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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."
- 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
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.
"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.
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.
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
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.