Slashdot Mirror
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."
: 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
put in your pocket and damage the DNA of, er, something else...???
Be careful: Some headsets are used as antennas for the cell phone. That would contradict the goal you are trying to achieve.
Perhaps a bluetooth headset can minimize the energy which your DNA in the brain has to absorb.
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....
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.
Umm - why did you decide to exclude the rest of the information?
From TFA:
Lai says there have been about 200 studies on the biological effects of cell-phone-related radiation. If you put all the ones that say there is a biological effect on one side and those that say there is no effect on the other, you'd have two piles roughly equal in size. The research splits about 50-50.
"That, in and of itself, is alarming," Lai says. But it's not the whole story. If you divide up the same 200 studies by who sponsored the research, the numbers change.
"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. "Then, if you look at the industry-funded research, it's almost opposite--only one out of every four papers shows an effect."
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
"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. "Then, if you look at the industry-funded research, it's almost opposite--only one out of every four papers shows an effect."
Ever try to get a null result published?
I believe that industry-sponsored research is biased. But simply because research is not industry-sponsored does not mean it is not biased.
In particular, what a scientist wants to see in an experiment is a positive effect, an non-null result. I've seen people (in genetics, as it happens) do terrible things to their data to get a non-null result, and carefully massage the statistics to make a result that deviates from the null hypothesis by a miniscule amount look significant.
Why?
Because it's a hell of a lot easier (to say nothing of more personally satisifying) to do all this work, kill all these rats, and at the end of the day be able to say something more interesting than, "Nothing to see here, move along..."
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Proteins and enzymes, and probably even DNA (IANABC) rely heavily on steric (shape) effects to do their work. Why cannot microwaves cause a molecule to flip and turn into a stereoisomer of itself ?
Consider the horrors of, for example, prions such as those that cause CJD. Here is an example of a simple stereoisomer of a protein, wreaking havoc by its mere presence causing the production of more of the wrong stereoisomer.
So, Maybe if microwave radiation does not affect DNA, what about the proteins found around it that function to repair and monitor damage ? How about turning them into stereoisomers and stopping them from functioning ?
Be careful: Some headsets are used as antennas for the cell phone. That would contradict the goal you are trying to achieve.
Actually, apparently all headset wires will act as an antenna for cell phone signals, even in models where that's not part of the designed functionality. Studies have shown that using a wired headset can increase your exposure to cell phone radiation by up to 3X. However, clipping a ferrite bead on the wire is suffcient to dampen radio coming off it to negligible levels. These beads are really easy to find online.
Perhaps a bluetooth headset can minimize the energy which your DNA in the brain has to absorb.
A bluetooth headset does use significantly less
power than a cell phone. I believe the SAR for a bluetooth headset is less than 0.1 W as opposed to the 0.6-1.2 W for an average digital cell phone.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Try googling for "Nitrosodiethanolamine", genius.
Yes, heart cancer is extremely rare. Heart cells are post mitotic; they do not divide. Considering that cancer is the result of too much cell division, the rarity of heart cancer makes sense.
The flip side is how little the heart can repair itself. Recovery from heart attacks is consequently poor. Heart tissue dies, and it stays dead. The undamaged heart muscle can compensate somewhat. The dead tissue may weaken and even rupture. Using stem cells to regrow heart tissue may work someday. A few clinical reports have been promising.
Lung cancer would be rare, although not as rare as heart cancer, if not for cigarette smoking.
I don't actually doubt the fundamental idea of your post. That things such as radium clock dials and x-ray shoe size machines were potentially harmful and that today we consider them stupid. People in the future could very well consider our current generation's cell phone usage stupid. But I want to point out the scientific fallacies that your post.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding about the word radiation in everyday speech. The most general definition is the transmission of energy through a medium. So a campfire generating heat is giving off radiation. The light coming off of your computer monitor is your CRT emitting radiation. When people say radiation they can mean a lot of different things. More confusing are when you add terms like radioactive.
When a nuclear particle such as radium or iridium decays it gives of particles. These particles were given the names alpha, beta, and gamma by early physicists. Today we know that nuclear decays give off helium nuclei (alpha), electrons (beta), photons (gamma), and neutron (no Greek name). When a particle decays some of it's energy is carried off into space by these particles. It is this loss of energy by an emission of a particle that is called radiation. Perhaps a more precise term is "nuclear radiation." When an element naturally gives off radiation it is called radioactive. All four of these particles can do harmful damage to human tissue. However, alpha particles are so heavy that even your clothes (and even air) can block their transmission.
Beta, gamma, and neutrons can be dangerous because they can cut your DNA strands in the nucleus of your cells. Although you cells can repair a cut strand, exposure to thousands of particles can cut a strange many times, which results in the cell being unable to divide, and the death of said cell. Now I've only described one type of damage that can occur. The human body is a complex mechanism that can receive complex radiation damage. I am not an expert in this field.
The word radiation becomes confusing when you move to the realm of photons. Recall that the electro-magnetic spectrum is made up of frequencies ranging from the very high (gamma-rays, x-rays) to the very low (radio waves). When your turn on a light bulb, the photons that are emitted are in the visible and infrared ranges. That is why you see "light" and feel "heat." Radiation is responsible for both of these phenomenon. In this case radiation refers to the emission of photons with energy. The amount of energy emitted is described by a very simple formula:
So high energy photons, such as gammas that nuclear decays emit, carry a lot of energy. This is why gamma-rays and x-rays can be harmful. But low frequency waves such as infrared, microwaves, and radio waves carry much lower amounts of energy. The difference between a gamma-ray and a microwave can be almost 10 orders of magnitude.
Cells phones transmit their signals on microwaves. Cell towers emit radiation in the form a microwave photons and cells phone also emit radiation in the form of microwave photons. I use the term microwaves here not because the frequency of the cell phone transmission is the same as the waves in your kitchen microwave, but because they are higher in frequency than radio waves but smaller in freq. than infrared waves. They carry much less energy than the x-rays mentioned in your post. Cell phones also don't emit any alpha, beta, or neutrons in appreciable numbers.
So after reading all this are cell phones dangerous because they emit photons? Does the energy of said photons affect the human brain? I have no idea. But I just want you (guys) to understand the physics behind the word radiation. As we see it took a long post to explain what exactly a word that is often used but frequently misunderstood.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! pwhew. I'm sorry, it's out of my system now, really, I promise. The idea that microwave ovens operate at 2.45Ghz because this is a resonant line of water and it absorbs most strongly here is some kind of pernicious zombie urban legend from hell that will not die! It's just totally incorrect. There is no particular resonant line for water here at all.(search for "resonant" in the page) For a good visualization of how microwaves heat things (any molecule with a dipole charge) look at this very cheesy but useful site.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"