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Don't Keep Cellphones Next To Your Body, California Health Department Warns (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the consider-yourself-warned dept.

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) issued a warning against the hazards of cellphone radiation this week. They are asking people to decrease their use of these devices and suggest keeping your distance when possible. TechCrunch reports: The warning comes after findings were offered up this week from a 2009 department document, which was published after an order from the Sacramento Superior Court. A year ago, UC Berkeley professor Joel Moskowitz initiated a lawsuit to get the department to release the findings after he started looking into whether mobile phone use increased the risk of tumors. A draft of the document was released in March, but the final release is more extensive.

According to the Federal Communication Commission's website, there is no national standard developed for safety limits. However, the agency requires cell phone manufacturers to ensure all phones comply with "objective limits for safe exposure." The CDPH recommends not keeping your phone in your pocket, not putting it up to your ear for a prolonged amount of time, keeping use low if there are two bars or less, not sleeping near it at night and to be aware that if you are in a fast-moving car, bus or train, your phone will emit more RF energy to maintain the connection.

40 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. Telephones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Are known to the state of California to cause cancer.

    1. Re:Telephones by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      California does have a tendency to get ahead of themselves. They seem to be the first to warn people about danger but the problem is they don’t do the full science and come with the warning after the science is over, so they have a lot of false starts.
      I think California wants to be progressive and say they are the first to protect people from danger while the rest of the world gets in trouble by taking time to study it. However often the benefits of things outweigh their danger. Especially if the danger isn’t fully proven.
      Yes we get companies trying to block and confuse the science and that practice should be stopped, but policies should wait for the science process to get to a consensus before making policy.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:Telephones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think its safe to say California is sorry.

    3. Re:Telephones by Junta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem is that strategy causes no one to take California's concerns remotely seriously.

      For example, prop 65 warnings are on everything and everywhere:

      https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mp...

      It has no teeth because pretty much everything has that label. Many companies add the label as a matter of course, even if they don't have any of the relevant chemicals in some products because it's easier to apply the label to everything than keep track of whether they need to or not. Additionally, some of the chemicals on the list are about as likely to cause cancer as non-ionizing radiation.

      Heck even contact with most shipping pallets can cause a package to be contaminated with formaldehyde enough to be detected in some of the tests, so a company without a warning could be at risk from that despite it being a shipping company's fault.

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
    4. Re: Telephones by c6gunner · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Scaremongering about GMO and cellphone radiation is the exact opposite of "progressive". Using that label for a bunch of luddites is very 1984.

    5. Re:Telephones by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      One study that disagrees with many other studies, and you want to cling on to it? Sounds just like what a climate science denier does.

      That is not at all what is happening, though. California classified cannabis smoke as a carcinogen because it contains compounds known to be carcinogenic. But one thing doesn't lead to the other, because the human body is a complicated place. If the smoke contains both things which raise and things which lower your cancer risk, then you can't simply point to it and say "look, it causes cancer". In fact, some of the other things it does (like increasing sputum production) actually reduce your risk from other carcinogens.

      At the point at which every single business in the state has to carry a sign which says that the premises contain chemicals known to cause cancer because basically everything can cause cancer in some quantity or under some circumstances, the sign loses all meaning. And that's where we are now.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    6. Re: Telephones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      MasterBlaster turn off power and water from Arizona, see how California likes dark and thirsty!

    7. Re:Telephones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That sixth-largest thing is misleading because it doesn't take into account taxes, fees, and cost of living. Once all that is accounted for, California winds up 12th, just behind Mexico.

    8. Re:Telephones by Alypius · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It has a lot of teeth, just not really for the state. Just as with the ADA, a cottage industry of trial lawyers popped up to sue/settle with any business they could find that didn't have the sign or to quibble (as with Starbucks) over exactly what words need to be on the sign. This cell phone ruling is just a sop to those same lawyers so they can start pre-litigation shakedowns.

    9. Re: Telephones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why on Earth would you take any of those things into account in calculating the size of an economy?

      That's some sort of standard-of-living calculation, not economy size.

    10. Re:Telephones by BronsCon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      A single state still comes out ahead of an entire first-world country. Your point?

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    11. Re: Telephones by c6gunner · · Score: 2

      The people who think that fearmongering about WiFi is completely justified will list an equally impressive-looking bunch of reasons for why they believe it, and their list will be just as bullshit as yours. That's what happens when you ignore science and worry yourself into a panic over some nonsense you read on Natural News.

    12. Re: Telephones by c6gunner · · Score: 2

      That's a nice bit of hand waiving, but there are quite a few studies which show that marijuana use DOES in fact correlate with an increase in cancer rates. It's not like California is the only place in the world that's looking into this stuff, you know.

  2. So, in my pocket, next to my three boys, not good? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    where then?

  3. Re:Not gonna happen. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    In your European man purse.

  4. No radiation risk by jonfr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is no danger from mobile phone electron radiation (it is non-ionising radiation). That document in California is wrong. The biggest risk is a unstable battery resulting in a fire in people pocket. Transmission power from mobile phones is limited to maximum 2W (bad signal areas). In towns and such areas most mobile phones are running on transmission power that is from 0.1mW and up to 0.5mW. General rule is that bad signal means more transmission power.

    1. Re:No radiation risk by rl117 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Cancer is caused by far more than ionising radiation. Is it within the realm of possibility that localised heating of cell contents by microwaves could cause damage to cell machinery for replication control? Or cause localised unwinding of DNA to expose repressed genes for transcription? Both are possible.

    2. Re:No radiation risk by Orgasmatron · · Score: 4, Insightful

      UV is partly ionizing and partly not. However, it always carries more energy per photon than visible light. What we call radio, even including microwaves, is in the opposite direction. Microwaves carry even less energy per photon than infrared light, and if you told someone you were afraid of a 2 watt quasi-spherical infrared emitter they'd fall over laughing.

      --
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    3. Re:No radiation risk by rgbatduke · · Score: 2

      2W of non-ionizing power, only 1 W MAX of which can be directed towards your body, at frequencies where the energy just doesn't penetrate much into your body. It is about as risky as taking a christmas tree light bulb, putting it in a cell-phone transparent box, and putting that inside your pocket.

      I'd sooner believe the connection between high voltage transmission towers and cancer. The power at ground level is again absurdly low, but at least there I can imagine the high voltage arcing into the air at points near the insulators, generating a surplus of ozone, that falls to ground level at some measurable rate and ... no, I don't believe that either...

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    4. Re:No radiation risk by rl117 · · Score: 5, Informative

      The L and S bands used for mobile communications are classed as microwaves. But it's not really that important. Both microwaves and lower frequency RF are energy inputs which can impart energy (heating) to a system even if the precise mechanisms differ. What about second- and third-order harmonic generation in ordered structures such as collagen connective tissue in the skin? When you have a transmitter sitting still in close proximity to the body, it's important to consider the effects it might have. Just like you get a hotspot in the centre of a microwave even with a stirrer, is there a focus adjacent to the phone antenna? Also note that even if the chances of disregulation are exceedingly unlikely, it only needs to happen once in a single cell. And while I'm no genius, I do have a PhD and spent some time working on cancer-related projects in a pharma company; I'm not stupid as you claim. General heating doesn't cause much damage; the body can detect it and respond with heat-shock proteins to cope. But what about sustained and highly-localised energy inputs? Is it sufficient to unfold or permanently denature some critical regulatory protein? Terahertz radiation can unwind DNA, as can raising the temperature; the helix is stabilised primarily through dipole interactions and it's easy to disrupt (see: PCR). Can that also extend to repressed genes in heterochromatin? It isn't stupid to ask such questions, though it's very hard to answer them experimentally.

    5. Re: No radiation risk by Brockmire · · Score: 4, Funny

      You heard it here first, clothing causes cancer. The only known workaround is to be fully nude. California, you're up first.

    6. Re:No radiation risk by rl117 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're thinking about "heat" too generally. Suppose you raise the temperature by a degree in a bulk volume, and that's survivable. But what about highly-localised but larger increases in small volumes such as a few cubic micrometres? Such as you might get if an EM source was present in a fixed position for an extended period. While the inverse square law has been mentioned a few times in other comments, this is only true... in a vacuum. Structures in the body can scatter, focus, absorb and reflect EM radiation in all sorts of different ways. It's incredibly easy to give a glib answer, but the body is a vastly complex set of structures and so assuming it's equally true here is I think a bit naive and simplistic. We actually use some of these properties to do label-free imaging of collagen, for example; I've done it with a multi-photon microscope using a tuneable Ti-Sapphire mode-locked femtosecond pulsed laser and it can image living skin structures beautifully using second-order harmonics. If you switch from a raster scan to a fixed point you can see the cell contents start to convect from the heating, before they boil away and the sample is ruined. That's under extreme artificial conditions, but it does make one wonder if similar processes can occur in the real world. By the way, while cells can survive temperature drops all the way to freezing point without much ill effect (cellular processes slow down), rises are a different matter since it increases the instability of all sorts of protein, DNA and RNA structures--folding and inter-molecular associations. It only needs a transient increase in the wrong place at the wrong time to disrupt something critical, and then it's all a matter of probability. There's a large correlation between temperature and throat cancer incidence in drinkers of hot beverages such as tea and coffee vs cold for example, with higher temperatures (tea without milk) having a higher correlation. What does that imply for heating induced by other methods? I don't know, but I do know that "1-2 degrees of extra heat is not going to cause cancer" as you wrote is not something that I would be confident in stating since biology is never that black and white.

    7. Re:No radiation risk by afxgrin · · Score: 2

      The wavelength in these RF bands are long enough that it wouldn't only excite any particular single structure. It could deposit energy deeper into the body but it would again still be not much different from any other heating. Higher order vibrations are rapidly dampened in liquid and solid systems, and that energy dissipates to heat. If you're denaturing some regulatory protein you're also denaturing adjacent protein - at this point you might as well call this a burn or cooking. The smallest point for even the highest frequency bands which is ~2200 MHz will keep your most intense point to a size of about 4 cm still.

      If it was really practical for doing DNA damage we would've been using microwave magnetrons for water purification long ago - turns out they just end up heating the water instead. Instead we use UV because it actually does cause the desired damage to water based pathogens without boiling the water.

      I'd sooner worry about the chemicals used in processing or out gassing from the phone than the low power emitters in the device.

    8. Re: No radiation risk by rl117 · · Score: 2

      Thanks for the informative and respectful answer. It depends, doesn't it? Consider standing waves for a moment. If you put a chocolate bar into a microwave with the turntable taken out, you can see that you get a line of holes due to the standing wave emitted by the magnetron. Seriously, try it out, and you'll see exactly how a long wavelength can cause specific localised heating in a tiny area (and you can eat the hot and gooey experimental result after). Similarly, if you look at the radiation pattern for a microstrip patch antenna as used on most mobiles, it has a high directivity and while it does radiate in all directions, it radiates most strongly in one direction for common designs. When it comes to visible light/UV/IR, I'm reasonably well informed (it's a large part of my previous research and current job), but I'm not an RF expert. However, I'll just say that if there's one thing my PhD taught me, it was how little I truly know in any area, least of all my own areas of expertise. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss things just because the answer *seems* clear and obvious. The theory might be obvious for the general case, but often there are subtleties we don't appreciate or understand for specific situations, and when it comes to the subtle interactions of EM radiation with living tissue, we don't yet know the full story. When you look at previous animal experiments to determine if mobile emissions are harmful, many of them aren't even close to modelling the effect of holding a phone to the ear, or sitting in a pocket, for extended periods. Personally, I'll be reserving judgement until we have more information; but it might take a while to get enough data to draw statistically meaningful correlations given the low incidence. While on the face of it the concerns look unlikely to be true, I would not be at all surprised if we eventually identify e.g. specific combinations of transmitter designs (or unit-specific defects) and usage patterns which are problematic over an extended period.

  5. Radiation vs. radiation by Jamlad · · Score: 2
    It's probably more a testament to the creaking educational system that most people don't know the difference between electromagnetic radiation from a lightbulb and nuclear byproducts from fission.

    My electromagnetism professor did a safety study for the PTA of the local elementary school of where the operator should put their new mast. The PTA didn't appreciate that the optimum location was on top of the school since the worst place to receive a signal is on the axis of oscillation of a dipole emitter.

    I do wonder how the intensity of blackbody radiation of a 100W lightbulb in the microwave compares to cellphone throughput.

  6. Re:The Battery has Colbalt in it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What else are you going to eat? It's not like you can afford food after buying an iphone.

  7. Re:The Battery has Colbalt in it. by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Informative

    Citation needed.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  8. Radiation inverse-square law by Max_W · · Score: 5, Informative

    The intensity of radiation passing through any unit area is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the point source. It is the fundamental law of the universe, and It is valid for any radiation, including electromagnetic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Practically it means, that even a small increase in distance decreases the radiation dramatically. So putting a smartphone into a backpack, or on a windowsill, away from the bed, decreases the radiation probably by several orders of magnitude.

    In even simpler words, - do not keep radiating devices, like a smartphone, router, etc., too close to a place were you sit or sleep.

  9. Re:Alt science by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have found both political parties to be eqaualy stupid in understanding science. However I have found a particular trend.
    Liberals don’t believe science when they say something is safe.
    Conservatives don’t believe science when they say something is harmful.
    The problem is somethings are dangerous and some things are safe. And many of these arguments are not science they are merely thought exercises. X contains trace amounts of bad elements Y. Then people are at risk from over exposure to Y. Or X is purely safe because our body can tolate some amount of Y. But no own is doing the the research to see if the body can and how to tolerate that amount of Y.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  10. WHO says no by De_Boswachter · · Score: 5, Informative

    Over the past 15 years, studies examining a potential relationship between RF transmitters and cancer have been published. These studies have not provided evidence that RF exposure from the transmitters increases the risk of cancer. Likewise, long-term animal studies have not established an increased risk of cancer from exposure to RF fields, even at levels that are much higher than produced by base stations and wireless networks.

    http://www.who.int/peh-emf/pub...

    1. Re:WHO says no by ebonum · · Score: 2

      Hard to see how cell phone signals causes cancer. These frequencies are not ionizing. A bit like saying the warmth from holding someone's hand is going to cause cancer. Makes no sense. There needs to be a mechanism for the radiation to do damage (knock off electrons), but there is none.

  11. Re:The Battery has Colbalt in it. by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

    But is it free-range cobalt?

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  12. Re:True Joke: Deeply, deeply frightening!!! NOT. by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Funny

    Why do you think most of us don't go outside and live in basements.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  13. Re:"Findings"??? by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I can't find much actual scientific information in any of the links in the summary. Can someone please provide a link to the actual findings of which mention is made?

    There doesn't actually appear to be any, it seems to be made up from a bureaucrat based on faulty findings. Honestly? The entire thing reminds me of the "danger of EM radiation from powerlines!" that was hot shit in the 1980's and 90's, if you want to see an example of that in action, there's an entire near-cult-like anti-em-powerline following in Japan.

    --
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  14. Incorrect by aepervius · · Score: 2

    Firstly while lower energy UV are non ionizing , the higher UV frequency at the boundary from xray are ionizing - it depends on the molecules/atoms as there is no fix precise limit on what an ionizing energy is. But far more importantly they are at frequencies where bonds can be broken. That is why the effect is far different than with microwave radiation, as those are frequencies where mostly rotation occurs (as a rule of thumb, microwave rotations of groups, infrared , vibrations, uv/visible, bond breakings, high energy uv and above, ionizing - the problem starts at bond breaking not ionizing, but ionizing is actually far more dangerous biologically).

    --
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  15. Re:Not gonna happen. by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Funny

    If I carry a shopping bag, it's a thin one that wads up and goes in my pocket. I don't want to be carrying items in my hands if I can avoid it. That's why I was born with a penis... so my clothes would have pockets.

    I don't want kids, so I just keep my cellphone in my front pants pocket. Kill two stones with one bird.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  16. When future generations look back... by CODiNE · · Score: 5, Funny

    recommends not keeping your phone in your pocket

    The wisest among us were known for holding their phones at a distance using so called "selfie sticks". While at first derided by others, their intelligence evidenced by longer lifespans and lack of serious illnesses lead to a beautiful society blessed with their fabulous rulership.

    This is why my son, we must always photograph our food before first eating, to share the joy of our blessed nonnoms with the world and more importantly our esteemed ancestors in the cloud.

    --
    Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
  17. It's not a warning by pots · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is alarmist in a nebulous sense, but it's not a warning. There aren't any actual claims about negative impacts to your health, just a bunch of bullshit about what may happen, or what some people believe. The actual title is, "CDPH Issues Guidelines on How to Reduce Exposure to Radio Frequency Energy from Cell Phones."

    The closest thing to a solid claim that it makes is: "Although the scientific community has not reached a consensus on the risks of cell phone use, research suggests long-term, high use may impact human health." Claiming that the scientific community has not reached a consensus on this seems like an outright falsehood, but I suppose that as long as there's one holdout then you can say that it's not a real consensus.

  18. Re: Alt science by Jarwulf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah liberals don't want to regulate behavior at all, except speech, voluntary gay conversion therapy, homeschooling, spontaneous sex, how you spend your money, freedom to hire, interactions with the opposite sex which nobody had a problem with up until 10 years ago, right to choose who to associate with, cake baking, running your business, wedding photography, hunting, eating, playing and on and on to virtually every area you can think of. Other than that, they're completely hands off unlike conservatives.

  19. Re: Whose by SeaFox · · Score: 2

    That hasnâ(TM)t been fully researched. For now it would seem âoewhoâ(TM)sâ is safest.

    The meaning of your post is harder to decipher than the CDPH's response.