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Pittsburgh Cancer Center Warns of Cell Phone Risks
RevWaldo contributes a link to an AP story carried by Google, according to which "The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer. The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that don't find a link between cancer and cell phone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration." RevWaldo continues: "One possible solution offered? 'Use a wireless headset.' No risk of EM exposure from one of them, no sirree!"
And what a doozy... nothing says... WAIT, STOP, CANCER RISK!
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A 2008 University of Utah analysis looked at nine studies -- including some Herberman cites -- with thousands of brain tumor patients and concludes "we found no overall increased risk of brain tumors among cellular phone users. The potential elevated risk of brain tumors after long-term cellular phone use awaits confirmation by future studies."
Studies last year in France and Norway concluded the same thing.
"If there is a risk from these products -- and at this point we do not know that there is -- it is probably very small," the Food and Drug Administration says on an agency Web site.
Still, Herberman cites a "growing body of literature linking long-term cell phone use to possible adverse health effects including cancer."
"Although the evidence is still controversial, I am convinced that there are sufficient data to warrant issuing an advisory to share some precautionary advice on cell phone use," he wrote in his memo.
A driving force behind the memo was Devra Lee Davis, the director of the university's center for environmental oncology.
"The question is do you want to play Russian roulette with your brain," she said in an interview from her cell phone while using the hands-free speaker phone as recommended. "I don't know that cell phones are dangerous. But I don't know that they are safe."
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Here's the quote I love:
"I don't know that cell phones are dangerous. But I don't know that they are safe."
Whooo, brill!
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
Correct, and the 2.5 mW devices(class 2) have a range of about 10 meters. I believe this includes the common bluetooth headset.
the cell phone does ramp up to dangerous levels when it has bad reception.
Cell phones generally transmit at 300 mW in normal cases, and can boost to 3 W (3000 mW) in bad reception cases.
Now consider that the skin of (say) a public city bus reflects the microwaves within the chamber, and you have a recipe for being toast.
Not quite. The concern about cell phones is that the transmitter is a centimeter or two from your head. Radiated energy decreases with r-2. A signal that bounces off of a bus wall, assuming no absorption and neglecting destructive interference, is going to be at about 2 m of travel distance, and thus will be 10,000 times weaker (i.e. equivalent to a cell phone transmitting at 0.3 mW). So you don't have to worry about phones you aren't using... unless, for example, there are 10,000 people using them within two meters of you at the same time.
True, poor antennas means you need to use more power to get the same effect, but the effect is radiating RF. It will take the same amount of radiated RF to reach the tower no matter how efficient the antenna is. (Directionality is a problem even with good antennas they all have nulls.) You seem to be implying that when a phone uses more power because of a poor antenna, so more power is radiated, which is silly. It's just extra heat in the phone and power from the battery.
Then again, even if an antenna is too small for the wavelength being transmitted, it can be loaded to compensate for nearly all the problem.
1) not being paid IS NOT a qualification - it suggests but does not prove impartiality
2) same as above because it is the same thing in different words
personally, I think there will be less hoopla made about the dangers once a decent replacement technology comes out - then they will use this fear of radiation as reason to switch. First, RF is non-ionizing radiation - like the radiation of an ultrasound machine.
Also, to answer the comment about "burying the data" - the medical literature is full of research on this very topic - ipsilateral gliomas are associated with cell phone use in a metastudy analysis
http://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijo/article.jsp?article_id=ijo_32_5_1097
The problem with most studies of this type is that they are case controlled and there are obvious recall biases at play. I don't think this will be easy to determine by most people. The fact that the radiation is non-ionizing should put most people to ease.
some more from pub med:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18063591?ordinalpos=14&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
Here is a controlled trial in rats - only issue i have is distance to localized tissue - if u standardize to the weight of the animal, human tissue at closest exposure receives more radiation + many people use them long enough to heat/burn local tissue. That is a completely different effect than low heat non-ionizing radiation.
You will notice consistent lack of power in the studies described.... hope this is useful stuff.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17903030?ordinalpos=16&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
When all else fails, try.
But cell phones transmit at the same frequency as the microwave oven
Hell no. If they did, your neighbor's Microwave oven would cause awful disruption if they used it when you tried to use your cell phone.
Microwave ovens operate at 2.45Ghz.
Cell phone carriers operate on licensed frequencies well outside the 2.45Ghz range.
Your typical GSM bands fall in between 400mhz and 2000mhz. Your highest frequency 3G transmission is 2100mhz.
In the US, 850mhz and 1900mhz are the frequency ranges used with GSM.
Now your cordless (non-cell phone), or your 802.11(b/g) unlicensed Wi-Fi that operate on unlicensed frequencies, are in the 2.4 Ghz range, which is the closest to the frequencies microwave ovens use.
That doesn't mean the frequencies or waveforms (amplitude, and other characterists) are exactly the same though, of course they are not!