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?

[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?

[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?

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.

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.

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: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.