NYC Subway Cell Service, No Cell-Related Cancer

Luke PiWalker wrote to mention a CNN article discussing a bid process for offering cell phone service to NYC subway stations. The contract is only to wire up stations; moving trains will not have service. Those New Yorkers will also be safe from their phones, as the BBC reports on a study indicating cell phones don't cause cancer. From that article, submitted to us by Dan Hope: "She acknowledged that there appeared to be an increased risk among brain cancer sufferers on the side of the head where they held the phone. The team, however, did not put this down to a causal link, because almost exactly the same decreased risk was seen on the other side of the head, leaving no overall increase risk of tumours for mobile phone users. Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on."

Comments

How hard would it be?

[EVil Lawyer]

I'm curious to hear from someone who knows--how difficult would it be (in terms of what kind of technology would it require, and relatively how expensive compared to stantionary-wiring would it be) to have service in the trains, too?

Re:How hard would it be?

[Alex P Keaton in da]

The Metro in DC has cell service in Trains. I am not sure how they do it, but that would be a good place to research to see how it is done.

Re:How hard would it be?

[Biomechanical]

Actually, servicing a subway train would not require antenna's all along the tunnels.

You put a cell-receiver in the train, and run communication signals from the train through radio signals out the tracks, the same as you can control model trains on a DCC setup railway, or do IP over powerlines.

moving trains will not have service

[denisbergeron]

Well, It's a good beginning, but in downtown Montreal we have cell services even in the Métro (subway) train !

Buenos Aires has coverage on all the network

[elfarto]

Buenos Aires had coverage in the whole subway (it's called "Subte" over here) network for the last 5 years, they have upgraded to GSM last year, the cell equipment underground is provided by Nokia.

Why the focus only on cancer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, that's great news. If cancer was the only thing to worry about. How about other diseases (mad cell phone users disease) or other imparements? How about testing IQ (or your test of choice) before cell phone use, and then 1-5 years later for those who are "heavy" users? Seems to me there could be a whole litany of potential issues that have nothing to do with cancer that are being ignored.

maybe it's not the cell phones?

[ZWarrior]

Maybe the problem isn't that the phone cause the tumors, but rather your hand preference. Think about it. Most people will, a majority of the time, use their dominant hand to hold the cell phone when talking on it. So of course the tumor that supposedly is caused by the phone is also going to match up to their dominant had as well. So maybe this is about your dominant hand being the deciding factor in the location NOT the phone!

What percent of persons using a cell phone have developed a tumor in the first place? I think that with the massive use of cell phones in our culture, and the lower numbers of tumors in the same population, we are going to find that there is probably not a real strong correlation.

Re:non-users adds bias

[Dun Malg]

What you have left is simple: does the cancer happen on one side more than the other? Well, yes it does. That's enough to say that cell phones are almost certainly affecting the cancer.

But you are missing the entire point of the study. They found that there was a corresponding drop in cancer on the side of the head where the cancer wasn't, in comparison to a control group of one-side cancers who don't use cell phones. In other words, cell phones aren't causing elevated levels of one-side brain cancer, cell phone users with one-side brain cancer are (intentionally or unintentionally) erroneously claiming the cancer side is the side where they used their cell phone most.