Cell Towers Not Responsible For Illness

drewmoney notes a BBC article on a major UK study of whether cell towers (or "mobile phone masts" as they are called in the UK) cause illness. The study concluded strongly that symptoms of illness caused by mobile phone masts are all in the mind. People claiming sensitivity to radio emissions showed more symptoms in trials, according to the article, whether signals were being emitted or not. Quoting: "Dozens of people who believed the masts triggered symptoms such as anxiety, nausea and tiredness could not detect if signals were on or off in trials. However, the Environmental Health Perspectives study stressed people were nonetheless suffering 'real symptoms.' Campaign group Mast Sanity said the results were skewed as 12 people in the trials dropped out because of illness."

Comments

Bad science or bad science reporting?

[nokilli]

Dozens of people who believed the masts triggered symptoms such as anxiety, nausea and tiredness could not detect if signals were on or off in trials.

That's not the test. People can believe and are in fact poisoned by additives in our food and yet if pressed to detect if a given mean contained additives they wouldn't be able to tell.

The obvious way to conduct such a study would be to correlate the incidence of illness with the proximity to radio sources.

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Re:Bad science or bad science reporting?

[GauteL]

Well, you could have bothered to RTFA. People's perception is important because it may be (and the study suggests) that it is people's perception that causes illness.

They tested on both people's perception and symptoms such as sweaty skin and high blood pressure.

They found that people with these symptoms felt unwell regardless of whether the mast was off or not and that they generally had no idea whether the mast was on or off. If they were truly ill from signal sensitivity they should be able to tell whether the mast was on or off depending on their general feeling of well-being.

The effects were, however, real. Thus it seems like a classic case of placebo, but the "Mast sanity" campaign group obviously refuses to acknowledge that this may be psychological effects.

Re:Bad science or bad science reporting?

[Billosaur]

Actually, the best way would be to use subjects which have no subjective bias: rabbits, monkeys, etc. After all, they are trying to test whether or not the masts are causing the symptoms. Mind you, they cannot control for other possible environmental influences, i.e. other sources of radiation, because they are so prevalent and widely varied. The drawback to using animals is that how do you know if they are nauseous or dizzy?

I'm going to save them a lot of trouble and expense and posit that the masts are not causing the symptoms, from the standpoint of radiation exposure, because radiation is all around, in various intensities and wavelengths all the time. While I don't have my old astrophysics textbooks handy and I don't have statistics on cell tower emission strengths, I'm willing to bet the extra amount of radiation from the masts is insignificant compared to the general background radiation and would only pose a threat if it were highly concentrated and you were living in extremely close proximity.

Re:Bad science or bad science reporting?

[nokilli]

And for a sample of two of course the results would be meaningless.

But if out of a sample of 10,000, 5,000 were experiencing toothaches, and it just happened that those same 5,000 were reading slashdot, things would be more interesting.

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Re:Bad science or bad science reporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the irony is: using a mobile phone (as most of the people complaining against masts do) exposes your brain to far more radiation than a mast. And the even bigger irony: if your campaign against a mast succeeds, your mobile phone will be transmitting much more powerfully to reach an unnecessarily distant mast.

Re:Bad science or bad science reporting?

[raddan]

Yes, but no matter how good your sample is, you're still talking about epidemiology. Correlation can help you know where to look, but as so many /.'ers are fond of pointing out, correlation is not causation. You still need to show a mechanism. There is no known mechanism for illness caused by the kind and magnitude of the radiation we're talking about here.

FWIW, there are LOTS of kinds of radiation. Not all of it is bad for us. I love it when people ask me if their monitors (LCDs, mind you) are blasting them with radiation. "Of course," I say, as their eyes widen with fear, "that's the whole point!"

Re:Bad science or bad science reporting?

[Lockejaw]

Actually, this study strongly suggests a lack of correlation:

... when tests were carried out in which neither the experimenter or participant knew if the mast was on or off, the number of symptoms reported was not related to whether a signal was being emitted or not.

Re:Bad science or bad science reporting?

[heyguy]

If it is a long term effect, how could they be so certain that it was caused by cell phone signals?

Re:Bad science or bad science reporting?

[Analogy Man]

Spot on, suppose slashdot reader's have a statistically high affinity to Mountain Dew and Skittles...could the epidemic of toothaches have anything to do with that, rather than Slashdot?

Or getting back to the article, could the people that are claiming sensitivity to EMF, also be sensitive to sun spots, food additives, black cats, nuclear fallout from 1950's atmospheric testing, and any number of other horrors?

Re:Bad science or bad science reporting?

[Tony Hoyle]

There's a correleation between *perception* of closeness to towers and illness.

There are a shitload more cell towers than most people realize.. each tower doesn't have that much range, and each provider has their own. They're also pretty well hidden.. chances are if you're in a built up area you can probably see one out of your window, but you haven't realized yet.

It cuts both ways

[brunes69]

Basically this is how you do a placebo trial. The science is telling us that these people are sick, but it is not due to radio towers, because having the radiation on or off is not making any statistically significant difference at all in their symptoms.

It is the same as when you do a dug trial with 1/2 the people getting sugar pills, and in a huge majority of *both* groups the people get better. You use statistics to find out the *true* efficacy of your medicine.

Basically - the point is the illness could be being caused by any number of other local-specific factors, but cell towers is not the cause.

Re:It cuts both ways

[Lurker2288]

I would say that because of the double blind control, it's clear that the radio signals are not causing the intensification of symptoms that patients report when they believe the signals are on--clearly, they can't tell the difference whether the tower is active or not. But this study doesn't show that long term exposure to the cell towers doesn't cause problems.

For what it's worth, I think it's all a lot of BS, but let's not overstate the evidence of any one experiment.

Not only that...

[Anonymous Coward]

but more cell towers means less radiation, as both the towers and the cell phones can then reduce their transmission power.

Re:Psychological?

[morgan_greywolf]

Absolutely. People can make themselves sick by believing that something is making them sick. Like, if I told you that in studies, reading Slashdot everyday gave people severe headaches, and if you really believed me, you'd start getting headaches. If the brain believes the body is sick, the body will be sick. After all, the brain controls everything in the body, right?

Re:Psychological?

[eggoeater]

You just negated your own argument...how can a wifi dongle give you a headache but a wifi router not?

I think this depends very much on the person and the WiFi transmitter used.

I think it just depends on the person.

Re:The effect does exist!

[eggoeater]

I once worked for a GSM handset manufacturer that had a couple of test BTS in the building and I can tell you that after a day of work there, I was suffering of anxiety, headaches and tiredness, but almost never during weekends. So you're tired and achy at work but feel relaxed on the weekends....

hmmmm.... I often have those same symptoms and I don't work around transmitters.

Who, exactly, funded the study?

[dpbsmith]

I am always leery of articles that do not disclose this early in the article. This article eventually says:

"The study was funded by the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research programme, a body which is itself funded by industry and government."

So, who exactly is the Mobile Telecommunication and Health Research programme? If this were the United States and the study had to do with health effects of nuclear power plants, and if "business and government" meant, say, the EPRI and the "government" agency were the NRC, I'd be very skeptical. On the other hand, if the government agency were the National Institutes of Health, I'd give it a lot of credence.

The Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research programme has a website,, but I can't judge from it whether this is real science or not.

Re:Psychological?

[samkass]

entirely psychological

There is no such thing as symptoms that are "entirely psychological". The cause may not be triggered by the physical interaction of the radio waves with the body, but so-called "psychosomatic" symptoms are still very real. Blood pressure changes, headaches, nausea, nervous system abnormalities, heart palpitations, muscle weakness, dizziness, "cloudy" thinking, sinus pressure, rashes, abdominal pain, diarrhea, insomnia, and many other physical issues can be triggered by stress and non-physical causes. That doesn't make them any less real. The body releases a cocktail of internal signals in response to all sorts of combined internal and external stimulae that cause all sorts of real, scary, and completely physical symptoms.

These people probably need a little counseling and perhaps a month or so of Lexapro to prove to themselves that the cause of their symptoms are not radio waves. Anxiety, depression, and other seratonin-related issues (along with all their physical symptoms) are very curable these days once they are properly diagnosed and the patient is willing to be treated for the root cause.

I am not a doctor.

Place to look for radiation damage

[Jeff1946]

Drive to the top of Mt. Wilson above LA, there are a zillion transmitting towers. The TV towers each put out hundreds of kilowatts of rf. If the birds and squirrels up there are doing ok, then it is hard to understand how a cell tower could cause problems. A friend of mine who used to work on a radio system for taxis up there, said much of his test gear would go crazy due to all the rf. Until someone can show how rf radiation can affect DNA, there is no mechanism for rf to cause cancer.

Re:Place to look for radiation damage

[ZorbaTHut]

Drive to the top of Mt. Wilson above LA, there are a zillion transmitting towers. The TV towers each put out hundreds of kilowatts of rf. If the birds and squirrels up there are doing ok, then it is hard to understand how a cell tower could cause problems.

Despite Mutations, Chernobyl Wildlife Is Thriving

"In Italy around 40 percent of the barn swallows return each year, whereas the annual survival rate is 15 percent or less for Chernobyl," Mousseau said.

Conclusion: Wildlife bounces back, breeds quickly, and is perfectly willing to live in an area where more than half of their population dies of various radiation-related issues every year. Nobody's claiming that TV towers are anywhere near that deadly (even the tinfoil hat people), and therefore the existence of birds and squirrels near TV towers means approximately zero.

Personally, I agree that these people are crazy. But your logic in proving them so is horribly, horribly flawed.

Re:Psychological?

[gad_zuki!]

I think this depends very much on the person and the WiFi transmitter used.

It might. for instance a lot of these symptoms are generic "illness" symptoms. You may have:

1. A person who is just a garden-variety neurotic. Purely pyschosomatic. Or they suffer from a mild form of mental illness but do not know it (manageable bipolar 2, low grade depression, low grade GAD, etc)

2. A person with an undiagnosed thyroid or blood sugar problem. Unfortunately, they have been led to believe that their problems stem from technology, not biology.

3. A person who very sensitive skin. Some people may be able to feel *something* if they are near a transsmitter, but never enough to cause anything like the symptoms described. This something feeling may make them politically sympathetic to people in 1 and 2.

4. Nutters. The typical tin-foil brigade. They may have started as a 1 but have degenerated into this.

5. People who suffer from work or person life related stress. They have real symptoms but its not the cell tower, its their crappy marriage.

I can also imagine that people in groups 1 and 5 may also have their symptoms made worse by actually carrying a cellphone. They know that *anyone* can call them on it, including the people in their lives who stress them out or are at the source of the negative relationships. They also may feel resentment to the "24/7" society and just holding a phone or being near one causes anxiety and a little depression. Seeing the tower only reminds them of this tenfold.

So I think its fair to say its a mixed bag out there. A lot of these people certainly have my sympathy, but they should not be attacking the cell phone companies. They should be angry at themselves for not attending to their personal problems. They should be seeking recourse with a therapist or a doctor. Hopefully, these people will realize that aliens, liberals, taxes, jet contrails, vaccinations, err cell phone towers arent the problem.

What about the TVs?

[LionKimbro]

When I was 12, I'd hang out in the school library reading books on programming.

The programming section of the library was right next to the UFO section of the library, so I got quite a bit of exposure to the cook section, as well. I remember seeing one book, "The Irradiation of America," or something like that. I opened it up, saw all the predictions about how we'd all be dead by now, due to the TV and radio signals flying around.

I asked myself, "What educational value could the library possibly see, in getting this book for us kids to read?"

Now I know.

To the ignorants here: Microwaves are unhealthy

[Qbertino]

I see a lot of wannabees rant about this study being run by oh-so scientific scientists and the wearyness about MW being pushed by unscientify crackpots. And that the sun and radio and tv is more radiation blah blah ...

I've got news for you: Microwaves damage health. Period.
The debate is only about at which intensity do they start doing that.

I generally turn my Wifi of if I'm not using it and have stopped carrying my cellphone close to my body, since it's on all day. I turn it off at night. I also hold it away from my head when I make a call until the cell handshake is over and the remote connect is there. My old Siemens M35 even had a beep to indicate when the connect is there. Smart people the Siemens engineers, aren't they?
Handshake you ask? That's the high-power meep-meep-meep you hear in nearby active FM radios just before you make or recieve a call. It's what establishes the conection to the cell network for communication.

I know a woman who can sense the cellphone handshake (she has e-magnetic field sensetivity) from meters away and has the habbit of anouncing cellphone calls seconds before a phone rings. Fun to watch with unsuspecting others near by :-) . Her life isn't that fun though. When her neighbor above leaves his 20" CRT on she can't sleep. She's got other trouble with that aswell and people often don't believe her and think she's crazy. She's had her sensetivity tested in a university laboratry and senses alternating fields of CRT coils at different angles with different intensity. I personally presume that the origin for this sensitivity is acutally the inner ear which apparently gets affected by magnetic fields (just an amature theory of mine).

On it goes:
My father was a high profile radar electronics engineer - with Military (Nato, Cruise Missile), Airbus, Nasa/Grumman Aircraft (Lunar Module, Skylab & early Space Shuttle) and some others. He forbid us to have a Microwave oven (they ALL leak Microwaves) and steared clear and went the other way whenever we got to close to a radar bubble when going hiking.
There are people who've had terminal brain tumors due to intense cellphone usage and I work with doctors (medical IT) who keep all equipment far away and well cased according to TCO.

Don't think it's not unhealthy just because most people don't care or some Telco funded (sic!) study from the UK says the health issues are all bogus and the people claiming health issues are hysteric. It is scientifically proven that even lower wattrange microwaves predictably lower the threshold for internal blood clot (mw induced heat + blood protein == hardboiled) and influence plant groth. Switzerland (iirc, it was some european country) official acknowledges e-magnetic sensetivity and authorities even funds radio shielding paint and other countermeasures for people who are affected. Whatever you make of that, I, for one, would *not* want to live right in smack of the middle of a directional radio beam or the raycone of a cell transciever. Not with proper shielding anyway.

Bottom line:
It's not about being hysteric or overly paranoid. But a little common sense and forsight is needed when handling technology. You don't get universal flawless wireless connectivity and mobile coverage without a tradeoff. Anyone who believes that is a crackpot himself.

Re:To the ignorants here: Microwaves are unhealthy

[swillden]

I've got news for you: Microwaves damage health. Period.

Evidence? Note: One unsubstantiated anecdote about an unnamed woman who can apparently detect the presence of some devices that transmit EM radiation is not evidence. Odds are that what she's detecting is actually sound, not EM, and even if she could detect the EM it would only prove that the radiation has some effect, not that it's harmful.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever asked your dad why he thinks some frequencies of EM radiation are harmful while others are safe?

Re:To the ignorants here: Microwaves are unhealthy

[JesusPancakes]

Not to be a dick, but a cute story about "some woman you know" and your dad's paranoia about microwaves don't really construct a rational counterargument to a scientific study, regardless of who funded it. Why don't you show us a real scientific study that demonstrates this electromagnetic 'sensitivity', or that increased chance of blood clots? That would be a much more constructive reply.

3,
Jesus

Re:The effect does exist!

[bennomatic]

This was actually my first thought. The title is actually inaccurate. They haven't proved that cell towers don't cause health problems, they've proved that cell tower radio emissions don't cause health problems. Wouldn't it be interesting if the cell towers themselves caused the problems?

Feng shui or no feng shui, maybe they just need to be more clever about integrating them into the environment. If a big, ugly tower causes stress for a significant portion of the nearby population, then it's worth exploring other options.

It could be the same with high power voltage lines. Farmers have been reporting problems with livestock which lives under HPVL, and hard scientists have denied any connection to the power or surrounding magnetic fields. They may be right; maybe even sheep and cows don't like grazing near huge, imposing, unnatural structures. Maybe those hard angles and bright, glaring metal cause them stress. And if that's true for our cloven-hoofed friends, why is it such a stretch to imagine that it would have an effect on those with bigger brains and opposable thumbs?

I've heard two different feng shui "experts" make exactly contradictory suggestions for a location, so I'm sure there's some quackery for anyone who claims absolute rightness and rigidity about the art. But that's not uncommon; the more zealous someone is about any belief, the more likely I am to distrust their opinions on the matter. That having been said, I think there are a lot of good concepts underpinning the practice. Make your environment peaceful and supportive. Encourage light and gentle, clean air flow. Discourage strong drafts, dust and shadow. Minimize noises which interrupt your life and work, but do not completely isolate yourself. Remember you are an animal; cold, industrial-feeling environments are not good for a well rounded life.

So who's up for a study of cell phone towers, emissions or no?

Re:Tell it to the apartment complex that is 200m a

[gurps_npc]

LOTS of other people live no more than 200 m away from such towers. Statistics clearly show that what happen to you is an isolated instace. That means either:

1. You are being affected by something else. Maybe you are drinking contaminated water and are so obsessed about the harmless tower you never thought to check your water. Duh.

2. There is something special about YOUR PARTICULAR tower that makes it far more deadly than any other tower in history. Perhaps you should see if it is run by aliens intent on taking over the world. Or maybe someone made it out of the dead bonus of native americans. Or perhaps it is made from depleted uranium.

3. That shear random chance means that in any give year, there will be one apartment building that has 7 residents getting and dieing of cancer and you are too stubborn to consider that sometimes CANCER HAPPENS.

Honestly, #1 seems the most likely to me. #3 is a close second. But who knows? Maybe #2 is happening. It would certainly make for a far more interesting newspaper article.