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Biggest Study On Cellphone Health Effects Launched in Europe
An anonymous reader writes "The biggest study to date into the effects of cellphone usage on long-term health was launched today, aiming to track at least a quarter of a million of people in five European countries for up to 30 years. The Cohort Study on Mobile Communications (COSMOS) differs from previous attempts to examine links between mobile phone use and diseases such as cancer and neurological disorders in that it will follow users' behaviour in real time. Most other large-scale studies have centred around asking people already suffering from cancer or other diseases about their previous cellphone use. Researchers said long-term monitoring will provide more time for diseases to develop, since many cancers take 10 or 15 years for symptoms to appear."
I wonder what mental and dental health effects they find now that most people's mouths never stop moving anymore.
Foil hats on, chaps!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There is some more info here: http://www.mthr.org.uk/research_projects/COSMOS.htm
Apparently the project is in the UK, Scandinavia and The Netherlands, let's see if I can participate...
No details on how the study is performed but I guess they will just try to gather data for statistical analysis. I hope they will make a difference between calling for hours daily (holding at your ear) and using mobile Internet over 3G for hours daily (on your lap / in hand)... Most studies until now just looked at the length of use and calculate the energy absorbed by the body (i.e. a sack of water), and I guess there aren't really a lot of interesting things to learn from that...
So...um, if they find brain cancer in the sector of the population who can't ever seem to put their phones down, will that be diagnosed as a cause or an effect?
No sig today...
And as for why this study has taken so long to do - you don't launch a study costing many millions of pounds and spanning decades as a first step in research (particularly in a field with relatively sketchy underlying hypotheses). You start with smaller, retrospective, studies which allow for large effects to be readily detected, at a fraction of the cost. The problem with mobile phones is that there is no evidence for the type of large-scale, acute effect which can be readily quantified by such small projects, so a larger project (like this one) is required to look for smaller-scale effects (which may still be significant on the level of the population).
And the problem with a big project is actually managing to get enough stats for sufficient predictive power - in the early days of mobile phone usage there simply weren't enough people regularly using mobile phones to make meaningful predictions about the effects on the level of a population. Indeed, it notes that even five years ago a study of this kind had to be halted because of a lack of participation.
Berating scientists for wanting to perform good-quality studies is not very productive. The demand for scientists to produce dramatic information very quickly tends to lead to lead to misleading results being presented, and statements of that kind (see: foods which cure/cause cancer every other week) is one of the reasons many people are losing faith in science.
Yeah, but where are they going to find a control group of people who don't use a cellphone?
</kidding>
In 30 years, brain cancer may very well be a curable disease.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Problem:
I commute by train to work, and must listen, involuntarily, to the conversations that cell phone addicts have, and who seem to think that what they have to say is important and should be shared with the rest of the world.
Solution: Don't commute by train.
General solution: Reduce interaction with strangers if you dislike such interaction.
Rule: Reduce disliked situations.
Law: Be happy.
The reason it is such a large study is to counteract the problems you mention (like some people may drink green tea and have a lower risk of cancer anyway). A big study makes it more likely that there are the same proportion of green tea drinkers in the control group and the test group.
America, Home of the Brave.
And the cave people will be called Morlocks and the wave-people will be called Eloi...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I use my cell phone for about 2 hours a month. My wife uses her cell phone for about that much a day.
I'm pretty sure they can find enough people with different usage levels such that unless there's a very low threshold for risk increase and there's no increase in risk with more use they'll be able to see an affect (if there is one at all).
+1, we're going to keep studying this until it agrees with our preconceived ideas.
-Styopa
Yeah, cause I'll be way happier getting hit by one of these same morons making calls while they're driving?
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
I don't have any opinion on the relationship between cell phone use and health. None. However, the more information the better, particularly in a field as fuzzy and complicated as health. Given how new cell phones are, I would be very much surprised if there was already enough research to consider the matter settled.
Surely, if there is a correlation between cell phone use and this or that health problem, the effect is rather small. Otherwise, as others have noted, we would have already noticed the effect without the assistance of detailed research and statistical analysis. If a problem is found, hopefully sufficiently detailed research will help cell phone manufacturers make cell phones that minimize or even eliminate the effect.
It's comments like this on a site supposedly frequented by those most educated in science and engineering that make me believe that the future of our society and civilization is doomed to the ignorance and intellectual laziness of the masses. All the movies about zombies that get made are really about our innate understanding that our end will be at the hands of a mass of unthinking humanity that only wishes to engorge itself on the fruits of the "BRAINS"!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
.. many people are losing faith in science.
IMHO Faith and Science are exact opposites.
An idle cellphone will transmit occasionally to tell the network it's still on, but not very often and not for very long. Something on the order of a few seconds per hour. The 2 hours per month might become 3 at a stretch, but certainly not 20 or 200.
Cannot break apart molecules. How exactly would an electromagnetic wave that can't ionize anything cause cancer? Usually to cause a cancer from radiation you need to cause some sort of ionization damage as far as I'm aware. Physics quite strongly says that these microwaves do not have the proper energy to do this, even if you have a lot of them. People can go on about 'heating effects' which is a common response I see to the non-ionizing radiation bit, but if that were the case, prolonged exposure to heat packs should also cause cancer. Luckily the body is quite good at dissipating heat. Based on physics there is no plausible mechanism for a cell phone to cause a cancer. The radiation just isn't energetic enough to break any bonds, and that is what counts.
.. many people are losing faith in science.
IMHO Faith and Science are exact opposites.
Come on. It's an expression. I think you knew that. It's perfectly clear what the GPP meant.
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
IMHO Faith and Science are exact opposites.
There's a scientific meta-claim that submitting theories to trial by experiment (and discarding the theories which disagree with the world) is likely to produce good theories about how the world works.
How would you verify this? Experimentally? Why would you believe that experimenting is a good way to learn the truth?
Yes, in the end I'm asking "you believe that what you see (perceive) is a reasonably accurate reflecting of what the world really is like; why?" But my answer is still the same: there is an element of faith in science.
That said, I want that kept small, carefully watched and well understood.
Unfortunately, although it's better than studies that try to quantify exposure by asking people to self-estimate their cell phone use (these studies are completely lacking in value, unfortunately), it's still a bad study protocol.
The kind of people who take steps to reduce their microwave radiation exposure from cell phones are, unfortunately, very likely to be the same kinds of people who take steps to reduce their exposure to other possible risks, some of which actually do cause cancer. Not all of these confounding factors can be adjusted out.
Keep in mind the placebo study which showed that not only does the use of a placebo benefit health, but the people who take the placebo regularly and according to instructions benefit more than people who take the placebo less meticulously.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com