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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.
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.
Just to be clear: Can you measure the risk in relative to a banana equivalent dose?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's a real, if slightly funny-sounding measurement of a deadly risk (usually, for radiation). You see, a banana contains potassium, and a fraction of that potassium is slightly radiactive. A human living on earth, without being exposed to direct sunlight would get around 100 banana-equivalents worth of radiation just randomly across a day from the environment.
If you think it's likely a risk - quantify that risk, and compare it to something we can at least relate to in every day life.
Ryan Fenton
FTA: "An interesting side note is that the radiation-exposed rodents of both types lived significantly longer than their control peers: 28 percent of the original control group survived the full 2 years, while about twice that amount (48-68 percent) survived in the exposed group."
I fully expect this article headline to be linked by many sellers and promoters of anti-radiation stickers/trinkets/money-drainers, but the prolonged lifespan of the exposed rats would be the sort of thing you'd be more interested in as a scientist, but likely that isn't part of the budget.
Headline should have been more like "Radiation exposed rats live longer than control group", and we should see the resurgence of selling Radon water.
Oops, small correction. The sentence "it is difficult to definitively conclude that these negative results clearly indicate that cell phone RFR is not carcinogenic" referred to the results of previous studies, not this study. That was the justification for doing this study-- the fact that previous studies were not conclusive.
...the fact that the RF irradiated rodents survived significantly longer than the control non-irradiated rodents-- and that this was true for both rats and mice-- might have been emphasized more. (https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/02/nih-study-links-cell-phone-radiation-to-cancer-in-male-rats/)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Cellphones tend to sit in the same pocket pressed up against the same spot of flesh throughout the waking day. W/kg is a really misleading measurement because even at 0.01W, that spot immediately beside the phone is going to receive a Hell of a lot more than 20W/kg. For studies like this to have any merit they need to start duct-taping the mice to the cellphones or sticking the RF/microwave emitters on robotic arms which track a spot on the mouse and spray it down with a constant dosage of radiation at the output of the cellphone at a single spot directly at skin level to simulate Google and Facebook apps streaming your location and other information 24/7.
About 15 years ago, a technology came on the market called Provant, developed and managed by Regenesis Biomedical in Scottsdale, AZ. It was a radiofrequency generator that delivered energy to tissues via an external antenna applied to the skin. It was meant to augment or accelerate wound healing. Like the many other stimulatory or pro-proliferative wound healing technologies, it worked well for some patients, not at all for others, sometimes contrary effects, and everything in between. Overall, it was not sufficiently effective to generate much buzz, and the company eventually began to market it for post-operative pain and swelling. You can read about it at links such as:
https://www.regenesisbio.com/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
While I had no direct involvement with the company, I did have opportunity to use it, and to visit the company and look through the labs. The device uses RF at about 12MHz. I cannot recall power or power densities delivered to the tissues. The effects under the microscope were dramatic. Fibroblasts in cell culture had a profound increase in motility and mitosis, exactly what is needed, in principle, in healing wounds, and of course, what goes awry when cells transform to cancer.
Circa 1900, biological sciences become so deeply entrenched in biochemistry and the metabolic processes in the body that chemistry and pharmacology became the defining sciences and therapeutics of most medical research and care. Physical modalities and energy interactions in the body became bastard children. Other than the effects of ionizing higher energies (ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma), the roles of heat, light, radio, stress-strain, acoustics, and similar energies have never received the same legitimacy as the chemical studies. Thus, "physical modalities" and the study of anything along those lines often gets dismissed as trivial, irrelevant, illegitimate, or second class or non-professional.
Furthermore, when such subjects come up via large public grants or national studies or in the popular media, they are often in conjunction with pervasive popular technologies that people are not so ready to give up, like cell phones. Thus, these studies engender debate and resistance.
The point is that RF has effects in the body. Good, bad, or indifferent all depends on many things. The Provant system was used for therapeutic effects. The studies that are the basis for this Slashdot post hint at possible negative effects. It is worth looking at the actual study publications, They are voluminous, at:
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/abou...
https://tools.niehs.nih.gov/ce...
They show that tumor occurrence tended to increase with greater exposures, but for almost all tumors, incidence was very low. Even if hypothetically all tumor occurring subjects were to have died (which is nowhere near the case), the great majority of RF exposed subjects not only survived but had a distinct and significant increase in longevity. So, is it good or bad? Like many therapies, good things have their side effects, which if kept to low incidence are considered acceptable.
So, is this report good or bad? It depends on your point of view. If you see it as interesting science, good. If you see it as an insight to further studies about disease or longevity, good. If it you see it as a threat to your Second City Amendment rights to carry a cell phone, then you might get incensed about totalitarian conspiracies to take them away.
Studies such as this might or might not have applicability to human medicine and public safety, but they provide useful information to be considered in the overall analysis. Read the actual original source materials. They are rather mat
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.
You forgot one critical statistic. Cell phones in 1992 were all analog, with some producing up to 3W continuous (though 600 mW was more common) while in use. Maximum output from an LTE radio is typically 200 mW, and unless you're in fringe territory, it is even lower than that, with typical output peaking at ~125 mW, and potentially being orders of magnitude lower if you're close enough to a tower. So as cell tower density has increased, the amount of RFR you're exposed to by cell phones has decreased pretty dramatically.
So the rate of brain cancer going down tells us that either there's no correlation OR that the decrease in power, coupled with increased use of hands-free devices, headphones, and speakerphone modes has roughly balanced out the increase in usage. Determining which will likely require actual studies beyond what can be done with correlation alone, such as the one described here.
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