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Research Finds Effects of GSM Signals on Sleep
An anonymous reader writes "The effects of mobile phone radiation on sleep were studied in Sweden in a laboratory experiment where subjects were exposed either to 884 MHz GSM radiation or placebo.
The study finds that compared to placebo, in the radiation-exposed subjects there was a prolonged latency to reach the first cycle of deep sleep (stage 3). The amount of stage 4 sleep was also decreased. Moreover, participants that otherwise have no self-reported symptoms related to mobile phone use, appear to have more headaches during actual radiofrequency exposure as compared to sham exposure."
where subjects were exposed either to 884 MHz GSM radiation or placebo.
Did they give them one of those plastic phones filled with Pez candies?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Calling Capitan Obvious... Come in Capitan Obvious...
Well to an extent I did. I've been out in the middle of nowhere to the extent that you couldn't get a cell phone signal if your life depended on it (and sometimes it does!) and there is an odd sense of quiet.
I know it sounds nuts but on a windy night even with the trees moving it still seems more quiet but in an almost impossible to define way. Like there is something that you can't put your finger on NOT there.
I always thought it might be either radio singles or high pitch EM radiation from all the fun toys I have around it (yes, including a Wireless Router). So I'm not complaining, and I can sleep fine, but at the same time this study doesn't shock me at all.
These are just a few of the questions that pop up in any thorough analysis of this experiment.
Maybe it's just the warming (microwave-effect) that affects sleep? Rising temperature generates activity in braincells and makes it more difficult to reach sleep. That does not prove there's anything harmfull in radiowaves, or that humans have any "not-yet-found" ability to sense radiowaves directly.
Uh, does that mean what I think it means? I weigh about 80 kilos, would they beam a 58 watt signal at my head? That seems awfully high...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Whoever applied that tag needs to die. I hate you. Can't get it out of my HEAD.
I keep an old T-Mobile phone on the headboard of my bed, and use that as my alarm clock (easy to set, small size, etc).
No wonder I sometimes can't sleep well!
I wonder if this will have an effect on any of my sweaters. Oh, SLEEP, I thought it said SHEEP.
That actually would be interesting...tin-foil hats are cheap Faraday cages, after all...
Sounds loony, but may be something significant...I'd rather see research money go for this than proving that drinking too much water/breathing too much air causes cancer...
Supreme Granter of Doctor of Obviology Letters ("A FIRM Command of the Obvious")
i have occasionally slept with my phone under my pillow to use as an alarm. i noticed that when i did so, i did NOT sleep as well. I also tended to wake up with a headache. no phone = better sleep overall, phone = less restful sleep. it's pretty consistent, and i could duplicate these results any time by sleeping with my phone. take it for what you will, YMMV.
But what about us CDMA users?
I don't think we sleep well because we're mostly on Verizon...
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
These are just a few of the questions that pop up in any thorough analysis of this experiment.
A "thorough analysis" of an experiment begins with actually reading the paper!
The original paper is linked to at the top of the page, in PDF format. You'll find your questions answered there. Basically, the study is carefully controlled.
If you have some ideological dislike of the results (as you seem to), perhaps you should try to repeat the experiment yourself and present your results. See, reproducing experimental result is another cornerstone of science.
In the abstract, it mentions that they were exposed to an average of 1.4 W/kg. That's several orders of magnitude more powerful than anything you'd encounter outside the laboratory, which is less than 1W total. Unless you have a kilowatt tower on your nightstand, you have nothing to worry about.
SHAM
That's what they call the 'non-RF' exposure tests. No, they're not biased from the start.
Even if you look at the PDF there's a negligable amount of actual statistical data. Like someone else said, people are great at picking up on subtle queues. Unless this was done double-blind (which i doubt, they would have said so) it's highly suspect.
Toss this one in the corner with all the other "studies" that "prove" controversial "facts". I'm not saying RF (or any EM radiation) can't or doesn't have SOME impact on human phisiology, but this study proves nothing in it's currently presented state.
Oh, and personally I think 'radio-sensitivity' is a COMPLETE load of horse manure.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
TDMA is less harmful? I actually prefer it because it set the clock automagically. Whoever thought that exposing living tissue to RF is not harmful? It's high tech lead poisoning.
...Dinah-moe humm
Dinah-moe humm
Where this dinah-moe
Comin from...
What?
Wikipedia
FCC Page
1.4 W/kg is close to the FCC limit of 1.6 W/kg. The EU limit is 2.0 W/kg.
See that "Preview" button?
I have 2 dogs & I was buying a large bag of Pal at Big W and standing inline at the check out.
A woman behind me asked if I had a dog.
On impulse, I told her that no, I was starting The Pal Diet again although I probably shouldn't because I'd ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IV's in both arms.
I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Pal nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry & that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.
I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story, particularly a guy who was behind her.
Horrified, she asked if I'd ended up in the hospital in that condition because I had been poisoned. I told her no; it was because I'd been sitting in the street licking my balls and a car hit me.
I thought one guy was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard as he staggered out the door.
Stupid b*tch...why else would I buy dog food??
I must need more sleep too. I swear it said sheep too, until I got the point of them reporting headaches which set of my WTF meter.
Well, off to count cellphones in my head until I get the rest I truly need.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Use CDMA or TDMA phones, or your landline.
Neither Att nor T-Mobile cell phones use 884 mhz. Why would they not use 850mhz, thats what the cell phones actually use.
i sleep with my head in the microwave oven
a microwave oven emits less radiation density then the amounts used in this study
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
First of all, this is NOT a double-blind, placebo controlled study. Sure they used a placebo, but if it was double-blind they sure as heck would have mentioned it in the abstract. That means that the results are based more on the opinions of the people carrying out the study, since they would have known weather or not the subjects were receiving treatment or placebo. Second, unless you are equipped with sensitive antanai and receiving curcuitry, your body is quite incabaple of being affected by light with a wavelength bigger than a volkswagen beetle. (devide the speed of light by the frequency to see how large these waves really are) There is a reason radio telescopes are frikin huge. As for a microwave effect... wrong frequency, buddy. no... just.. no. also, It's not as exposing you to radio frequency is actually "adding" anything to your environment. We are being constantly struck by radio waves of every frequency, that is why an untuned radio plays static. The only difference in adding a transmittion is that the waves are made into something recognizable and put closer and brighter, but there are times when natural background radiation is even brighter than your cell phone's (aka bad reception).
I am not shouting. I am merely speaking in a voice loud enough to be heard.
This is actually something that has started worrying me since I got my iPhone. It's not really anything I used to notice, but the iPhone has a habit of interfering with any and all electronic devices within I'd say a 3 foot radius. I'm not kidding, at work I sometimes have to make it sit in the far corner because it makes my business landline almost incomprehensible. Other times, I'll be standing at the reception desk with it in my pocket, only to hear the speakers on the other side of the desk start to emit your standard cell phone interference noises (actually, I've always found that pattern of interference interesting for some reason--it's like I can hear my phone thinking). Honestly, the fact the I carry it in my pants pocket is what worries me the most--I'd like to have children some day...
And GSM is no different than CDMA or TDMA. If the protocol was harmful, the we'd all be dead anyway because it saturates the atmosphere. It's the exposure to the high powered radio frequency that is harmful. It could be TDMA, CDMA, GSM, or good old CB or ham band, or hell, morse code, it doesn't matter, if you're too close to the transmitter at that power, you're going to get hurt.
This sig no verb.
Apparently Tim Rifat, the world's leading expert in psychic spying (who knew there WAS such an expert. Where do you take certification tests for THAT honor?) reported in 1998 that the 884 MHz frequency is being used for govt mind control. Of course the sneaky bastards can also alter your sleep patterns! It's all a part of their plan to turn us all into zombies!
... Off to make my tinfoil hat.
it's that old inverse square law nipping at your heels - yes the transmitter is about a watt give or take a watt - but you hold the thing *next to your head* so that the exposure is typical- for the region being irradiated. The region is again, your head, so i'd say you haven't sleuthed this one out quite yet. /just pointin' it out
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
Does three hours really count as "prolongued exposure", as the abstract explains?
Not just stylish, but practical too!
Am I the only one who thought the headline was:
Research finds effects of GSM signals on sheep?
Just wondering.
Happy New Year!!!
REMEMBER: 1. Preserve Nature. 2. Always wear a helmet.
3. Ride safely. 4. Read owners manual carefully before riding.
Why is this tagged psuedoscience?
/other/ conditions that would, well, cause them to have trouble sleeping.
/preliminary/ results show that those who SAID they could detect symptoms of RF exposure had increased headaches during exposure than those that did NOT say they could detect the symptoms of RF exposure. However, it does not give a statistical analysis.
Here's a layman's synopsis:
1. 36 women and 35 men were selected for a study, and were checked by physicians to make sure that they didn't have any
2. They were then classified into two groups. One, that said they could "detect" the effects of RF radiation, and another that said they could not.
3. The group as a whole was divided into two groups, both to be strapped into the "RF Machine", however, the machine would only be on for the "RF" group, not the placebo group.
4. The study reveals a statistically significant reduction in the time that it takes for one to reach deep sleep (1/3 of an hour for those exposed, 1/4 hour for those not exposed), and that Stage 4 sleep time is also reduced (37.2 min vs 45.5 mins respectively).
5. The study also says that
Remember, this is labelled a "provocation study" that is "We're trying to narrow this down, now pick us apart." It even says that in the Discussion!
. It is the job of the publishing author to convince the community that they are right, and so they must present sufficient evidence (and sufficient experimental detail) to make their case adequately.
Yes, and since this paper appears in a peer-reviewed publication, the combination of reputation, explanation, detail, and terminology of the authors is evidently sufficient for its community. That's what we have peer review for.
This is definitely an interesting article; I'll have to take some time later to read through it once more because of some observations of my own personal experience. In 2006 I owned a GSM Motorola V3 RAZR. Keeping in mind like most Motorola's, their radiation was always pretty high compared to competing brand phones.
:/
It never failed that any time I'd fall asleep in the room with my cellphone, I'd suddenly wake up moments before the phone would ring. I'd ask whoever called me if this is the first time they called or had they been calling me earlier. I was always bewildered thinking, 'well the phone must have been ringing earlier,' and that must be why I suddenly woke up. And every time I asked, the person on the other line would always respond, no, this was their first call. But now I'm almost led to believe that the GSM radio is what would wake me up.
Ever place a GSM phone next to a speaker and hear static, or leave a GSM phone next to a CRT and watch the degauss waves across the screen moments before the phone actually rings, or before a text message is received? I suppose if the radio is strong enough to interfere with a speaker or monitor, it'd be strong enough to screw with my head.
I hate all sigs, even this one.
... oh, _sleep_! I thought it said "sheep".
This happens both due to the way GSM communication is done, and due to crappy shielding on your equipment. GSM uses TDMA (Time Division Multiplexing) so the radio is basically turning on and off rapidly, each time sending a spike. The communication slots are timed out in a range that is audible to humans, thus you hear the GSM 'buzz.'
This particular interference happens only with GSM technology, or TDMA technology, before 3G, the 3G GSM system uses an adaptation of CDMA, which continuously transmits, which is why if you had Sprint, Verizon, or Alltel before getting your iPhone you never ran across it before.
I work daily with audio equipment, and since doing some upgrades, none of our current equipment seems to care if a GSM phone is around. It is better designed and shielded circuitry, so it is more immune to the GSM buzz problem. Consumer electronics vary in their design and YMMV. Our old equipment (Mackie, Telex, etc.) was horrible when I had my iPhone around it, as well as boombox type things, computer speakers, etc. Our new Soundcraft, Sennheiser, Crown, Rane, etc. systems are so far impervious. I even tested by placing my iPhone directly against the equipment.
This will have no worse of an effect on you from the iPhone than it would with a Razr, LG whatever, etc. etc. It would be nice if the iPhone was 3G capable so that when AT&T gets the rest of the country 3G we would have WCDMA and not have to worry about it, but considering that my wife's Razr gets like 1/3 to 1/4 the battery life when 3G is available compared to EDGE I certainly can see why Apple used battery life as one reason they didn't do it yet.
Shawn's Tech Articles
The document says subjects were exposed to 1.4 W/kg - that's a huge amount of power compared to a transmitting cell phone - at least an order of magnitude more, if not two orders.
Didn't realize standards made a difference. How do EVDO, EDGE, 802.11n, DOCSYS, and OCAP affect sleep? The frequency and power of the signal has no effect, of course.
i tend to find i get this more, especially with songs like nancy boy.
Blazing Spiders
Going back to the SAR units, if I want to reduce my radiation exposure by a factor of 10, to perhaps 0.14 W/kg, how far away should I put my cell phone from the side of my head?
For what it is worth, I do turn my cell phone off when I go to sleep, my wireless router is on a vacation timer and turns off during the family's sleeping hours. I also use a corded/hands-free headset when using my cellphone because of a general "respect" for radiation. It'd be nice to know even rough numbers about this sort of health topic.
Well, there's also this little known effect, like that EM fields induce currents in conductors. The brain works based on electrical impulses. Can it cause induction?
I don't know whether it can or not, but I'd like to see that addressed just for once. You know, instead of the "it can't be anything but heating" handwaving. I'd like just once that someone addresses that point, even if to bury it finally, you know?
Second, exactly how do microwaves heat water. If you have one MW photon for each million mollecules of water, the way I remember quantum physics is that they _don't_ get a millionth of it each. One mollecule absorbs the whole photon, then bounces into the surrounding ones and spreads the energy around. I.e., for a really really tiny fraction of a second, you have a really high energy mollecule there, not just a bunch of slightly faster ones.
What if that one mollecule is a protein? What if it has a resonance on exactly that frequency or close enough?
What if it bounces into a protein? No, seriously, mis-folding for example is known to be a serious problem. (See mad cow disease or CVD for, admittedly, uncommonly extreme examples of what it can do.) Can it break other bonds or mollecules there? It only takes one protein matching something to fire a signal for example.
I'm curious, you know? Has anyone calculated the energies involved? Is everyone dead sure that it can't break some of the weaker bonds? We don't even really understand how all proteins are folded. (Or we'd give up on that whole branch and on Folding@Home and go do something else.)
No, I'm not one of the tinfoil hat gang, and I never attributed headaches to RF, but I like my science more exact nevertheless. If you're going to claim that it can be _nothing_ else, then I'll take that literally. I'd expect a thorough debunking of literally everything else conceivable there. Ionization is only one aspect of the problem.
I also recally one study where early adopters of cell phones did get slightly more often brain cancer. Ok, so those emitted a heck of a lot more power than cellphones nowadays, and it wasn't that horribly many people even then, so I'm not putting on the tinfoil hat any time soon. But that's one effect which, if true, can't be explained by the "but it's only a little warmth" hypothesis. _Something_ happened in there which we thought was only possible via ionizing radiation. What _is_ the explanation for that? I don't think anyone knows for sure yet.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I wonder which sort of loonies brings us this "study", the novelty-haters or the everything-good-is-bad-for-you crowd.
Life's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I just don't take my cell phone to bed. My wife already complains that I spend too much time using my phone to text message friends & check my e-mail. I'd be divorced if I actually took it into the bedroom.
If SD means "standard deviation", then these "researchers" have basically measured *nothing*.
And the slashdot ****** post that shit. One should sue them for dumbening the people and for actively spreading misinformation.
Great. But that's democracy. Countries lead by herds of irresponsible *******.
Sorry.
The original was an internal email at Starbucks corporate:
"The effects of CAFFEINE on sleep were studied in Sweden in a laboratory experiment where subjects were exposed either to A GRANDE CAFFE LATTE or HERBAL TEA. The study finds that compared to HERBAL TEA, in the CAFFEINE-exposed subjects there was a prolonged latency to reach the first cycle of deep sleep (stage 3). The amount of stage 4 sleep was also decreased. Moreover, participants that otherwise have no self-reported symptoms related to CAFFE LATTE use, appear to have more headaches AFTER actual CAFFFEINE exposure as compared to HERBAL TEA exposure."
This story begs to be true. A true Slashdotter will never know when a women is interested in him.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Based on the PDF, I have difficulty agreeing with your objections. First of all, the number of participants was double what you say, and I see nothing which indicates that a double blind technique was not employed.
-FL
That's childish, and indeed, it goes to the heart of the parent post!
-FL
1.4W/Kg !!! That type of electromagnetic radiation will effect anyone. A typical cell-phone radiation is well below 1mW/KG and probably closer to 1uW or even smaller. This study proves on thing. Moderation is the key.
If you have 72 subjects, and you do a paper like this, you absolutely have to publish the data. This paper is unscientific and a lie. I would bet 10 bucks that if you saw the results for all 72 subjects in a nice table it would become obvious that nothing happened. It was likely that a few people with the radio transmitter on took 30 mins longer to go to sleep, But when you say " "Under the RF exposure condition, participants exhibited a longer latency to deep sleep (stage 3, meanRF=0.37, (SD=0.33), mean- Sham=0.27 hours (SD=0.12); F=9.34, p=0.0037)." Hey it sounds technical. "During the sessions participants carried out performance and memory tests, scored self-reported symptoms and state of mood." This gives you an idea of what was tested for. They, as usual, did not find anything where they were looking, so they report on something else. This widely used trick in the medical sciences artificially increases the chances of finding 'significant' results. Another way of saying this: If you do an experiment on 72 people and measure 72 variables, all you get is a mess.
... we still know extremely little (comparatively) of the details about how the brain actually works. It simply isn't possible to *know* what the effects of increased unnatural radiation might be inside the brain if we don't even know what the hell is happening inside the brain. Brains have been comparatively protected throughout our evolution too, they've seldom if ever had to deal with the particular kinds and levels and durations of EMF radiation we have now - thus it does not stand to reason that the machinery of the brain is necessarily 'tough enough' to 100% perfectly handle this stuff.
That doesn't mean that one should become hysterical and start thinking people will start dying like flies from cellphones. OBVIOUSLY that isn't happening, and NOBODY is claiming that it is. But that doesn't mean they're necessarily *perfect* and beyond even attempting to understand better.
Nah! The lowest resonant frequency of a water molecule is about 22 GHz. The concept of resonance doesn't really apply anyway, since the water molecules bumping into each other spoil any resonance.
Instead, microwave ovens work by causing the water molecules to rapidly turn and knock each other about. The effect works for a wide range of frequencies. 2.54 GHz was chosen because it works well enough and didn't interfere with existing communication frequencies.
Blancmange
When I first got here the fortune said "Pardo's First Postulate: Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening. Arnold's Addendum: Everything else causes cancer in rats."
I have got to know why they are almost always so appropriate.
Sweden, enough said. Those crazies are dreaming up ways to create new controversy. I will proudly talk on my cell phone while pissing standing up.
Things like this are why I use an analog 3-watt bag phone. It doesn't do strange, unpredictable things to my brain. It just cooks me alive, and that's the way I like it.
I mean, I know *I* have more trouble getting to sleep when somebody's on the phone nearby.
Television has the same effect...
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
they control the tin foil too!!
So congratulations - your funny story saved you from sex!
You've got that backwards- it saved her from sex with him.
The wonderful thing about finding out someone is an asshole- is that you found out when you did- and not later. You know, like...after relationships, proposals, wedding bells, children.
If both genders were better at asshole detection, the divorce rate would plummet.
Please help metamoderate.
Does the report state how far away you should place your phone while sleeping?
I couldn't see it listed anywhere.
Give them a taste of their own medicine - bring the dog round to your house.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
According to TFA
Their p-value a good (indicator saying how often such data could happen due only to random chance : around 0.2-0.4 %)
and the pool is not so small (~70 subjects, earlier in the text - quite good compared to what other sleep-related studies in psychology).
So their conclusion aren't completely bogus.
*BUT* before we jump to conclusion we should make larger-scale studies :
- the SD is still very close to the mean (the distribution is rather wide).
- ~70 subjects is rather small compared to what's done in medical clinical studies.
Also - as they said - they voluntarily set the conditions to be worst case :
the signal strength corresponds to the maximal amount tolerated by regulation, and the was on extended duration (3 hours - nobody is hooked that long on the phone. or at least without going broke and having to sell a kidney on the black market to pay the bill).
So maybe the difference between groups would be less important with more conservative simulation.
In conclusion, it's still a small-scale study, which mainly show us that there might be something interesting worth doing bigger studies.
I think it's a paper that basically falls into the "we have some interesting stuff worth pursuing, please give us grants so we can actually make the big scale experiment we dream about" category of papers. It's just strange because they forgot to include the mandatory "and there's hope to cure cancer and/or get rid of terrorists by next 5 years with our project" clause that all these papers usually have.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
i succeeded in the bad part, apologies
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well... Unless you are not talking on the phone while sleeping, the phone emits much lower powered data busts quite rarely (the transmit power depends on the signal quality to the base station). Max powered data bursts are only emitted when you are connecting to the network and that should not happen. So the phone does not radiate that much ever. :)
And if you are talking to the phone while sleeping... then the RF radiation is the least to worry about
RF can only do damage to a person's tissue via heating.
In this case though, GSM happens to use a TDMA channel access mechanism resulting in the phone transmitting "bursts" at a periodic repetition rate. If the RF is rectified and filtered by some sort of energy detector (many such circuits occur naturally or in other electronics that were NOT designed to behave as such), the output is a low duty cycle square wave at audible frequencies. This is why putting GSM phones near many models of speaker results in lots of "bleeping" when the phone rings or is in use.
I would not be surprised if the test results would be significantly different for a CDMA signal (CDMA2000 or UMTS) of the same frequency and average power, or a CW signal of the same average power (or even a CW signal with the same peak power and hence much higher average power). I would not be surprised if such signals caused no difference for the user.
The TDMA modulation scheme used by GSM is inferior to CDMA in many ways (which is why 3G GSM, aka UMTS, is a CDMA system), and EMI issues are just one of them. I do a lot of EMI testing/mitigation work at my job, and when someone asks me what EMI is, the example of a GSM phone near speakers is almost always understood.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?