard pressed to establish that the effects of gross radiation, effecting subcellular structure would be materially different in any mammal, since generally speaking with regard to phenomena at this level of organization, the genes that encoding development and production of most molecules manufactured in the body, particularly those associated with DNA replication (whether it be a newt or a Newt Gingrich) differ only by a very few site subsitutions across all mammals, if at all.
While its nice to live in a fantasyland, reality can at times complicate things.
Given the way repulicans in congress are so busy accepting campaign contributions from industry lobbyists, the probability of massive lawsuits occurring is becoming extremely remote.
It is doubtful such suits will ever again occur, even if corporations were found to be observed on live video feeds torturing the last few dissenting voices into confessing that smoking is not only safe but actually good for your health.
The important point is that the amount of radiation you receive from a source decreases as the inverse of the distance squared. So if you are an inch away from your phone and a mile away from the city, the city would have to be radiating four billion times as much power to cause the same damage.
The experimental methodology is simple: stick a mobile phone-like source of radiation in a fixed distance and then examine the cells (with specific DNA damage markers) to see if anything happened. I could try putting my cell phone close to a test tube and call repeatedly and see if I get some DNA damage (that would be very very sloppy and un-scientific, of course).
Things become quite complicated after that because you simply cannot generalize a statement like "Mobile causes DNA damage in fibroblasts" to "Mobile causes cancer in humans". The inverse is also true "Mobile does not damage fibroblast DNA after 10mins of exposure" does not necessarily imply that "Mobile is safe for children to make 4-hour calls every day". I'd bet, however, that the media would go wild over any remotely interesting link between mobiles and DNA.
Finally, as a side note, there are many, many things that damage DNA. The amount of exposure is crucial to determine whether a mutagen is practically dangerous. For those worrying I'd suggest to stop smoking first instead.
P.
...a few years ago now, I watched a very pretty young lass receive a mobile 'phone call while she tood at a bus shelter nattering with her buddies. She was wearing her mobile phone clipped to the outside of her left front pocket, and her handbag - carried on her left hip - had pushed it as far right as it would go. To get it any closer to her gonads, she'd have to tuck it inside the belt.
It rang.
It was set to vibrate as well as sing.
The handbag was pressing down fairly hard on it.
The yelp was audible for several blocks, and she leapt more than a foot into the air (lucky her, she was standing just outside the bus shelter, else the negative effect on her health would have been fairly immediate).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...supporting that assertion?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You didn't even look, did you? Lazy, presumptuous sod! (-:
Note especially the 4th paragraph below the picture of the airliner.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Or any high-level managers/directors??
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Muja power plant in Collie, Western Australia, burns 4 million tonnes of coal each year. The coal contains 3ppm of uranium. Where does all of the U go? The coal is also mined pretty much on the spot. That mining releases radon.
Western Australia would be a far cleaner, lower-radiation place if we built a nuclear reactor, but the squawk that happens when you suggest this is amazing. If a nuke powerplant lost 12 kilos of U, the hullaballoo would be audible in Florida, but a coal-fired station burns 12 tonnes of it every year and there's silence. Go figure.
Oh, yes, and they recently built a second coal-fired powerplant down there. <thwack!>
I think if you're expecting the whole risks and reactions thing to make sense, you could die waiting.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Specifically because once killed, a brain-cell stays dead. There's not much replacement going on.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I was visiting different offices in England setting up security and building communications. At some certain offices, I always get a bad headache after working for a day. At other offices, I have no problem. This went on for a while before I found out the ones I had headaches were the one that had cell towers.
Good thing another job came up.
The idea that our body must be damaged by force in order for there to be malfunction would only be correct if we were a static mechanical entity.. that is not alive and constantly changing and responding.
It has been demonstrated that the delicate blood/brain barrier filter opens or is perforated by cell phone radiation, leading to proteins (primarily albumin) leaking into brain tissues. These proteins then cause great damage to neural tissue. (research references)
There are many real situations where cellphone radiation is concentrated.. metal subway cars with many cell carrying passengers for instance. So all the rational pencil pushing in the world can't claim to be accurate without empirical evidence of the devices operation in the field.
also another good link page
Actually, there is a device that does this: http://www.lessemf.com/specials.html
Scroll down, it's called "Smart&Safe". Somewhat of a hokey site but full of cool shit. I found it after noticing that my phone displayed more signal bars with the standard earpiece attached.
Wow, someone who truly could benefit from a tinfoil hat....
You're missing the forest for the trees. That mechanism you introduced as far fetched with 'maybe, maybe' is far less intricate than the immune system.
/are/ scientifically proven routes to cancer other than DNA damage. DNA damage occurs naturally, it also depends on how well you repair it or do away with cells that have gone astray.
In the vast majority of cases, cancer cells are killed by your immune system before they get a chance to develop into tumors. So it only takes an agent to subtly affect your immune system (is a psychological mood subtle enough for you) to allow for an increase in cancer.
Don't invoke that "doesn't ionize, so doesn't harm" too soon!
A propos, I think that cancer is vastly overrated as an endpoint in studies about new chemical or physical agent. "If it doesn't cause cancer, it's harmless", seems to be the line of thinking. Ritalin, Seroxat, Prozac don't cause cancer, but I wouldn't dream about taking them if I haven't developed any of the conditions for which they're prescribed.
What I think is much more important than cancer in the context of the wireless revolution is whether all that electromagnetic noise could raise the noise floor in your brain, killing subtle thoughts, creativity and inspiration.
It wouldn't surprise me if antennae turn out to be the factory chimneys of the 21st century. We're in a "hooray, we've found an unlimited new toy" stage right now, and it'll probably take a few years before we move to lower power levels, and probably more importantly, more carefully chosen signal envelopes and/or modulation types to avoid interfering with the human brain.
The brain was constructed before EMC guidelines were in effect, so it may not be all that resilient against interference.
That attitude "I can't see a mechanism, so it can't be true" is so thoroughly un-scientific, especially if there
Cheers,
Emile
All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)
Why is there no stink about simple cordless phones? Don't they operate in the frequency range technically considered to be microwaves, around 2.4GHz? Doesn't this constitute a microwave transmitter being pressed agaisnt your head? Granted, I'm guessing that the power levels in cordless phone transmitters are MUCH lower than in cell phones, but isn't the article dealing with prolonged, long-term exposure to low-powered microwave transmitters?
Isn't that what Siemens is proposing in one of their newer phones still in development to increase connectivity?
bruise head, possibly damage head and/or neck.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Way to go - the study you're citing below to support your half-baked opinion is about 50/60Hz EMF from power lines! Wave too long, indeed - by more than 7 orders of magnitude. You, sir, are talking out of your ass. Period.
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
Penn and Teller are not nearly as wise as they believe.
-FL
Remember the story where Ford new full well about a defect where activation of the left turn signal could cause a gas tank explosion? This was on a vehicle where a lot of copies of that car were sold.
The defect didn't manifest every time, but was definitely reproducible at some percentage rate.
Ford's decision on whether to recall was purely monitary: Would the worst case litigation / cost of payout (if someone in the public ever discovered the class problem, say by numerous people dying in specatacular fireballs) be higher or lower than the cost of (and loss of face with respect to) a nation wide recall.
They chose to say silent because it was "cheaper." People died. A whistle-blower finally brought it to light.
Anyone remember this, and what happened next?
This just in... BREATHING causes CANCER! Save yourself, stop breathing NOW!
Knight37 - Once a Gamer, Always a Gamer
Tell your woman friend she should be a flight attendant, that way she can enforce the "turn off all electronic devices" rule. Also, for her living arrangement, I suggest she repaints her flat/apartment with that cell-phone blocking paint mentioned here in the past. Alternately, she could just move out into the country.