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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."
Good, their constant chattering gets on my nerves!
I will have a sig when the market demands it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
One sees these duelling studies, some for, some against cellular phone usage,
and one can't help but recall the Steven Wright joke about getting a humidifier
and a de-humidifier for Christmas. So he put them in one room and let them
fight it out.
Maybe there could be some kind of academic cage match between the two camps,
wherein they have to explain their research publicly, and get to critique the
methodology of the opposing camp.
The match ends when intellectual honesty compels one camp to admit that their
work is an absolut waste of human time, at which point enter John Cleese to issue
a Wensleydale.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Maybe its because they are talking all the time, drying out their mount and their salivary glands are stress to compensate.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
I love my cell phone, but every time it powers on I has the startup phrase: "Cancer Machine ON".
So what? Chocolate makes you fat, Tobacco gives you cancer, Death and Taxes are inevitable. Until humans live forever and are tax-exempt, at least they DO have a choice on the others.
One radio next to your head, and one next to your balls? Are you sure that's a good idea?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Cell phones cause cancer?
Sounds like another one of those liberal lies... Like global warming.
So what if my cell phone melted to my neck goiter while I was using it outdoors in the middle of January? It's totally coincidental.
It doesn't matter whether the results of this study are valid or not. I can't stop using my mobile phone, as I work for a web startup I need to be constantly available if there is a site problem and having my mobile close by, always (even in my bed), is something that is 100% essential.
In addition, I would basically be saying goodbye to my social life (what little I have of one after work) if I stopped using a mobile phone.
Therefore, I hope this study is wrong. If it isn't I hope that mobile manufacturers can somehow make next gen phones slightly safer, if possible.
It's quite simple actually. Most of the positive studies are either funded by wireless companies or are watered down for fear of litigation.
"Three times more likely to die in a car crash"? That's not reassuring. Given how many people die in crashes each year, that would make cell-phone-induced tongue cancer one of the more significant causes of death.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I'm skeptical about these statistics: 500 tumour patients and 1300 control subjects can't really support a probability of 0.003% and 0.0045% for each outcome, can they? I reckon that these numbers are less likely than the false-positive error for their data set.
Particularly if you are talking on your cell phone at the time.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I'm three times more likely to die in a car accident than of cell phone radiation? Good gracious, I'm never driving again!
It seems to me that both findings of the study (more tumors and even more tumors in people in rural areas) could be due to simply talking a lot. More talking means more salivation to keep the mouth from drying out, and it is possible that heavy use of the salivary glands could lead to cancer. In rural areas, one would expect the effect to be magnified because people there are more isolated, and so even less likely to talk a lot except when using a cell phone. It's possible that the study accounted for differences in time spent talking, but neither article makes that clear.
Based on that data, a 50% increase would raise one's theoretical high-end risk of developing a tumor in the head from 0.003% per year to 0.0045% per year.
This translates into an effectively zero risk. The risk is so low that an individual couldn't really justify spending any time or money trying to lower it further.
We've got to learn that even though our advancing technology allows us to measure smaller and smaller risk, that doesn't mean that "something has to be done!" for every risk we can measure.
From the article:
Does this simply mean we should use handsfree headsets or hold the phone away from our heads?
I happen to hold mine in front and use the loudspeaker but that's purely because I'm deaf in one ear and don't like not being able to hear anything else that's going on.
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
I don't have access to the main journal article, so it's possible the answer is in there, but there are potentially a lot of variables in 'cell phone' use. The article kind of hints at that in the following:
I would be curious if anyone has done a larger break-down of the 'risk' seen in this study, to find out if users were using older analogue phones, or newer digital, spread-spectrum phones (which, I believe, typically run at much lower power levels). What frequencies do the phones run at? (It might be, I dunno, that different mobile phone networks around the world use different frequencies, and there might be a correlation to specific frequencies used and an increase in cancer). I would also be curious to see if anyone is able to repeat this finding in other populations outside of Israel? Maybe the increased risk is really something in the air or water? Hard to say sometimes. . .
Honestly though, if it were me, and I were living in Israel, I think there are risks I'd be more worried about than my cell phone. . . like Hezbollah missiles, Palestinian suicide bombers, another war erupting with the neighboring countries, etc. . .
I got a new cellphone last year, its a nextel motorola i836 and was slimmer then my previous model (i760? big blue one), so i usually carried in in my right front pant pocket. I did this daily (well M-F) all day long, and often in the evenings. About 4 weeks ago, my right thigh directly under where I kept my phone, started getting nerve twitches, and it felt like the phone was ringing (on vibrate), about 10-15 x daily. Most of the time, Id pull it out and there was no call. I moved it back to my belt, on the clip, about a week ago, and within a few days the strange nerve twitchings went away.
I do notice the phone has a lot of leaky radiation, when i set on my desk, my desk landline starts cacklin, often right before I receive a call, or tm.
#include bier;
Well, a quick google search turned up that a cell phone has about a 1 watt transmitter. A Bluetooth class 1 transmitter has a power output of about 100mw, but this is unlikely to be in a cell phone. Class 2 and 3 only transmit with 2.5mW and 1mW respectively. So, at worst, the bluetooth headsets are 10x less energetic than the cell phone's transmission and more likely down around 500-1000x less energetic. I'd fear bluetooth far less (about a 500x less ;-) ) than I would fear a cell phone, which isn't much to begin with.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
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
"2 (best) Place your cell phone on your belt, and use a headset. Remember, the energy waves' strength falls off rapidly with distance; having the cell phone even a short distance away from your head reduces exposure significantly."
Doesn't anyone think of the children anymore???
At the bottom of the
I read a similar study if not the same one. If I recall, one of the main reasons for the increased distraction is there is a need to always fill all silences in phone conversations handsfree or not. Think about it, how often is there a large pause in a phone conversation? Never basically. Normal conversation with a present person is less taxing on us socially, and thus less distracting.
Everyone gets those "Phantom Vibrations", but try again - they're just muscle memory. [citation: http://jscms.jrn.columbia.edu/cns/2005-05-03/orso-phantomvibes ]
The interference with speakers is caused by...wait for it... radio waves.
Those things that are engulfing all of us, all the time, in varying intensities. Naturally produced or not.
Just because you do not understand the world around you, doesn't mean you must be fearful of it.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.... WELCOME TO THE MAIN EVENT!
In this corner, with combined revenue of over 220 billion.....CELL PHONE MANUFACTURERS! In the other corner, already salivating like half-starved rabid dogs, PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS!
"LETS GET READY TO RRRUUUMMMBLLLE!
(CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!)
(sounds of lawyers shuffling papers and shouting as lawyers demand settlements)
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....