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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."
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
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.
"Microwave ovens operate at a frequency of 2.45 GHz (2.45x109 Hz) and this is NOT the resonant frequency of a water molecule"
cite: http://www.schoolphysics.co.uk/age16-19/Wave%20properties/Wave%20properties/text/Microwave_ovens/index.html
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.
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.
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'
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.
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)?
"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.
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.
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.
NO!!! Water molecule resonance is spread over a very large spectrum, ranging from microwaves till to infrared (just check a manual about molecular spectroscopy). This is due to the fact that there are many oscillation modes for H2O molecule (rotation, reciprocal vibration, etc.) . Just imagine having a system made of three weights connected by springs, and ask to yourself in how many modes it can oscillate. Then repeat the exercise replacing the springs with rigid bars, and ask yourself in how many modes you can rotate it.
The 2.4 GHz water resonance bogus claim appeared many years ago on QST and, like many urban legends spread by ham radio buffs, is misleading people from physical truth.
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).
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.
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.
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 ]
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.
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.
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.
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
2.45 GHz is used because it's unlicensed spectrum, so it's less likely to interfere with other uses.
Larger industrial microwave ovens often use 915 MHz, which is also unlicensed. The wavelength is 2.5x longer, which means a larger resonant cavity, which is why this frequency isn't used for domestic or smaller commercial ovens.
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.
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...
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.