Slashdot Mirror
Testing Cell Phone Radiation on Humans
Palm Addict writes "News.com reports that Finland's radiation watchdog is to study the effects of mobile phones on human proteins by direct tests on people's skin. From the article: 'A pilot study, to be conducted next week, will expose a small area of skin on volunteers' arms to cell phone radiation for the duration of a long phone call, or for one hour, research professor Dariusz Leszczynski said on Friday.'"
They'll discover that the phones have a small heating effect, 1 C, as required by a)basic phystics and b)regulations. They will conclude whatever they have already assumed, i.e. that this is dangerous/not dangerous, without any actual experimentation having been done on that particular question.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
...would be the reaction of the world if these things really do cause cancer. Would we just deal with the risk? Rebuild all the towers to use frequencies that don't penetrate human skin? Give up cell phones altogether? Would insurance companies hike your rates if you use a cellphone?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It's non-ionizing radiation.... people have been putting these things by their heads for hours on a daily basis... show me one potential case of burn via cell signal.
Alternating magnetic fields aren't generally considered ionizing radiation either, but rat studies have shown that they can cause an iron-mediated peroxide reaction that causes DNA strand breakage in rat neurons.
Just because radio waves cannot directly break carbon bonds like UV radiation and higher doesn't necessarily mean that they're harmless. There's an entire field of study in how microwaves catalyze and otherwise alter chemical reactions. A lack of gross physical effects like burns does not mean that radio waves cannot be disturbing cellular chemistry in signficantly more subtle ways.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
IAPS and it's indeed very unlikely that cellular phone radiation can cause cancer. At least, it can not work on the same principles as is normal with ionizing radiation (as it's not). But what many people seem to forget, that any free electric charge does interact with radiation. Water is strongly polarized molecule, and many physiological reactions are ion-based. So any electromagnetic wave can indeed have a very small effect on the biology. I'm _not_ implying that it is enough to cause cancer, or any disease whatsoever. But indeed such an effect can exist, although it may be very hard to find in any simple studies. That's what makes studying complex interactions difficult -- anything can change the results, temperature for example.
All the above does not make such studies unwarranted. If ever it is possible to learn something new, it's worth studying. The bad thing with these cellular phone radiation studies is the panic they may cause. But, I hope that people keep their heads cool (no pun intended).
1. Radiation that has the resonant frequency of molecular bonds can give a LOT of energy to the molecules that make us up. That's how a microwave oven works. The EM waves have the same frequency as the resonant frequency for water molecules.
No, vibrational resonances in molecular bonds are in the range 30--100 THz (that is a factor 20,000 above the 2.4 GHz in a microwave oven). And exciting a vibrational mode is not enough to break a molecule. Electronic resonances are even higher, in the visible light. A kitchen microwave works by forcing the water molecules to rotate. The resulting friction is what appears as heat.
2. Radiation can kick off electrons (beta particles) or protons (alpha particles).
This is utter nonsense. Alpha particles are helium nuclei (not protons) that are emitted by the nucleus in certain types of radioactive decay. Electromagnetic radiation is not going to trigger this type of decay. Same for beta decay. However, X-rays (that is EM radiation with a wavelength that is more than 100 times shorter than visible light) can kick out electrons from the shells of an atom, but you don't call that beta decay. But yes, removing electrons from the molecules in your body is unhealthy.
Anyway, just because you cannot think of a mechanism for microwaves to be harmful doesn't mean that there is no such mechanism. For example, a photon of visible light carries way too little energy to synthesize an ATP molecule. Still, plants do manage to produce ATP in photosynthesis because they have a highly complicated molecular light-harvesting system that collects the energy from many photons in order to synthesize a single ATP molecule. Something like that could happen with microwaves: with the help of enzymes, living cells produce all kinds of unstable molecules as an intermediate step that leads to the desired reaction product. In this unstable state, the small energy of a microwave photon might be enough to trip the reaction into the wrong direction.
Don't understand me wrong: I personally don't believe that mobile phone radiation is something to worry about, especially given all the other well-known risks in life that we take(*), but that's not a reason to dismiss the risk based on a wrong understanding of physics.
(*)other risks in life: overweight, excessive consumption of sugar and saturated fats, smoking, participating in traffic, radon gas in houses from rocky soils, sunburn, dangerous situations at home, etc., etc..
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
This study will conclusively show that there is no evidence of damage.
Do you think the Finnish gov't would let any of its agencies jeopardise its biggest, possibly its *only* major, high-tech export company (Nokia)?
So I'm absolutely sure that the terms of the study have been set to make sure it brings in the right verdict. In this case, if they're only studying the skin, anything that happens in the more interesting area under the skin will, of course, be outside their terms of reference.
And this, boys and girls, is how "pure" science is manipulated to commercial or political ends.