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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.
"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.
John
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
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.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
And that is far in excess of a mobile phone will provide - making this a useless study that tells us nothing at all.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
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
Did they live longer or were their undead bodies simply animated for longer? :-)