Slashdot Mirror
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."
Just a lameass politician trying to make a name for himself.
Next will be the "Vaccines cause Autism" warnings, the "Aspartame makes you Fat" warnings and the "Fluoride in the water is a Mind Control Drug" warnings.
They really should have a "Politics makes you a fuckhead" warning.
.
Trolling is a art,
Scientists don't agree, no real studies confirm the notion, and the biggest reason in favor of this is 'they get warm'. Of course they get warm - the battery is discharging.
Reboot macht Frei.
If you want proof that cell phones cause brain damage, just listen to someone talking on one.
Where's the Science to support this claim? Everything I've read, including a more than 20 year study of cell-phone users, concludes that it is not the case. Without the science, he should SHUT THE FUCK UP! I am so sick and tired of everything being ruled my malicious ignorance and stupidity. All the people who refuse to use science (i.e. Obser-fucking-vation) to form policy, guide their actions, and make decisions, and would rather use tea leaves, bones, or the dingle-berries they pick out of their ass, need to FUCKING DIE!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
I recall smoking cheap cigars and reading the warning label on the packaging. It might cause cancer in the state of California. Glad I smoked 'em in Florida. Made me rest a hell of a lot easier, ya know?
Fried foodstuffs contain known carcinogens. We should add this informative label to potato chips as well.
"Use of this device while travelling on public transit may cause people to hate you"
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
Who gives a flying leap? We're inundated with all sorts of things as we wander around this planet, and I for one think its a bunch of bollocks.
And really --
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16059841
If 420k danes dont have cancer from cell phone use, then nobody will.
GWB to President of Brazil - "You have blacks, too?"
We all have to go sometime, son. And you've used all your rollover minutes anyway.
You know, now that you mention it, that's not a bad plan if you're a tobacco company. I can't tell you how many times when I try to get friends to stop smoking, they fall back on excuses like, "Well, eventually something is going to kill me..." or "Everything causes cancer..."
Talk about lame rationalization. Still, if they start slapping "This may cause cancer!" labels on stuff that has been proven, in fact, not to cause cancer, it's just more ammunition. If you're a tobacco company, that might be a viable strategy. Get cancer labels on everything so that no one will believe the labels on anything.
Here in California we passed a law that requires any business or establishment to post signs if anything on the premises is a carcinogen. What happened was every single business in the state posted a sign. Legitimately, too, since lots of things we use on a daily basis are slightly carcinogenic, like gasoline and paint. Now everyone just ignores the signs because they're everywhere.
If you actually had something dangerous people would ignore your sign unless you put something like "On these premises there's something really, really carcinogenic. We're not kidding, either. Don't push your luck."
Ironically, those LN2 tanks DO present a danger that is worth warning about. But the warning isn't that "nitrogen may be present," obviously. The issue is that a leaky LN2 tank in an enclosed space may wind up making nitrogen the ONLY gas present, which is extremely hazardous. You can pass out without feeling anything abnormal in advance, and then quickly suffocate. Nitrogen asphyxiation has been advocated as an execution method for this very reason, in fact. Two people died in a nitrogen asphyxiation accident at NASA some time ago. The second tried to rescue the first without first understanding what went wrong, and then succumbed himself (if I am remembering the story properly).
And your point is? if it leaked you could get a higher concentratin of O2 and beyond a certain point if you get a spark you get a very nasty fire this is how the Apollo 1 crew died.
Be careful. You can type almost anything into a search engine (and PubMed is a search engine) and get back a bunch of hits. Some of them will even be related, and sound scary. The number of hits you get is strongly affected by the amount of hype around an issue.
Scientific literature is like a massive debate. On any given issue you'll find a bunch of different viewpoints and a bunch of different proponents of each, some with more and some with less, evidence. Eventually the whole thing trends towards the right answer, but monitoring who is yelling the most is definitely not the right way to predict what that will be.
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.