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FCC To Update 1996 Cell Phone Radiation Standard

Posted by Soulskill on from the don't-rush-yourselves dept.

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.'"

19 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. texting vs talking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  2. Basic summary: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Basic summary: by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    2. Re:Basic summary: by ilguido · · Score: 2

      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.

    3. Re:Basic summary: by icebike · · Score: 2

      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.

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    4. Re:Basic summary: by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2

      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.

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      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    5. Re:Basic summary: by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

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      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  3. Change the name by simonbp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Change the name by justthinkit · · Score: 2

      (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".

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  4. idiocy by bcrowell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:idiocy by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 2

      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/

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    2. Re:idiocy by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:idiocy by Solandri · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:idiocy by bcrowell · · Score: 2

      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.

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  5. Cell Towers by ISoldat53 · · Score: 2

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

  6. Oblig... by wbr1 · · Score: 3, Funny

    http://xkcd.com/925/

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
    1. Re:Oblig... by j-beda · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  7. Re:Warning about corrupt moderator... apk by feedayeen · · Score: 2

    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.

  8. Or.. by AndyKron · · Score: 2

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