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Legislator Wants Cancer Warnings For Cell Phones
Cytalk writes "A Maine legislator wants to make the state the first to require cell phones to carry warnings that they can cause brain cancer, although there is no consensus among scientists that they do and industry leaders dispute the claim. The now-ubiquitous devices carry such warnings in some countries, though no US states require them, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. A similar effort is afoot in San Francisco, where Mayor Gavin Newsom wants his city to be the nation’s first to require the warnings."
What this legislator is really saying is that he doesn't have anything better to do to justify his presence on the payroll. In these tough economic times useless asses like this should be given the boot, so that the money can go to somebody who can do something that is actually productive and useful. (Not just the cost of his salary, imagine the cost of implementation of this thing.)
The carcinogen is acrylamide, and thanks to California's Prop 65, you can find labels on potato chips, and in fast food joints that read: "WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer."
I always liked the "known to the State of California" part, like Maine isn't aware of carcinogens.
Just to nit-pick a bit, 0.5% per year over 30 years is actually a little over 16%. But that was only in men - 0.2% per year in women. So that's an increase of ~11% in the overall population.
Personally, I'm leaning toward the "We're getting better at identifying brain tumors" camp, but 11% does seem like a lot and the large discrepancy between men and women is a little distressing.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
We just need an SI unit for cancer-causing-probability. It should probably measure exposure, like rads. And dosage over time probably matters, too. So you could call it the "marb:" 1 marb = 1 filtered cigaratte over 1 day. So if you smoke 5 cigarettes a day, that's an exposure level of 5 marbs. Using a CRT probably adds a few millimarbs. Inhaling asbestos fibers adds several kilomarbs. There's also some micromarbs of background risk.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.