FCC To Update 1996 Cell Phone Radiation Standard

An anonymous reader writes "It's been more than a decade and a half since the FCC adopted a set of standards for radiation exposure from cell phones. The guidelines set in 1996 (and based on studies from the '80s) have applied to all cell phones released in the U.S. since then. Now, the FCC has decided that modern devices are just a tiny bit different than models from the '90s (where did those suitcase phones go?), so they're going to review and update the standard. 'Even though the FCC hasn't changed its standards for evaluating the safety of cell phones, it has provided consumers with information about how to minimize the risk of exposure to cell phone radiation. For example, the FCC recommends people use the speakerphone feature or an earpiece when talking on the phone, since increasing the distance the device is held from the body greatly reduces exposure. But the agency has not advocated for stricter warnings nor has it even endorsed these safety measures as necessary. The current review of the standards could change that as the agency will look at its testing procedures as well as the educational information it provides to the public about cell phone safety.'"

Comments

complicated radiation patterns

[rubycodez]

interesting question if the fractal antennaes modern units use make "hot spots" in the head

Re: complicated radiation patterns

[Great Big Bird]

Have a citation for that? Sounds interesting if true.

Re:complicated radiation patterns

[X0563511]

Probably not. The whole point of a fractal antenna is that you get a relatively omnidirectional pattern.

Re:complicated radiation patterns

[rubycodez]

but they don't, look at real world results, neither omnidirectional nor frequency agnostic

texting vs talking

[Anonymous Coward]

People no longer talk on cell phones to any significant degree. They text (*), which involves holding the phone at a distance from the head. That's got to reduce the exposure.

(*) Except for Machete. Machete don't text.

Re:texting vs talking

[poofmeisterp]

People no longer talk on cell phones to any significant degree. They text (*), which involves holding the phone at a distance from the head. That's got to reduce the exposure.

(*) Except for Machete. Machete don't text.

'cept me. I talk to family on the phone for up to 2 hours per day, one stretch. Fortunately, I my provider's tower is less than 1/4 mile from me so my transmit power is lowered, but still..... Very close, long time.

documentary

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a good documentary about the cell phone radiation.

Resonance - Beings of Frequency
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vb9R0x_0NQ

Re:documentary

[Anonymous Coward]

I watched a few minutes, just skipping through it and the first thing I saw was that it interfered with cockroaches, which I consider a good effect.

But then it started talking about birds and butterflies and even bees facing extinction and that's bad, but it also said this has been happening for most of my life and I realized that it's not radiation from cell phones, it was my hitting puberty that is the cause of all this.

Basic summary:

[Anonymous Coward]

RF is non-ionizing. The danger caused by RF is due to tissue heating. While you aren't going to get RF burns from a cell phone, it might not be a great idea to warm your brain for extended periods of time. So take a break from time to time or use hands free since increasing the distance dramatically decreases the exposure.

Re:Basic summary:

[TechyImmigrant]

If there was a significant effect it would have shown up in the various massive epidemiological studies.

The FCC 'advice' is based on supposition, not science.

It goes like this.
A -> B (RF causes local heating)
B -> C (Local heating causes disease)

So A -> C (RF causes disease)

But A -> C was shown not to be true, and B -> C has never been established, but given the A->C thing, is almost certainly not true.

If they want to save lives, they would have more success banning base jumping from radio towers.

Re:Basic summary:

[ilguido]

The FCC 'advice' is based on supposition, not science.

Yeah, but science is all based on suppositions.

It goes like this. A -> B (RF causes local heating) B -> C (Local heating causes disease)

So A -> C (RF causes disease)

But A -> C was shown not to be true, and B -> C has never been established, but given the A->C thing, is almost certainly not true.

You made it too easy. First, it may not be as simple as A->B->C; second there's more than heating: "The International Agency for Research on Cancer Exit Disclaimer (IARC), a component of the World Health Organization, has recently classified radiofrequency fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans,” based on limited evidence from human studies, limited evidence from studies of radiofrequency energy and cancer in rodents, and weak mechanistic evidence (from studies of genotoxicity, effects on immune system function, gene and protein expression, cell signaling, oxidative stress, and apoptosis, along with studies of the possible effects of radiofrequency energy on the blood-brain barrier)."

I concur that right now it is idiotic to demonize/fear cellphones because they could cause cancer (or other health problems), however it's equally idiotic being dismissive about it. We know well what happened with asbestos and papilloma virus.

Re:Basic summary:

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather, they should ban tobacco and alcohol.

Re:Basic summary:

[icebike]

Worse than that, no one has measured RF tissue heating from a cell phone in temperature controlled (that is to say living) tissue.
So even if B->C were true, no one has demonstrated that A->B is even happening in vivo from cell phone transmitters.

Your head temperature probably rises more when standing outside in the sun.

The idea of leaving the cell phone in your pocket while talking on bluetooth simply ADDs RF to another location (the pocket) while doing nothing to reduce over all exposure. The body part most exposed to radiation is probably the hand, more specifically the Other Hand, (the non-dominant hand) with which most people hold the phone.

Re:Basic summary:

[Anonymous Coward]

My ear gets hotter from wearing my headphones for an extended period.

Re:Basic summary:

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Asbestos and papilloma virus were eventually tied to actual diseases. There is no corresponding disease outbreak around cellphones. There is nothing there that needs explaining.

Re:Basic summary:

[TechyImmigrant]

Right, but with both asbestos and smoking, the signal in the epidemiological data was huge and easily seen. Since the signal in the 'low level RF causing cancer' data is next to non-existent, any effect will at most be minor compared to other things (like diet for example).

The emerging data on various hormetic effects shows small effects, but consistently and repeatably shows them.

The strongest univariate association between eating any single food and cancer is for wheat. But apparently those of us who avoid 'healthy whole grains' are a bit loopy. People's ability to weigh risk is astonishingly bad.

   

Re:Basic summary:

[TechyImmigrant]

>My ear gets hotter from wearing my headphones for an extended period.
My ears burn when I listen to the conversations between my cube dwelling neighbors.

Re:Basic summary:

[Anonymous Coward]

Mesothelioma also often doesn't show up for 20-50 years after exposure to asbestos. Maybe it hasn't been long enough?

Re:Basic summary:

[Anonymous Coward]

How long does it take before the data is obvious though? Mesothelioma might not develop until 50 years after asbestos exposure.

Re:Basic summary:

[TechyImmigrant]

Penis cancer was strongly related to a career in chimney cleaning and like mesothelioma, it takes a few decades to show up. The book 'The Emperor of Maladies' gives a good account of how major causes for both these diseases were identified. By the time the link was shown, chimney cleaning as an major industry was going away and the problem was fixing itself.

The rising rates of Alzheimers disease may be related to glutamates in the diet, but it's going to take some huge studies to show this to be true, even though the basic chemistry of how it occurs at the cell level is textbook stuff.

Since we generally don't start looking until the disease rates start going up, there's not a lot you can do beyond massive data collection and tracking today in the hopes that something pops up. That data collection is happening, but more for the purpose of selling you things that identifying disease causing behaviors.

Re:Basic summary:

[TechyImmigrant]

We've had whole industries of people exposed to higher than background RF since the second world war. Anyone with walkie talkies. Anyone working RF transmission equipment. Anyone working on radar. etc. These people have had time to get old and die by now. So there's been plenty of time for the signal to show up in the data. It hasn't.

Re:Basic summary:

[GrumpySteen]

Warming your brain is a common activity that's well studied. It happens every time you exercise and your body temperature goes up. The effects of hyperthermia are also well known and they occur at temperatures significantly higher than what your cell phone signal would ever produce in your brain.

Re:Basic summary:

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why most researchers clain that RF doesnt do anything:
This A->B (RF causes local heating).. and B->C (local heating causes disease) is both not significant.

But the mechanism of RF causing changes in cells could be very different.
They may have implications on biology that we have not researched well yet..

There are far more mechanisms than heating that may cause stress or damage to the biological body.
To name a few:
1) Resonating ions
The Cells, especially the nervous system is a complex system that contains all kinds of different ions and atoms contained within complex structures.
The ions may resonate with certain frequencies and break the boundaries of the structures it was contained in (more often than regular). For example this may give some stress on the nervous system.
This is what researchers have indeed found: People are more stressed under RF.
2) Resonating nucleus
As known the nucleus of an atom may resonate with certain high frequenies.
Small structures within cells (like DNA) are of such a small scale that building them takes a lot of mechanisms work together in harmony. The body prefers certain nucleus of the same atom over others, and certain chemical reactions are different depending on the amount of neutrons in the nucleus (like Ozone). Therefore there is some kind of interaction between the inside of the nucleus and the chemical constructions is certainly present. Even if this interaction is weak it is still possible that certain chemical reactions are influenced by resonating nucleus of atoms.
Researchers did find an increase in DNA breakage under some high frequencies, so therefore it is possible that the DNA itself may have chemical structures or reactions that are influenced by nucleus of the atoms.

Compared with background radiation of any kind, all artificial radiation is usually of a certain frequency. This means anything artificial RF may cause resonating, while the natural version does not.

Re:Basic summary:

[Anonymous Coward]

Often times, its better to be safe than sorry.

Humans didn't start out knowing how to prevent and cure diseases but they had folk tales and legends and traditions which keep people healthy even though people in the past didn't know exactly how it works.

For example, in some cultures, food portions may be part of a basic guideline or rule e.g. to have mixed vegetables and meat dishes.
Of course people in the past don't know how nutrient deficiency came about nor can they really prove anything but they acted on supposition anyway.

Re:Basic summary:

[Kelbear]

Buddy, I am ready and willing to hear out theories for how RF radiation can hurt me, but when they're so laughably vague such as this one, you make it very hard to keep an open mind.

You could take this same post to make an argument against heating devices with about the same level of effectiveness. Heat affects you in a "certain" way, and "may" cause "structures" to break by interacting with atoms and inducing chemical reactions. Studies have shown that higher levelsheat can cause people to report higher levels of "stress". It's better to live in "harmony" with the temperatures of the "natural" environment rather than "artificial" heat which can have unknown dangers associated with it. We should all take reasonable precautions to avoid heaters, stove tops, steamers, and fire.

I am open to the suggestion that it COULD be harmful, but since we're bathed in RF radiation all the time as it is, the burden of proof is shifting towards those who want to show that there IS harm.

Change the name

[simonbp]

The general public doesn't know the difference between RF EM radiation and ionizing/nuclear radiation. That's why it's some common to call microwaving a foodstuff "nuking it" (hydrogen bonding it would be more appropriate).

So, just don't call it radiation. Call RF emission or RF power. Just as accurate, just as technical sounding, but less scary to the illiterate.

Re:Change the name

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fun to say I'm going to nuke it. Way better than I'll stick it in the microwave. I know the radiation difference, but that doesn't change anything. When was the last time you rolled up your window?

Re:Change the name

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's save to microwave my cat? (as long as I don't raise its temperature to much)

Re:Change the name

[justthinkit]

(hydrogen bonding it would be more appropriate)

Wiki doesn't exactly agree:
A microwave oven, often colloquially shortened to microwave, is a kitchen appliance that heats food by bombarding it with electromagnetic radiation in the microwave spectrum causing polarized molecules in the food to rotate and build up thermal energy in a process known as dielectric heating.

To sum that up in a single word, I'd go for "exciting", as in "I excited my Hot Pocket with the microwave".

Re:Change the name

[Linsaran]

I know my cat would probably murder me if I tried to put it in a microwave, so in that sense no it's not particularly safe for you to microwave your cat. If you meant would it be safe for your cat, then sorta. I suppose you could probably expose it to 3-5 seconds of microwaves without any particularly ill effects, maybe a slight sunburn (do cats even get sunburns?), but any more than that and it would probably start getting serious damage. If you figure an average microwave can heat a burrito from frozen solid to 'too hot to eat' in about 75 seconds, then there's definitely enough energy to make your cat all explodey and dead in the same time frame.

Re:Change the name

[bcrowell]

So, just don't call it radiation. Call RF emission or RF power. Just as accurate, just as technical sounding, but less scary to the illiterate.

This is what happened with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). It would have been logical to call the medical imaging technique nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, NMRI. Instead we leave off the N and call it MRI.

Re:Change the name

[ebvwfbw]

... If you figure an average microwave can heat a burrito from frozen solid to 'too hot to eat' in about 75 seconds, then there's definitely enough energy to make your cat all explodey and dead in the same time frame.

You don't have to wonder. Google microwave cat. Sadly people do this and have done this for years. I remember hearing about people doing it in the 1970s when consumer microwaves came out in an attempt to dry the cat out thinking it was more like a hair dryer. So they said.

idiocy

[bcrowell]

Cell phone radiation is non-ionizing. There is no known, plausible mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer. That puts the burden of proof on the people who claim there's harm. No such effect has been documented in animals. No such effect seems to exist in epidemiological studies in humans.

It's depressing that science education is so poor that ordinary citizens don't seem able to evaluate these facts appropriately.

It's depressing that journalists do such a lousy job that they keep on reporting on a manufactured controversy as if all evidence were of equal value.

It's depressing that funding agencies such as NIH continue to give money to this type of junk science, and that scientific journals continue to publish it.

Re:idiocy

[TechyImmigrant]

Furthermore, there's a growing body of evidence that hormesis is vital for health and so a low level of exposure to radiation (ionizing and non ionizing), toxins and harmful biological entities in the environment is a good thing that promotes health.

Some fun links because I'm too lazy to find proper citations on a Saturday morning..
http://blog.sethroberts.net/2012/04/01/moderate-alcohol-consumption-associated-with-less-cirrhosis/
http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller12.html
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/tiny-amounts-of-ethanol-dramatically-221986.aspx
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2011/12/20/low-dose-radiation/

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-ionizing radiation is harmless (unlike ionizing radiation, toxins and harmful biological entities) which means that it is completely unrelated to "hormesis".

Re:idiocy

[hedwards]

The research for this kind of stuff is pretty weak and inconclusive. What's more, the results regularly go back and forth and are generally done in a post hoc fashion after the data is collected. Now, when they take that data and start making reproducible predictions about who will and won't get sick, then I'll take it seriously. Until then it's just pseudoscience at best.

Alcohol is a poison, there is no quantity which isn't poisonous, however in sufficiently low concentrations it's not likely to do much harm to the body. Nobody should be recommending that people take up drinking for health benefits as the evidence is shaky at best.

This isn't the same as when people suggest that it's a bad idea to kill all the bacteria around them, there's a reason to be nice to the bacteria, they often times do helpful things for us, and it's mostly just certain strains that cause problems and cases where the immune system is weak that harsher measures are needed.

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

They put mice A and B in litters, mice A next to a broadcasting RF/EM source: mice A got more birth and developmental defects. Yes, RF emissions affect biology.

Re:idiocy

[Solandri]

Cell phone radiation is non-ionizing. There is no known, plausible mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer. That puts the burden of proof on the people who claim there's harm.

There are two commonly-held contradictory beliefs at play here.

• From a science standpoint, you can't prove a negative so the burden of proof should be on those claiming the product is harmful.
• From a consumer safety standpoint, you're supposed to prove your product is safe before it can be brought to market. (e.g. UL testing)

The FCC is trapped in the middle here (as is frequently the FTC, FAA, NTSB, FDA, NIH, etc). They're trying their best to satisfy both by using scientific principles to come up with safety standards that products can be tested against.

There are certain issues where the common opinion on slashdot favors the second instead of the first. I won't mention what they are because lately that's a quick and easy way to get your post modded down into oblivion (that wasn't the case 10 years ago - nowadays too many people ignore the moderating guidelines and use their mod points as "dislike" votes). But if you think about it I'm sure you can figure them out.

It's depressing that funding agencies such as NIH continue to give money to this type of junk science, and that scientific journals continue to publish it.

If the burden of proof is on the people who claim there's harm, and you prohibit funding of any further attempts to find such harm, that subverts the scientific process. For a long time people suspected that electricity and magnetism were somehow related, but were unable to figure out how. How would things have turned out if those who believed they weren't related pointed to all the early failures and cited them as reason to cut off all funding for attempts to find a relationship between the two? I completely agree with you that there's no danger from these levels of non-ionizing radiation. But those who claim there is a danger must be allowed to continue trying to prove their viewpoint. Otherwise you've turned science into one big circle jerk of confirmation bias.

Generally, the government agencies funding those types of studies do a pretty good job of it. They don't just keep funding the same study over and over. In order for the applicant to get funding, s/he has to propose something new and novel - either something which hasn't been studied before, or some way to conduct the study which hasn't been tried before and could give different insight.

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-ionizing radiation can certainly damage DNA. If you don't believe me go see what happens to meat you heat in a microwave oven.

You don't even have to heat stuff that high to cause problems. The maximum safe temperature for a brain is about 42C. If your skull + phone somehow cause hotspots you might not notice immediately - there's redundancy and not much pain detection in the brain itself.

Re:idiocy

[bcrowell]

If the burden of proof is on the people who claim there's harm, and you prohibit funding of any further attempts to find such harm, that subverts the scientific process.

By this logic, the NIH should be funding endless studies of all kinds of quackery, such as putting magnets in your shoes to cure arthritis. There isn't unlimited tax money available to do unlimited numbers of studies on topics where no convincing positive evidence exists and there are strong, fundamental reasons to believe that the previous negative results were to be expected.

For a long time people suspected that electricity and magnetism were somehow related, but were unable to figure out how. How would things have turned out if those who believed they weren't related pointed to all the early failures and cited them as reason to cut off all funding for attempts to find a relationship between the two?

This is an apples-and-oranges comparison. In 1820, electricity and magnetism were not well understood at the fundamental level. In 2013, the interaction of nonionizing radiation with matter is well understood at the fundamental level, and has been for 150 years.

But those who claim there is a danger must be allowed to continue trying to prove their viewpoint. Otherwise you've turned science into one big circle jerk of confirmation bias.

I don't advocate prohibiting them from doing studies. I just advocate not continuing to give them tax money to do it, and not continuing to publish their inconclusive results, based on poor methods, in peer-reviewed journals. We don't fund people to continue testing the hypothesis that malaria is caused by bad air, or that maggots arise from decaying flesh by spontaneous generation. That doesn't make the germ theory of disease "one big circle jerk of confirmation bias."

Generally, the government agencies funding those types of studies do a pretty good job of it. They don't just keep funding the same study over and over. In order for the applicant to get funding, s/he has to propose something new and novel - either something which hasn't been studied before, or some way to conduct the study which hasn't been tried before and could give different insight.

What you're describing is the way it's supposed to work. Cell phones and cancer are an example where it doesn't actually work that way.

Re:idiocy

[ceoyoyo]

No, there's quite a bit of evidence that light drinking is good for most people. It's not a big enough effect to recommend that non drinkers take it up, but that doesn't make it any less real.

You don't have to make specific predictions about who will or won't get sick. There are very few situations in science where you can make individual specific predictions, and most of those are trivial.

There is weak evidence that low levels of radiation might be beneficial. There's no evidence that its harmful above the linear extrapolation from higher dosages, which is what alarmists generally assume.

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful with the blanket safety statements there. Non-ionising radition includes things like UV light (sunburn at the beach, etc.)

Anyway, non-ionizing RF is far from proven harmless: http://www.hpa.org.uk/webc/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1194947383619

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful with the blanket safety statements there. Non-ionising radition includes things like UV light (sunburn at the beach, etc.)

To photo-ionize hydrogen, needs an energy of 13.6 eV. That energy corresponds to a wavelength of 91.2 nm. UV light ranged from 3 eV to 124 eV the equivalent of 400 nm to 10 nm. Ionizing radiation begins in the ultra violet. That's why sun light causes skin cancer. It's ionizing.

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-ionizing radiation can certainly damage DNA. If you don't believe me go see what happens to meat you heat in a microwave oven.

Except cell phones have nowhere near the amount of power that microwaves have.

Microwave ovens output about 1000 Watts of power. By contrast a cell phone outputs 2 Watts max.

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

By this logic, the NIH should be funding endless studies of all kinds of quackery, such as putting magnets in your shoes to cure arthritis.

Unfortunately, they are.

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

But there are peer reviewed studies indicating that non-ionizing radiation alters the blood-brain barrier? Why does the damage have to be cancer?

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. We have some evidence that Linear No Threshold (the model typically used for ionising radiation) is wrong, perhaps badly wrong. But the most obvious way to gather good evidence for a better model is to irradiate large numbers of people. Who here wants to get exposed to a dose that the linear model says has an 80% chance of causing death? We need a few thousand of you to try it. Maybe only 10% of you will die - a significant new data point that would doubtless save everybody a lot of money. The 90% who don't die will get to celebrate with raised environmental limits.

Re:idiocy

[hedwards]

Sure you can make individual predictions, if you can't make the predictions, then you can't claim that it's the case. This attitude is why medical science is such garbage, you cannot use retrospective studies in this fashion.

I could claim that eating beats makes one super fast because of a few top athletes eating beats, but without carrying out a forward looking study, there's no way that I would know that it was the beats that was doing it, or something else.

Same goes here, people who drink, aren't just drinking, they're doing all sorts of other things, until they have research to back the fact that it's the drinking that's the causation of this, then they shouldn't be saying that it's the drinking. It could easily be any number of other lifestyle choices that go along with the drinking that causes it. What's more, even if it is drinking, you don't know that it's the alcohol itself that's doing creating the effect, alcoholic beverages tend to have other things in them, most folks are not using pure distilled spirits as their source of alcohol. They're typically talking about beer and wine for most consumption.

As for evidence of harm, alcohol is poison. You can pussy foot around it all you like, but the fact of the matter is that once it's in your system your body does what it needs to do to get it out of your system as quickly as possible, because it is poison. The real question is at what point does that become important.

And BTW, considering how many alcohol related fatalities and general misery that goes on in the world, I think a bit of caution is called for, rather than handwaving away the concerns about it's safety. And certainly doctors shouldn't be encouraging drinking by releasing half baked retrospective studies of minimal reliability.

Re:idiocy

[ceoyoyo]

Sure you can make individual predictions, if you can't make the predictions, then you can't claim that it's the case. This attitude is why medical science is such garbage, you cannot use retrospective studies in this fashion.

An easy counter example. In quantum physics it's impossible to make detailed predictions about individual particles. Yet it's often held up as the epitome of hard science.

I think you need to think through your argument more. The rest of your examples illustrate that you don't understand the basics of statistics at all and have a poor understanding of the basics of science as well.

Regarding your statements about alcohol: Oxygen is a poison. You can pussy foot around it all you like, but the fact of the matter is that once it's in your system your body does what it needs to do to get it out of your system as quickly as possible, because it is poison. The real question is at what point does that become important[?]

Actually, let me revise my previous statement. You don't understand statistics, you don't understand science, and you suffer from the issues most puritans do - use of excessive generalization, straw man construction, and any other logical fallacy you have to commit to convince yourself your hatred of something is justified.

Re:idiocy

[Misagon]

No, it is not idiocy. There are other things that could go on than just ionizing or heating. There have been numerous studies that have shown that various things can happen inside human tissue from exposure to microwave radiation ... but science does not yet understand exactly what these effects imply, or if the harm as a result of "normal" cell phone use would be significant enough to bother.

For instance, one study showed that if you dope glucose with isotopes and take a PET scan of a person head while talking in a 2G (CDMA or GSM) phone held next to the ear, you will find that isotopes will centre around the phone's antenna. Why those (brain) cells consume so much more energy than other cells is unknown.

There have also been several tests with lab rats that have shown ruptures in the blood-brain barrier, causing death of nerve cells and loss of cognitive function.

Another issue is that not all microwave radiation is equal, and with the frequency bands of 3G and 4G, we don't know that much yet.

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

You are literally 500 years out of date on your toxicology.

Alle Dinge sind Gift und nichts ist ohne Gift; allein die Dosis macht, dass ein Ding kein Gift ist.

- Paracelsus

Or to put it in English: "All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; only the dose permits something not to be poisonous."

The idea that the dose makes the poison the fundamental basis for the field of toxicology. So, I guess you just haven't had a chance to experience the Renaissance, yet? It is pretty cool, you should definitely look it up.

PS: Dihydrogen monoxide is a poison as well.

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

once it's in your system your body does what it needs to do to get it out of your system as quickly as possible

No, it starts metabolizing an energy source just as it would any other (fats, carbs, proteins). Alcohol and aldehyde dehydrogenases oxidize the stuff, and once it's turned into acetyl CoA, it's ready for burning or storage (as fat). That's why heavy alcohol consumption is associated with fatty liver.

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, one thing the brain does have is an extremely high blood flow - about 20% of cardiac output, or 1 L/min, so any heated tissue will be rapidly cooled by the passing blood.

Re:idiocy

[kwbauer]

Yes. An excess of oxygen partial pressure is poisonous to the human body. Look at what the gas ratios were in the Apollo craft or, even more fun, become a certified scuba diver and learn about oxygen toxicity.

Re:idiocy

[russotto]

As for evidence of harm, alcohol is poison. You can pussy foot around it all you like, but the fact of the matter is that once it's in your system your body does what it needs to do to get it out of your system as quickly as possible, because it is poison.

Aside from not being true, this is a dumb criterion for poison. You know something else my body tries to get out of my system as quickly as possible? Hit... err, I mean water. On the other hand, my body is perfectly happy to keep lead for long periods of time, incorporating it into my structure. Which one is the poison again?

Re:idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I only drink alcohol infused with pro-biotics

Cell Towers

[ISoldat53]

How dangerous is the other end of the transmission? Are cell towers a threat?

Re:Cell Towers

[Brett Buck]

None of it is a threat.

Re:Cell Towers

[Dark$ide]

How dangerous is the other end of the transmission? Are cell towers a threat?

Only during a hurricane when a falling tower (unlikely) could cause structural damage or injury.

Re:Cell Towers

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are standing within 5 metres of the tower's antenna, your phone is heating you up more than the tower.

Re:Cell Towers

[rueger]

According to a lot of people in this town, yes. Along with WIFI in schools and, I suspect, fluoridation.

How the hell do you counter the great wallops of misinformation that are flying around us?

Re:Cell Towers

[NIK282000]

Take advantage of it. Get some anti-wifi signs printed up and sell them with "a portion of the proceeds going to WiFi exposure research," be sure to hug your router once a day to see if you feel better or worse ;)

The New McCarthy'ism

[Anonymous Coward]

The new McCarthyism, of the Jenny variety. Stop posting this anti-science shit. If you want to blow off science, go be a creationist, where at least you have some ancient book to back you up, instead of straight-up hysterical lies.

Trolls commence

[Anonymous Coward]

No comments yet, ignoring years of research about microwaves changing tenths of phenomenons in physiology, like ion diffusion or opening of the blood-brain barrier? No comments yet ridiculing about 100W from sun exposure, ignoring complex patterns of interaction between waves of different length and a biological tissue? How is it possible, given the big money between cellular phones? Mod me down at least, it is easy.

http://www-ehs.ucsd.edu/rad/pdf/mobilephones.pdf

Re:Trolls commence

[Anonymous Coward]

changing tenths of phenomenons in physiology?

What does this mean?

Re:Warning about corrupt moderator... apk

[YrWrstNtmr]

Can this be killed off? I don't mean this account, I mean the actual meatbag behind it.

Oblig...

[wbr1]

http://xkcd.com/925/

Re:Oblig...

[j-beda]

And this one is also widely relevant: http://xkcd.com/882/

Re:Oblig...

[houghi]

One thing is proven: Scientific research causes cancer in rats.

So many differences

[EmperorOfCanada]

The differences between phones, signal strengths, antenna designs, usage patterns, frequencies, etc. are so vast that even if a connection to some disease is found it will probably not apply to the phones in use when the discovery is proven. Then to make it worse any phone technology that might have been harmful would generally cause the worst disease among seriously heavy cellphone users who tend to have the latest and greatest so when investigating a connection you will ask them which technologies they have used and they will probably reply "All of the above" assuming they knew the name of any technology they used.

So the study I would like would involve piles of mice blasted with every technology ever used in general use.

Re:So many differences

[Lehk228]

given how rapidly cell phones went from fancy business/luxury good to ubiquitous and most affordable option for connectivity available, the proof they do not cause cancer is the fact that brain cancer deaths have not shot up massively since 1998

Re:So many differences

[Misagon]

Cancer can take many years before symptoms appear. An example is people in Ukraine and Belarus who were subjected to fallout from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Diagnoses of thyroid cancer (for all age groups) peaked in 1996, ten years after, but people are still being diagnosed with it. ... and this was is ionizing radiation that mutated genes directly during a few days in 1986.

If there are health effects from cell phones, we will probably not see the diagnoses for twenty years. (However, by then the collapse of the world's eco-systems will be a more pressing issue....)

Re:So many differences

[Lehk228]

peaked is not the same as showing the first signs of an increase.

good good

[Anonymous Coward]

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where did those suitcase phones go?

[Osgeld]

I dunno, ask the 80's, while bag phones did still exist, they were typically old models still lurking around. My first phone was a self contained model, no bag, but still large ... but my dad had used it for 5 years at that point, and that was in 94. My second phone was a candybar nokia, not much bigger than the HTC I have now.

When I think 90's phone I think of clamshells and candybars, monochrome glcd's and 7 segment OLED's, not some wall street yuppie with a sweater tied around his neck playing tennis with his army radio near by.

Re:where did those suitcase phones go?

[ebvwfbw]

I used a bag phone all the way up to 1996. Sucker put out 5 watts and it was necessary. Lot fewer towers back then. I think they started eliminating the analog around 2000. I think I ended up throwing it away. Still have my pager around here some place. My bag phone was always as far away from me as I could get it.

The good old days. When you left work (the premisis), you left work! Now you leave work and take it home with you. Hardly an escape out there any more.

Re:Warning about corrupt moderator... apk

[feedayeen]

Can this be killed off? I don't mean this account, I mean the actual meatbag behind it.

I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic to track the IP address. Then we can send a fake DMCA request to his ISP to identify the user's real name. From there, we hire an assassin.

Re:It's not I folks: It's Jeremiah Cornelius... ap

[Anonymous Coward]

Get an account retard. If you format your password as crazily as your posts no-one will ever crack it.

The real danger

[Anonymous Coward]

You're more likely to get cancer from the dioxins in the heading cell phone plastic than from some non-ionizing radiation. Maybe you should consider washing your hands after you use your cell phone. Or better yet, we should have stricter standards on the plastics that humans are in contact with every day.

For the crackpots

[Anonymous Coward]

If 20-somethings all get cellphone cancer in their 70s. I suspect that statistically speaking half of them would have died by then anyways. It's hard to get excited about something that has not yet been demonstrated and are built on theories that are counter to our current understanding of RF and EM exposure.

Re:Warning about corrupt moderator... apk

[L. J. Beauregard]

I'd have never known that s/h/it was there if it wasn't for you. Don't feed the trolls.

Or..

[AndyKron]

Or... You could quit living with that damn thing against your ear 24/7.

Not idiocy, fact!

[Misagon]

You wanted to see an epidemiological study for humans that shows a link between cell phone radiation and cancer.

Here you go:

Hardell L, Carlberg M, Hansson Mild K.
Pooled analysis of case-control studies on malignant brain tumours and the use of mobile and cordless phones including living and deceased subjects.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21331446