Another Cell Phone-Cancer Study Emerges

oxide7 writes "Since the advent of cellular phones, researchers have pondered whether a connection exists between cell phone usage and brain cancer. New evidence always seems to emerge to support or refute such a link. On Wednesday, another study was added to the list. A European study involving nearly 1,000 participants found no link between cell phone use and brain tumors in children and adolescents. This marks the 3rd study this month and the 4th major one this year, all with different conclusions."

Comments

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[Anonymous Coward]

the money... who pays for the studies?

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[shoehornjob]

Oh if I had mod points. You are so right and your formula can be applied to research done in various fields. I think Mythbusters presented the best research on the subject. They put Busters' head in a glass box with some alcohol soaked rags and a cell phone that was wired up to some kind of scientific instrument that measures radiation (yeah someone here will know wtf I'm talking about). They found that the radiation did spike a bit when making or recieving calls but it was within acceptable levels. And predictably it did not set Busters' head on fire. Damn.

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[Dthief]

YES!

I noticed the ones who said correlation was there (causes cancer) were from universities, whereas the other studies were international committees with no mentioned affiliation. I am pretty sure you are right on target.

This also applies to Fracking

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[Joce640k]

FTA: "Since the advent of cellular phones, researchers have pondered whether a connection exists between cell phone usage"

Ummm, no they haven't. The underlying physics has been known for at least a hundred years and the appropriate experiments to confirm the theory were done to every thinking person's satisfaction long before cellphones even existed.

Anybody who thinks cell phones might cause cancer has no right to call themselves a "researcher". They're in it for the grant money, book sales and daytime TV appearances.

For the short-attention-spanners:
a) Cellphone radiation is made of exactly the same stuff as light.
b) Visible light is about a million times more energetic (i.e. dangerous) than cellphone radiation.
c) Visible light doesn't harm anybody (none of these 'researchers' seem worried about visible light, do they?)
d) Physics predicts that ultra violet light is where the cancer problem begins.
e) Simple observation confirms point (c) and (d)*

[*] Hence sun creams. Which are made by scientists.

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[sjames]

While it does seem that cellphones don't cause cancer, a few of your points are weak enough that they should just be dropped.

a) so are X-rays

b) I'd rather be exposed to 800Watts of visible light than microwaves

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[GrievousMistake]

Personally I doubt that cell phones have any notable effect on cancer rates, but dismissing it simply because the radiation is non-ionizing would be too hasty.

There are plenty of documented carcinogens besides ionizing radiation; irritants, burns, bacteria and various chemicals can all increase your risk of cancer.

The researchers are looking at cell phone use as a whole here. There are a couple of other effects that could plausibly have carcinogenic effects, though it is unlikely.
There's a list of potential issues at Wikipedia.
E.g., holding a cell phone close to your head while talking will cause slight but measurable heating of the brain.

Dismissing out of hand that any of these effects could cause cancer just because you think you understand the physics of radiation interacting with physical matter would be folly, comparable to dismissing asbestos as a carcinogen because you understand the effects of throwing rocks at a person.

Now, at this point there has been extensive studies on the matter, and I feel reasonably convinced that if there is indeed an effect, it is very slight. That was IMO the most likely result from the beginning, but considering the massive scale of worldwide mobile use, even a small probability of health issues is well worth researching.

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[Linux Torvalds]

I'm guessing you meant 'transparent'

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[bertok]

slight but measurable heating of the brain.

A modern cellphone emits on the order of 1 W of radiated power. That would take an hour and a half to heat an adult brain up by 1 Kelvin, but our brains are liquid cooled, so that just can't happen.

If an increase in the temperature of the brain causes cancer, then people who work outdoors in tropical countries ought to get a very high rate of brain cancers. They don't. People who get fevers more often than average ought to get a high rate of brain cancers. They don't. The average person's body temperature changes by 0.5 degrees C due simply to natural daily rhythms! That's the same amount of 'heating' as 45 minutes of cell phone use, every day.

The cellphone-cancer link is pure pseudoscience. It's not enough to come up with some vague correlation if every other verified theory tells us that it just can't happen. A mechanism for the cause has to be proposed (a model), and it has to be shown to be valid rigorously, using double-blind studies and falsifiable experiments. Nobody has come even close, and nobody should expect to be taken seriously until they do.

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[perryizgr8]

you're wrong. cell phone radiation is the same kind as light, yes. but unlike light, it can cause a very little amount of heating inside your head. the question is, does that heating pose a risk? i don't think it does, but i'm not a scientist. it worries me why so many studies do not agree with each other.

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[rtb61]

In the article, "cell phone use and brain tumors in children and adolescents" and "a large and immediate risk of cell phones causing brain tumors in children can be excluded". So if you are a child or adolescent you wont "immediately" get a brain tumour if you use a cell phone.

Now of course after many years of use, many hours a day when you are no longer a child or adolescent, well that's called Russian roulette.

What is needed is simply an honest analysis of current data. Of all the people with brain tumours and cancer, how many hours per day and for how many days have they used a cell phone. Of course bugger the "1,000 participant studies", an analysis on everyone with known brain cancers and tumours ie tens eve hundreds of thousands.

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[tehcyder]

Oh if I had mod points. You are so right and your formula can be applied to research done in various fields. I think Mythbusters presented the best research on the subject. They put Busters' head in a glass box with some alcohol soaked rags and a cell phone that was wired up to some kind of scientific instrument that measures radiation (yeah someone here will know wtf I'm talking about). They found that the radiation did spike a bit when making or recieving calls but it was within acceptable levels. And predictably it did not set Busters' head on fire. Damn.

So, because his head didn't catch on fire, there is no link between mobile phones and cancer?

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[tehcyder]

In the article, "cell phone use and brain tumors in children and adolescents" and "a large and immediate risk of cell phones causing brain tumors in children can be excluded". So if you are a child or adolescent you wont "immediately" get a brain tumour if you use a cell phone.

Exactly, if you did a study on smoking in adlolescents, I imagine a vanishingly small proportion would die of lung cancer by eighteen even if they'd been smoking since the age of ten. It proves nothing useful.

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[spyros2]

different radiation to different materials, absorbsion rate is different skin reflects normal light but X-rays pass right through

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[shoehornjob]

The head catching on fire was just the icing on the cake. The true test was how much a person is exposed to radiation during an average cell phone call. The test was by no means complete as they only measured the output of one phone but the radiation was significantly lower than expected and only peaked when making or recieving a call.

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[cybe]

This also applies to Fracking

(universities being the objective, independent source of research results)

Oh, Rly? See This American Life from July 8th this year for an example of the opposite.
It seems like many universities (in this case Penn State) are more or less dependent on continuing economic support from "benefactors" in the gas industry and are stifling dissenters.

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[GrievousMistake]

That would take an hour and a half to heat an adult brain up by 1 Kelvin,

That's an oversimplification assuming the entire brain receives the exact same amount of energy, and that is just the radio transmissions, while a cell phone can also output heat on its own and reflect your body heat.

These "Platonic thought experiment" rebuttals tend to be simplistic to the point of "assuming spherical cows" and ignore the complex interactions of a real biological system. That's not a valid scientific argument, at best it's a plausibility argument.

We didn't think asbestos was a carcinogen but it was. We then thought glass fibers were likely to be carcinogens too, but they weren't.

That's the same amount of 'heating' as 45 minutes of cell phone use, every day.

Any cell phone use comes on top of all that, and some professions could easily spend more than an hour a day on the cell phone. (Though admittedly they'd normally get a hand-free set then.)

It's not enough to come up with some vague correlation if every other verified theory tells us that it just can't happen. A mechanism for the cause has to be proposed (a model), and it has to be shown to be valid rigorously, using double-blind studies and falsifiable experiments.

A correlation can be plenty to work with if you can clearly prove it. If the correlation can not be explained by other established models, or discarded as coincidence, you can then start searching for a underlying mechanism.

John Snow found a correlation between drinking from a certain well and outbreaks of cholera. The mechanism of infection was not known at the time, but even so the correlation was clear and undeniable.

The problem here is rather that they have tested for a correlation and there isn't one. Empirically testing a hypothesis you don't like is not pseudo-science.

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[sjames]

WHOOSH!

I understand perfectly! Just because X-rays are EM and visible light is EM does NOT mean X-rays are as safe as visible light, you think?

As for microwaves, they penetrate the dead epidermal tissue so they can kill the living tissue underneath. Not so much the case for visible light. RF burns are not pleasant.

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[Dthief]

A lot of faculty at Penn State and Pitt speak against the line, but they get funding from non-natural gas companies. Those who are funded by those companies are who you are talking about. I'm sorry if I made it seem like all academia was immune from corporate corruption. I was merely pointing out the competing sides in this particular case.

Obligatory xkcd

[somaTh]

http://xkcd.com/925/

The graph does make it look pretty clear...

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[pushing-robot]

http://xkcd.org/882/ is also relevant.

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[Dthief]

Oh, so its actually the infrastructure, and not the cell phone use itself?

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[KarrdeSW]

So obviously it must just be the green cell phones!

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[Dynetrekk]

More relevant I'd say.

I'm not so sure the conclusions are different

[Scareduck]

as they have been manipulated to sound different. The infamous WHO study was so mealy-mouthed as to be capable of saying almost anything the reader wanted.

Re:I'm not so sure the conclusions are different

[jojoba_oil]

Right. The whole subject is junk. Just look at TFS:

New evidence always seems to emerge to support or refute such a link.

Ok. So there's 2 options: support, refute. But then:

This marks the 3rd study this month and the 4th major one this year, all with different conclusions

If each has different results, then we have:

• support
• refute

• inconclusive (not one of two possible outcomes stated)

• not-supporting not-refuting still-conclusive evidence? wtf is that?

Re:I'm not so sure the conclusions are different

[Scareduck]

not-supporting not-refuting still-conclusive evidence? wtf is that?

Collecting a paycheck.

Non-ionizing

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-ionizing. Quit wasting my time.

Re:Non-ionizing

[bcrowell]

Non-ionizing. Quit wasting my time.

Mod parent up.

Doing these studies makes as much sense as doing massive, expensive studies to figure out whether I can cause my neighbors to get cancer by thinking evil thoughts about them. In both cases, there is no remotely plausible physical mechanism for the direct effect as postulated. The only reason to do the cell-phone study and not do the evil-thoughts study is that the former appeals deeply to people's folk beliefs, which have been built up from decades of movies and comic books where "radiation" causes magical effects. Never mind that electromagnetic "radiation" is necessary for photosynthesis -- "radiation" is bad, I tell you!

Of course some studies give positive results and some give null results. The studies are measuring the relative sizes of their random and systematic errors. In the studies where they succeed in getting their random errors down to a smaller level than their systematic errors, they will measure either a positive or a negative correlation with cancer. In the ones where they succeed in getting their systematic errors down to a smaller level than their random errors, they will get a null result.

Even in the case of ionizing radiation, where there is a physical mechanism for causing cancer, it is extraordinarily difficult to measure cancer caused by low doses. For instance, nobody really knows whether doubling your dose of ionizing radiation relative to average natural background would be positively correlated with cancer; there is in fact some evidence to suggest that it would reduce your risk.

Re:Non-ionizing

[jank1887]

If only someone could go back in time and convince them to come up with another word to describe electromagnetic propagation. Think of all the time and money that could be saved. If it's not an ionized particle, IT'S DIFFERENT!

Re:Non-ionizing

[Joce640k]

Yeah, but...when I wave my sell phone near my speakers it makes a horrible noise. You're not telling me that's not really powerful radiation are you? Surely it must do something bad to me.

Re:Non-ionizing

[Dthief]

you should stick your head in a microwave while its on.....its non-ionizing....so totally safe

Re:Non-ionizing

[MonkeySpaceCapsule]

Actually, the fact that they are non-ionizing doesn't prevent them from harming DNA. Ionization loosely means that the power is sufficient to destroy a base pair in a DNA chain (via striping of an electron), if the full energy of the wave packet is absorbed. Ionizing radiation is guaranteed to hurt you if it is absorbed by your body (e.g., it will ionize something whether that is protein or DNA). My perception of why "non-ionizing" doesn't mean it is safe comes from a (tangential) education in terahertz radiation (e.g., microwaves). Simply put, just because the radiation may be low in power when averaged over time and space, the instantaneous energy density of the radiation might make it unsafe. DNA can be harmed through lots of different ways other than ionization (strand separation, mutagens, denaturing, etc.)

For an ocean analogy, just because the ocean has an RMS wave height of 5 feet doesn't mean that *all* the waves will be 5 ft tall. Instantaneous peaks (in space and time) will discharge sufficient energy (albeit non-ionizing) into DNA to cause the strands to separate (and be subject to other effects accordingly). For a gadget example, take the microwave. It isn't ionizing. It doesn't directly cause cancer, but if an organism is subjected to sufficient microwaves of power to denature proteins, the process will cause upticks in cellular metabolism to repair those proteins. I for one do believe that the uptick in metabolism does in fact lead to a higher incidence of cancer (though metabolic studies vs cancer rates are really not well documented in my book and mostly involve healthy people starving themselves).

I think the best take on cell phone radiation, for which sadly cannot attribute, was from a UK doc several years ago who was worried that the digitization of cell phone signals (vs analogue), while it would lead to a much lower RMS would also lead to bursts of *very* high instantaneous energy. This might denature proteins over time, like cooking an egg millimeter by random millimeter.

Forget studies on people with cell phones for the next decade or so. People are complicated and are difficult to pin down w.r.t. a cause of a disease. I think we probably need to spend more money on actual fundamental (microbial) research on non-ionizing radiations effect on cellular growth (such as http://www.biomedsearch.com/nih/Cell-phone-radiations-affect-early/20355324.html). As for myself, right now I have no idea if they are safe, but I for one know that just being "non-ionizing" isn't enough.

Re:Non-ionizing

[Misagon]

You mention upticks in metabolism. That is very interesting.

I have seen PET-scans from a study where the subject was injected with doped glycose molecules and using a GSM 800 MHz phone while inside the detector. The scans showed a high concentration of glycose -- a blob in the image -- right next to where the antenna was, and only normal levels elsewhere in the head. Mind you this was somewhat older model of an Ericsson GSM phone with only a single-band that had an actual external antenna.

Seeing that image shed my doubts right there that something is going on. The radiation may not be ionizing but it is definitely doing something. This particular study did not go into why there was an increase in glucose, it was only showing that there was.

Re:Non-ionizing

[dgatwood]

Here's the thing: non-particle ionizing radiation (e.g. ultraviolet light) is fundamentally just higher energy because of the higher frequency. Claims that UV causes damage while lower frequency RF signals can never cause damage are just plain contrary to reason. Nothing else in nature has a sudden threshold like that; there's always a continuum, such that you start to see significant numbers of additional deaths at some concentration, with near complete destruction of the population at some point, but that doesn't mean that levels below the level where you saw the first death aren't dangerous.

As a general rule, it is silly to assume that there is some magic threshold above or below which you can say that suddenly this energy is or isn't going to cause damage. This strongly suggests that the dividing line between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation is really nothing more than an arbitrary cutoff below which the odds of damage are small enough that we consider it to be "mostly harmless", not a point below which RF is completely harmless. Thus, you would expect chance to play a major role in whether the effects are or are not detectable at those levels. Crank up the gain by a factor of a million and see if the effects are still undetectable. If they suddenly become consistently observable, then what you are seeing is really no more than the difference between one instance and zero instances in a sample size that's too small to adequately show the effect.

Re:Non-ionizing

[cababunga]

The scans showed a high concentration of glycose -- a blob in the image -- right next to where the antenna was, and only normal levels elsewhere in the head.

I wonder if the antenna was incidentally located close to the area of the brain responsible for processing of the audio signal, which might also be emitted by the phone.

Re:Non-ionizing

[Dynetrekk]

Spot on. Please, help spreading the work of Robert Adair, he's got papers on both ELF and cell phones. One of them is found here: http://pra.aps.org/abstract/PRA/v43/i2/p1039_1 There's one about cell phones too, he basically disproves the whole thing using thermodynamics and simple, fundamental physics arguments. It's more thorough than waving your jedi hand and saying "non-ionizing", too.

Re:Non-ionizing

[cababunga]

Not a good example. Nobody asking you to stick your head in a pot with boiling water to prove your point.

Re:Non-ionizing

[ericloewe]

Here's the thing: non-particle ionizing radiation (e.g. ultraviolet light) is fundamentally just higher energy because of the higher frequency. Claims that UV causes damage while lower frequency RF signals can never cause damage are just plain contrary to reason. Nothing else in nature has a sudden threshold like that; there's always a continuum, such that you start to see significant numbers of additional deaths at some concentration, with near complete destruction of the population at some point, but that doesn't mean that levels below the level where you saw the first death aren't dangerous.

As a general rule, it is silly to assume that there is some magic threshold above or below which you can say that suddenly this energy is or isn't going to cause damage. This strongly suggests that the dividing line between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation is really nothing more than an arbitrary cutoff below which the odds of damage are small enough that we consider it to be "mostly harmless", not a point below which RF is completely harmless. Thus, you would expect chance to play a major role in whether the effects are or are not detectable at those levels. Crank up the gain by a factor of a million and see if the effects are still undetectable. If they suddenly become consistently observable, then what you are seeing is really no more than the difference between one instance and zero instances in a sample size that's too small to adequately show the effect.

Actually, there *is* a sudden jump, assuming the material you're observing is the same. A photon either has enough energy to remove an electron or it doesn't. Also, RF and UV are nowhere near each other.

Re:Non-ionizing

[Dthief]

Although it doesnt cause cancer, the radiation is nonetheless interacting with molecules (in this case causing thermal excitation of water) in your body.

It is not unreasonable to have an interaction with a radio wave perturb a molecule either thermally, magnetically, or otherwise, and result in a modification to some biological pathway. If that pathway has to do with healing of damaged DNA then you will very easily get cancer, despite the lack of ionizing radiation. I dont know the biology of the brain very well, but neither does anyone well enough to determine this for sure, or even ascribe the risk accurately.....this is why these tests are being done, and hopefully you are right, I just dont want to take that on faith.

Re:Non-ionizing

[MonkeySpaceCapsule]

Yeah the jump discontinuity is caused by atoms having protons, neutrons, and electrons in integer amounts (rather than continuous amounts such as 0.3 protons).

I should note, that non-ionizing radiation (such as green light) can also be devastating, depending upon it's energy density. I've come across articles where titanium sapphire laser light (green non-ionizing) was sufficiently compressed through pulse shaping that it was capable of producing soft x-rays when passed through air. Remember light is a eletromagnetic wave, and the amplitude and frequency of the pulse shape was sufficiently high to rip off electrons.

Re:Non-ionizing

[Man On Pink Corner]

And the control for this study was the same subject holding an equally warm object, correct?

Re:Non-ionizing

[Linux Torvalds]

Thermal effects. Visible-light lasers harm living cells by burning them up.

Re:Non-ionizing

[repapetilto]

I think you're simplifying too much. Its better to quantify things. UV radiation is 1,000,000 times more energetic than radio. So the magic threshold you are talking about spans a factor of a million. Another way to put it is that the cutoff is not arbitrary at all. If you shine light that does not contain photons energetic enough to knock electrons away from their nuclei, it does not matter how long you do it for, or how bright the light is. You will never get ionization. This has been known for 100 years.

Can the exact energy required to ionize a molecule be affected by factors such as the solvent and interaction with other molecules around it?
Yes. This difference will not be by a factor of 1,000,000 though.

Could there be damage due to non-ionizing effects of the radiation?
Yes.

But is the damage due to non-ionizing radiation significantly more than the damage a cell causes to itself during day to day living?
Probably not. A normal cell repairs around 250,000 dna lesions per day (or 10,000 per hour, or 200 per minute). It is capable of repairing closer to 1,500 dna lesions per minute.

For reference, one hour of bright sun exposure causes about 80,000 dna lesions (1,300 per minute) and skin cells can take about 15 minutes of this before they start killing themselves off rather than trying to repair.
So if you look up how many dna lesions occur in RF treated cells now you will have something to compare to.

As to whether we should keep paying for these huge epidemiological studies without any proposed mechanism:

http://xkcd.org/882/
http://xkcd.com/925/

Re:Non-ionizing

[repapetilto]

So you agree they should be studying pathways rather than doing epidemiological studies?

Re:Non-ionizing

[dgatwood]

You're assuming that all of the energy necessary to produce such a transition must come from a single, controlled source.

Re:Non-ionizing

[IICV]

Yeah, that's why when I go out for a day at the beach, the sunscreen I put on blocks radio waves as well as UV light.

Wait, no it doesn't - because non-ionizing radiation doesn't cause cancer at noticeable rates.

Look, you're right that non-ionizing radiation may, in rare circumstances, cause some sort of harm to the DNA in a cell.

However, that doesn't matter! Humans are accustomed to wandering around underneath a gigantic, broad-spectrum electromagnetic transmitter (we like to call it the Sun). Your DNA is assaulted all the goddamn time, by pretty much everything in your environment.

And you know what your body does? It kills cells that are acting funny. It does this quite frequently. It's essentially a Nazi about genetic purity. If there's the least little bit of derp in a cell, it will kill that cell and everything in the area.

All this means that even though non-ionizing radiation does occasionally damage the DNA of a cell, your body will fix it pretty quickly - and even in your post you admit that it such an occurrence is particularly rare (that's why they call it non-ionizing, after all). The reason why ionizing radiation can be bad is because, as you said, almost every particle causes an ionization event - if it messes up your cells to the point where your body misses something (and this can take literally years of sunbathing), you get cancer.

If you're concerned about getting cancer from non-ionizing radiation, and you care at all about being consistent, you should also be searching out sunblock lotions that block in the microwave and radio spectrum (good luck finding that).

You just don't seem to realize that the sort of damage a phone could cause is the sort of damage your body deals with all the time, without you noticing - and cell phones don't put any more strain on the body than walking around in the sun for a while.

Re:Non-ionizing

[treeves]

So is UV 'B' ionizing radiation?
See the problem with your argument now?

Re:Non-ionizing

[emt377]

C'mon... 1000W microwave versus cell phone?

1000W at 200mm distance equals (10/200)^2*1000 = 2.5W at 10mm. Cell phones burst at 3-5W (depending on local regulations). The oven is directional while the phone is omnidirectional, but the short distance means it can't be discounted.

Re:Non-ionizing

[green1]

When was the last time you found a cell phone that worked at 3-5 watts? The old bricks and bag phones from the mid 80s were 3 watts, today's phones are about 1/10th of that. Additionally there is a reason that microwave ovens work at the specific frequency that they do, it's because that frequency causes the energy to be transferred to water molecules and cause them to heat up, if you changed to either a higher, or a lower, frequency the microwave oven would stop being able to cook your food. Cell phones do not operate at the same frequency as microwave ovens (though wireless routers, baby monitors, and cordless phones do, but I guess those don't make for as exciting sensationalist headlines so nobody tries to twist the facts to make those evil)

Re:Non-ionizing

[Black Gold Alchemist]

And a system with internal electromagnetic fields but no cell phone hookup (like a PDA). These scanners work by shooting charged particles.

Re:Non-ionizing

[perryizgr8]

sunlight is also non-ionizing. so can you look at the sun without burning your retina? nope.
i think there is no relation between cancer and cellphones, but it would be wrong to dismiss the though just due to it being non-ionizing.

Re:Non-ionizing

[perryizgr8]

i doubt the brain has a separate 'audio processing' region. i think it might be spread out all over. only very few specific things have dedicated areas in the brain. everything else is 'distributed'.

Re:Non-ionizing

[perryizgr8]

yes, and imagine what sort of cancer inducing radiation we are bathed in, because i can see the radiation emitted by stars billions of light years away.

Re:Non-ionizing

[cababunga]

That would be a very inefficient brain. Here, I found couple pictures for you: http://www.strokecolorado.org/Graphics/brain-side.jpg http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/brain.gif

Re:Non-ionizing

[perryizgr8]

offtopic, is it my browser or links in comments have stopped working?

Re:Non-ionizing

[Sipper]

Actually, the fact that they are non-ionizing doesn't prevent them from harming DNA.

? Ionizing means the particle has enough energy to disturb molecular structure. Non-ionizing means it doesn't.

You brought up the Microwave Oven -- this is another example of non-ionizing radiation. A lot of people are concerned about "denaturing proteins" in a microwave -- but that happens anytime you "cook" or "burn" food, so the same thing happens in a frying pan or cook on a charcoal grill. And considering a charcoal grill, that is KNOWN to generate carcinogens -- but despite the risks we're still cooking with them anyway (me included).

The huge problem concerning trying to prove that microwaves are non-cancerous is that it's trying to prove a negative. For example -- prove to me that pink elephants never existed. Even though you have a pretty darn good idea that they never did, it's nearly impossible to PROVE it, especially such that everyone else will be assured that it's true. And, so, the speculation continues...

Cellphones are safe.

Re:Non-ionizing

[cababunga]

Buggy Slashdot. You have to expand all ancestors to have clicks go to links.

Re:Non-ionizing

[tehcyder]

Non-ionizing. Quit wasting my time.

Go stick your nuts in a microwave oven then.

Yes, I know, heat damage isn't the same as ionising radiation. It's a joke.

The conclusions are not that different.

[Kenja]

Remember, the study everyone was screaming about not too long ago put cell phones (and all other devices that emit radio waves of any sort) into the same carcinogen class as pickled cucumbers.

Re:The conclusions are not that different.

[ThatsMyNick]

So, pickled cucumbers can cause cancer?

Re:The conclusions are not that different.

[Kenja]

Odds are they dont, but they cant say for sure. Same with cell phones.

Re:The conclusions are not that different.

[Joce640k]

Bananas are far more dangerous than cellphones, they emit ionizing radiation.

Re:The conclusions are not that different.

[fran6gagne]

Yeah cell phones waves were classified in Group 2B: the agent (mixture) is possibly carcinogenic to humans. The exposure circumstance entails exposures that are possibly carcinogenic to humans. Among group 2B is Citrus Red No. 2 dye used to color oranges, lead, nickel, coffee and as you said pickled vegetables.

I guess you will find interesting that alcoholic beverages and tobacco products are classified in Group 1: the agent (mixture) is definitely carcinogenic to humans. The exposure circumstance entails exposures that are carcinogenic to humans.

Re:The conclusions are not that different.

[bcrowell]

Sorry to tell you this, but the whole banana thing was a mistake. Your body maintains an equilibrium with respect to potassium. When you eat a banana, you quickly excrete just as much potassium as you ate. Negligible net increase in your radiation dose.

Re:The conclusions are not that different.

[drinkypoo]

What if you slept amidst bundles of bananas?

I'm still Calling BS

[Anonymous Coward]

5 Billion phones in use and the sample size is 1000? I'm still calling BS on the cancer part since the signal from a phone is not ionized and does not have that effect of mutating cells, but that sample size is way to small to the general population use of the phones to be relevant.

The actual paper quoted a percentage of people in that group with brain tumors and it seemed very high, like 60 out of the 1000 people or something.

Re:I'm still Calling BS

[Walt Dismal]

Imagine this statement: "Sunlight is not ionizing radiation therefore it is unthinkable that it can cause cancer."

On another topic, the study is flawed in that it only tracked children over a limited period even though that was several years, and therefore cannot make assertions that something does not cause cancer, as it omits long-term development triggered many years before. It is clear from chemical environmental studies that carcinogens can take long times to produce effect.

Also, the study took place where (lower than USA) European radiation standards are in place, and therefore does not cover effects of higher output phones in other countries, nor of pervasively high-density US towers.

And finally the study by using only cancer for a claim that phones do not cause problems omits the effects of RF on childrens' brain development, a wholly different issue but not an insignificant one

Re:I'm still Calling BS

[leighklotz]

Imagine this statement: "Sunlight is not ionizing radiation therefore it is unthinkable that it can cause cancer."

You're massively confused. Sunlight *is* ionizing radiation, at least the UV portion. That's why sunlight causes cancer.

http://cancer.stanford.edu/skincancer/skin/causes/uvrad.html

Re:I'm still Calling BS

[Walt Dismal]

Guys, I was illustrating flawed thinking - my whole post was about flaws. I was not asserting that UV cannot deliver enough energy to break bonds. Of course it can.

Re:I'm still Calling BS

[treeves]

Breaking bonds != ionizing.

Re:I'm still Calling BS

[Walt Dismal]

But in ionic solids ionization IS breaking of bonds.

Re:I'm still Calling BS

[treeves]

Yes, and in the case of covalent bonds, or hydrogen bonds, breaking bonds is not ionizing anything, so what is your point?
DNA is not an ionic solid, in case you are confused about that. In fact, I'll say that there are *no* ionic solids in the human body under normal conditions (i.e. you didn't just eat some table salt which has not yet fully dissolved in your mouth), just to be safe.

Re:I'm still Calling BS

[Walt Dismal]

I went to make sure I used the right definition. And lo! I correct myself. Breaking the bond in ionic materials is dissociation and not ionization. But in common in ionization and dissociation is that energy causes the action. Certainly UV can have enough energy to do either, in the right cases.

Now, going back to the original issue, some RF energy can most certainly ionize although it depends on the frequency and power level. A simple example is in the semiconductor industry where RF applied to plasma chambers excites gases creating a plasma. Of course cell phone peak power levels are not that high nor around the same frequencies.
But the contention in play was that because cell phone RF does not provide ionizing energy levels and frequencies nor high enough thermal energy, it cannot interact with tissues. But that premise is not true. For example, RF applied to a wire on a microscope visibly causes causes paramecia to react to the energy. Ants can align with microwave energy, because their (organic) antennae are about the right wavelength and energy couples into their nervous systems. Bees have been shown to react to cell phone frequency energy. That's pretty much demonstration that RF at non-ionizing levels can affect tissues sometimes. So then the next question would be what does that energy do and to what molecules? Obviously it can couple into nervous system tissue, and the brain is nervous system tissue. To what extend can energy coupled into organic conductors affect chemical processes such as DNA replication or repair? One may not have to break bonds in order to disrupt sensitive processes, merely make the processes have one critical error once in awhile.

Re:I'm still Calling BS

[leighklotz]

Guys, I was illustrating flawed thinking - my whole post was about flaws. I was not asserting that UV cannot deliver enough energy to break bonds. Of course it can.

I'm still kinda lost but I'm willing to believe you're saying something. Want to try again?

As far as your other points about density of cell towers, going from an area with a single distant tower to an area with great cell coverage (i.e. an increase in cell tower density) would cause a decrease in phone transmit power at the phone of tens of dB, and a decrease in absolute power of at least several hundred milliwatts, which would result in a drastically decreased SAR. The increase in power from the surrounding cell towers received in the area with higher tower density would be in the nanowatt range. Receive threshold for a cell phone is in the roughly -100dBm range, or 10^-10 milliwatt or 10^-13 watt. If you had poor cell coverage, that's what the signal strength would be at your phone. If you have two cell towers which give you that same amount of received power, the total power received would be -97dBm, or in round terms, still about 10^-10 milliwatt. If you had ten towers nearby each was -90dBm (i.e. ten times as strong) that's 20dB difference or a signal strength of -80dBm total or about 10^-8 milliwatt. So the increase in power at your point is in the nanowatt range.

So going from one barely usable cell tower to ten strong ones gives you an increase in received power of a nanowatt, and yet your phone transmit power goes down from 1 watt to 20dB less or 10 milliwatts. So total, you transmit 990 mw less and receive 1 nanowatt more. The nanowatt is clearly so small that you can ignore it.

TL;DR: If there are more cell towers, the absolute only thing that matters is your phone transmit power is now drastically lower when the cell coverage is better.

Re:I'm still Calling BS

[Walt Dismal]

I have a question. The worst-case received power a cell phone is designed for doesn't really say what peak emitted power a cell tower emits. Even with inverse-square law, what are the actual numbers for tower antenna radiation? I don't any good numbers available but believe it's around 35 to 100 watts per bay at phone frequencies. How much at harmonics of 800 MHz? How much at frequencies caused by nonlinear rectification by corroded materials? I don't know. Need more info. Can''t sleep, clowns will eat me. Clowns with phones.

"...all with different conclusions"

[stevegee58]

...depending on the authors' agendas.

No science to see here folks! Move along! Move along!

Re:Children and adolescents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be silly, most parents buy their kids cell-phones at the age of 10 now.

Frequency dependent

[EmperorOfCanada]

Technology and frequencies have all been changing over the last few years. Even analog to digital. I would be interested in seeing if the studies that all show harm are for the same technology. And the harmless studies are for a different set of frequencies.

Re:Frequency dependent

[Mia'cova]

Excellent point good sir. I mean, um, wait a second, wtf are you talking about?

Re:Frequency dependent

[Mia'cova]

Different frequencies affect things differently. eg microwave radiation is absorbed easily and heats our food. xrays mostly go straight through tissue. Different frequencies will have different penetrating capabilities. One could potentially be more damaging to our skin/brain than the other.

Re:Frequency dependent

[compro01]

The different frequencies used for cellphones are not different enough for that to be a factor. X-rays are roughly ten million times the frequency as a cellphone radio.

radio->infrared->visible light->ultraviolet->x-rays->gamma rays

Re:Frequency dependent

[perryizgr8]

your sequence seems to be in order of wavelength, not frequency.

Re:Frequency dependent

[compro01]

it's listed from low to high by frequency or long to short by wavelength. Take your pick.

Re:Frequency dependent

[perryizgr8]

i mistook '->' for '>'.

Re:Sigh

[YodasEvilTwin]

And yes, most of it is non-ionizing, but that just means a single radio wave won't cause a point mutation. The interaction of all the signals in the modern environment is much more complex than that.

Slightly Related

[Haedrian]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjh13hxehl4

Re:Sigh

[Phleg]

-1, Idiot

Visible light is a form of radiation. Heat is a form of radiation. Therefore light bulbs cause cancer, right?

Re:Sigh

[ZombieBraintrust]

Radiation is just a scary word for light. Lightbulbs cause radiation. Heat causes radiation. Your own body emits radiation. Cancer is only caused by radiation that is at wavelengths that can damage DNA.

Re:Sigh

[Phleg]

I hate replying to myself, but "radiation" has become the new "chemical". Chemicals are bad. Radiation is bad. This is what we get for de-funding science education.

Re:Sigh

[elsurexiste]

What about non-ionizing UV light, then, which indeed causes DNA damage?

Re:Sigh

[Sqr(twg)]

Radiation can cause DNA damage and thus cancer. Thus cell phones can cause cancer.

Yes. That's the way clueless people reason, and the reason so many people are afraid of cellphones. The correct reasoning would be: "Ionizing radiation causes cancer. Cell phones do not emit ionizing radiation. Thus there's no reason why cell phones should cause cancer." A 60 Watt light bulb emits about 60 times more radiation than a cell phone. Those are higher-energy photons also. I don't know if there has been any studies on whether light bulbs cause cancer.

You don't know anything about radiation, do you?

[publiclurker]

Adding non-ionizing radiation sources together does not make it ionizing, nor does it increase the energy levels to where it can break chemical bonds.

Different Conclusions Tell You Something

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>This marks the 3rd study this month and the 4th major one this year, all with different conclusions.

If we were talking about anything else, the obvious conclusion would be that there isn't even evidence for correlation let alone causation. This will continue until the next Scary Thing (tm) comes along to replace cell phones and smart meters.

Re:Children and adolescents?

[CannonballHead]

Assuming the parent *already* gave his kid a cell phone... what's wrong with the research about said usage? The kid is already using it, wouldn't it just be measuring the results? And if you don't want to give your kid a cell phone, it would still just be measuring the results. It doesn't seem like the study is asking them to do anything different than normal cell phone usage, which they very likely are already doing. Granted, I'm not sure of their actual methods... but since they are trying to find a link or absence of a link between, I assume, normal cell phone usage ...

Re:Sigh

[Phleg]

Irrelevant. I'm replying to the person who lacks a fifth-grade understanding of the term "radiation".

Re:Sigh

[Phleg]

UV light != visible light. Go back to high school.

Well, technically

[EdwinFreed]

Nonlinear effects are possible, like where two photons are absorbed then only one is emitted. So non-ionizing radiation could in theory interact in a way to produce ionizing energy. It's also possible that some structures are exquisitely sensitive to particular frequencies of radiation.

But a closer look shows just how unlikely such phenomena are. The probability of such interactions depends on there being sufficient energy density - you see them with megawatt lasers but not at the power levels where cell phones operate. As for some sensitive structure being present, if there was you'd think we would have found it by now.

Re:Well, technically

[Linux Torvalds]

So non-ionizing radiation could in theory interact in a way to produce ionizing energy. No, they can't. Take a physics class, then post.

Re:Well, technically

[EdwinFreed]

First of all, there are ionizing and non-ionizing photons. The difference is the energy/frequency/wavelength. Visible light, infrared, radio are all relatively low energy and non-ionizing. X-rays and gamma rays, OTOH, are ionizing.

Second, your assertion that there are no processes that can convert non-ionizing radiation to ionizing radiation is false. I've done it myself in the lab - a 10Mw picosecond pulse neodymium YAG laser puts out light in the infrared (non-ionizing). But with frequency doubling optics you get green light. And you can then combine the green light and some of the infrared and get ultraviolet (ionizing) radiation out. (And incidentally, I was a physic postdoc at the time - that's how you get to play with such cool expensive toys.)

Third, getting this to work depends on the tremendously powerful (but extremely short) pulses the laser puts out. Without sufficient quantities of photons the changes of the same atom getting hit twice are extremely low. And the radiation produced by a cell phone isn't even close to having the necessary density, not to mention that the photons are so low energy you'd have to combine a lot of them to get to the ionizing range. But the phenomenon does exist.

Re:Well, technically

[repapetilto]

Uh, yes it can.

Re:Well, technically

[Linux Torvalds]

I've done it myself in the lab - a 10Mw picosecond pulse neodymium YAG laser puts out light in the infrared (non-ionizing). But with frequency doubling optics you get green light. And you can then combine the green light and some of the infrared and get ultraviolet (ionizing) radiation out. (And incidentally, I was a physic postdoc at the time - that's how you get to play with such cool expensive toys.)

The phrase "that's not even wrong" comes to mind. Your nonlinear optical crystals aren't doing anything applicable in a discussion of microwaves. But yes, if my brain ever evolves a broadband comb generator with femtosecond recovery times, I'll indeed start to worry about how it might interact with my cell phone.

Re:Well, technically

[EdwinFreed]

In other words, you now admit that my original point, which was that while it's possible to turn non-ionizing radiation to ionization radiation, the chances of anything in a human body doing it are vanishingly small, was in fact correct.

Re:Well, technically

[Linux Torvalds]

Sure, but if your point was irrelevant, why'd you even bring it up?

If we took the argument to its logical extreme, I could assert that moving water can create ionizing radiation. Then, when someone argues with me, I'll fondly recall that one (hypothetical) time back at Science Camp when I rigged an X-ray tube up to a water wheel. Optical multipliers are almost that far removed from what's being discussed.

Re:Well, technically

[repapetilto]

No, the logical extreme would be multiple RF photons hitting the same molecule at the same time thus ionizing it. Also you sound like you need to go to the bathroom or something.

Re:Well, technically

[EdwinFreed]

Entirely relevant, actually. The reason I brought it up is because it has various been asserted that an ionizing effect in this situation is possible, and others have claimed it's impossible. I don't know about you, but when I want to consider whether or not something is possible in a given situation, I look at the actual physics and see what's involved in getting it to happen. And we both know, what's involved doesn't seem likely to exist (ok, that's an considerable understatement) as a combination of what a phone actually emits and what's between a persons's ears. But you don't know that until you look.

Re:Well, technically

[Linux Torvalds]

No, the logical extreme would be multiple RF photons hitting the same molecule at the same time thus ionizing it.

Which isn't going to happen.

Re:Well, technically

[repapetilto]

What if I wanted it to happen? Like as a noninvasive way to burn out a tumor without damaging the intervening tissue.

Re:Well, technically

[Linux Torvalds]

Then you either use ionizing radiation to begin with, or you use nonionizing radiation in a thermal capacity.

Re:Well, technically

[perryizgr8]

actually it can.

Re:Well, technically

[repapetilto]

But ionizing radiation would damage the tissue it is passing through and thermal effects cause too much collateral damage. Are you sure theres no way to focus the energy better?

Re:Well, technically

[Linux Torvalds]

Sorry, I'm not your professor. You might spend some time on Wikipedia -- an example of what you're asking about might be the so-called "gamma knife." Individual beams of ionizing radiation converge on the spot to be treated, delivering an increased dose where it's needed without doing as much harm to the surrounding tissue.

Re:Well, technically

[repapetilto]

Sorry I am just interested in a physicist's perspective. I'll admit that I know little about lasers, etc. I guess here is my basic question: Can I use the principles of two-photon microscopy to cause ionization?

Just a yes or no is fine.

Re:Well, technically

[Linux Torvalds]

You'd want to ask an actual physicist for one for the specifics of how multiphoton fluorescence works; I only play one on TV. From what I gather in the Wikipedia article, it requires some pretty exotic conditions, as the probability of a quantum UV transition being stimulated by two coincident IR photons is extremely low even when you're trying to make it happen on purpose.

Optical frequency multiplication by itself is not that new or exotic, so if you're fishing for a yes/no answer, the answer is "Yes, under certain conditions you can observe non-ionizing photons stimulating the emission of ionizing ones." You can also manufacture gold with a particle accelerator -- does that vindicate alchemy?

Re:Well, technically

[Linux Torvalds]

The thing is, when you're arguing with creationists, you don't start rambling about specific obscure DNA markers that somebody found last week. It invites nitpicking of the sort seen in this thread, and your argument suffers the death of a thousand cuts. ("Yes, but couldn't God have put that endogenous intronic retrovirus there to test our faith? You can't prove he didn't!")

Earlier I said, paraphrasing, "Non-ionizing radiation doesn't turn into ionizing radiation." Was that correct? No, it was not, because you can use an optical frequency multiplier to demonstrate such an effect on the bench, or a microscope that uses wack-ass femtosecond lasers and shit to stimulate fluorophores in living tissue. Is it even remotely useful to hedge your words with all of these corner cases when trying to persuade people with a typical American high school science education that their iPhones aren't cooking their brains? I'd say that the answer to that question is also "No."

Life's too short, radiation or no radiation.

Re:Well, technically

[repapetilto]

Well from the lit it looks like people are doing it... Pulse a high intensity IR beam at sub-picosecond rates then split it and focus the two where you want to "ablate" something (basically put enough photons in a small enough volume so that multiphoton ionization does happen, while avoiding significant thermal effects).

Anyway, if someone believes something based off consensus you are not going to convince them with arguments no matter how confident you act. In my experience the only way is to change their perception of the consensus.

So I think EdFreed's post contained an experts perspective that was informative and useful to the interested reader. Whether or not it would convince ignorant people of their error is irrelevant. They won't listen to people who just tell them they are wrong, and they won't put the effort towards considering details either. The weakness of this way of thinking is that the person is left wide open to manipulation.

I didn't get why you were attacking Ed. Honestly I originally took you for a troll.

Re:Children and adolescents?

[Belial6]

I got one for my kid at 3. Sure made our trip to Disneyland a lot less traumatic when he found an exit we didn't know about in the Tom Sawyer' caverns.

Re:I find this more interesting

[jank1887]

even better:
The Sunscreen Smokescreen - Information is Beautiful

Re:Sigh

[codegen]

What about non-ionizing UV light, then, which indeed causes DNA damage?

Actually it is in the UV band that radiation become ionizing. Near UVA(300-400nm) is non-ionizing. Middle and Far UVB/C (200-300nm) is ionizing. The latter(UVB/C) causes DNA damage directly. UVA can contribute to cancer, but it is indirect through interactions with radicals. Nobody has ever said that there are not chemical interactions that can be influenced by non-ionizing radiation (chlorophyll and blue/red light comes to mind). However, cell phones are in the microwave region. If you can show an organic molecule that reacts chemically at these frequencies, I suspect there is a Nobel Prize in it for you. So far all anyone has been able to show is heat.

Re:Sigh

[shoehornjob]

Thank you. His theory/assumption was far too vague. We need to measure the amount of radiation occuring on most current models in various modes of daily use to even grasp a correct baseline before we can calculate potential damage to tissue etc. It's just basic facts with no hidden agenda that we need to formulate a valid opinion.

Re:Physics shows that cell phones cannot cause can

[jank1887]

the comments on that article are priceless.

No need for any studies...

[frog_strat]

Because I fully understand everything about radio waves and biology. Nothing in my knowledge would allow for any cancer stimulating phenomenon. Sheez, go get a religion. Science has no room for all of these dogmatic assertions.

Cancer takes years to show up

[mrheckman]

Children and adolescents? Heck, I suspect that one could run a test of children and adolescents working under UV lights in asbestos mines who eat nothing but saccharine, and there still wouldn't be any sign of a cancer connection. Cancers generally take years to show up.

Re:Sigh

[Dthief]

depends on the animal

Re:Sigh

[Joce640k]

Lucky for us that cellphones don't emit UV-B then...

Effect vs No Effect? Third Option

[Caption Wierd]

Collectively, these studies tell me one very important thing: If there is an effect, it is not a large one. And not worth worrying about.

Re:Cancer is not the only malady that befalls us

[Joce640k]

Compared to all the other radio waves out there? Meh.

Conclusions of yet another one

[houghi]

I have the conclusion of yet another study:
Studies cause cancer in rats.

Skin depth.

[Anonymous Coward]

The intensity of any EM radiation (including the RF/microwave radiation from cell phones) diminishes as it moves into any medium, including the human head.
Brain cells divide at a much slower rate than skin cells, so any radiation induced carcinogenic effects would take longer to produce cancer in brain tissue, as compared to skin and ear tissue.

Cellular RF is most intense at the skin surface, at the temple and the ear.
The skin does, in fact, exhibit cancerous growth relatively rapidly following exposure to carcinogenic chemicals and ionizing (UV, X-ray) radiation.

If cell phone radiation was really causing cancer, we should see alarming rates of skin cancer, radically outpacing brain cancer, and correlated with cell phone use.
But we don't.

Re:Sigh

[gorzek]

On the other hand, microwave radiation--which cell phones produce--has never been shown to cause cancer.

Art imitating life

[BetaDays]

Art imitating life: last lines in the movie "Thank you for smoking" 2005 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427944/quotes says it all quite nicely. Nick Naylor: Gentlemen, practise these words in front of the mirror: Although we are constantly exploring the subject, currently there is no direct evidence that links cell phone usage to brain cancer.

Re:Cancer is a fungus, known prior as Consumption.

[leighklotz]

The nature of EMF from transmitters is that most communications and food preparation equipment are operating at near the resoant frequency of water:

No, that's wrong. Dipole resonance of water molecules is around 20 GHz. Microwave ovens are 2.5 GHz and 915 MHz. Those frequencies are allocated as ISM bands. All RF causes heating by absorption, even light.

cell phones and WIFI are operating near the resonant frequency of water to improve their line-of-sight communications through the atmosphere, while microwave ovens actuallty agitate the water molecules in edible food

No, that's wrong. If something absorbs RF and turns it into heat, it's not going to pass it through without loss as well. You're claiming two contradictory things in the same sentence.

to generate heat that supposedly cooks the food if not change the chemical structure of it to something worse.

Yes, you're right. Heat does cook food. Cooking food changes the chemical structure. That's why we cook it. It's done by heat. A 2000 watt Infrared lamp in a stove can cook food because of heat, but it doesn't cause cancer. A 2000 watt microwave oven can cook food because of heat. A fire can cook food because of heat. A lens can concentrate the electromagnetic radiation from the sun and cook a hot dog or kill an ant. If you look at the sun, the lens in your eye will concentrate the energy on a sensitive part of your anatomy and you will go blind. A 2000 watt radio transmitter can cook you because of heat, and you would not want that, so you should avoid being near concentrated electromagnetic energy, because it will induce heat into the soft tissues of your body just as it does chicken breast, and you will get cooked.

In the matter of Cell Phones, wherever region that transmitter is held on the body is where it impugns the Immune System from fuctioning

So what is your proposed mechanism by which some frequencies you have picked ("cell phones", "wi fi") cause immune system suppression now that you know that the special distinction you supposed for these frequencies (by exciting water molecules at resonance) isn't true? How do you propose to decide that heat energy induced in the body by cell phones is more dangerous that heat energy induced by the heat lamp in the bathroom ceiling, or the heat you get from sitting in the sunny part of the yard instead of the shady part?

You want to read about microwave ovens? Go to wikipedia.

Astrocytoma reference

[FrootLoops]

The article mentions

Published in the International Journal of Oncology, and carried out by researchers from the University Hospital of Örebro and Umeå University (Sweden), the study found that long-term usage increased the risk of all malignant tumors by 30 percent, and astrocytomas in particular by 40 percent.

But this article says (apparently about the same study)

People who started using mobiles as teenagers, and have done so for at least 10 years, were 4.9 times more likely to develop astrocytoma as compared to controls, the researchers added.

Neither article bothers to give enough identifying information for this study for me to actually find the paper (even further reinforcing my impression of widespread journalistic incompetence...). Anybody have a link at least to an abstract?

But there is irrefutable evidence...

[DaveAtFraud]

that talking on a cell phone causes stupidity.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Children and adolescents?

[sjames]

This, like most cancer studies, is statistical. That is, the subjects self-select themselves into control or experimental group independent of the existence of the study.

The problem there is that self-selection introduces a lot of potential for confounding influences.

The huge advantage and why they're done in spite of such a serious shortcoming is that since the subjects self-select independently of the study's existence, the researcher bears no responsibility for the outcome.

Research idea

[slasho81]

Somebody should check the correlation between conclusions and funding sources.

Re:Sigh

[elsurexiste]

Thank you for an informative reply! :) This was the last piece of the puzzle!

Follow The Money

[Anonymous Coward]

See who paid for the study. Skip directly to conclusion.

Re:Sigh

[compro01]

Also depends on where in the UV band you are. Some types of interaocular lens implants will allow you to see a little into the UVA band. My grandma had such a lens after she had cataract surgery.

ob xkcd

[jc42]

Someone has to post a link to relevant xkcd comic.

Actually, the discussion on this includes messages with interesting points. The most fun might be the observation that one interpretation of the graph is that the increase in cell-phone users matched the levelling-off of the total cancer incidence, implying that cell phones are preventing a significant portion of the cancers we'd have otherwise.

Of course, fun stuff like this is likely to be drowned out by the chorus of "correlation doesn't imply causation" chanting.

Re:Sigh

[treeves]

No it doesn't. The term 'visible light' refers to a particular, defined wavelength range of electromagnetic radiation, not whether or not some animals eye is capable of detecting it.

I was wary but...

[MrL0G1C]

The number of brain cancers have not increased in the general population whilst mobile phone use has exploded, so it's pretty obvious that mobiles aren't causing brain cancer.

This is important to know

[Travel Addict]

Its necessary to obtain knowledge like this. In simple ways we can inform people about the danger within this new technology.

Just look just to your left or right when driving.

[JakFrost]

I'm amazed at the sheer number of people down here in the south who drive their expensive luxury cars and trucks with the mobile phone glued to their ear by their hand, oblivious to the situation and other drivers around them.

You'd think that if they can spend $30-60K they could buy a $40 Bluetooth speakerphone or ear piece?

Douchebaggery on our roads!

Re:So...

[green1]

being that there isn't even a remote possibility... I'm happy to keep my smart phone.

Re:Sigh

[perryizgr8]

its not just lack of education, there's a general atmosphere of misinformation in news sources. my mother (a civil engineer) thinks cellphones and laptops(!) cause cancer, if operated too close to the body. this is due to misleading, sensationalist reports in newspapers and tv. and these guys doing all these contradicting studies are not helping either.

Re:Sigh

[perryizgr8]

Radiation is just a scary word for light. Lightbulbs cause radiation. Heat is radiation. Your own body emits radiation. Cancer is only caused by radiation that is at wavelengths that can damage DNA.

ftfy

Re:Physics shows that cell phones cannot cause can

[perryizgr8]

this is a very ignorant article. i'm surprised it was published on sci am.

Re:Physics shows that cell phones cannot cause can

[perryizgr8]

the comments seem to be more logical than the article.

Re:In related news. . .

[perryizgr8]

haha. does politics make normal people stupid, or do stupid people become politicians?

Re:Just look just to your left or right when drivi

[perryizgr8]

more than likely their car audio system already supports bluetooth.

Re:What about Cordless Landline Phones?

[perryizgr8]

today's cordless phones use a frequency in the range of bluetooth, also the transmitting power should be much lesser than a cell phone.

Re:Just look just to your left or right when drivi

[JakFrost]

True, but the cell non-ionizing radiation denatured all the proteins in their brain cells making them too stupid to figure out the Bluetooth pairing process.

Enough of the cancer research

[LongearedBat]

If no link has been found yet, then it's unlikely that one will be found. However, many people do actually get warm ear aches that develop into headaches (myself included). I'm pretty certain it's not psychosomatic for a variety of reasons (that I can't be bothered listing out yet again, though one reason is the fairly consistent sensation across many people).

So is it dangerous? It seems not (and it seems quite clear that it does not cause cancer). Also, not enough energy is generated to warm up all that water in the head. So what is happening then?

How about testing for other things for a change? For example, how about starting by measuring the percieved effects on people who claim to be sensitive?

Cancer studies

[RivenAleem]

These cellphone studies are like cancer, they never go away, just keep resurfacing time and again

Wrong Approach

[tomxor]

I agree that it is very unlikely there is any significant link between cell phone microwave radiation and cancer.

But what i hate even more than the ignorant seeking out answers they do not understand for a conclusion they have already drawn out of fear... is people at the other end of the spectrum who while sharing the most probable answer also use bad science to argue their point. They make science look bad, if they aren't knowledgable enough in the field then they should state their opinion with some damn humility.

Also It isn't as black and white as you draw it, em radiation can interact in many ways, and classifying all non-ionising radiation as the same is quite wrong - of course - there is a reason we use the microwave frequencies for coms through walls and not visible light.

Now i'm not suggesting that a cell phone emits ionising radiation, and i'm not suggesting that it can cause dipole rotation and heat your brain. However as more is discovered about the workings of the brain, different studies could to be done that monitor possible non-cancerous affects... For instance considering how it has been found communication between neurons also takes place through electric fields: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brain-electric-field it's also known that much stronger focused fields have a definitive and immediate impact on neurons (not necessarily negative) it has actually been used for treating very specific phycological problems that can be physically targeted. However knowing that more subtle fields are also a part of the neural mechanism does raise questions as to how such close proximity to a weak microwave transmitter could interact with those fields... who knows it could have positive effects ! but keep an open mind.

Bananas' Heat Brains

[tomxor]

This reminds me of another study where they quite amusingly did test with both bananas and cell phones... whether or not the subjects knew the difference i don't know :D

Anyway they found that holding a banana in close proximity to your ear or for that matter any other object be it a shoe or a gerbil, also heated your brain by roughly the same degree... the gerbil might actually heat your brain slightly more so i think they should put some warning labels on gerbils in pet shops.

Re:Sigh

[ZombieBraintrust]

thanks

Re:soo...

[myth24601]

It means you shouldn't pretend you are using a banana as a phone to make your kids laugh.

Re:Sigh

[Dthief]

sorry, i thought people understood jokes