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Mobile Phone May Rot Your Bones
Stoobalou writes "Researchers at the National University of Cuyo, in Mendoza, Argentina, looked at that strange breed — men who wear mobile phones on their hip. They discovered evidence to suggest that the proximity of the mobile phone caused a reduction in bone mineral content (BMC) and bone mineral density (BMD) in the men who wore the phones over a 12-month period, compared to a control group that didn't."
How many just did that?
I'm skeptical, but interested in this ... that would actually be fairly alarming. Though, you'd think cell-phone users would be breaking hips all over the place if that were the case. Certainly some people have their cell-phone in close proximity for an awful lot of hours in a day.
Though, it does make one think a tin-foil codpiece might be in order in case your junk is getting equally affected by the proximity. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Okay, but am I still okay to wear my smartphone jockstrap? Not as convenient as a belt clip I'll agree...
Wikipedia: N-rays (or N rays) are a hypothesized form of radiation, described by French physicist Prosper-René Blondlot, and initially confirmed by others, but subsequently found to be illusory.
... significant means "statistically significant" i.e. there was a correlation. "Significant" doesn't mean large, great, or disasterous. Too often mainstream press will pressure the reader into assuming it means something more than this.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Pants pocket: normal Belt clip/holster: doucher
As a Brazilian citizen, I can claim for sure that any Argentine finding is clearly bogus, just like their claim for being #1 in soccer.
There still hasn't been anything to disprove the studies claiming an increase in brain cancer correlated with cell phone use. Both of these topics should be actively researched before deciding one way or the other. This could be like the cigarette problem where people don't find out about health issues until after the population is hooked.
whether or not it's true or false, any emitting device needs to be closely monitored and studied. We often hear of these kinds of reports but before we start band-wagon'ing this issue either for or against - let the peer community scientists do their due diligence and hash this out with peer reviews. A good scientist is always critical of their own work. If it's true, then we need to decide how to resolve it - if not, we can file it under a 'misdiagnosis of results.'
I mean, its not like its causing strange growths to appear on my thigh or to sterilize me.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
Been wearing one on my hip every day for the past 4.5 years, and have noticed no problems. Anecdotal, I know. But I'm skeptical.
pockets then ? where will we need to shove our phones up in order to be safe of any downsides ?
Read radical news here
They need a control group that wears the phones but has transmitting functions turned off or the phone turned off all together. Perhaps the reported result is due to the mechanical abrasion of wearing the phone.
I did not read the article, but wouldn't moving the phone just change which bones are affected?
First time I read the title I thought it said "Mobile Phone May Rot Your Boner" I tend to carry my phone in the front pocket of my trousers, so it's no wonder that headline scared the crap outa me!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
To double the amount of time you get before hip replacement..
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
looking at all the other 'science' projects that leave our entire bodies infactdead (du, media, self-deception etc), the phone/bone rot, is probably what we need to focus on the image of? hopefully, we'll all learn to stay off of, & fear the phone, as our rulers need the bandwidth for expanding censorship/propaganda campaigns against us.
you may also like to read; ayn rand's buybull, the book of death, the georgia stone (for you chosen one highbrow walking dead murderous depopulation scheme zombies). thanks
Perhaps someone with more knowledge than myself can comment on this topic:
Would it be:
1. possible
and
2. make a positive difference
to have some sort of shielding between phone and body? For example, shielding on the inside of pocket pants etc., that'd prevent the signals to go towards the body where we don't need them anyway?
What would you need and would it work?
Just did a quick search and it does appear that if, e.g., this is accurate, stressing bone causes them to increase in density.
Wearing a cellphone is restrictive on your range of movement, and you're more cautious about activities which could apply force to that area because you don't want to damage your expensive phone. Hence, the bone is less stressed, leading to less bone density.
Even if that isn't right, it still seems to me like the correct control for the experiment, if they want to say it's the radiation that's causing the bone loss, would be to have the control group wearing deactivated phones, not having them wearing no phone at all.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
...how would you transport it?
I'm skeptical about this, but I have to agree that the thought has crossed my mind before. What if it really is harmful for my genitals (don't care about bones) to always have it there in close proximity? But apart from at the hip or in a pocket, I don't see any other practical way to carry it around. I know that if I put it in my laptop bag, I'll just forget it half the time, and I don't always have it with me...
when we wear something on our body it subtly shifts our weight distribution. and I'd imagine that having a phone on your hip also changes your posture to make accessing that phone easier and faster.
it doesn't seem like that's accounted for at all in the study.
the control group didn't use phones at all. so there's no control for whether it's the phone's radiation or the physical presence of the phone that causes the (very slight) degradation.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
No youngster wears a phone pouch on their hip anymore. Did they take the average age and de-calcification for the elderly into account?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
My god when will they ever stop this BS!
is there anything else? $? 'science'? fear? gods? geography? energy problems? compassion? is that enough? all fake?
we should be very grateful to our rulers, providing us with so much of less than nothing, without which, we might be forced into reality?
Screw that. One hip replacement is cheaper than two. I'll just stick to one pocket.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"Researchers at the the National University of Cuyo, in Mendoza, Argentina"
Pier reviews or it didn't happen.
...but good for calling an ambulance; if you happen to break your de-mineralized hip bone
Have a look at figure 3 of the actual article:
http://journals.lww.com/jcraniofacialsurgery/_layouts/oaks.journals/ImageView.aspx?k=jcraniofacialsurgery:2011:03000:00075&i=FF3
Really? A linear correlation?! I suppose MDs must have a really wild imagination to see an actual linear correlation in that dataset! For crying out loud...!
April, June, September, November - 30 days (4 months)
January, March, May, July, August, October, December - 31 days (7 months)
This means that excluding February there are 3 more odd days than even in a year. If we count February as 0.75 even days (on the basis that 3/4 of Februarys are even) then it's 2.25 days.
Use alternate days. The difference may seem small - but do you really want to take a chance with your health?
IT workers wear phones. IT workers are traditionally heavily caffeinated, at least I am, so that's 100% of IT workers. Caffeine also has effects on bone loss. http://www.ajcn.org/content/74/5/694.short The problem is that if both of these things are true I should be so brittle that I can't walk without my bones crumbling under my own weight.
A few atto-curies of radiation from Japan, literally counting atoms, have been detection by sophisticated fallout detection sensors in the US. People worry about this, while the radiation from phones touching their bodies is millions of times more intense, but also a pretty small number.
Many years ago, I used to always wear my cellphone on my left hip. This was from 1997 to about 2002, and the phones were TDMA (predecessor to GSM). I started developing arthritis in my left hip at age 38. Since my hip was hurting a lot, and I no longer liked wearing the phone clipped to my belt, I got a newer, smaller phone (also TDMA) and begun to carry it in my left shirt pocket. After about a year of shirt pocket carrying, My arthritis in my left hip had seemed to heal substantially, but then I begun to notice that my sternum was starting to feel tender and swollen, so I went to my doctor fearing I may have some kind of cancer, as cancer often manifests itself in a swollen and tender sternum bone if it has begin to metastasize to the bone marrow. The Doc said I have no cancer, but definitely noticed that my sternum was swollen. He'd been reading all the medical journal stuff about cellphone radiation and related suspected health risks, and suggested I stop carrying my cellphone directly on my person all the time as an experiment, so I did, and all my symptoms went away. In 2004 I switched from the TDMA/GSM phone carrier and went to a CDMA carrier, and began carrying my phone in my shirt pocket again and have encountered no bizarre suspected cellphone-related health effects since. I think that the TDMA/GSM radiation must be far worse that CDMA, especially when TDMA/GSM will badly interfere with any nearby audio equipment and CDMA does not, which has to be some kind of indicator that TDMA/GSM is "nastier".
BTW: The arthritis in my left hip has never totally gone away 100% but now is so mild that it only bothers me whenever there's a rapid drop in atmospheric pressure, like when a strong winter storm cold front blows in during wintertime.
... by Louis Vuitton, the number one maker of man purses.
Also, I am super curious why there is no special mention of whoever he pulled (apparently 1/3rd of the study participants) from the Nuclear Medicine School.
In a study focussed on radiation adsorption, I would think the people who spend a considerable amount of time near a mix of X-Rays and MRI machines might be worth considering as a substantially unique group.
I've read through the thing (institutional login is a lovely thing) and have to agree. Sure they report some statistically significant values but the paper's short on information about the case and control group and probably underpowered to boot. There's also no mention of controlling for smoking or other environmental factors. Because the participants were recruited via word of mouth it could be that his case group has to wear their phones for a specific job and the controls do not. Either way it's irresponsible journalism to report on a study which is merely a pilot and lacks the statistical rigour to have anything worthwhile to report. I'm also skeptical about the use of the paired t-test, how were the participants matched?
Why oh why couldn't it melt fat instead?
Judging by the cigarette company payouts, it might just be pay day for a lot of people come retirement age. I carry my phone in my pocket, but I might seriously consider buying a hip pouch and spending my pension pot after this :)
In addition to inadequate controls galore for confounding causes, this once again fails to take into account two things -- confirmation bias (why would anybody even think of looking for something like this?) and physical mechanism. What part of skin depth and power do people not get? Exposing your skin to direct sunlight is far more dangerous than any cellphone hanging outside of your clothes at your hip.
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
My right ear has gone softer the years. My left ear is still bony.
This is only a pilot-study, and should NOT be brought into the media before a larger and more rigorous study has been done. This study has very small sample groups, and they should have had a group with the cellphones at their waste, but turned off. It could be other things than the electromagnetic radiowaves, i.e. the weight of the phones, if there is an effect at all, which a larger study will clarify.
mobile phone ruined my boner!
that only dorks wear cellphones on their hip. Keep fighting the stereotypes, guys.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Carrying a cellphone in a front jeans pocket every day gives me a lot more to worry about than loss of bone density.
... significant means "statistically significant" i.e. there was a correlation. "Significant" doesn't mean large, great, or disasterous. Too often mainstream press will pressure the reader into assuming it means something more than this.
This is Slashdot. I think people around here know what the word significant means, whether it is preceded by the word stastistically, or not.
Try using a dictionary once in a while and you might find that words sometimes have more than just one definition.
You see, the Scots wear kilts and keep their cellphones in their sporran.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The journal article on which TFA is based is embargoed behind Kluwer's academic firewall's and my school doesn't have a subscription to this one. So, I can't see the actual article. However, the comments from some of the people who *can* see the article are telling, to wit:
"Only by a stretch of imagination do you see a linear correlation in there. Look at figure 3 ... http://journals.lww.com/jcrani...
OMG!!..."
and......
"This is only a pilot-study, and should NOT be brought into the media before a larger and more rigorous study has been done. This study has very small sample groups, and they should have had a group with the cellphones at their waste, but turned off. It could be other things than the electromagnetic radiowaves, i.e. the weight of the phones, if there is an effect at all, which a larger study will clarify."
not to mention.....
"This is only a pilot-study, and should NOT be brought into the media before a larger and more rigorous study has been done. This study has very small sample groups, and they should have had a group with the cellphones at their waste, but turned off. It could be other things than the electromagnetic radiowaves, i.e. the weight of the phones, if there is an effect at all, which a larger study will clarify. "
and.....
"Also, the study doesn't say if the measurement and calculations were unblinded, and the sample groups were not randomized, and recruited by word of mouth locally. This is just the flaws without looking at the results. Again, please stop writing about pilot studies, unless you are giving it a critical evaluation."
as well as....
"Something is wrong with the user cited charts where the bone density declines on a range from zero to 80,000 hours.
Now at maybe 2000 hours exposure per year, that means 40 years exposure. How could they get that much data?
Chart labels must be wrong. "
followed up by....
"From the method section of the study:
'Men of the first group provided information about the
number of years they had used a mobile cell phone and the number
of hours per day that they carried the phone in the belt pouch. The
number of years of use and the product of years of use and hours per
day each year carrying the phones were used as rough estimates of
cumulative exposure.'
*****In other words*****
A small pilot study with questionable (or at least very simplistic) methods for estimating for cumulative exposure was conducted on a small and apparently undifferentiated sample and a statistically significant result was obtained.
As one of that "strange breed," I was initially concerned. Now, not so much...
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard Feynman
"No difference in mean BMDs and BMCs between groups was found." So, they have their study and their control group. They looked at bone densities in their hips. The average hip density between both groups is statistically identical. But, in the right-handed cellphone user group, the right hip is 1.2% less dense than the left hip, while for the control group made up of mixed-handed people of a different age, the distribution is more even, but still not perfectly even. They conclude that cellphone radiation weakens bone mineralization. But according to the abstract, there was no difference in mineralization, it was just distributed differently.
And, n=24 is not high enough to call a 1.2% difference "statistically significant". That's just bogus. Anyways, my wife and I both lean to our left. And so do her parents and sisters. Not a lot, but about 1-2%. I'd be surprised if that didn't translate into an unevenness in our hip bone densities. We're all right handed, too. Now, I just complained about their low n, so I can't conclude anything from my anecdote...but maybe we favor the leg opposite our dominant hand? If you have more weight on it, you can more easily pivot to bring your right side forward to do something. And, they only studied people who wear a cellphone on their right hip. Isn't that going to be right handed people? Who quite possibly put more weight on their left hip? And if the control group had some left handed people in it, even if there was only 1 or 2, that would totally skew the averages.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Not being a doctor, researcher or expert in EMF fields, I gotta ask: is there a plausible explanation for why this would be? It seems to me that there are a lot of researchers out there fishing for weird correlations with cell phone use, and if you look for statistical fish long enough you're going to find something that isn't really there. Without a plausible mechanism for messing with bone density, I'd be tempted to write this one off entirely until someone else confirms it. Especially since it's the first study of its type and is a relatively small group of subjects (n=24).
Recipe for science fail: conduct 30 studies looking for some type of harm done by a random controversial bogey man. Don't publish the 29 that fail to reject the null hypothesis. Publish the one that does.
Just looking at Table 1 in the PDF of the study you can see the sample of non-phone users to phone-users had a really weird makeup. The nonusers where older and heaver by significant margins: 47.1 years to 33.5 years and 85kg to 77kg. So non users were like 14 years older and 18 lbs heaver. Really wacked.
Why would you do a study on hips with such a skewed population? The attempt to account for this in the text, but I'm not buying it.
Also, the total number studies was 48 people (24 users, 24 non-users) so not a huge study.
Based on the populations used for the study, its my guess they had some data lying around on at least one of these groups which was probably collected differently from the data for the other group.
Hey I want to know as much as the next guy if this is for real, as I sometimes carry up to 3 cell phones (don't ask), but I'm seeing some flaws here that are just jumping out.
Reading a bit more on how they did the study: 2/3 of the people in the study were faculty or personnel from a Medical Sciences school or Nuclear Medicine school. Again a strange choice for studying the effects of electromagnetic radiation given that these people probably get exposed to more of that than the average joe.
This was also not a before/after study. Meaning they don't have any measurements from the cell phone wearing group before they started wearing cell phones. Nor did they follow either group over time. Basically they just got 48 people, half who wore a cell, half who didn't and measured, 1 time (as far as I can tell) their Bone Mineral Density and Bone Mineral Content.
I guess it was hard for them to find young thing people that didn't wear cell phones, thus accounting for the skewed sample ages and weights?
Also note the following:
The cell phone wearing group had higher (read Better) or similar BMC and BMD for 9 out of the 12 measurements by my count.
Empirical observation: A person's intelligence is inversely proportional to their frequency and duration of cell phone use. Does this indicate cell phone use reduces the density of brain matter? Just askin'...
Even if this turns out to be a reproducible phenomenon, it's not clear that EMF would be the cause. A potentially more likely cause would be that if you wear your cell phone on your hip, you are slightly less likely to be bumping that hip into things. Slight damage from bumps and falls are known to increase bone density, so protecting one hip would potentially result in reduced bone density in that hip. I'm not saying this is an extrememly likely scenario, but at least it represents a known causal effect.
Do people really put phones in pockets? That just seems weird. They'll get scratched up by keys and change, and you can accidentally dial people while moving or sitting.
yes.
The screens hold up surprisingly well against keys.
The pocket dial problem is more of a software issue that can be solved with proper locking/unlocking.
Leaving your phone in you pants pocket on the floor, however, is a bad idea. Feet are more harmful than keys ...
If you do the math, cell phone radiation is several orders of magnitude lower than what is needed to mess with an ionic bond. The photons just have way, way, way too little energy. Heck, when you compare the energy of the photons to the random motion of the particles, it is still orders of magnitude below their kinetic energy. The idea that Cell Phone radiation could interfere with the human body is really quite ridiculous. It is physically impossible it could cause cancer or really do anything else. Blue Light, on the other hand, is potentially dangerous (massively more energetic photons there) -- well, all light is much more energetic, but blue light actually is at the low end of having enough energy to start messing with some weak bonds, potentially.
I can believe this. Watching people blunder around while driving or walking around a grocery store with a mobile phone affixed to their heads, I've come to the conclusion that mobile phone proximity causes your brain to rot as well.
licet differant, aequabitur
I definitely get affected by mobile phone radiation, and it’s not psychosomatic. And when pain happens, then that’s usually a signal that something is not right. And there are too many other people who claim to be affected to simply dismiss it. And, we tend to describe very similar symptoms.
So how could it happen? Perhaps one of the mobile phone frequencies just happens to tune in to some molecule using electromagnetic absorption? That's my hypothesis.
But to claim that because it doesn’t happen to everyone, then it therefore doesn’t happen to anyone, is an absurd argument. Some people are allergic to certain substances while the rest of us are not. Why? Perhaps it’s because they have a higher level of some amino acid, or because they produce a slightly different protein from the rest of us. Who knows?
Now I’m not claiming that sensitivity to microwaves is an allergy. The point I’m making is that each and every body is subtly unique, such that some people will be affected while others are not.
The truth is that we don’t know enough yet. And the research that I have read about so far has been surprisingly unimaginative.
ex.
Do mobile phones heat water? No, wrong frequency. (Didn’t even need to test for that. Could have asked someone working with spectrometry.)
Do mobile phones cause cancer? No. (Okay, worth checking.)
So now let’s move on...
Do mobile phones “tune in” to molecules other than water? Ah... considering the vast multitude of different kinds of molecules... quite possibly.
How do I know it’s not psychosomatic for me?
1. When I first started to use a mobile phone I would put it in my pocket. After ½ hour my hips would ache. I didn’t know why. But sometimes my hips were fine with the mobile in my pocket, and I’d discover that it was off (for whatever reason). The correlation seemed to be 100%, despite me not thinking of mobiles as harmful (which is why I had no issue putting it in my pocket).
2. Whenever I talk for more than 10-15 minutes with the mobile to my ear, my ear aches behind the eardrum. For more than about 45 minutes, I get a particular headache that is unlike any other (eg. from dehydration, tiredness, sickness). I do not suffer these problems when I use a wired phone or hands free.
3. I’m a kung-fu man. I don’t get sick. I don’t get flu’s, ever. I have no allergies. I’m not a hypochondriac. But mobile phones...
So what about Bluetooth and WiFi? Well, personally I’m not affected by them. Perhaps Bluetooth is too weak, even at close range. Or perhaps it’s because their frequencies are different. I dunno.
Having said all that, I still find mobile phones so damned useful that I always carry one around (yes, in a “man bag”) and I write software for them (moving into Mono). As long as I keep my mobile away from my body, I’m fine.
In conclusion, what I’m saying is that just because you’re not affected, then that’s not to say that other people aren’t affected. (I've been flamed on slashdot before for my opinion on this, and expecting it again now.). I’m not suggesting that we should stop using mobile phones. But perhaps with greater understanding we could make them even safer and less painful.
I don't keep anything in the same left side pocket as my phone. It's a Motorola RAZR so it folds shut. No accidental phonecalls. Also, no damage to the screen since it's closed when pocketed.
And even if it wasn't, I'd still carry it there. I'd pretty much rather lose my phone than ever carry it on the outside. I'm not 70 yet.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Why not a blind test? Instead of having two groups; users ans non-users, have three groups. non users, left hip and right hip. Every time a subject was tested he would not have his cell phone on and the technician would not know what group he was in. When the statistics were analyzed the doctor would not know which group was which; he would just be looking to see if there was a difference between the left and right. Only after the analysis was done would the groups be revealed. That would remove any possible bias.
I also agree that "statistically significant" may not be "medically significant".
And one final note; N=24? That seems like a very small study considering that only a total of 48 subjects were tested.
If you're referring to the photoelectric effect, that has nothing to do with ionizing radiation, since metals don't "ionize" (in that way).
But rods and cones are affected by non-ionizing light. More generally, heat also affects tissues, so any non-radiation that is converted to heat (down to microwaves) affects tissue. Even lower on the spectrum, non-thermal low frequency radio waves beamed at certain brain tissues can affect thought, perception, mood and emotion.
What this research is referring to involves how dissolved molecules, which become ionized by interactions with water molecules breaking components apart, might be affected by electromagnetic fields. Since ions are positive or negative, a positive or negative electric field, or a changing magnetic field (as in an electromagnetic field), may physically influence the movement. It's completely possible that a constant electromagnetic field might jiggle those ions enough to prevent or reduce the chemical coupling that would normally occur in, say, bone growth. Even a very weak field, it it were a resonant frequency, could do that.
Is it the phone or the life style of people wearing the phone on their hip?
A general contractor I met about 2 years ago was hired to replace some support beams in our 2-story Condo/apartment-commune structure. He always ate 2 meals a day of Fast-food yet his metabolism was so high-energy that it kept him skinny with anatomically-precise muscles that rippled around his body. He wore a Cell-phone clipped to the back of his baseball cap on his head. He even had a full head of hair back then when he worked near me, and I said to him "man that isn't worth the experiment and I know how much all the radiation reports on microwave ovens and cell phones are worth disproving but just don't get involved bro'." Now today, he's still wearing the same Style with that baseball cap and Cell-phone on the back of his head; and his eyes are sunken-in and nearly lost all of his hair if not a horseshoe haircut. He always feels lethargic, and simply doesn't have the mental capacity to get a doctor visit: he said he doesn't want to retire and thinks healthy food is bogus that it does more to help ignorant 2nd-world towns on the map in terms of export rather than Research and Development like 1st-world cities.
Realy, his attitude and health have fallen by a long shot! I think at this rate of events, Fast-food will be banned and the Cell-phones will be suspected only after 10-years of legal debate that will give those companies long enough to offshore before any liability finally hits them. It's too late for the Fast-food companies, but Kentucky Fried Chicken is already being established in nether regions of Africa -- for better or worse, just as long as they can "serve" the public like how America got them established. Redundancy is the job of an attorney and incompetent clients, malice has nothing to do with it so-long as what's done is removed for causes to give enough time to relocate that company to a more docile host.
where do u find mobile phone non-users for the sampling these days?
correlation != causation
Placebo effect, perhaps? Just throwing that out there.