Slashdot Mirror
Studies Find Harm From Cellular and Wi-Fi Signals
Over the years we've discussed the possible health risks of cellphone and other microwave radiation: studies from Israel and Sweden indicating a link between cellphone use and cancer, one from England exonerating cell towers as a cause of "microwave radiation sensitivity," and a recent 30-year Swedish study that found no link to cancer. The question won't go away though. Reader Artifice_Eternity writes "I've always tended to dismiss claims of toxicity from cell phone and Wi-Fi signals as reflecting ignorance about microwave radiation. However, this GQ article cites American and European studies going back decades that have found some level of biological harm caused by these signals. Why haven't they gained more attention? Quoting: 'Industry-funded studies seem to reflect the result of corporate strong-arming. Lai reviewed 350 studies and found that about half showed bioeffects from EM radiation emitted by cell phones. But when he took into consideration the funding sources for those 350 studies, the results changed dramatically. Only 25 percent of the studies paid for by the industry showed effects, compared with 75 percent of those studies that were independently funded.'"
Although it can be fair to argue about whether or not the industry studies are biased, I think it goes the other way too.
There are A LOT of people out there who are 'convinced' that cell phones and wi-fi cause cancer. And it doesn't matter how many studies you show them that it doesn't, they just won't believe you.
And if you consider that many of these so-called 'independent' studies are in fact paid for by fringe anti-science groups, then perhaps their results are aren't as unbiased as they would have you believe.
Surely not. People skewing tests in accordance with funding would never happen.
The /. demographic sees it as fact that studies funded by the oil industry regarding environmental effects are to be dismissed out-of-hand.
This same demographic sees it as fact that studies funded by the tech industry regarding biological effects are to be accepted out-of-hand.
We like our echo chambers just like everyone else.
Now cue the nerds screaming about RF radiation is harmless, and always has been, and always will be:
THL phish sticks
It matters not one whit how many studies show result X. What matters is what is shown by peer-reviewed studies done under controlled circumstances and having a significant sample size.
For example 100 studies done shoddily using sample sizes of 3, 4, and 6 subjects do not outweigh one ten-year study across 1,000 subjects.
Now just on general principles, if one watt of radio energy was harmful, you'd think that people like RF welders, tower steeplejacks, plasma researchers, and radar disk repairers wolsd be covered in suppurating pustules. But they're not. Even people whose heads are hit by 100 watts of much stronger photons (sunbathers, cowboys), they do just fine.
So I suggest you use GQ to check up on the latest fashions, maybe not so much on the best science.
The GQ article with a cell phone next to a pack of cigarettes couldn't be more misleading. We hear about "such and such % increased risk of this", "such and such % increased risk of that". But these numbers are meaningless in assessing behavior changes unless you know the baseline risk.
So here's some numbers. The article starts off with cigarettes, so what's the risk of lung cancer between smokers and non-smokers?
Well, according to wikipedia, For Men it's 1.3% for non-smokers, and 17% for smokers. Wow!
Let's compare that to Brain cancer (all types). According to the National Cancer institute it's .6% for everyone. The Swedish study from 2006 found a 240% increase. So that's 1.44% risk.
So it seems quite obvious to me that even the most alarming study only showed a small increased health risk from cell phone use, and others have shown none. Compare that to smoking, which has been consistent in showing risk over the years, and an ENORMOUS risk. Oh, and for smoking that's JUST the lung cancer risk. We all should know about the other increased health risks associated with it.
AccountKiller
If any warming caused by holding a cell phone near your head caused sufficient warming to actually cause damage in the long term, then exercise of any sort would kill you dead a lot quicker than a cell phone could possibly be responsible for. A two or three degree Fahrenheit increase in body temperature is completely normal during exercise and even this is larger than a cell phone is capable of doing.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
"Studies" that are funded or sponsored or promoted by environmental organizations should be taken as expressions of religious dogma, essentially worthless to those who endeavor to understand the underlying issue. Environmental organizations, like religious organizations, perceive themselves as above criticism, and therefore not accountable for the veracity of their proclamations. Commercial organizations might be equally and oppositely dogmatic in their desire for lucre, but tend to have a higher regard for logic, even if they reject it when they can get away with it.
Obviously an imposter.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, I agree with you. Unfortunately it is the sort of crap that gets published on Slashdot.
Rat organs affected by GMO - check.
Vermont Nuquelar plant going to kill us all - check.
Cell phone radiation causes cancer - yup.
I am waiting now for a vaccine causes autism article to balance out the Lancet story from last week...
Doesn't work that way. If the photon doesn't have enough energy to put the molecule into a new state, it simply doesn't get absorbed. There's no difference between one not being absorbed and a billion. Saying that more photons = more energy is like saying that if you have a bunch of red lights and point them all at the same place, they turn blue.
That's part of the problem - the other part is people like this:
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Wireless/11099.html
In short, a bunch of local "sensitives" claimed that the tower was giving them rashes, etc. that faded within hours of leaving the area. The telco responded by pointing out that the tower had been switched off for 6 weeks prior (unbeknownst to said yobs) and told them to STFU.
And at this point, is there really an alternative? We can't exactly just switch off all the RF, even if it *is* causing problems.
Finally, the balls on people who complain about this (while, for example, most of the lakes in the US are so polluted with mercury that it's only safe to eat a handful of fish from them every year) must be enormous - rivaled only by the "third-hand smoke" hand-wringers. Howsabout they all get back to us after we've stopped burning dirty coal as a primary fuel source?
These "studies" cut both ways. Greenpeace for example funded the preposterous Rat Organ study that was posted here last week.
The best and most time tested answer is independent review. Which pretty much works in the long run.
Even if there is a link, how can they be sure it's not due to exposure to chemicals given off by the plastic of the phone? Nothing in any of the studies I've seen would rule out chemical causes.
He was doubting that a hardcore Slashdot reader has any female acquaintances, not that the AC was you.
"Incredible NPC AI" is a vast overstatement, the GFX are nice though...
It is fair to say that the vast majority hold center-left political views, but this usually doesn't mean outright hostility to capitalism,
In fact, let's go further. Many scientists hold patents which they think may make them money (a very capitalistic goal). Most that I know are sufficiently affluent to be pretty well invested in the stock market or in various businesses. Attacking the economy is not something that most academics are interested in, we benefit from the status quo more than the average person does. The only people I seem to hear making the claim otherwise are right-wing pundits who seem to want to cast doubt on the honesty of researchers who are finding things that they don't like.
I was going to RTFA but it's densely packed in an unfriendly typeface and when I opened it up, I immediately saw warning signs of conspiracy-mongering (Hey, this guy publishes an "investigative newsletter" called Microwave News! And he has a doctorate in environmental policy from MIT! That means if he says that the science is 100% solid about cell phones causing harm, he must be right, because God knows no one who got a doctorate at MIT ever got convinced of some cockamamie theory and started "investigative newsletters" to pursue some non-existent threat!) and research fail ("The "hearing," however, didn't happen via normal sound waves perceived through the ear. It occurred somewhere in the brain itself, as EM waves interacted with the brain's cells, which generate tiny electrical fields." First of all, any time someone mentions the Frey effect, 80% of the time you're about to hear schizophrenic ranting about government mind control transmissions. Second of all, the author seems to have made up the theory that the Frey effect happens because of EM waves interacting with brain cells; it seems quite inconsistent with Frey's own findings that there were some individuals who could not hear sounds around the frequency of 5Kc who also could not hear the "rf sounds". If the Frey effect bypassed the ear and directly stimulated the brain, why would anyone who had a brain be unable to detect this stimulus? Why would the people who were unable to detect this stimulus also be those with known deficiencies in their ears? Coincidence?)
Anyways, I suspected that what I would find in the article was a situation similar to the Myung meta-review of cell-phone/cancer studies, where the author declared that even though the overall review of the chosen studies had failed to establish any sort of convincing evidence that cell phones caused cancer, a "sub-group" of "high-quality" studies established a "significant positive association". What the meta-review may have failed to call attention to, however, was that seven out of the eight "high-quality" studies were all done by the same researchers, a group led by Dr. Lennart Hardell, and that Hardell is frequently retained as an expert witness in lawsuits against cell-phone companies. I wouldn't be surprised if at least 75% of the "independently funded" studies in the GQ article are also by researchers who profit handsomely from testifying in similar lawsuits. People talk about how they can't trust any studies done by "industry", but they're naive to think that litigation itself is not an industry.
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
Far more importantly all those molecular bonds are not locked in, they are in transition from one state to another state, human bodies are living organisms, a fully active molecular processing system. Altering the energy states of molecules in transition has an outcome on the resultant new molecules formed. Probabilities are low but you are dealing with billions of molecules of trillions of reactions, those low probabilities suddenly become lethal given sufficient time, genetic predisposition and plain bad luck.
That this generation wants to take a chance with the lives of the next generation because it is more profitable to do so, fine, as long as the perpetrators pay the full price, for causing the early deaths of the next generation.
The telecoms don't think there is a problem, fine let's see those life time guarantee and warranties, ensuring against damages from radiation and make today's corporate executives liable for tomorrows victims. Lets see how many life insurance companies would be willing to take on the risk of insuring against cellular damage caused by radiation all built within the price of a single telephone contract and covering the user for the rest of their life, lets see the telecoms put their money and their current executives future freedoms where their current PR=B$ advertising mouth is.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It's hysteria meets technology. Blunt and simple. It's like Brain said when he tried his insurance fraud.
Brain: I'll claim the microwave made me into what I am today.
Pinky: Why that?
Brain: Because nobody knows how it works.
People don't know how something works, but if hysteria is mixed into it, especially if they're at least a touch hypochondriac, you really have a volatile mix that makes them go ballistic on anything that might have any ill effect on them. Add a bit of "I don't need it and it might have a nonzero chance of harming me, so you must not have it either" and we're set.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have a great PROTIP for everyone out there discussing this topic:
Hmm... Interesting how this is a really good analogy to the “terrorist ‘threat’”, compared to e.g. car accidents, and bad things the own government does...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Ten watts of X-rays is very bad for you. Ten watts of microwaves directed at your eyes can blind you. Ten watts of radio pass right through you. And ten watts of light is nice for reading.
With EM radiation, its precise frequency and location matter a great deal.
As I said, unreputable sources. :)
You can find someone who will assert just about anything. It reminds me of my BBS days. As CPU speeds approached 33Mhz, there was a discussion on FidoNet (if I recall correctly), where a few people were terribly insistent that computers would never exceed 100Mhz. Not that it couldn't happen, but when it did, it would be hazardous to be around, the power consumption would be impossibly high, and it would effectively destroy VHF and FM broadcast abilities.
I remember all the folks who screamed that the 2.4Ghz spectrum would kill us all. Any wireless device would be the equivalent of putting an unshielded microwave oven in your lap.
I'm still waiting to die of it. I've been pretty well exposed for quite a few years now, and I'm still alive and kicking. :) I may have almost died a few other ways, but they've never been by any method conspiracy folks have screamed about.
Shhh.. I hear the silent black helicopters coming to take me away now. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I think it goes beyond that to the idea that many people have, it seems, of "they wouldn't print it if it weren't true."
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
Stop trying to pass off a bad strawman argument as if it were truly based in logic and fact. The energy of the photons in the UV part of the spectrum of the Sun is FAR greater than anything generated by a cellphone.
It's not the number of photons, it's their energy, but I suspect you knew that already.
Anyone who buys an Enquirer has demonstrated that they are gullible as hell, making the advertising space on those pages incredibly valuable.
If someone will believe that there is a half human half bat boy flying around in mexico then they will believe anything.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0