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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."
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? ;-)
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Oh great. Leave the phone in your pocket where it will damage the DNA you pass on to your children.
Bravo - great idea!
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!
We'll all find out later in life when we're 40 and slobbering all over ourselves and mumbling incoherent nothings.
You're new around here aren't you?
: 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
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.
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....
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 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.
A bluetooth headset needs to have anough power to reach you phone 10 meters away.
A cellphone need to reach the next antenna which may be 5 kilometers away.
There is a radical difference in signal strength here.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
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
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.
I agree. Its current status is about the same as cold fusion. Right now we have a bunch of scattered hard-to-explain and hard-to-reproduce results in the literature, mostly in minor journals, and it doesn't really seem to be going anywhere. It could easily all be artifact. What is needed to give this field some credibility is some real progress on the question of mechanism.
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.
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