NIH Study Links Cellphone Radiation To Cancer In Male Rats (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: New studies from the National Institutes of Health -- specifically the National Toxicology Program -- find that cell phone radiation is potentially linked with certain forms of cancer, but they're far from conclusive. The results are complex and the studies have yet to be peer-reviewed, but some of the findings are clearly important enough to warrant public discussion. An early, partial version of this study teasing these effects appeared in 2016, but these are the full (draft) reports complete with data. Both papers note that "studies published to date have not demonstrated consistently increased incidences of tumors at any site associate with exposure to cell phone RFR [radio frequency radiation] in rats or mice." But the researchers felt that "based on the designs of the existing studies, it is difficult to definitively conclude that these negative results clearly indicate that cell phone RFR is not carcinogenic."

The studies exposed mice and rats to both 900 MHz and 1900 Mhz wavelength radio waves (each frequency being its own experiment) for about 9 hours per day, at various strengths ranging from 1 to 10 watts per kilogram. For comparison, the general limit the FCC imposes for exposure is 0.08 W/kg; the absolute maximum allowed, for the extremities of people with occupational exposures, is 20 W/kg for no longer than 6 minutes. So they were really blasting these mice. The rodents were examined for various health effects after various durations, from 28 days to 2 years. At 1900 MHz: Equivocal evidence of carcinogenicity in lung, liver and other organ tissues in both male and female mice.

Comments

What kind of nonsense is this?

[plover]

"based on the designs of the existing studies, it is difficult to definitively conclude that these negative results clearly indicate that cell phone RFR is not carcinogenic."

This is how a priest justifies the existence of a religion, not how a scientist describes a fact.

Come back to us when you actually have positive results, not some phony belief.

Re:What kind of nonsense is this?

[Joce640k]

Yep. This is definitely somebody with a conclusion desperately trying to find evidence, ie. religion.

Fact: 900MHz is very far below the THz range where ionization starts.

Triple negative

[Geoffrey.landis]

"based on the designs of the existing studies, it is difficult to definitively conclude that these negative results clearly indicate that cell phone RFR is not carcinogenic."

Yow, It is very hard to interpret things when they're phrased as a triple negative. What this seems to say is "the results were negative (that is, not showing RF to be carcinogenic), but not showing that it is carcinogenic does not allow us to conclude that it is not carcinogenic.

These RF intensities are so high, however, that it sounds pretty conclusive to me.

One Statistic

[JBMcB]

You only need one statistic.

Cell phone usage has increased by over an order of magnitude between 1992 and 2014 in the US.

The rate of brain cancer diagnoses has slightly decreased in the same time span.

Some studies take 'liberties' with the statistics and say that there is an increase, but they are usually separating out categories of cancers, which get shuffled around from time to time, to say that one category has increased without mentioning that another has decreased or has been eliminated entirely.

Re:One Statistic

[Plus1Entropy]

Correlation may not imply causation. But a complete lack of correlation refutes causation.

1 to 10 watts per kilogram.

[robbak]

That is an insane dosage. A dosage which is likely to cause heating, and heating a living thing by any means is known to cause mutations and cancer.

And that is far in excess of a mobile phone will provide - making this a useless study that tells us nothing at all.