Slashdot Mirror
Cell Phone Use Study Sees Increased Cancer Risk
Dotnaught writes "Frequent cell phone users face a 50% greater risk of developing tumors in the salivary glands than those who don't use cell phones, according to a recently published study. The study, led by Tel Aviv University epidemiologist Dr. Siegal Sadetzki, appeared last December in the American Journal of Epidemiology 'Sadetzki's findings are sure to add to confusion surrounding the already contentious debate about the health effects of cell phone radiation. Many other studies in recent years have found no increased risk of cancer due to mobile phone use, but a few have stopped short of ruling the possibility out and a few have said increased risk of cancer is small but real.'. Even with the increased risk, however, you're still about three times more likely to die in a car crash in a given year."
These figures comes from two different studies. The \emph{relative risk} increase of 1.5 comes from one case-control study. This is then applied to a survey of the total number of cases in the population, leading to an estimate of the \emph{absolute risk} increase of 0.0015%. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The result isn't worth getting too excited about, but it's interesting none the less.
The bigger problem I would have, (although I don't think it's a fatal problem for the study) is that overall they found no effect of being a regular phone user. They had to do a subgroup analysis of very heavy users in rural areas to find a significant increase. I'd also be worried this being a freak result given the number of negative findings.
There have been numerous studies that shows it is far more distracting to talk to someone on the phone than if they are in the seat next to you. The person next to you knows when to shut up, and there is in general better feedback. When you talk on the phone, even on a handsfree, you dedicate a lot more attention to it than you do to speaking to someone who is physically there. I'm not sure what that is, but it is what it is.
It is FAR more dangerous to talk on the phone while driving than to talk to another person in the car.
The cell phone is much worse. The passenger can see danger and not only shut the fuck up at an appropriate time, but point it out to you. Not so much for someone on the other side of some spectrum.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Cell phones do not produce ionizing radiation, nor do they contain any matter that does.
Therefore, the sun is approximately infinitely more likely to cause cancer than a cell phone.
Non-ionizing radiation (which is all that cell phones produce) has little to no impact on the human body. See for example, light bulbs, radios, radio stations, TV stations, microwaves, ovens, the earth's magnetic field, refrigerator magnets, CB radios, MRI machines, CAT scanners, PET scanners, CD players, MP3 players, computers, monitors, TVs, cell phones, watches, motors.
The worst a cell phone can do to your body via radiation, is make you a few nano-joules more energetic. Unless of course you installed a nuclear power source in your phone for some reason. Your freaking smoke detectors are more likely to cause cancer than your cell phone.
Question everything
To put some numbers on this, around 40,000 people die in car crashes per year. By their logic, around 13,333 people die from cell phone induced cancer per year. But oral cancer only kills around 8000 people per year. Clearly these figures have been pulled from someone's ass.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Is this the study you're thinking of? Effects of remote and in-person verbal interactions on verbalization rates and attention to dynamic spatial scenes
Leo GugertyCorresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author, a, Mick Rakauskasb and Johnell Brooksa
a Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA
b HumanFIRST Program, University of Minnesota, USA
Received 23 July 2003; Revised 1 December 2003; accepted 11 December 2003. Available online 24 April 2004.
Abstract
This study focused on how teams allocated attention between a driving-related spatial task and a verbal task, and how different kinds of verbal interactions affected performance of the driving-related task. In Experiment 1, 29 two-person teams performed an interactive verbal task while one team member also performed a simulated driving task. Of the team members performing only the verbal task, half could see their partner's spatial situation, as a car passenger can (in-person condition), and half were remotely located, similar to someone speaking to a driver using a cell-phone. Teams interacted verbally at an overall slower rate during remote than in-person interactions, suggesting that remote verbal interactions are more difficult than in-person interactions. Verbal interactions degraded situation awareness for driving-related information while performing the spatial task; and this degradation was not greater during remote than in-person interactions. Experiment 2 used a faster-paced verbal task and found greater degradation of situation awareness due to the verbal task. These findings are potentially relevant to the issue of how passenger and cell-phone conversations affect driving performance.