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Brain Cancer Worries? Look Up Your Phone's SAR
CWmike writes "With recent news of a possible link between cell phone radiation and risk of brain cancer, you may have a new-found interest in knowing how much radiation your mobile handset is giving off — or, more importantly, how much your body might be absorbing. The FCC's legal limit for mobile phones is 1.6 Watts of radiofrequency energy per kilogram, using a measure called Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). The Environmental Working Group, which tracks SAR data for more than 1,300 cell phone and smartphone models, notes that several factors besides your handset affect your actual level of exposure. Look up your phone's SAR; or see a full chart of phones." And relax — have a coffee.
Have they bothered thinking about other cancers in all of this? I had testicular cancer last year, and my phone spends a lot more time in my jacket or pants pocket than it does up against my head.
...But coffee is also in the 'may possibly cause cancer' that mobile phones have recently been added to
"IARC conducts numerous reviews and in the past has given the same score to, for example, pickled vegetables and coffee" [http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20067593-266.html]
Anyone else smell that?
*sniff sniff*
Kinda smells like someone spreading FUD...
My blood hurts...
Quick lets look up how much things are killing us rather than getting rid of them.....
Great scott! Mine is listed as having 1.1 million gigawatts!
I'll worry when someone proves non-ionizing radiation causes cancer.
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/ionize_nonionize.html
The reason is that the frequencies cell phones use are below the spectrum of ultraviolet light. It is near the spectrum of ultraviolet light where the first ionizing radiation occurs, which is required to be able to cause cancer. Ionizing means that the energy level of the individual photons of the transmission have enough energy to disturb the molecular structure of live cells. Microwave "radiation" (which has absolutely nothing to do with nuclear radiation) is far within the level of the non-ionizing radiation spectrum, so there is no possibility of it having the energy required to cause cancer.
Cell phones use frequencies around 800 MHz to around 2 GHz or so. 3 GHz has an energy level of about 12.4 ueV; ultraviolet light where the first ionizing radiation is possible is around 124ev -- that's a 10,000,000:1 difference in energy level. Have a look at the energy level chart on the right hand side of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum
or even better, see page 3 of FCC OET Bulletin 56, which is a Q&A on Biological Effects and Potential Hazards of Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields:
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_Technology/Documents/bulletins/oet56/oet56e4.pdf
People are also afraid of the cell base stations, because they don't know how safe they actually are. The transmitters for these typically send 20 - 40 watts -- that's all. This is then sent through directional "sectored" antennas that typically have 120 degrees of horizontal beam width and only 6 to 15 degrees of vertical beam width; so the three-dimensional antenna pattern is like a 120 degree slice of a pancake, yielding gain of about 13 dBi. This focusing is where the "gain" of antennas comes from -- by focusing where the energy is transmitted.
In the U.S., the standard for specifically what frequencies and power levels are considered safe is the IEEE C95.1 standard, which is unfortunately not freely available, however there's a an overview here: http://www.interferencetechnology.com/uploads/media/AG_07.pdf
This standard is incredibly long to read, but boils down to this: the only proven effect of microwave radiation in 60 years of research is the effect of microwave heating. No cancer. Further than that, the standard narrows down to the power levels that are safe for various frequency regions concerning microwave heating.
But if you really want something to "bite your teeth on", have a look at the international ICNIRP guidelines: http://www.icnirp.de/documents/emfgdl.pdf
Now, if you go through the MATH of how close you have to be to the antennas of a cell tower for it to be "unsafe", the result is pretty interesting:
Spec limit for human-absorbed power per IEEE C95-1 at 900 MHz: 50 Watts/m^2
13 dBi gain = gain of 20
EIRP = 20 W transmitted power * gain of 20 = 400 W
400 W / 4*pi*R^2 = 50 W/m^2
R = 0.636 meters
0.636 meters = 2.09 feet
So at 900 MHz and with a typical transmit power of 20 Watts and a sectored antenna with 13 dBi gain, you need to be 2 feet in front of the antenna while it's transmitting for it to be considered unsafe. This means the only way it's unsafe for a human being is if they're not only on the tower, but right in front of the antenna while it's operating at full power.
The cell phones themselves have a limit on how much power they are allowed to transmit. There are different power limits in various countries; in the U.S. the limit is 1.6 W/kg SAR, in Canada I believe the limit is 10 W/kg SAR. SAR stands for "Specific Absorption Rate". What you really want to know is "what SAR power level is unsafe?", and the answer is that in lab t
The reason is that the frequencies cell phones use are below the spectrum of ultraviolet light. It is near the spectrum of ultraviolet light where the first ionizing radiation occurs, which is required to be able to cause cancer.
I don't think that's the reason at all.
A more likely reason is that UV frequencies have a hard enough time passing through a plane of glass let alone all the walls in your house, all the trees outside, that hill at the end of the street, and the big plastic shield over the antenna on the comms tower.
Judging by the labels the entire state of California seems to cause cancer :-D
Stop giving so much weight to this idea that they have concluded that cell phones may cause cancer. It's listed with a ton of other things under the "maybe" level. It's only based on repost that they've read. There was no independent study involved. They read a bunch of reports and based on those, concluded that it falls under the "may cause cancer" classification. As in, they can't state that it does or that it doesn't. Prior to this, they hadn't even gotten around to classifying it. This is a non-news story, except by twats trying to sensationalize it.
Smoking and cancer?
Cell phone and cancer?
Humans and Climate change?
Well, die-hards die harder, but now! Mitt Romney acknowledges Climate Change!
Times are a changing
I'm really surprised about this story. That none of the sold phones go over the legally set limit is a no-brainer. This whole story looks like a piece of junk written by technologically-challenged persons for other technologically-challenged persons. Although the information is correct and TFA is very neutral and factual, the conclusions presented TFS is total bullshit. Then it presents a set of data that most people in this world don't understand. They can only see if their phone is over the legal limit or not. What more can a normal person, that is some that is not an antenna specialist and specialist on biological effects of EM radiations, deduce from such a set of data? Nada. And even the specialist will probably say he doesn't have enough information do deduce anything.
Important factors are left out of the story and its THOSE that should be discussed here. Leave the bland non-news for tabloids...
Things like how are those SAR measured. Who sets the SAR limit and how was this SAR limit decided. Who studied the relation between SAR level and biological impact of the EM radiation.
For all we know (from TFA), the FCC might have measured somehow the SAR, taken the highest level, added 10%, set it as a limit, cashed the check from cellphone makers. Although I don't think it went out like this, I still believe these questions need to be discussed and reviewed further.
FCC says SAR not appropriate to compare.
Where is even the correlation, let alone causative link, to brain cancer?
This was on NPR the other day and it was all "LOL we don't know but it /might/ cause brain cancer even though every study we have shows there isn't any correlation."
And the brain cancer it supposedly causes is a rare type that has not shown an increase in incidence from the time of no cell phones to the time of cellphones everywhere.
This is fucking pseudoscience scare mongering. There is a moneyed interest here somewhere for the scare mongering. Grants? Maybe. But that doesn't explain the actions of Sweden. Who wants to scare people into not using cellphones, and why?
That would explain this bullshit.
--
BMO
Safer phone lists..
http://www.ewg.org/cellphoneradiation/Get-a-Safer-Phone
Research..
http://www.ewg.org/cellphoneradiation/fullreport
And there is more available from their site.
Once upon a time there was a country Germany that had the world leading technology in maglev trains. Unfortunately while the Germans had the technology, due to their regulatory system they could not actually build the systems in their own country, so they shopped their technology to a country that could, China.
The Chinese paid for building one demonstration system in Shanghai and seemed to be interested in paying for more maglev business from the Germans. Unfortunately after "public protests" of radiation further projects kept getting delayed so nothing was actually built. Then the Chinese developed their own maglev technology and no longer needed the Germans. The end.
Ionizing radiation starts above visible light, radiation below visible light is non-ionizing. So if you are wondering if something has the possibility to be ionizing or not you need to ask "Is it higher frequency than visible light?" The only things that are would be ultra-violet, X-rays, gamma rays, and cosmic rays (or high energy gamma rays more properly). Anything else is below visible light and thus has no possibility to be ionizing.
In terms of frequency, visible light ends at about 800 THz so that is a rough "where ionizing radiation might start," yardstick (it doesn't right at that frequency, just an easy yardstick).
With so many bugs and battery life limited to less than a day on a lot of the latest phones, I think the brain cancer worry isn't the greatest. The risk of having an aneurysm while throwing your phone at the pavement far outweighs it!
Speaking of aneurysms, I didn't need another fucking thing to have to factor in when buying a phone. Now in addition to battery life, reliability, features and bugs, sluggish behaviour, DRM and lockdown, I have to look at the SAR? FFFFUUUUCCCCKKKK!!!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Just because it's non-ionizing radiation doesn't mean it can't damage cells, or alter proteins. Otherwise a microwave oven wouldn't be able to cook stuff. Or people wouldn't have to be careful about radar exposure[1].
Damage cells enough and the odds of cancer go up.
The risks are probably not that high (compared to smoking and some toxins). But the phones often operate rather close to heads. And there are measurable effects ) http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/305/8/808.abstract ). So I'd keep my cellphone usage as low as possible. Maybe some people's brains can take it (or might even do better) but others might not fare so well.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10926722
Link them. I just checked the top Google results and there is a whole ONE paper with a group of 25 men which shows a correlation. There is another which covers most of the US forces in Korea and specifically looked at radar technicians which found no correlation (in fact for several categories they had lower cancer rates). All the others are mixed which screams to me "random cancer cluster" not "non-ionising radiation causes cancer".
The thing you are missing is that early radar equipment used exciters that emitted large amounts of IONISING radiation. The stuff that come out of the antenna was non-ionising, but it wouldn't have been healthy sitting next to the actual transmitter.
And those power levels of orders of magnitudes higher then from a cell phone. So the claim is that not only does non-ionising radiation cause cancer in a way that hasn't been identified in over a century of research, but that repeated small exposures are worse then single large exposures of the same overall magnitude. The opposite of how ionising radiation works.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
My iPhone is at hip level, in a "dollar store" 2$ holder clipped to my Levis jeans pocket...
It's right next to my nuts, probably incinerating them everytime I receive a call... /. user, I'll never meet a woman :)
I don't even mind it, since listening to every article's "OMGZ ITZ KILLING ME" will mean I'll start living like an amish... (besides, as a typical
Like my favorite satire magazine liked to put it (CROC, Quebec), Living will give you cancer :)
They still work OK, according to some girl friends of mine, but it's unusual for most /. users...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
If a news article about a possible link to cancer from cell phones has you worried about brain cancer I don't think you are actually qualified to get brain cancer -- so you have no reason to worry.
Next up: Breathing air and eating food can cause cancer
What? People AREN'T dropping left and right with brain tumors?
IMO the most logical explanation for the correlation between cell phone use and cancer is that the cancers are from the KNOWN carcinogens that leech from plastics. Like the plastic cases that most phones used until the iPhone made metal/glass cases cool. Holding a piece of carcinogen leaking plastic to your head for hours on end for a decade or more seems a much more logical culprit then non-ionising radiation.
P.S. The plastic theory would probably explain why bowel cancer is spiking amongst the young. Young people are eating/drinking from crappy plastic containers at higher rates then ever. If you like carrying water around all the time get a metal or glass flask.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Openmoko seems to be missing from the list. According to http://people.openmoko.org/openmoko/certificate/gta/gta02/certificate/CE/EA832514_R01_CE%20SAR_FIC_GTA02.pdf the SAR is 1.05 W/kg for GSM.
The reason is that the frequencies cell phones use are below the spectrum of ultraviolet light. It is near the spectrum of ultraviolet light where the first ionizing radiation occurs, which is required to be able to cause cancer. Ionizing means that the energy level of the individual photons of the transmission have enough energy to disturb the molecular structure of live cells. Microwave "radiation" (which has absolutely nothing to do with nuclear radiation) is far within the level of the non-ionizing radiation spectrum, so there is no possibility of it having the energy required to cause cancer.
This is total bullshit. There are a lot of studies show the link between EM radiation at longer wavelengths than the UV causing an increase in cancer rates. I'm not even going to bother providing a references to one of the thousand papers on this subject. Just look at some studies performed in England and Belgian on the incidence of cancer for radar operators in WW2. We are speaking of other magnitudes of energy levels, but it still invalids your opening statement. Maybe you also overlooked non-ionizing biological effects?
No; as I said, the non-ionizing effects are microwave heating... and there aren't any ionizing effects. And I quoted both U.S. and international studies and standards that cover over 60 years of scientific research on the subject.
The only thing you're correct about in your comment is that there are papers as well as books that claim a link between microwaves and cancer; it's a very popular myth, and has been for over a decade. I'm saying it's a myth, and I've told you why I'm personally sure it's a myth, and I've given you some of my research on the subject. ...and you've given me your opinion.
And then... the eyes... Again a falsehood. The eyes are very actively cooled, and that with a very high blood flow, to cool them down from the incoming and concentrated (through the eye optics) radiation. On a very sunny day, where you have over 1 kW/m^2 of irradiance, without a good cooling, they would simply burn/cook.
I wonder how one can present such a thought out post, with calculations and everything, but with such blatantly falls information at the same time.
I never said the eyes weren't actively cooled; I said that they're the most sensitive part of the body because they don't have much blood flow due to only having capillaries in them. They're also the most sensitive because with a sufficient increase in temperature, cataracts will result. On other places on the body, an increase in temperature would mostly cause temporary damage or a burn that would heal later -- but not with the eyes.
1 Minute of every Cell Phone conversation is equivalent to 1 X-Ray
If this were even remotely true, everyone who uses a cell phone would have cancer.
what they didn't realize was that the effects can carry all the way to the Mic by inductance
Do you even know what 'inductance' means? I don't know why I bother asking, from the way you use it, you obviously don't. What you're looking for might be more akin to coupling, I don't know. Either way, the EM radiating out of the microphone is nowhere near, and not related to, what is coming out of the transmitting antenna.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
now your telling me I can get SARs from a phone. I'm just wondering if it's just me that would find it immensely satisfying to smash their phone with a hammer, sometimes.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Remember that the energy pumped out by a microwave is roughly 1000 times that of the peak output of a CDMA phone. And that the energy of said phone is focussed away from your head (for the simply reason that you don't want to waste transmission power), whereas the energy of the microwave is bouncing around a small box.
Radio antenna output can be orders of magnitude more than the microwave oven, depending on antenna application, and increased proximity causes an exponential increase in exposure (in addition to beam shaping, this is why hugging a mobile phone antenna is a Bad Idea, but standing under one is of little effect).
You're at more danger from the thermal radiation emitted by the phone's electronics being absorbed by your skin than RF radiation absorbed by your brain.
The thing that always amuses me about cancer panic regarding non-ionizing radiation from cell phones and now wifi, is that we're literally living in a sea of non-ionizing radiation, and have been for 70 years. If you look at the energy/m^2, radio and television broadcast radiation are significantly higher that cellphones, and WAY higher than wifi. TV and radio sit firmly in the 'radio band' at frequencies lower than 1GHz, while mobile phones straddle the border with the microwave band, at between 0.9GHz and 1.8Ghz or so. The top end of the microwave band is 300GHz, and the UV band doesn't start until 750Thz or so; phones, wifi, radio, tv all sit will below the visible spectrum, and thus simply do not have enough energy per quantum to ionize atoms or molecules—that is, to 'knock off' an electron from an atom or molecule. It is this that causes damage to cells in the body that can cause cancer, or unregulated growth of cells. If this wasn't true, we'd all have cancer already from our lifetime exposure to TV radiation.
UV sunlight, x-rays, cosmic and gamma rays (i.e. nuclear radiation) lie in the frequency range above visible light, and DO have enough energy to ionize atoms. This is ionizing radiation, and is why we must be careful of our exposure to man-made x-rays, exposure to too much UV light, exposure to cosmic radiation when we fly too much etc because they can and do cause cancer.
Microwaves like TV and mobile phones? They do not, and cannot cause cancer because they simply are not the type of radiation that can. Heating? Well, they do cause heating of course - we exploit that fact in microwave ovens - at 800W or so. A cellphone that emits power in the milliwatt range is not going to cause much heating, which is why we have the SAR ratings - they measure how much heating they would cause in the most sensitive tissue in the brain to that. All current phones, even high power smartphones, lie well below the guidelines for safe operation.
Note, standing in front of a high power TV transmitter is still dangerous for your health, as is being literally right in front of a tower mounted high power cell phone transmitter, because the level of heating starts to go up, and can damage tissue through heating - especially the eyes. IIRC, this is how the idea of microwave ovens came about - high power radar dishes (which operate in the microwave spectrum) were literally cooking birds to death that roosted in front of the dishes - and they roosted there because the air was nice and warm...
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
It's worrying how much attention this "radiation problem" receives from the Average Joes. Funny also to see how hard it is for some people to keep their heads cool (no pun intended).
Individuals (people) have the protection against "false claims", "harassment", etc. Science is objective (or should be). It is a "false claim" to point your fingers to somebody and shout "Person X might be a KILLER!" and after that continue investigations for 20 years, trying to find the link. There might be lots of "clues" for this person to be a killer, for example he just played violent games, watched a detective movie or just walked near some crime scene. After 20 years of investigations the public thinks this person is a serial killer when he/she actually ate meat.
Anyway as the brain cancer worries are not about people but instead about objects (phones etc.), the claims must be investigated. And probably the only way to see if it is true is to rearrange the same experiment (probably multiple times) and see the results.
I let you to decide is it good practice in science to say "might cause" when only the initial experiment was finished. This reminds me of "The Science News Cycle" comic strip.
What a curious selection of phones. The venerable Nokia 3410 is missing, but they somehow bothered to test an N-Gage.
Here is comprehensive data for Nokia handsets.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
You are swimming in the ocean. There is a supertanker bearing down on you.
The noise it makes as it passes over you is going to be amazing.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
If the frequency is not the problem, then how do you explain the large number of children having cancer, living near the radio aerials in the Vatican?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10634977
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
and the trial lawyers need something to move onto next.
Probably because they could not get lawsuits up and running against fast food as a whole. Seriously who comes up with this stuff? Possibly is not a guarantee but I am quite sure a good legal team will find a simpleton jury out there to award damages. I can see it now, warnings on the side of my cell phone that it may cause cancer, complicate pregnancy, or cause planes to fall from the sky.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
you may have a new-found interest in knowing how much radiation your mobile handset is giving off — or, more importantly, how much your body might be absorbing.
Not really, no.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The reason is that the frequencies cell phones use are below the spectrum of ultraviolet light. It is near the spectrum of ultraviolet light where the first ionizing radiation occurs, which is required to be able to cause cancer. Ionizing means that the energy level of the individual photons of the transmission have enough energy to disturb the molecular structure of live cells.
Certain viruses, such as HPV, can cause cancer without ever producing anything in the EM spectrum more energetic than miniscule amounts of IR radiation.
It probably is the case that cell phones don't cause cancer, and theoretical considerations are important, but it'd be foolish to not regard the observational data as the real arbiter of this. If a statistically robust connection is found, then the interesting thing is to find out how that can happen.
On theoretical grounds, dark energy either doesn't exist, or it should be 10^(huge number) times larger. But observations clearly show that it's real.
Then it shouldn't have been that difficult for you to find one or two *good* studies to link to. Absent a few worthwhile links, your post is equivalent to "because I say so...."
I hardly ever use my cell phone held to my ear. What I am interested in and haven't seen yet is what kind of radiation Bluetooth Headsets puts out compared to the cell phones.
.
I'm sick to death of "can you hear me now..." when I'm on my cell.
Is it possible for multiple radio waves of a non-harmful frequency to overlap and produce harmful frequencies? It seems just from picturing it in my mind that it would work but it would produce a signal with less power.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No need to worry about testicular cancer. Very little power is used when the phone is in standby. Note that the battery charge lasts a long time if you are not talking on the phone. The receiver is working, but the transmitter has a very low transmission rate.
Any transmitted energy from a cell phone in a pants pocket would need to travel through a leg to get to testicles.
Danger -- The Sun is a big electromagnetic radiation transmitter in the sky. Walking from the shade into the sun will heat your body much more than the energy of a cell phone transmitting during a call.
Standing in the sun absorbing high-energy ultraviolet radiation is truly damaging; severe exposure can cause sores and even eventually skin cancer. The photons of ultraviolet light are more than a million times more energetic than cell phone radiation, and the sun emits far, far more energy than a cell phone.
The entire earth receives 1,218,000,000,000,000 Watts from the Sun. The earth receives more total solar energy from the Sun in one hour than is generated and used by humans in an entire year. The average energy received over the entire earth is about 250 Watts per square meter over a 24 hour day, ignoring clouds.
The sun emits energy in the same wavelengths as cell phones. The only difference between the sun's energy and cell phone emissions is that the cell phone energy is at one specific frequency, and the sun emits energy at all frequencies. GSM cell phones use frequency bands at 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 MegaHertz. GSM is the most popular kind of cell phone transmitter design.
But no one has shown any frequency-specific interaction, and the physics is quite clear that there cannot be any. High energy electromagnetic waves definitely can have a strong effect on chemical bonds, but not low energy waves. The energy emitted by cell phones is perhaps 1/10,000 or 1/100,000 of the energy needed.
I haven't yet calculated how much energy is received from the Sun at those frequencies. However, there is no way for the energy from cell phones to be resonant in the body; the wavelength of cell phone radiation is too long. So the cell phone energy just heats the body, as does the Sun's energy. Without resonance, there is insignificant coupling to specific chemical processes.
Instant fame There are many, many very well-educated people in the world who would love to discover a new way that electromagnetic energy interacts with matter. Such a discovery would make any physicist or chemist instantly famous, and would earn him or her a Nobel Prize. The motivation to make such a discovery is enormous for people working in those fields.
The fact that no such discovery of a new kind of interaction has been made indicates at least that it is not easy. Another indication is that apparently no one has even proposed a mechanism for low-energy long-wavelength electromagnetic radiation to have an effect on chemistry.
It's not as though it hasn't occurred to anyone to do research.
People may say that there may be some subtle effect that we have not yet discovered. And there may be. However, those comments often give the impression that they think that the discovery of a new subtle interaction would have a subtle effect on our understanding of the world. That isn't true. In fact, the discovery of a new kind of interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter would create a revolution in Physics, in areas we think we know well, in areas where our understanding has been stable for many decades. For example, Planck's constant is known with an uncertainty of only 89 parts per billion.
That makes a new discovery seem less likely.
Einstein's discovery of relativity revolutionized our understanding o
How do you explain the large number of children not having excess cancer, living near the other thousands of high-powered radio aerials in the world?
The thing that always amuses me about cancer panic regarding non-ionizing radiation from cell phones and now wifi, is that we're literally living in a sea of non-ionizing radiation, and have been for 70 years
s/70 years/for as long as man has walked the earth/
The Sun itself emits a sea of non-ionizing radiation in addition to the ionizing radiation it emits. Hell, the universe itself does-- the cosmic background radiation (though it is pretty weak compared to what the Sun emits.)
(Of course, it IS well known that exposure to the Sun does cause cancer (via it's ionizing radiation). Of course, it also helps you make vitamin D and is pretty hard to avoid for most people, so we accept the risk -- but mitigate it when needed.)
What chemicals are they using to keep plants off those aerials?
What is the cancer risk at similar sites around the world?
The reason is that the frequencies cell phones use are below the spectrum of ultraviolet light. It is near the spectrum of ultraviolet light where the first ionizing radiation occurs, which is required to be able to cause cancer.
99% of all carcinogenic substances do not emit ionizing radiations. On the other hand it is known that microwaves alter the physiology of the brain:
http://www.nature.com/jcbfm/journal/v29/n5/full/jcbfm200914a.html
http://www.nature.com/jcbfm/journal/v26/n7/full/9600279a.html
There are a lot of scientific articles pointing out that low-power microwaves can damage brain cells or alter their physiology. Since that's the primary effect of a ionizing radiation (cancer is a secondary effect of the induced damage), none can exclude that microwaves can cause cancer because "ionizing radiations are required to be able to cause cancer". They're not.
okay.
There is this one: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10926722
This one : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19035449
This second one brings up an important point also mentioned by the_raptor to my previous post... The cancer may have occurred from the exposure to the exciters. Separating both is difficult obviously.
But you also have studies that show no correlation between high-exposure environment and cancer rate, like this one (also mentioned above) :
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/155/9/810.full
or this one :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20570865
which is directly contradicted by this one showing totally opposite conclusions :
http://www.bfs.de/de/elektro/papiere/Stellungnahme_Naila/
So there is no unambiguous word on cancer incidence due to exposition to non-ionizing radiation. In the best case you could say the it is inconclusive. But stating that it is impossible that the exposure of non ionizing radiation, namely radiation at longer wavelength than UV, cannot cause cancer is about as false (or as true) as saying it does cause cancer without a doubt.
Here's the problem with this, and most of modern science: It's model based.
To use your reasoning, airport scanners are safe because we can model the effects of radiation on living tissue.
Choose different assumptions to argue the outcome in different ways.
Compare with dental X-rays. At the time people started worrying about radiation, X-rays had been used for some time so it was straightforward to collect data on lots of people and look for a correlation. The correlation was almost vanishingly small, but it was there. From this data we calculate the increased risk, and compare against other risks.
For those of us old enough to remember, there was a similar controversy awhile back about high tension power lines causing cancer in children. In similar manner there were lots of arguments back and forth on why it could happen versus why it doesn't.
Only after a series of evidence based measurements was the issue finally put to rest.
Your model works for you - and that's fine. I notice no one is doing actual experiments; for example - raising mice in close proximity with cell phones and looking for correlations.
Show me the evidence.
The only known "cause" of cancer is a genetically deformed cell. The older you get the more your cells have divided. Cellular damage also causes more cells to divide. Nervous lip chewers (that chew their inner mouth tissues frequently) have the same approx amount of mouth cancer as snuff dippers (tobacco chewers). The more times a cell splits the more chance it will mutate and become a cancer. Cells that have split more times have a higher chance.
Then, Cancer causes more of itself.
Does exposure to EMF increase the chances of cancer? Do you think that adding energy to a chemical reaction may have a factor in the result? (DNA duplication == chemical reaction) Microwaves are non ionizing, but they still contribute heat, and last I checked, so did a Bunsen burner.
Do foreign substances increase the chances of cancer? Do you think that adding more chemicals to a chemical reaction may have a factor in the result?
IMHO, we should put more effort into researching a cure than trying to figure out what causes (read: increases the chance of) cancer. There is no way to prevent genetic deformations of cells, but perhaps we can find a way to combat those that occur, (or use them to our advantage), and make the whole argument pointless.
IIRC, this is how the idea of microwave ovens came about - high power radar dishes (which operate in the microwave spectrum) were literally cooking birds to death that roosted in front of the dishes - and they roosted there because the air was nice and warm...
They tested this on Mythbusters, strapping a chicken carcass to front of a high-powered radar dish. After several hours, the chicken was still the same temperature as when they started. So even high-powered microwaves won't necessarily hurt you.
stressing tissues can cause mutations, and sometime result in cancer, For two examples, oxygen deprivation and heating can result in cancer. Increased incidence of eye and testicular cancer have been noted in those that work with high power microwave transmitters. Yes, this is a very different situation than cell phone use, but still it isn't accurate to say only ionizing radiation can cause cancer.
Besides high levels of RF radiation. Including many KNOWN carcinogens like PCBs in high voltage capacitors, transformers and insulating oils, Asbestos in old wire insulation. Chlorinated solvents used for cleaning and degreasing equipment. Radioactive isotopes used inside spark gaps and transmitting tubes. X-rays and ultraviolet emitted from high voltage vacuum tubes..
And because we are talking about MILITARY radar techs, you need to add in all the other nice stuff that soldiers were potentially exposed to, like DU munitions, agent orange, etc.
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I'd mod you up "insightful" if I could! Thanks, though -- this is another link to add to the collection of why cell phones are actually SAFE.
Not a popular opinion, unfortunately.
If the frequency is not the problem, then how do you explain the large number of children having cancer, living near the radio aerials in the Vatican?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10634977
I explain that as BAD STATISTICS. What is being described in the article is called CORRELATION -- but it is not proving CAUSATION. (Usually this is explained as "CORRELATION != CAUSATION.") Basically the argument they're making is A) the area around the Vatican has an unusually high rate of cancer, B) the area around the Vatican has a lot of radio aerials, therefore C) the radio aerials must be causing the cancer. However, this is an error in logic; all they know is that the area around the Vatican has a high rate of cancer, but not why.
So, perhaps some type of very localized heating might lead to accelerated cell growth with higher replication error rate which then gives cancer.
This suggestion is likely totally bogus, but is intended to illustrate the way some type of alternative mechanism to ionizing radiation might come into play.
i.e. data is always the master, not the theory.
Ionizing radiation is not why cells phones maybe dangers to your brain. I remember seeing a TV News spiel about this and it was even smart enough to explain that the worry was heating the brain like a microwave does. More specifically heating small blood filters which when heated became ineffective allowing pollution and waste byproducts into sensitive brain tissue. I think there is even some worry on it's effect on mental health.
Well, again, even this doesn't make sense, because the cell phone only transmits a couple of watts, which isn't enough to do any effective heating. Heck, the actual *heat* the cell phone itself has to dissipate does more heating than the transmitted energy does. A microwave oven magnetron tube typically transmits between 500 W - 1000 W in a sealed RF enclosure, so that any energy that isn't absorbed by the water molecules in the food bounces around the RF enclosure until it does. A cell phone radiates in nearly an isotropic pattern (in all directions, like a bare light bulb does), so even those couple of watts (at most) that is transmitted, more than 50% of it never makes it to your head even when the cell phone is against your ear. Also, the antennas in cell phones are down by the mouthpiece these days, to keep the transmitting antenna from interfering with hearing aids.
And when it comes to the brain, why would there be blood filters in it? If there were, how would the waste that was filtered be expelled? Isn't this the job done by the kidneys? See, that doesn't make sense, either.
I don't doubt that you saw what you saw on TV, though; the idea that cell phones are dangerous and is a very popular opinion. I don't think the argument the TV news program was making has any merit.
So, perhaps some type of very localized heating might lead to accelerated cell growth with higher replication error rate which then gives cancer.
This suggestion is likely totally bogus, but is intended to illustrate the way some type of alternative mechanism to ionizing radiation might come into play.
i.e. data is always the master, not the theory.
The idea you've given is that somehow a higher replication rate causes cancer. I have no idea whether that idea has merit or not, but it sounds like speculation.
The whole problem with the idea that cell phones cause cancer is that it's based on speculation. It's much more difficult to disprove an idea than it is to prove it; and that's why more speculation won't help.
The reason is that the frequencies cell phones use are below the spectrum of ultraviolet light. It is near the spectrum of ultraviolet light where the first ionizing radiation occurs, which is required to be able to cause cancer. Ionizing means that the energy level of the individual photons of the transmission have enough energy to disturb the molecular structure of live cells.
Certain viruses, such as HPV, can cause cancer without ever producing anything in the EM spectrum more energetic than miniscule amounts of IR radiation.
It probably is the case that cell phones don't cause cancer, and theoretical considerations are important, but it'd be foolish to not regard the observational data as the real arbiter of this. If a statistically robust connection is found, then the interesting thing is to find out how that can happen.
On theoretical grounds, dark energy either doesn't exist, or it should be 10^(huge number) times larger. But observations clearly show that it's real.
I understand your desire for observational data to draw your own conclusion -- that's cool. The IEEE C95.1 report has 76 pages of it dedicated to listing all of the hundreds of references to documentation and studies on the subject. It's nearly impossible to find online, but at least at one time is possible to find the PDF form by searching for the ISBN number. Give that a try and see what you find.
Print: ISBN 0-7381-4834-2 SH95389
PDF: ISBN 0-7381-4835-0 SS95389
IIRC, this is how the idea of microwave ovens came about - high power radar dishes (which operate in the microwave spectrum) were literally cooking birds to death that roosted in front of the dishes - and they roosted there because the air was nice and warm...
They tested this on Mythbusters, strapping a chicken carcass to front of a high-powered radar dish. After several hours, the chicken was still the same temperature as when they started. So even high-powered microwaves won't necessarily hurt you.
I heard the myth of birds being cooked by radar dishes, too. I don't know if it's true, but the respected documentation of where the microwave oven came from is in the document "The History of the Microwave Oven: A Critical Review" by John M. Osepchuk, ISBN number 978-1-4244-2804-5/09. In case you don't find the document, the microwave heating effect was found by Percy Spencer in 1945-1946, who was then working at Raytheon Manufacturing Company. That's a lot earlier than most people would expect.
[......] And that the energy of said phone is focussed away from your head (for the simply reason that you don't want to waste transmission power) [......]
Ridiculous! Phone antennas are omnidirectional. Suppose the BTS was the other side of your head from the phone - focussing the RF away from your head wouldn't work very well, would it?
Seems they don't have any data on the Nokia N900. That's OK; We can get it off of Nokia's web page :
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"The highest SAR value under the ICNIRP guidelines for use of the device at the ear is 0.80 W/kg."
Not bad at all, especially compared to the HTC Nexus One or the Motorola Droid Pro at 1.39 W/kg
jdb2
"Remember that the energy pumped out by a microwave is roughly 1000 times that of the peak output of a CDMA phone"
More than that. My CDMA phone peaks at 0.2watts and my microwave is ~1200watts(very typical). That's about 6,000 times stronger.
increased proximity causes an exponential increase in exposure (in addition to beam shaping, this is why hugging a mobile phone antenna is a Bad Idea, but standing under one is of little effect).
As I said, phones operate rather close to heads. About half the output is absorbed by the head. It certainly is not focused away. Designers just try to locate the antenna so it's not closer to the head than it has to be.
You're at more danger from the thermal radiation emitted by the phone's electronics being absorbed by your skin than RF radiation absorbed by your brain.
Skin repairs itself much faster than brains. And typically handles damage like "sunburn" better.
Human brains can and do cope with damage, but it's typically more a result of workarounds than repair.
Theory is all fine and dandy, but there is a wealth of evidence to suggest just the opposite of what you propose.
I didn't give you theory, I gave you FACT. A fact is something that can be independently verified; and I gave you links to studies and standards concerning exposure to microwave radiation.
...
By no means are the proposed mechanisms [that you referenced] necessarily correct, nor will they explain everything, but your assertion that it is impossible for cell phones to cause cancer is not only poorly thought out, but negligent of the harm that it causes when naive individuals take you at your word.
In other words, what you've given me is speculation. It's exactly this kind of speculation which has gotten us where we are today; where people are afraid of cell phones and cell towers for no proven reason. I'll attempt to read up on the biological mechanisms you've referred to in order to try to understand them, but until I find proof that negates the prior evidence I have that EM radiation is not cancer-causing, I'm maintaining my original position.