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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.
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.....
What is this, global warming?
So 100 studies say there are no problems. And 100 say there are problems.
So there must be problems!
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!
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.
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...
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?
I think its a valid starting point though. The question is "does the electromagnetic frequency used for cellphones have the ability to interfere with biomechanical processes?" and the answer would be 'yes'.
The next step would be to test on higher-evolved species and mammals (e.g. guinea pigs, cats, eventually primates) to iron out the concerns you've identified. Most likely by the time it reaches humans this will not be a relevant matter... but at least there is some preliminary evidence that would suggest further testing is required.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
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 issue isnt't that we have different phyiology. The fact that radiation can cause DNA damage in anything is proof enough. The only thing that would matter is that it would take longer for radiation to make the same effect
Due to financial difficulties, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.
Uh, which broadcasts at the same freq and more power than the phones. Try again.
Questions:
Answer: because cell phone radiation doesn't cause cancer at any rate appreciable from statistical noise, IF AT ALL.
Do you realize the gasolene vapor and diesel fumes are far more likely to give you cancer, that they're both known, proven, undisputed carcinogens?
Please help metamoderate.
". . .maybe he's on to something?"
Or maybe he's just a fruitcake. The behavior of a researcher is no indication that his results are valid, just that he believes them, and just because some early quantum theorist started wearing "quantum snowshoes" to keep himself from falling through the floor doesn't mean I have to feel in any jeopardy of doing the same.
People, even researchers, are capable of believing all sorts of doofy shit, especially that shit they have produced themselves. Or Perhaps he has a brain the size of a rat's.
Personally wearing headphones doesn't work though, as I suffer far more brain damage from the emanations from the headphones than I ever could from those of the phone itself.
KFG
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.
Just because something is being used for a long(ish) period of time does not mean that it is safe. People have been getting cancer a greater rate over the last century than ever before. While it can be hard to point to the cause of the cancer in some cases, you can't blindly say "people have been talking on land-line phones for the last 100 years, so they must be safe".
Assumptions are not *studies*.
--JLockard - "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." - Emo Phillips
The goggles are actually protection from a well known thermal effect of microwaves (cataracts). Goggles aren't some new idea in protecting from a previously unknown danger of microwave exposure. The OP is off his rocker.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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.
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.
Can you point us at a cancer rate by nation breakdown? Just curious, I spent a few minutes googling for one without success.
Well, let's be fair: the microwave oven is designed to keep its emissions inside.
It's certainly difficult to isolate from the risk factors we bathe ourselves in daily, yes.
I would guess that people who walk around with their cell-phone glued to their head all the time are likely to be type-A personalities with more significant lifestyle factors.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Too early to tell. Cancer is usually about 10years in development. We will see.
See above, plus the phone towers are very far away compared to the phone in your hand. The inverse square law again.
Because cell phones are new. New stuff is always blamed for all sorts of things. Plus the US system of civil suits are severely broken, so it sometimes pays to sue more or less randomly.
Because tin foil hats can't spell? It's probably something like Dinitroamino ethanolamine or similar. And google is not the best place to find chemical data (=such data tend to cost money).
You are probably right, but we can't conclude this quite yet. Ask again in 10 years.
Are you seriously suggesting that people give up their holy cows^H^H^H^Hcars instead of going after big corporations?
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
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.
SuperBanana writes: Answer: because cell phone radiation doesn't cause cancer at any rate appreciable from statistical noise, IF AT ALL.
Not necessarily. Some cancers take their time in developing, and some require a fair amount of exposure to toxins, etc., before a cancer is triggered. It may be that we will see rates soar in the next ten-twenty years, once time of exposure + time for appreciable harm to occur adds up to cancer. It may also be that there are other, much more subtle forms of damage, forms that are not cancer but which lead to equally unpleasant and debilitating diseases/syndromes/etc.
brwski
"Because without beer, things do not seem to go as well''
It isn't just about manifested cancer but damage to the cells period. Regardless if it eventually leads to cancer or not.
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.
Can you point us at a cancer rate by nation breakdown? Just curious, I spent a few minutes googling for one without success.
I managed to find this after a few minutes of googling myself. I guess your success can depend on your googling skillz. It seems that overall cancer rates show no noticeable correlation with cell phone usage--Japan and Korea are in the middle to lower end of the scale in fact, at least in comparison to natinos not known for such widespread cellphone usage.
In any case, the data is for overall cancer rates, not brain cancer specifically. In fact, brain cancer is quite uncommon in comparison to lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, lymphoma, etc. It seems quite silly to me to worry about the cancer risk of cellphones when things like tobacco smoke and industrial toxins are much more obvious problems to worry about.
Well, let's be fair: the microwave oven is designed to keep its emissions inside.
What is unfair about a comparison to microwave ovens? Or household cordless phones or wi-fi access points for that matter? They all emit high-frequency radiation. And yes, microwaves are shielded and meant to CONTAIN radiation, but they are not perfect. If they were, then setting your wireless access point too close to a running microwave oven wouldn't mess up your network access (it does--my cordless phone didn't play nice with the oven either). Keep in mind that a typical cellphone emits less than a watt of power and a microwave oven is over a thousand times more powerful. The shielding may be 99.9% effective, but even at that rate the oven will emit radiation at rates on the same scale as that of a cellphone (this is not just a wild guess--microwave ovens may emit up to 5 mW per cm^2 from its outside surface, as measured from 5cm from that surface).
It's certainly difficult to isolate from the risk factors we bathe ourselves in daily, yes.
I think that researchers could conduct a study that proved ANYTHING caused cancer, and that a lot of these studies are influenced by pre-conceived prejudices--it is a goal to establish some link to cancer then muck with the study until there is evidence to back that link. There isn't a substance in the world that could not harm us if misused, and any data could be interpreted to sound urgent. Ever seen the parody site about "dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO)"? There are no lies in that site at all, but it makes DHMO (better known as pure water) sound like a dangerous toxin.
Truth is, it is quite EASY to isolate some obvious risk factors. When people live and work around synthetically produced chemicals that'll make your eyes water and give you a headache, or you notice a town that has 5 times the cancer rate of the rest of the nation, then it's pretty easy to figure out there is a problem there. But this cellphone thing? We've had 20 years to look at this, and there've been no big cancer clusters, no obvious cause-and-effect relationship, etc, and studies that have been made indicate no solid consensus. I think there are much more important things to worry about right now.
...supporting that assertion?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing