Slashdot Mirror
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."
When did slashdot start posting bullshit unscientific studies.
Here is the data on brain cancer. Here is their data on heart cancer. I see no correlation in this data (but someone with a better statistics skill than me might be able to explain it to me). What I see is that if you divide your data into enough groups, one of the groups is likely to show a correlation (this is the relevant explanation)
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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?
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.
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.