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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]
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
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.
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
Just don't be talking on your phone when your car hits 88 mph and you should be fine.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Well, actually they are.
You can find the statistics here: http://www.abta.org/sitefiles/pdflibrary/ABTA-FactsandStatistics2010v3.pdf
And to quote:
Brain tumors are the:
the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in children under age 20
the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in males up to age 39
the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in females under age 20.
the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in females ages 20–39.
I'm not arguing that I'm convinced this is caused by cellphones. Clearly people don't drop dead immediately after using a cellphone, and don't develop a brain tumor after using a cell phone once or twice - we'd have noticed that. But brain tumors are a serious health problem, and all the WHO now claims is: we don't know whether cell phones are one of the causes of brain tumors or not.
"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
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.
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.