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World's Largest Animal Study On Cell Tower Radiation Confirms Cancer Link (digitaljournal.com)
capedgirardeau shares a report from Digital Journal: Researchers with the renowned Ramazzini Institute (RI) in Italy announce that a large-scale, lifetime study (PDF) of lab animals exposed to environmental levels of cell tower radiation developed cancer. The RI study also found increases in malignant brain (glial) tumors in female rats and precancerous conditions including Schwann cells hyperplasia in both male and female rats. A study of much higher levels of cell phone radiofrequency (RF) radiation, from the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), has also reported finding the same unusual cancer called Schwannoma of the heart in male rats treated at the highest dose.
The Ramazzini study exposed 2448 Sprague-Dawley rats from prenatal life until their natural death to "environmental" cell tower radiation for 19 hours per day (1.8 GHz GSM radiofrequency radiation (RFR) of 5, 25 and 50 V/m). RI exposures mimicked base station emissions like those from cell tower antennas, and exposure levels were far less than those used in the NTP studies of cell phone radiation. "All of the exposures used in the Ramazzini study were below the U.S. FCC limits. These are permissible exposures according the FCC. In other words, a person can legally be exposed to this level of radiation. Yet cancers occurred in these animals at these legally permitted levels. The Ramazzini findings are consistent with the NTP study demonstrating these effects are a reproducible finding," explained Ronald Melnick PhD, formerly the Senior NIH toxicologist who led the design of the NTP study on cell phone radiation now a Senior Science Advisor to Environmental Health Trust (EHT). "Governments need to strengthen regulations to protect the public from these harmful non-thermal exposures."
The Ramazzini study exposed 2448 Sprague-Dawley rats from prenatal life until their natural death to "environmental" cell tower radiation for 19 hours per day (1.8 GHz GSM radiofrequency radiation (RFR) of 5, 25 and 50 V/m). RI exposures mimicked base station emissions like those from cell tower antennas, and exposure levels were far less than those used in the NTP studies of cell phone radiation. "All of the exposures used in the Ramazzini study were below the U.S. FCC limits. These are permissible exposures according the FCC. In other words, a person can legally be exposed to this level of radiation. Yet cancers occurred in these animals at these legally permitted levels. The Ramazzini findings are consistent with the NTP study demonstrating these effects are a reproducible finding," explained Ronald Melnick PhD, formerly the Senior NIH toxicologist who led the design of the NTP study on cell phone radiation now a Senior Science Advisor to Environmental Health Trust (EHT). "Governments need to strengthen regulations to protect the public from these harmful non-thermal exposures."
About the same as a microwave oven, it just took longer to cook up the rat-kabobs.
When did slashdot start posting bullshit unscientific studies.
It’s like 2 out of 200 rats got cancer in the control group and 4 in the exposure group. But rates of cancer don’t seem to increase with amount of exposure.
Can someone familiar with these methodologies explain the criteria for statistical significance of these numbers?
What is the hypothetical mechanism for low-level non-ionizing radiation to cause tumors?
If you trace it back, you find that:
1) This is a press release that was picked up by a minor news service, then picked up by other news services.
2) The original source is a web sight: https://ehtrust.org/ if you go to the About page, you see that website is headed by someone with a new book out. Guess what the book is about...
3) Yes, the book is about power lines causing cancer. Funny how the same person that has already published a book about something that has been thoroughly discredited is now claiming a study proves her right.
4) The websight mentions no other person except their own 'head', but mentions her several times. It has two addresses listed, one of which is a po box in Wyoming, the other is a home in Wyoming. No office.
5) She is a real doctor, but is famous for this EMF controversy.
In other words, the study is not to be trusted, and the news release is fake news, at least until a real news agency can thoroughly check something rather than just accept the word of someone that already has a reputation for accepting junk science
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If there is actual causation, then there should be a significant increase in this form of cancer during the last 20 years. Is that true?
... does not mean what you think it means. The permissible SAR is 1.6W/kg; my Galaxy J7 is 0.62W/kg.
"normal ground-level exposure [from a cell tower] is much less than the exposure that might be encountered if one were very close to the antenna and in its main transmitted beam" (https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/human-exposure-radio-frequency-fields-guidelines-cellular-and-pcs-sites). "Measurements made near typical cellular and PCS cell sites have shown that ground-level power densities are well below the exposure limits recommended by RF/microwave safety standards used by the FCC."
They also have apparently claimed Splenda causes cancer. They have "been a virtual punch bag for relentless criticism from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)".
I think I'm gonna take anything they say with a grain of salt.
Since this isn't about cell phones, but cell towers, I assume you know your question is irrelevant and rather boring.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Did I get that right?
Now I have to wrap my house in foil, and put on my foil hat and cup again? Make up your minds.
Read the darn paper. There's barely a statistical link in male rats at the highest dosage. For everything else there no statistical difference than control.
I'd hardly call this confirming a link.
I'm calling bullshit: the study did absolutely no such thing. In fact, I'm just going to link to a screenshot of their results (can't link to the actual study as it's behind a paywall). First, a couple of things to note: while their underlying population is large, the number of cases of tumors and lesions is tiny, so any results are going to be highly subject to statistical fluctuations (if the rate for a rare disease is 1/1000, a sample of 1000 people could easily still have 2-4 people with the disease, or none, just by chance). Secondly, there is little or no correlation between exposure and tumors (I'm not actually going to try to fit a line, but by eye the correlation is not great: in some cases the control groups showed a higher rate than the exposure). Third, they subdivided by male/female into separate groups. While there's some justification for doing that, what it means is that they've essentially doubled the number of studies they're conduction (actually kinda tripled, since they take male+female as another group, but that's not independent, so it's a bit more complicated than that), so finding something statistically significant (by chance) is twice as likely. In fact, given they made tests for 4 different conditions, with 3 different exposures, all divided into 2+ groups, they essentially made 24 tests. If you set your statistical significance at 0.05, you'd expect\* (by chance) 1.2 statistically significant results. They found one.
\*I'm simplifying here, it's more precise to say that if you conducted an infinite number of identical studies the average one would produce 1.2 "statistically significant" (p less than 0.05) results by pure chance.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Then shouldn't there be a significantly higher incidence of cancer in people who live closer to cell towers than in people who don't?
The rats were anywhere from 6" to 6' from the full power antenna. Now lets rerun the same test with the rats being 100 feet or more away and see if there is any increase.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Yes there should.
I just had a look at their data and it's all over the place. There's no dose response curve at all. Some types of cancers occurred more often at the lowest dose than at the highest dose.
It looks almost like P hacking to me. But I've only had a brief glance at it, and I'm not a scientician. Would love to hear from someone who does actual scientific research for a living.
Translation: I know what I'm talking about, listen to me.
I have no idea what I'm talking about, don't call me out.
That's some next level whiplash
Many... people lol, read slashdot. (great insite). People... lets just say they love twitter lol.
[($)]
That would back this study up, since we know the Sun is responsible for quite a few cases of cancer.
From the abstract:
Results: A statistically significant increase in the incidence of heart Schwannomas was observed in treated male rats at the highest dose (50 V/m). Furthermore, an increase in the incidence of heart Schwann cells hyperplasia was observed in treated male and female rats at the highest dose (50 V/m), although this was not statistically significant. An increase in the incidence of malignant glial tumors was observed in treated female rats at the highest dose (50 V/m), although not statistically significant.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
No, cell towers don't emit ultraviolet radiation. It is UV that causes cancer.
This couldn't be further from the truth. The linked pdf from ehtrust.org is a preprint version. It is NOT the published version of the paper. I pulled the published version of the paper down from my university account and the abstract is completely different, and the results show no statistical differences between those exposed to the magnetic fields vs controls.
The pubmed entry has the correct abstract: http://pubmed.gov/29549848
Read it for yourself.
The ehtrust.org should be reprimanded for knowingly spreading false information.
How about Albert Einstein?
The wavelength of ionizising radiation (the type that can cause cancer) is well known. Cellphone towers don't emit it.
No sig today...
As above, the link by AC to the published version's abstract (which I've double-checked and it is from the Ramazzini Institute) shows the OP to be bullshit. capedgirardeau should not be allowed to submit stories on medical or scientific topics in general, and /. should correct itself on this.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I didn't even know that whales could use cell phones.
I know they make them waterproof now, but sheesh!
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Rats are already prone to developing tumors anyway, but Sprague-Dawley rats are especially prone to randomly developing tumors at the drop of a hat. Like you could stare at them funny and they get more cancer than usual.
Yes, that rules out the ignorant, it radiation therefore cancer argument, that doesnâ(TM)t mean there cannot be other a less direct mechanisms going on, if there was no interaction between non ionizing ration and biology we would not be able to see visible light which we clearly can, a microwave oven doesnâ(TM)t produce ionizing radiation either, but that doesnâ(TM)t stop it cooking flesh. Not saying this study is a slam dunk, I interested in hearing what the rest of the scientific community has to say once this research has been reviewed.
The wavelength of ionizising radiation (the type that can cause cancer) is well known. Cellphone towers don't emit it.
Yes, any layman with an interest in physics knows that. However that does not necessarily exclude the possibility of some other type of unknown mechanism, no matter how slight that possibility might be. The lack of a known mechanism is not enough; it's just an appeal to ignorance.
If a well designed rigerous study found a link between cell tower radiation and specific type(s) of cancer, and followup studies successfully replicated those results, I would be quite willing to accept that cell towers probably are causing cancer, even if we have no idea how. The problem has been that all of these studies are crap, and that real world data shows no link either. That, combined with the lack of a plausible mechanism, leads me to conclude that there's almost certainly no danger. I'm always willing to be proven wrong, but this study definitely isn't the way to do it.
web sight
(great insite)
Well plaid, sir. Well plaid.
It would actually have to be tin foil. Aluminum foil would just turn you into an antenna.
I would think people placing dicks into cell phone towers would be quite an exciting subject for Slashdot!
Why do you think they put all those holes in towers anyway?
This news if any, proves to me, that the credibility that Slashdot has had fÃr years in the most varied of fields are now slipping significantly into crap-land..
It is almost so bad that I will stop reading Slashdot for good, based on the complete "junk science" that you give credibility by headlining it in this way.
Shame on you and the money grabbing hands you've got and this from a long, seriously long, time reader that is now fed up!
Several studies have been released on this subject.
The IAEA, the Russian Federation has also produced a report, with the effects on males and the American Association of Physicists in Medicine has also produced a report.
The question being What is the safe level of microwave irradiation for the ovarian follicles during the first 100 days development of the embryo?
One analysis revealed that in the study group, the number of follicles was lower than that in the control group. The decreased number of follicles in pups exposed to mobile phone microwaves suggest that intrauterine exposure has toxic effects on ovaries.
The general findings suggest that emissions from wi-fi routers and the X-ray scanners used before boarding have enough energy in them to damage the mitachondrial DNA within the unfertilized eggs carried in girls. Energetic emissions absorbed into the body damages reproductive cells in both sexes which causes transgenic diseases that can manifest in the next generation.
Damage to mitochondrial DNA in the eggs of girls, who are born with their entire inventory of eggs, occurs as low as 10 Gy according to some of the papers. Considering that any damage done to mitachondrial DNA will be passed down to *all* subsequent human generations as an increased prevalence of many kinds of inherited diseases, accumulating the more we are exposed to it, it shouldn't be too difficult to take a pragmatic view of this issue and decide what is really important to us.
Being pragmatic about what that means, wifi affects children more because they have a lower body mass than adults, that they need to keep their distance from wifi because they have less water, muscle and bone to shield their reproductive system, that schools should be cabled with fibre optic and ethernet instead of trying to scrimp installation costs with wi-fi. They're not difficult problems to solve by making simple construction and infrastructure decisions.
The thing we have to remember is we cook food with this wavelength all that differs is the wattage and time it takes to do the cooking. Yikes!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Nevertheless a simple conclusion is possible: Just start wearing clothing woven from metal fibers (see various classic science fiction portrayals of future clothing). Isn't it nice how we finally found something else that Hollywood actually "predicted" correctly (not the reason why; just the wearing)?
Good funding (many rats) doesn't prove the researchers are the best. Most studies have some problems and surprising methodological flaws. This is just an opportunity to find those flaws.
"Confirms Cancer Link" is some tabloid "journalism".
My Scwanns been growing, although I'm not sure it has anything to do with radiation.
"study found a link between cell tower radiation and specific type(s) of cancer, and followup studies successfully replicated those results"
This is a large scale lifetime Italian study, finding statistically significant increase of a specific and uncommon cancer which replicates the results of a U.S. National Toxicology Program study which found a connection between this radiation and an increase of this same uncommon cancer.
If there was an impact by RF you would expect some kind of power correlation. At least in the picture you show, for nearly all of those you see more impact at II, than III or IV which are 5 time or 10 time higher dosis. The total absence of power correlation shows me that this is far more a statistical fluke than any real effect.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Pure fucking bullshit.
by editors would be most welcome for companies who can pay the fines. Being able to get money back from editors when there is no money left in the company would also help against this bullshit.
Spending a year in jail for publishing this pseudo-science in the first place would also be a great plan.
What I want to know is why do some people so desperately want to believe this nonsense? What's the angle? What does anyone have to gain from "proving" their nonsense right?
(I guess you could ask that about any kind of nonsense, but I'm asking about this one in particular).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Studies have proven that the healthy dose of harmful radiation exposure studies has been exceeded.
People should expect more cancerous growth to appear in their lives after having read or have been exposed to any of these studies.
Exposure to the detritous growths that any of these cancerous studies created only furthers the development and exponentially increases the chances of death.
It could be the carcinogenic paint they use on the antennas or the toxic waste the construction firm secretly buried.
This is a large scale lifetime Italian study, finding statistically significant increase of a specific and uncommon cancer
Not really. This appears to be a large scale farce which subdivides a large population into 24 subgroups and then tries to pretend that the result is still statistically significant, despite it being pretty much what you would expect from chance alone.
Here's a bunch of research on the subject. It's been 20 years since I read it here on /. I think MIT did some research on the subject and found that some hats actually magnify the signal. It's worth reading and one of my all time favorite submissions.
effective.
I'm not sure there's any significance to 1.8 GHz being numerically close to 2.45 GHz (is it even considered close at 30% difference?)
I would expect a far greater power density using FDD20, which has a down-link (from the tower) and uplink (from the phone) that both have a harmonic around 2.45 GHz. Of course, this is known already, which is why the power density limit for FCC and Canada gets lower as the frequency is reduced. Anything over 2GHz in the US just goes to 1mW/cm2, but it is way more strict for Canada.
While LTE does have a lower peak power, it doesn't enjoy the far lower duty cycle of GSM. So, you have to calculate at 100% rather than the -3, -6 or 9 dB of GSM, depending on the number of slots being used.
But yeah, the link to cancer is pretty clear and actually common sense. It's a big ass transmitter... of course it wont be good for you.
As long as you don't have that shit attached to your house, you should be fine though given the air losses involved. Though, in the US they are using more and more lower bands, which have way less attenuation.
How about Albert Einstein?
The wavelength of ionizising radiation (the type that can cause cancer) is well known. Cellphone towers don't emit it.
I wonder how that world you live in, where science knows it all already, is. In my world, science is still discovering new things and maybe there are other processes involved in this situation. Remember, 150 years ago no one knew about ionizing radiation at all.
I'm not saying the article is correct. But your quick dismissal of this type of subject is a bit too cocky.
Seems like it could be a natural instance of p hacking.
We just run the same study over and over and over, everyone hoping to find the link, but only the people who find what they want publish."Cell phone still don't cause cancer" isn't sexy.
It‘s brain cancers so you‘ll be ok with that tinfoil hat.
Scientist here.
First thing that strikes me is... they don't have replicates, so there is no measure of experimental error. So when they show in Table 2, for example, that the control group had a 0.7% incidence of hyperplasia Schwann cells... we don't know the error. I think this is important because if the (standard) error is, say, plus/minus 0.5%, then some of the results would be within the experimental error. The 95% confidence given that error would be, approximately (0, 1.7) --technically (-0.3 1.7), but -0.3% has no biological meaning here). The claims they make in the paper would vanish.
Then, for some reason not justified in the paper, the sample size for the groups III and IV is half of that for groups I (control) and II. This make me feel weird, because the statistics (as much as you can do with that data) says the results are significant _only_ for males, in group IV, and when both types of Schwannoma are added together (adding up to 1.4% incidence). You'll see a 1.5% (total) incidence in group II for males and females.... but that group doubles the sample size and doesn't seem to be significant (essentially, the smaller the sample, the higher the error and a lot of things can happen here).
And, for some reason, they don't run stats in table 3. Or if they did, none of it is significant as there's no asterisks like in table 2.
In my professional opinion, a) the analysis seems a bit sloppy/inconclusive and b) given the effect on society, if the study was truly strong it would have gone to a much better journal (say, PNAS, where peer-review is usually a bit of a pain for all the requirements) instead of Environmental Research (lower profile journals use to have softer peer-review).
One of the most popular locations for cell towers is at or next to schools.
(Because they get money from the lease.)
Are we irradiating our children?
Maybe the rats that live by the cell tower like to go up there for a smoke.
They only work, because
1. the radiation field is *rotating*.
2. the food has polar molecules that then rotate with it.
3. a 600W microwave has the power of 550(!!) UMTS phones with *active calls* at a distance of 1m.
Leave any of those away, and it does nothing.
What you have there, is a concentrator!
Just like a tin foil hat actually is a parabolic dish ,focusing all radiation from below into yout brain! :D
The Ramazzini Institute has been publishing dubious studies for more than a decade. They have been accused of data fabrication and deliberate misinterpretation of their own source data (which they tend to keep under wraps even to government institutions) on multiple occasions, and most often publish on environmental and health topics which already got a lot of press (glyphosate, aspartam, methanol, now cell tower radiation). EPA, its Euro equivalent and other reputable institutions have more or less ceased taking these studies seriously (and not just since the new administration took office) and are actively reviewing and updating their older reports which referenced data from that source: http://www.epaarchive.cc/node/92139.html
Given this history, I am really skeptical wrt this new study.
Then shouldn't there be a significantly higher incidence of cancer in people who live closer to cell towers than in people who don't?
Three words are he main confounders here: Reflection, Refraction and scattering. Just because you are close to a tower does not mean you will have more exposure than in other areas and atmospheric conditions, ground topology an numerous other factors come into play that could attenuate or as much as completely eliminate the observed effect. t is completely reasonable that some people living right next to such a tower might have no such effect while people further away have some worse effects. It is not that simple.
Cell towers???
Today's joke: I know this deeply technical knowledge is unknown by most people. However, there is another source of electromagnetic radiation besides cell phone towers and TV and radio towers. That other source emits electromagnetic radiation in all frequencies. It's called the Sun. It may be difficult for some to believe, but the Sun emits far more radiation than cell phone towers.
Interesting! What are we to do about the lack of vitamin D production from not getting any UV radiation on the skin, causing inflammation and raising the risk of cancer and autoimmune diseases? (also a cancer risk from the same cause.. a double whammy!) Not getting enough sun causes cancer, getting too much causes cancer. There is a sweet spot where it doesn't.
So, stay inside during the day, and wrap yourself in aluminum foil. Go out only at night.
Short-term goal: Live underground in an abandoned coal mine.
Long-term goal: Try to find a planet that doesn't have one of those nasty Suns.
"study found a link between cell tower radiation and specific type(s) of cancer, and followup studies successfully replicated those results"
There are all kinds of weird statistical correlations that don't actually have any causal relationship. Just because they (supposedly) found a correlation does not necessarily mean cell towers cause cancer. There could easily be other factors in play or it could be experimental error or just one of those weird coincidences. Until they can detail a causal mechanism of action the only conclusion one can draw is that further study appears warranted.
Can someone familiar with these methodologies explain the criteria for statistical significance of these numbers?
Basically it's big enough to have a p value greater than 0.05 which implies statistical significance. But this doesn't mean much. Obligatory XKCD.
What is the hypothetical mechanism for low-level non-ionizing radiation to cause tumors?
They don't know and that is why nobody should get excited about this. Weird correlations happen all the time between unrelated events. Until they can show a causal mechanism for the cancer then the only conclusion you can draw from this research is that more research is warranted.
Mod parent up, the link in the grandparent post really is for a different paper.
It proves something else what I have been suspecting for a long time. I know it will be controversial, but the facts are in : Medical research causes cancer in rats.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
This does not bode well for Italian rats who have nothing better to do but hang out around cell towers all day.
PS, thanks for the click bait.
Your sig here!
And many people know that it is website, not "websight" and it is insight, not "insite".
Most ncancer patients blame themselves.
"It would actually have to be tin foil."
Anything that conducts electricity can be an antenna.
Anyone wanting to avoid electromagnetic energy would wrap himself in 2 layers of electrically conducting foil. The outer layer would be grounded so the energy would flow into the earth.
My joke didn't do well. Darn.
The underlying issue: Only a tiny amount of energy arrives on people from cell phone towers. There doesn't seem to be any law of Physics that would cause an interaction between that tiny amount of energy and Biochemical processes.
So you're claiming that active THz scanners as used at airports are 100% safe?
Or you're just being a prick?
> I didn't even know that whales could use cell phones.
> I know they make them waterproof now, but sheesh!
I thought the whales have been waterproof for quite some time.
The entire U.S had dick cancer. Well, at least until we can get him out of the White House.
I didn't even know that whales could use cell phones.
Have you not seen any talking on their phone in Walmart?
However that does not necessarily exclude the possibility of some other type of unknown mechanism, no matter how slight that possibility might be.
Such a not yet known mechanism could be :
- at microwavelenght, most of the absorbed energy is converted to heat (see micro-oven as an example where this phenomenon has been put to good use - though using a frequency band of 2.4Ghz. That one *also* lies whithin the range at which water will absorb micro-waves into heat. But that one is less heavily regulated than 1.8Ghz).
- the varying train of pulses and jumps at 1.8Ghz, could cause small varying trains of heat pulse in the water medium of the body.
- such train of heat pulse could cause very tiny shock wave.
- these thermal shock waves could cause tiny bit of (non-lethal, non critical) damage.
- the metabolism must keep repairing these tiny insignificant damages.
- over a lifetime of such constant higher-level of repair, the additional chronic metabolic stress could eventually cause some serious damage, leading to degerative disease (see repetitive-micro-trauma induced parkinson) or slightly higher cancer rates (either due to oxydative stress of the inflamatory cells cleaning up the small damage, or the increase cell division rate to replenish afterward).
DISCLAIMER: don't take my post as an authority, but as random speculation of potential explaining hypothesis
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935118300367
Folks, reading the paper, Table 2 basically proves the exact opposite of what the paper claims. The link is not at all proven. They cherry-pick one significant result out of 36 statistical tests. The level of significance is not specified but, the way it's reported, is probably between 0.01 and 0.05 (wrong between once in a 100 trials or 1 in 20), while Table 2 reports 36 statistical tests. In other words, significance of a test at this level of alpha (type I error) is not at all established. Moreover, there's no dose dependence, it would seem, whereas typically there would be a log-linear dependence on dose. The study is somewhere between inconclusive and (based on their loose understanding of statistics) junk.
Some journalist needs to blacken his paper. Some website needs Clickbait. Pampered whiteys are bored.
The rest is Bullshit Science.
So you lump x-ray weapons checking machine together with Microwaves ?
BIG TIME BULL.
Here is a nickel boy. Buy yourself a proper education.
We irradiate them with tons of bullshit that flows from the optical tubes.
That bullshit makes them angry and fearful. That in turn makes them smoke, which creates cancer.
See how the optical-tube-radiation makes cancer ?
Even worse, we have chained microwave radiators to the optical tube radiators in order to amplify the smoking.
Bad bad technology. Makes canzer !
It is true that you have close to a 50% chance to develop cancer over your lifetime.
This is because cancer is very strongly age-linked, and as expected lifespans increase the aggregate probability gradually approaches 1.
In days past, people would die before they had time to develop cancer. Then they would die with undiagnosed cancer. Now we are quite good at detecting cancer.
Also, cancer cures would be extremely profitable themselves, and would allow for customers to continue to buy other products. Viagra and heart medication alone eat the profits from chemotherapy for lunch.
What you are experiencing is known as naive cynicism.
Don't worry, in a couple of days, there will be a new story done by a cell phone company, which proves a negative.
Just like there is every time a study done by real scientists proves that RF can be harmful in large enough doses.
This is of course because cell phone companies are afraid that our politicians are going to put limits on the allowed amount of RF, even though we all know that politicians care more about money, so the limit is going to be somewhere between a cell tower and cooking a person in a microwave oven.
I just wonder why cell phone companies are so afraid of it becoming illegal to cook people in microwave ovens.
We will invent scary theories and then be Chicken Little, just in case one of the theories proves to be true. That is highly rational behaviour, especially when their is absolutely no credible data to justify the theorizing.
What we know is that RF energy will heat up fleshy structures. But you need massive power to do SERIOUS heating. Your cellphone has 5W max, while your microwave oven has 500W to 2000W AND the energy is focused into the metal cage of the oven. Without the metal cage you would have a hard time to heat your food just from 25C to 30C.
So - your cellphone will heat your brain by 0,1C, while sitting in the sun will heat it by 2C or more. And still you do not get brain damage from some moderate sunbathing.
That is why in most countries people have an increasing life expectancy, which is now higher than at any time in the past ?
A reducing life expectancy in the US is most probably due to a quickly expanding sector of society who cannot even afford a proper dentist.
Longer life expectancy due to better food, hygiene and medicine means also much higher likelihood of getting "cancer because of old". People died much younger of pneumonia in the 1950s, so these folks had no chance of contracting cancer.
"Quick dismissal"??
The electrosensitives have been trying to find something to justify their cause for many decades now.
If there was any effect you'd think they'd have found it by now.
Sorry, but the burden of proof is firmly in their court now and the standard of evidence required is well into the levels of "extraordinary". This ain't it. Nothing to see here. Move along.
No sig today...
Researchers with the renowned Ramazzini Institute (RI) in Italy announce that a large-scale, lifetime study (PDF) of lab animals exposed to environmental levels of cell tower radiation developed cancer.
The study developed cancer?
It is true that you have close to a 50% chance to develop cancer over your lifetime.
This is because cancer is very strongly age-linked, and as expected lifespans increase the aggregate probability gradually approaches 1.
In days past, people would die before they had time to develop cancer. Then they would die with undiagnosed cancer. Now we are quite good at detecting cancer.
Yes, let's simply dismiss every poison we've introduced into our environment and chalk up the massive increase of cancer to age and detection. Sounds good for profits, and it also somehow makes us feel like we've accomplished something. In reality, the 5-year cancer "survival" metric hasn't moved in decades, billions still die, and no cure will ever be found or allowed.
Also, cancer cures would be extremely profitable themselves, and would allow for customers to continue to buy other products. Viagra and heart medication alone eat the profits from chemotherapy for lunch.
First of all, I'd love to see your proof regarding Viagra profits. Second, heart medication profits only prove just how quick we are to prescribe drugs for the sake of profits. And lastly, neither of those products serves the other benefit that cancer provides, which is population control.
What you are experiencing is known as naive cynicism.
Better than blind ignorance.
The Sprague-Dawley rat strain is predisposed to developing tumours (cancerous and benign) without any stimulus, so this result is a huge meh. Try this research with a strain of rat that is not prone to developing tumours and then call me with the results. But I'm sure that this will recieve huge play in the alt-med world. Oh my god, cell phones cause cancer. Quackery and sketchy science as far as the eye can see.
period.
/. should be ashamed for posting this drivel.
Only ionizing radiation can effect the cells and cause mutations (and possibly cancer)
How about Albert Einstein?
The wavelength of ionizising radiation (the type that can cause cancer) is well known. Cellphone towers don't emit it.
While not ionizing radiation, RF radiation can and does have physical effects - Usually heating.
So I'm not going to write off the entire idea of carcinogenic effects, but I think it is very unlikely. And unless there is some homeopathic thing going on, holding a cell phone right up to your head exposing it to the the near field is going to dose you a hella lot more than being in the far field of a cell tower.
Humans have been carrying that experiment on for years now, I know people who spend hours every day soaking up near-field radiation from their smartphones. We should see some human results.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You jest, but, IIRC, cancer clusters around electrical transmission towers, which were statistically significant but could not be reproduced in controlled settings, ended up having been caused by toxic pesticides used around those towers.
Nonaggression works!
I assume you know your question is irrelevant and rather boring.
I am John Q Public. I'm no expert, but I know that cellphones and cell towers talk to each other. So to me, in a topic about cell tower radiation contributing to cancer, it seems prudent to ask about cellphones. Maybe that question makes no sense to an expert in the field, but again, I am not an expert.
In the future, please remember that other people might not know all the same things that you do.
The sun is also pretty active in the RF field too. All stars are for that matter.
But the thing is, as I stated earlier RF power falls at the square of the distance from the transmitter. So our average exposure is likely sub 1W. Not enough to heat up anything.
Awe Rats!
The Sprague-Dawley rats used in this study are notoriously prone to cancer. If you touch one with your hands it will get fingerprint shaped skin cancers. They have apparently have had all their DNA repair functions eliminated. They are used in toxicology because they are supersensitive to cancer, but the results are often dubious at best. I doubt that any study done with these animals can be trusted
did they include it in the study this time ?
But I've only had a brief glance at it, and I'm not a scientician.
That's ok. I'm pretty sure nobody else is either.
This strain of rats gets cancer at a high rate (45%) no matter what you do. This is literally the worst experimental model for determining if anything causes cancer as you cannot determine which cancers were going to happen anyway. However, this is the perfect model for generating click bait headlines that support your belief that something causes cancer without actually having to risk spending all of that money to find out you are wrong.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
unless there is some homeopathic thing going on, holding a cell phone right up to your head exposing it to the the near field is going to dose you a hella lot more than being in the far field of a cell tower.
Hell if it homeopathic you'd better strap a handset to your head permanently, increasing the distance could be deadly...
This is incorrect. Radiation does not need to be ionizing. UV-A is not ionizing but can cause a sunburn. Broadcast RF can also cause RF burns if you are exposed to high enough of an energy. Anything that causes tissue damage, inflamation etc can be a problem. If it were not the case a sunburn would not be dangerous.
The responses to this post tend to refute the conclusions or point out fallacies or biases or weak statistics or correlation factors. Much of that critique is valid - a whole lot of people here jumped onto the problems with the study. But, there are also a few points worth noting.
Biological effects -
Beginning in the latter 19th century, chemistry became the basis for understanding biology, and physical influences on biological systems were, and still are, relegated to lesser rank, not so robust methods, and lesser appreciation, sometimes even disdain among public an scientists alike. However, there is ample evidence of the effects of energy on biological systems, sometimes for the better and useful as therapy, sometimes of neutral influence, and sometimes provoking injury or pathological transformations. Common experience tells you this is so - get hit by a car and transfer kinetic energy, or get burned and transfer thermal energy, and that's bad. However, let a therapist apply ultrasound, diathermy, or e-stim, and significant benefits can accrue. Microwaves wiggle water molecules. Light waves interact with photoreceptor cells and molecules in the eye. Vibrational energies are transduced by the ear with discrimination of frequencies. The effects of EM radiation on cells and biological systems have been demonstrated in many ways. Note that I am referring to long wavelength low energy bands - radio, microwave, etc., not the high energy ionizing effects of x-ray and gamma. How it is that the effects of low frequency non-ionizing EM are transduced by cells or biochemical is another story, but not understanding how does not invalidate multitudes of observations that the effects are there.
Much of the attention in these studies focuses on certain organs and tissues and tumors because that is where prior studies, valid or invalid, have identified risk. Focus on the brain is based on studies suggesting incidence of brain tumors, and the obvious fact that you hold cellphones to your head. Regardless if there is a real effect or not, the types of tumors or tissues looked at have a commonality - they make lots of phospholipids, so that is an obvious nominal association that makes you wonder if there is an interaction. Phospholipids make cell membranes. For instance, schwannomas are mentioned. Schwann cells make the "insulation" around fast axons (a nerve cell's output "wire"). These cells are like a roll of tape of wound phospholipids - lots of "the stuff" filling the local space. Phospholipids are long alkyl chains, much like various other liquid crystals, about 2 nm long. Phase state transformations in these molecules have been observed in EM fields, so somehow they can transduce that energy.
Mechanisms
I have heard postulates that these long molecules can act like antennas for EM. If the molecule is 2 nm, and the EM is gigahertz range millimeter waves, that is 6 orders of magnitude difference in size, so maybe not a classic antenna, but remember that microwaves (and others) wiggle water, so other effects can happen as biochemicals absorb those energies. Many comments to this post point out lack of dose response, but that is not a necessary criterion. Many perturbations of biological systems exhibit other response curves, including hysteresis, bimodal, band pass, band stop, high or low pass, self-competition or saturational inhibition, and others. Who knows, the effects might not even be on membranes or cytosolic chemistry. Perhaps the very genes that make such chemicals, open and unwound in the nucleus as part of that cell's phenotypic expression, has a certain set of base pairs that makes the molecule loose or springy or rigid in key areas such that it is subject to extreme vibrational torques or bending which in turn initiates passive or active responses elsewhere in the nucleus leading to the malignant transformation. There is a vast ocean of possibilities out there that can be explored before finding a clear understanding of mechanisms.
Biases
The study posted he
Wasn't a joke. I was trying to point out that it could be some secondary relation like that.
The insurance companies are constantly mining their data for payouts on cancer treatments. They're correlating common threads between these patients such as work environment and then lobbying industry to change the work environment to reduce the cancer risk.
If cellphone radiation was causing cancer, the insurance companies would see higher incidents of cancer treatment payouts for cellphone tower technicians. They would then lobby OSHA to modify regulations surrounding cellphone tower work.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
unless there is some homeopathic thing going on, holding a cell phone right up to your head exposing it to the the near field is going to dose you a hella lot more than being in the far field of a cell tower.
Hell if it homeopathic you'd better strap a handset to your head permanently, increasing the distance could be deadly...
That's why we can't leave the solar system. At some point the radiation from the sun will burn us to a crisp when we get far enough away.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Ah. I misunderstood. My apologies.
Nonaggression works!
They're what happens in the natural environment where people live and work everyday. DUH. :P
If you want to derive conclusions about environmental levels of radiation you compare shielded with unshielded. Right?
The underlying issue: Only a tiny amount of energy arrives on people from cell phone towers.
Don't worry about the towers. You get much more radiation from your phone because it is so much closer than those towers. A phone is no more than one wavelength away. A tower is typically 1000x farther away, so its output is weakened 1000x1000 or a million times compared to the phone.
A phone maxes out at 2W, an american cell tower maxes out at 500W. So the tower has 250 times more power, but distance still means the phone affects you about 4000 times stronger.
Worry about the phone in your pocket, not the tower across the street. Or the wifi at the other end of the room.
"The results of epidemiological studies in various countries show that radon and its progeny cause carcinogenic effects on mine workers. Therefore, it becomes of paramount importance to monitor radon concentrations and consequently determine the radon dose rates in coal mines for the protection of coal miners. " from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... ... Maybe abandoned salt mines? :-)
In what world is 50 Volts/meter typical of any user near a cell site? If Typical sector antennas have 20 dB gain, and I'm not sure they are this high for 120 degree sectors probably only 14 dB, at 20 watts average transmitter power one has to be within about 5 meters to see that sort of field strength. At 50 meters with inverse-square (far field) this falls to one hundredth that level. Who spends significant time only 5 meters from the center of beam of a cell antenna? I suspect that field strength from a leaky microwave oven far surpasses typical exposures from cell sites. I think this report is BS on multiple counts.
They are singling out cell towers. There is a much higher power transmission source in your pocket, your cell phone, when you adjust for distance from the user.
You are rarely closer than 10 metres from a cell tower, while you are rarely farther than about 10 cm from your cell phone. Sure the tower has higher overall power output, but the inverse square law takes hold. I'd expect the cell phone to be a much higher contributor to RF exposure than the towers.
Unless of course you don't own/use a cell phone.
back in the day, when frequency band allocations were made, someone had to find places for "stuff" that interferes - generically "industrial scientific and medical".
So we have bands at 27MHz, 900MHz and 2450 MHz (and higher and lower).
A lot of times, the band is selected because it's *not* used for something else. For instance, 2000-2300 is used for space communications (and studio/transmitter links for TV.. "stormwatch 2018 live remote" is likely using that band) 2400-2500 is not used for anything other than Amateur radio, ISM, (WiFi, etc. as well as microwave ovens), and a few radars.
The other spectrum is pretty full. THEIR allocations are often driven by how easy it is to make equipment (e.g. deep space X-band (8GHz) is 4 times the deep space X band (near 2GHz))
https://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/2003-allochrt.pdf
Ionizing radiation can damage DNA and lead to cancers or other mutations - true.
That is by no means the only cause of cancer.
Many chemicals are carcinogenic.
Repetitive (even single) trauma can be carcinogenic.
Sustained inflammation can be carcinogenic.
Genetic variations cause cancer.
The mechanisms vary among all of them, but these are just the basic everyday stressors that lead to cancer. Among all of them, ionizing radiation is perhaps the least prevalent unless talking about skin cancers in certain locales.
Radiofrequency might or might not cause cancer. That is the question, maybe yes, maybe no.
But, radio does have demonstrable effects on cell proliferation, cell migration, and genomic expression.
Radio is not ionizing, but then again, nucleic acid ionization is not the only mechanism of tumorigenesis.
"Only ionizing radiation can effect the cells and cause mutations (and possibly cancer)" - that is simply incorrect.
Scientific research causes cancer in rats.
You can pretend it dont all you want.
How often to rats get cancer anyway? Maybe this was just 4/200 rats getting cancer as per the norm?
Is this /. or is this a Fox TV News outlet?
Check in with Ars, https://arstechnica.com/scienc...
A very interesting walk through about why it wasn't worth covering.
Correlation does not equal causation. I had seen studies a few years ago showing that continuous radiation at cell phone frequencies does not cause a problem but varying modulation schemes correlate to timing of cell division and other cellular processes. It is the modulation techniques that can interfere with cellular operation. that is the closest thing to a sensible argument I've heard in relation to these types of studies
They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
A group devoted to publishing that everything causes cancer. Shame on Slashdot for falling for this!
Just another discovery of something needing regulation.
Like lead in gasoline, or lead in paint, or cigarette smoke, etc...
We too soon get old, and too late smart!
I hypothesize that if (we - humans) were to actually take our time and focus on what is good for us rather than what is good for our wallets, we may just survive long enough to spread out into the galaxy and universe, or evolve to more amazing creatures, before we get wiped out.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
..using a sample size of everyone on EARTH using cell phones and NOT getting cancer says this animal study is total crap.
It's not just appeal to ignorance, "radiation = cancer" ignorant overreaction is the very basis of the suspicion that radio signals might have something to do with cancer. Without it there is no reason to even suspect there might be a any link between radio signals and cancer. But the masses keep making noise, so scientists keep revisiting the problem over and over, out of thousands of studies there are going to be some false positives that media then happily cherry picks, completely ignoring 99% of studies that come up with "no link found". This is just another one of those, give me mechanism or overwhelming evidence or gtfo. There is not going to be overwhelming evidence, pretty much entire human population uses cellphones and there is no signal to be seen in cancer rates, zilch, nicht, nada. If there is any kind of effect it's extremely minor, so you better come up with a mechanism for that extremely minor effect before you have any kind of chance of showing it's actually true.
1 in 3 humans get cancer, late in life. That is an important distinction. There are very few animals that are biologically immortal, all other animals die of cancer if they manage to avoid getting eaten, injured or sick for their entire life. Cancer is a symptom of abnormally long life expectancy in humans, not of commies fluoridating our precious bodily fluids.