Study Shows Cell Phones Safe

PreacherTom writes "In a move worthy of the Mythbusters, scientists in Denmark tracked over 420,000 cell phone users over the course of 21 years in an attempt to determine if the urban legend that cell phone use causes cancer is true. Their results: the RF energy produced by the phones did not correlate to an increased incidence of the disease. Please note that this doesn't make chatting on the highway at 85 mph any more safe." From the article: 'This so-called Danish cohort "is probably the strongest study out there because of the outstanding registries they keep,' said Joshua Muscat of Pennsylvania State University, who also has studied cell phones and cancer. 'As the body of evidence accumulates, people can become more reassured that these devices are safe, but the final word is not there yet,' Muscat added."

Comments

They didnt let the facts get in the way before,

[topham]

why start now?

Re:They didnt let the facts get in the way before,

[WillAffleckUW]

One study does not a conclusion make. Usually, in scientific research, you need three independent studies before most scientists will draw a conclusion.

My question is - who paid for this study? Was it Nokia (caveat, I own shares in them) or some other cell phone firm?

Re:They didnt let the facts get in the way before,

[Chris Mattern]

> One study does not a conclusion make.

That depends on the study...most importantly, on its size. 21 years and 450,000 subjects makes for a pretty damn solid conclusion. And where are the studies that show any other conclusion?

Chris Mattern

_other_ parts of the body

[7macaw]

I carry my cell phone in my pants pocket. Is it safe?

Re:_other_ parts of the body

[edwardpickman]

If you're worried about sterility you're on /. mate, no worries.

Re:_other_ parts of the body

[TrappedByMyself]

I carry my cell phone in my pants pocket. Is it safe?

Yeah, I do too, but only because I keep it on vibrate mode

Misleading title...

[Lunar_Lamp]

Even the summary of the article doesn't agree with the title of the article. Whilst I am of the opinion that mobile phones are safe, it is impossible to prove it. It is possible to demonstrate that it is almost certainly not the case, but it is impossible to demonstrate to a mathematical certainty that mobile phones (or any other treatment, e.g. medication, having blonde hair, being called Fred) is safe.

What about for driving?

[D4rk Fx]

They didn't take into effect the amount of vehicular accidents that are caused by inattentive cell phone drivers. This is probably the most unsafe aspect of them

Mythbusters?

[camperdave]

Knowing Mythbusters, they had to somehow crank up a cell phone to a ludicrous level to induce cancer. Poor Buster! Still, it might make for an interesting episode.

Mythbusters != science

[mollymoo]

In a move worthy of the Mythbusters, [...]

If I had an important paper published in a respected scientific journal and someone told me my work was 'worthy of the Mythbusters' I'd punch them in the face.

And what of it?

[Sycraft-fu]

That's true with anything, including that what you see is real. I don't have the time or the energy to teach you basic philosophy but this is not a new debate. Descartes thought about it, and many have after him. For the best modern thought on how scientific method works and how we prove things empirically, get the Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper.

Re:21 years?

[geekoid]

If the cell phones 20 years ago didn't cause cancer, then todays less powerfull phones certianly do not.

Re:21 years?

[Jott42]

Sweden (not Denmark, but close) did start an analog cell phone network in 1981: the NMT system. The system was standardised to be the same within the nordic countries, of which Denmark is one. (Japan started even earlier, in 1979)
It is not always correct to assume that USA is on the edge of technology development and deployment.

Not at all like MythBusters

[thirty-seven]

This is not at all a "move worthy of MythBusters" as the submitter stated. Mythbusters is entertaining and generally informative television, and this Danish study sounds solid, but the methodologies are totally different, for the obvious reason that sifting through hundreds of thousands of medical records accumulated over many years and applying complex statistical models to them does not make for compelling television.

Re:Stupid

[SEMW]

You know, I can smoke one cigarette a week for 15 years, then a pack a week for the remaining 5 years and probably not get lung cancer and the end of that 20 year time period. That doesn't exactly mean that smoking isn't harmful. Perfectly true, you probably won't get lung cancer. However, if instead of considering just yourself, you survey 420,000 people over that same 20 years, the incidence of lung cancer among that group will be very much higher than a control group. It's called a scientific study. In fact, TFA is about a scientific study exactly like that one! What a coincidence.

Putting a device that emits radiation next to your head is harmful. And you could give me what evidence for that statement? What study are you quoting? Or did you just make it up on the spot? I'm guessing the latter.

Re:Stupid

[SEMW]

I kind of thought it was common sense that radiation is harmful. I didn't think we still needed studies to prove this. OK, facts of life talk. Long to medium range electromagnetic radiation is everywhere, all the time. The Sun emits a hell of a lot of it in a Planck distribution, only a few narrow bands of which are absorbed by the atmosphere. Anywhere you could turn on a radio and hear a station, that means you are bathed in man made radio waves (whether you have a radio or not) -- and even when you can't hear a station, there's still a hell of a lot of natural radio waves around (which a radio hears as static). Moving higher up the spectrum; low energy microwaves are coming down at us from every corner of the universe; it's called the Cosmic Microwave Background. Infrared is, of course, only a step into the sunlight away (or in front of a fire, etc.). And then you get visible light -- also a form of EM radiation (radiation is dangerous? better turn off that light-bulb!). Not to mention *anything* that glows when hot approximates a black-body, emitting visible light, infrared, microwaves, and radio waves. That light-bulb is emitting not only visible light, but also infrared and microwaves (and negligible amounts of UV). Better get that tin-foil hat on -- remember, "it's common sense that radiation is harmful"...

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen"
-- Albert Einstein

If cellphones caused cancer...

[patio11]

... then we would be talking about the nation of Japan in the past tense. I rest my case.

It's not about Cancer.

[Fantastic Lad]

It never was.

It's about fuzzing the brain.

Please pardon the bold face, but it seems this subject calls for it. . .

The blood-brain barrier becomes permeable when exposed to EM cell phone frequencies. This is shown by injecting dye into the blood of rats and exposing them to cell phone EM. The short version: control groups don't end up with dyed brains while the exposed groups do. This experiment has been repeated numerous times.

--Now aside from an artificially permeable blood-brain barrier making your brain more susceptible to whatever agents happen to be in your blood at the time, the really interesting question people should be instantly asking is, "How does cell phone EM cause this to happen?"

And better yet, "What OTHER cellular responses are stimulated by cell phone EM?"

This isn't rocket science. It's simply a matter of taking the data as it comes, remembering it as you read more articles, and applying it in a logical fashion to form more questions.

Why the heck is everybody so caught up by the Cancer question when there is OBVIOUSLY something else important going on?

-FL

Re:Stupid

[SEMW]

You would be correct. According to Wikipedia, Humans emit around 95 Watts with a peak wavelength of 9500nm (infrared). For reference, the equivalent numbers for mobile phones are 0.6W and around 30cm.

The question now is... Are you giving your mobile phone cancer? :)