Slashdot Mirror
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."
... 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/
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.
Carry my phone in my pocket all the time. Have done for the last 10 years or so.
In the risks I run each day, the usage of a mobile phone comes very near the bottom of the list, near "lifting a piece of paper up while seated at my desk" and "blowing my nose".
It's actually NOT worth my time worrying about, because the worrying would do much more damage to my body than the phone ever would in normal usage.
Personally, until it approaches the risk of myself drinking about a litre of Coke a day (which I've done for years), I'm very unlikely to start worrying. And yes, Coke is incredibly "dangerous" - sugar, acid, calcium-leeching chemicals (in the Diet versions, I believe) and all sorts of problems. But when a sip of Coke is that dangerous, a mobile phone hardly figures in my reckoning.
Why not click on the link in the article then?
You scoff, but nose blowing fatalities are the great, unspoken tragedy of our times.
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.
It's actually NOT worth my time worrying about, because the worrying would do much more damage to my body than the phone ever would in normal usage.
Ignorance is less stressful, indeed. There are many other more important issues to deal with, but why not keep the darn phone a tad farther from your bones anyway ? Just to be sure. Would you say it's that stressful to do that ?
Every time some data suggesting that wireless technology might be harmful to human health appears I see a bunch of geeks jumping in and screaming about how stupid that is. It looks almost irrational, almost like they wish it not to be harmful, even though they reckon it might be.
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?
Not ignorance - I honestly just don't care enough, having reviewed the evidence thoroughly in the days of "mobile phones will fry your brain", especially as I work in schools where we were deploying Wifi and the parents were protesting against a mobile phone mast being built nearby too.
My initial instinct when I first heard things like this years ago, fresh out of uni, as someone of a scientific mind? They were idiots. My conclusion then, after lots of personal research? They were idiots. My conclusion now? They're still idiots. My conclusion for the forseeable future? Almost certainly still idiots but I bet we do eventually find lots of things that "are affected" but in such minor ways that I'll spend more time worrying about whether I should blow my nose or not.
Science, observed recordings, and centuries of studies tell me that EM radiation in the frequencies and powers observed does nothing to my body that's even close to being measurably, statistically and practically significant or detrimental over the timescales discussed, and considered against any other number of reasonable factors that you could easily remove. The bacteria that live in my shoes pose orders of magnitude greater risk to my health every day.
And I'm not a phone junkie. I get one or two calls a day, about five minutes each, and rarely dial out (I have an office phone and a home phone, why bother using the mobile?). But the mobile stays on me, powered on, all day to fulfil its primary purpose - so I have something on my person that can make a phone call in an emergency. Just turning the damn thing off would be an infinitely better solution for myself (because I only care about outgoing calls) but it's just not worth the effort because the risk is so statistically insignificant. I'd be more worried about the extra weight on my hip, to be honest, and that's such a minor thing compared to my upper body weight.
If I put it anywhere else, I will lose it - I don't have shirt pockets and I'd end up leaving it in there, my trouser (pant) pockets also contain other "take everywhere" essentials - keys, money, cards (the invisible finger-grime on my cards is more a hazard to me, and the keys are a greater risk of causing me injury, especially if I just shove them in my pocket and then sit down). And the risk from the phone is so negligible as to not warrant changing a habit.
Some people REALLY have a problem estimating risk. That's their problem. Personally, my phone stays. Similarly, I see no reason to not live inside a ring-main wired house, as I do. All that electricity pumping around me all day, emitting EM for no reason! If I treat a hip-phone as a significant risk, I have to treat everything with that same risk or more in the same way too, and that would make my life infinitely more complicated to the point that it would be unlivable.
But I have a life. One with infinitely more risks (which are much more significant, likely and detrimental) than what a bit of EM might do to my hipbone over the course of my lifetime. Hell, technically I walk through EM fields dozens of times a day - they're called "Oyster readers" on the London Underground and/or shop theft detectors.
The point is - people who *KNOW* and calculate the risks are telling you that it's really not worth worrying about and hasn't been, for pretty much forever. Thus every scaremongering story about radiation, EM or how we're all going to hell if we don't believe is subject to criticism.
It's probably slightly less "damaging" to have my phone an inch away. But having it where it is is already so "undamaging" that I just don't care. It really makes that little difference that's it not worth worrying about.