13 ms·

Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

203 points by mijustin 10y ago

retrogradeorbit 10y ago
It's important to note that according to official dogma, non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer. I've heard my own concerns about non-ionising radiation dismissed (even belittled) so many times that I've lost count. Most often this comes from educated people who think that their education constitutes the whole of all knowledge about the universe and that there is nothing left to be discovered. But one should understand that if this dogma was correct, there should be no link found at all. I did a physics degree at uni, and then spent many years working in genomics. And I've never (even before the biology work) assumed the "non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer" to be a true statement. You can only come to that conclusion if you assume that ionisation effects are the only pathways that can cause cancer. After working with biologists for many years I've come to the understanding that biology is extremely complex, we have an extremely limited understanding of it, and there could be any number of as yet undiscovered effects of non-ionising radiation on cellular biology. I would hope that as more of these studies are done (this is not the first and probably wont be the last) that we would hear less of this dogma spouted by supposedly smart people, but I doubt this will happen. It doesn't matter what you do, intelligence and education often go hand in hand with ego and a feeling of infallibility. And the dismissive "non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer" people never miss an opportunity to tell you that doubting this "proven fact" makes you stupid.
- andybak 10y ago
  Anyone with even a cursory understanding of the scientific method shouldn't be bandying around words like 'proof'. Science is always provisional and new evidence can always overturn a theory. Sadly many areas of debate attract cranks in larger than usual numbers and the health effects of electromagnetic radiation is one of them. So people get rather weary of fighting the same battles again and again and tend to become a little flippant in their replies.
- legulere 10y ago
  I guess a better way to say it is: Non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer the way UV, x-ray or gamma rays cause cancer. We haven't found any other way radiation can cause cancer yet.
  - shirro 10y ago
    That may not be true. UVA is not ionising and possibly increases risk of skin cancer. Non-ionizing radiation can cause chemical reactions (photochemical, heating, burns) that damage cells and might lead to increased cancer risk. I really doubt if that is the case with mobile phones but I think it makes more sense to look at the epidemiological data rather than make a bunch of hand wavey arguments about the radiation. There are a hell of a lot of cell phone users and if there is a risk worth being concerned about I think it should have shown up before now.
    - marvin 10y ago
      Non-ionizing radiation can also cause other adverse health effects. A famous Norwegian case in the early 90s related to navy personnel on board an attack vessel, where 17 of the 85 children of soldiers who had served on the vessel, had birth defects. A disproportionate number of the employees on the electronics workshop of its home base also has children with similar birth defects The negative effects are widely believed to have been caused by a 750W radar jammer, which frequently radiated the ship deck. There hasn't been established a clear cause-and-effect link. https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvikk-saken https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvikk-saken
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        They could have shared exposure to an awful lot of things. Short of some indication that they were turning on the jammer all the time in the workshop I would sort of think chemical exposure would be a more likely explanation.
- tzs 10y ago
  > And I've never (even before the biology work) assumed the "non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer" to be a true statement. You can only come to that conclusion if you assume that ionisation effects are the only pathways that can cause cancer. ...and it is not justified to make that assumption, because there is reason to believe that there is another possible pathway. DNA is known to be conductive, and it is known that due to the shape of DNA in chromosomes it can act as a fractal antenna and non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation can induce currents in it. It's also know that damage to DNA can change the conductivity of the damaged section. Some major researchers suspect that part of the mechanism cells use to detect and repair DNA damage makes use of this by looking for sections of DNA where the conductivity is not what it should be. If this does turn out to be part of how damage is detected, then it is possible that currents induced by non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation when the DNA acts as a fractal antenna could confuse the repair mechanism causing it to fail to recognize and repair damage that would normally be found and dealt with. Here is a submission from a little over a year ago about the fractal antenna aspect of DNA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9447964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9447964 See my comment in that discussion for some more information on the possibility that this is connected to DNA repair and a link to one of the major research groups that is looking into this stuff (Jacqueline Barton's group at Caltech).
- MicroBerto 10y ago
  Be careful when dealing with absolutes. No matter how smart you think you may be, you simply don't know what you don't know, as you allude to later in your comment.
  - whatisunseen 10y ago
    Very true, but the same can be said for scientists. While paying lip-service to what it doesn't know, the hubris of modern science is its vice. We live in an age of relative technological ignorance. Let's keep a proper perspective. In a few centuries, people will look back at what we know today and laugh. (Infinite examples could be given. Only 100 years ago people said man would never fly, etc. )
- Houshalter 10y ago
  Perhaps, but how, in 2016, is it not known? Surely scientists have tried raising rats near strong radio waves to see if they die or get cancer?
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Rats get cancer. The rats used in this study get tumours. http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/33/11/2768 http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/33/11/2768 > A spontaneous tumor incidence of 45% was noted in 360 Sprague-Dawley rats (179 males and 181 females) and a 26% incidence was seen in 254 Swiss mice (101 males and 153 females) used as untreated control animals in an 18-month series of carcinogenesis experiments. A tiny increase in cancer over a large base rate is going to be tricky to find.
- greatnorthz 10y ago
  In a round-about-way you are hinting at the 'science is a religion' mentality. If something can't be explained by current scientific knowledge then, the people who think that way, must have the idea shot down and disregarded. It's a binary thought pattern that would probably be less common if history (and philosophy) had a greater value in society.
- derptacious 10y ago
  The establishment demands that non-ionizing UV can be carcinogenic, but laugh if someone thinks that microwave - at various doses - could be! Why does it take so much evidence to even propose that low doses of the frequency that cook food can have adverse health effects on living humans? The fact that they're not willing to recommend bluetooth or earbuds without a mountain of evidence is another demonstration of closed mindedness. If something in nature has an even infinitesimal chance of being harmful, then you put it closer to your hands and legs - and not your eyes, face, and brain.
  - mcbits 10y ago
    Fire cooks food, but waving your hands above a candle for warmth doesn't "cook" your hands. However, if you do damage your skin (especially repeatedly), the tissue damage and repair cycle can increase the risk of cancer. So when it comes to cell phones, do those microwaves merely warm human tissue very slightly, or might it occasionally be concentrated in a way to cause micro-burns? Supposing the body is repeatedly having to heal tiny microwave burns, it wouldn't be surprising at all if cancer risk is increased.
- mnsc 10y ago
  "official dogma, non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer." I doubt that you can find a scientist doing research on radiations effect on the body that dogmatically has said that "non-ionising radiation _can not_ cause cancer". I will personally call this scientist up and lecture him/her on the merits of doing science scientifically. So if you "doubt" the dogma by saying "non-ionising radiation _can_ cause cancer" every scientist, and me, can go "Fk yeah, thats a working hypothesis, go prove that and bring society forward". But if you would say that "non-ionising radiation _causes_ cancer" you are "stupid" in the way that you don't base that sentence on the current state of science and you are just making things up because you have been "working with biologists for many years" and you are a proud user of Common Sense™.
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
    > I will personally call this scientist up and lecture him/her on the merits of doing science scientifically. Feynman did in 1974: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm In light of these things, my working hypothesis is scientists can dogmatically claim things too.
- mh-cx 10y ago
  I think it would help a lot if they could somehow compile a list of the likelinessnes for getting cancer from a specific sort of radiation. It should also contain the radiation that we are naturally always exposed to. Even if the values were only rough estimates I feel like this would put the real risks more into perspective.
- mathgeek 10y ago
  > It doesn't matter what you do, intelligence and education often go hand in hand with ego and a feeling of infallibility. This is a bit overly general. Many of us who are highly educated and traditionally intelligent battle with imposter syndrome. We're just the ones who you won't find out there acting like we know everything. The idea that this is often the case it likely more a matter of "the squeaky wheel" than scientific fact.
- kisstheblade 10y ago
  No, the "dogma" is just that scary cellphone RADIATION! is no more harmful than the radiation from lightbulbs, flashlights, candles etc. And probably a couple of orders of magnitudes less so. But hey, radiation, you know, nucular, scary.
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    Snark aside, those lightbulbs, flashlights, and candles are not placed directly against the head and near the reproductive organs (in pockets) for upwards of a thousand hours per year.
- snake_plissken 10y ago
  Aren't the ultraviolet components of sunlight non-ionizing?
- xenadu02 10y ago
  I'm not saying you are a quack, but you are crying the rallying cry of quacks everywhere. You also setup a straw man. Any scientist or thoughtful person says "there isn't a known/proven" link between non-ionizing radiation and cancer and so far most evidence seems negative. Of course there is a lot we don't know. That doesn't mean we are incapable of making any statements about anything at all. If cell phones caused a significant risk in the rise of cancer (say 1-10%) we'd have easily seen that by now. We haven't. This study didn't see it either... In fact the rats exposed to radiation lived longer than the ones not exposed! So what we can confidently say is that if cell phone radiation causes cancer, it is an extremely minor contributor. In all likelihood it's contribution is zero, but that is also unproven and should be further studied.
- pithic 10y ago
  > Most often this comes from educated people who think that their education constitutes the whole of all knowledge about the universe and that there is nothing left to be discovered. Such biologists may even believe they know how cells divide, because they've observed stages of cell division and given them fancy Latin names.
yc-kraln 10y ago
Study proves cell phone radiation makes you live longer! What about the huge, decades long study run by various governments with hundreds of thousands of people showing no association?
- LoSboccacc 10y ago
  yeah. one would say that even before study, this http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/brain_other_cns_incidence.jpg http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/brain_othe... and this http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/leukemia_incidence.jpg http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/leukemia_i... would show at least some acceleration the only thing that really moved the average: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/all_sites_combined_incidence.jpg http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/all_sites_... was this, I think related to HIV: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/kaposi_sarcoma_incidence.jpg http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/kaposi_sar...
kome 10y ago
Cellphones or Wi-Fi today are like cigarettes in the '50s. A huge lobby pretend they are just fine, people are in denial because they love them and we lack of longitudinal data about their effects on health. But thanks to further research, and time, we are starting to understand better the effects of cellphone radiation on health. The World Health Organization already had a rapport in 2011 about cellphones possible dangers: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/ http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/ Meanwhile, people should learn to use cellphones in a healthy way, and not living 24/24h with them (during sleep, for example). And at home would be better using cables instead of Wi-Fi...
- 1337biz 10y ago
  > Cellphones or wi-fi today are like cigarettes in the '40s. That is exactly the same question I am always asking. But with most controversial topics this could be true.
  - Johnythree 10y ago
    When the statistical evidence for Cigarette usage was closely examined it was immediately obvious that there was a link with health. But we have hundreds of detailed studies of Radio and Health, and no reproducible link has ever been found. You can't have it both ways. To conflate the two is simply wrong. The evidence doesn't support your argument.
    - andy_ppp 10y ago
      Agreed, exercise, smoking and alcohol are likely to be hundreds of times more effective at stopping cancer than giving up your mobile phone, wifi and bluetooth devices.
    - dalu 10y ago
      > But we have hundreds of detailed studies of Radio and Health, and no reproducible link has ever been found. What about http://www.bioinitiative.org/ http://www.bioinitiative.org/
- 10y ago
oskansavli 10y ago
Similar article but no subscription required: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/federal-study-links-cell-phone-radiation-cancer http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/federal-study...
mijustin 10y ago
I'm especially interested in hearing how this study is different than this one in 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3141594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3141594
Vanit 10y ago
Eck, worth mentioning that science is done by consensus. Individual studies might be interesting, but it means nothing until it's shown in the context of an aggregated review.
- makach 10y ago
  So this is the one report people will refer to when they will justify their views on mobile use
Zelmor 10y ago
Paywall
- GigabyteCoin 10y ago
  Click the "web" link below the title.
  - Zelmor 10y ago
    Mind: blown. Thanks chap.
  - __david__ 10y ago
    I feel like I'm missing something. Here's what I see: http://i.imgur.com/GAGo2y5.jpg http://i.imgur.com/GAGo2y5.jpg What should I click on?
    - adrianN 10y ago
      Look at the top of the HN page. Under the article's title that links to its website, there is a "web" link.
  - NTripleOne 10y ago
    Jesus Christ this might be the most cancerous practice I've seen in a long time.
- TelAviv_1 10y ago
  Yes, we all know. HN doesn't object to people posting links to premium content. Why don't you try reddit?
djmdjm 10y ago
Does anyone have a link to the actual paper? As usual, it's impossible to get any useful information from a sensational mainstream science article. The article states that they studied rats and mice at 9 hrs/day exposure (at what RF power?) but aren't reporting results for mice at this stage. Of the rats (how many?), they found the "cancer association appeared in male rats" but no effect size or confidence interval is reported. No mention of dose sensitivity is mentioned. So they report some cancer association (how much? we don't know. how confident? we don't know) in a small subset of their study population (excluding female rats and all mice) at some unknown RF power and at an exposure time considerably larger than what most humans would receive. I'm sure the science behind the study is much more rigorous than this, but wow - the reporting sucks.
- mcpherrinm 10y ago
  The paper is linked at the beginning of the article. Abstract: http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699 http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699 Direct PDF link: http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...
  - LionessLover 10y ago
    The problem with linking to websites like this is that one has to be logged int o see anything but the first line of the article...
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - timpattinson 10y ago
      not this time - this is an open access preprint server like arXiv for physics and math
      - niels_olson 10y ago
        He meant the WSJ article
voltagex_ 10y ago
Sigh, this isn't going to help the (mentally ill?) people who believe cellphones / wifi are making them sick. I wish this study wasn't paywalled, it needs some careful reading to determine actual risk. And then, if phones are causing cancer? Do you think everyone will stop using them? Do you think Apple will go bankrupt?
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  > I wish this study wasn't paywalled, it needs some careful reading to determine actual risk. It's not paywalled. It's linked in the article as well as in other articles. Take a look here: http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f... > And then, if phones are causing cancer? Do you think everyone will stop using them? Do you think Apple will go bankrupt? Everything comes with a risk. If phones really do cause cancer we need to figure out the possibility and weigh it. It's likely very small if it exists whereas every person in the United States, over an average life time, has an almost 2% chance of dying in a car (which is insanely high when you think about it) and yet we're still using cars, non-stop.
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    Thanks.
homero 10y ago
I don't think this applies anymore due to no one using phones as phones anymore and when they do it's hands free. No more antenna to head. Also modern phones transmit at the bottom of the device. Lastly radio power is much lower now due to much smaller cells.
mr_sturd 10y ago
This paper was linked, on a MotherJones article, found via the "web" link. http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...
hayitsbacon 10y ago
"I suspect that this experiment is substantially underpowered and that the few positive results found reflect false positive findings." - Dr. Michael S Lauer, Director of Cardiovascular Sciences at NHLBI. Peer Review in Appendix G starting on page 36 of the study. http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...
- cozzyd 10y ago
  Indeed, I did not find their response to this reviewer to address the statistics criticisms satisfactory. Also, although they try to adjust for this, I'm not sure if their rate correction fully corrects for longevity.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
At the moment the wsj article doesn't correctly link to the abstract so I put it in my post [1] (which also includes the full PDF link to the study [2]). Considering there are an absolute ton of studies showing there isn't a link this is highly interesting. I'm not a telecom engineer so I don't entirely understand the methodology but part of their pilot study was to test various field strengths that do not raise the mouse or rat's body temperature (does this mean they are not using the same field strength as our towers?). They were also put into custom reverberation chambers; wouldn't that amplify or at least repeat the signal? Or is that not an issue and if so, why? Also this section has me confused (maybe I'm reading it incorrectly?): "At the end of the 2-year study, survival was lower in the control group of males than in all groups of male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RFR. Survival was also slightly lower in control females than in females exposed to 1.5 or 6 W/kg GSM-modulated RFR. In rats exposed to CDMA-modulated RFR, survival was higher in all groups of exposed males and in the 6 W/kg females compared to controls." This makes it sound like the ones exposed to RF lived longer than those in the control. Am I reading that right? [1] http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699 http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699 [2] http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...
elchief 10y ago
Does this same paper come out every five years, or is it just me?
lucaspiller 10y ago
Ok this is the first study that says there is a link, but let's assume for a moment that what it says is correct and it has the same effect in humans: Would the same also be true for wifi? According to Wikipedia the average cell phone TX power is 500 mW vs 200 mW for 802.11n [0]. Cell phones usually operate at lower frequency than wifi, however wifi (at 2.4Ghz) is at the same frequency as microwave ovens. In the study the rats were exposed for 10 minutes on - 10 minutes off for 18 hours a day (at an unknown TX power), if you work in an office you are going to be exposed continuously (apart from coffee / lunch) for 9+ hours a day, and even more if you then go home and use a wifi device. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm
- quickben 10y ago
  There are many factors. I had a friend studying the induced magnetic field and it's effects on tissues (vs frequency etc) long time ago. The conclusion was that there are overall cancer related and other brain related problems. It was her postdoc, and she also had access to the city subway lines for more tests. So from the people I've known doing research and other anegdotal evidence, there is a link. It still perplexes me how most of the studies in the end conclude there is overall no human-related high risk. So maybe cellphones+ other generators are like peanut allergies, to some are fine, to others they are fatal. It's too complex of a subject anyways. ... Edited for minor misspell
- miles 10y ago
  > this is the first study that says there is a link From 2011: WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk [1] "Radiation from cell phones can possibly cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization. The agency now lists mobile phone use in the same 'carcinogenic hazard' category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform. "Before its announcement Tuesday, WHO had assured consumers that no adverse health effects had been established. "A team of 31 scientists from 14 countries, including the United States, made the decision after reviewing peer-reviewed studies on cell phone safety. The team found enough evidence to categorize personal exposure as 'possibly carcinogenic to humans.'" [1] http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/ http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/
Keyframe 10y ago
I'm too much of an idiot here. What frequencies, range, power? How about other ubiquitous signals like Wi-Fi?
- aortega 10y ago
  Wifi exposure using a computer should be hundreds of times lower than a cellphone that is emitting radio at full power next to your head. If you are talking about Wifi in your phone, its' basically the same effect/power as GSM/CDMA.
  - Keyframe 10y ago
    Ah yes, sorry, wifi in phone! Thanks.
tim333 10y ago
From the paper a sample of 90 control rats had no cancer found while the groups (90 in each) of rats exposed to radiation had between 0 and 3 instances of cancer being found. I would have though the odds of it coming out like that by chance would be fairly high. I also note the control rats seemed to have survived less well "At the end of the 2-year study, survival was lower in the control group of males than in all 2 groups of male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RFR" which shows these things are a bit random and would probably not justify saying cell radiation makes you live longer.
- wmeredith 10y ago
  The subtleness if the differences between the groups seems to undermine their hypothesis. How are they saying this is statistically significant?
  - tim333 10y ago
    I'm not sure. Also from an NYT article: >Also it was unusual that the control group had zero tumors. In previous studies at the National Toxicology Program, an average of 2 percent of rats in control groups developed gliomas. Had that happened in this study, there would have been virtually no difference between the exposed rats and the controls.
Confusion 10y ago
One in 20 studies will find that, with 95% certainty, there is a link. You can easily find 19 others that found that, with 95% certainty, there is no link.
- kome 10y ago
  To be fair, a meta-analysis is already done, and it proves there is a link: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/ http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/
  - takluyver 10y ago
    That article does not describe a meta-analysis (or at least it's not clear that it does), and it certainly doesn't 'prove' a link. They classified it as 'possibly carcinogenic' because there is some evidence indicating that it increases the risk of cancer. The evidence is inconsistent, and applying the precautionary principle doesn't 'prove' something.
franky303 10y ago
Well ... 900 MHz. GSM. CDMA. - Sounds like outdated to me. What about what we are using daily e.g. 2.6 GHz LTE and 3G signals.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  What about wifi ? Since I, we, are sitting next to routers all day long, which I guess are sending more EMW energy through us than 3G towers.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    The exposure from towers and base stations will be tiny compared to the exposure from devices. Inverse square law and all that.
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      That was my assumption too but I never tested it.
    - Gnarl 10y ago
      With regard to cell-towers: the inverse-square law will underestimate your radiation exposure from a cell-tower, because they are directional and the inv.sq.law relates only to to perfectly isotropic radiators. In other words: you need to factor the cell-tower antenna gain (typically between 7-10dB) into your calculation.
- Sephr 10y ago
  700-900 MHz is used for LTE as well, and is usually preferred due to its building penetration characteristics.
fyhhvvfddhv 10y ago
If cellphones and WiFi caused cancer you'd think we would see the cancer rates explode over the past 20 years. Have they?
- tfm 10y ago
  Cancer is a very broad church. There have been a lot of lifestyle changes over the last twenty years, very difficult to specify control groups ....
  - bkmartin 10y ago
    You could possibly use the Amish as a control group. They are probably exposed less than almost any other group to these types of radiation due to their distance in proximity. They, of course, do come into contact with it in minor ways when interacting in public, but far far less than the general population.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      That's actually a bad control group; you want some group whose lifestyle, including lifestyle changes, matches pretty well the rest of society but for exposure to the kind of radiating devices at issue, to isolate changes due to the effects of the devices at issue from the effects of other lifestyle changes. Since the Amish lifestyle and lifestyle changes over the time period of interest don't match the general public in ways other than cellphone/wifi exposure, they aren't really a good control.
    - takluyver 10y ago
      The Amish live in a very different environment from the general population in all sorts of ways. So they're not a good control group, because where their health differs from the general population, you don't know if it's because of radiation exposure, diet, electric lighting, chemicals in cars, or any of a thousand other things.
    - nommm-nommm 10y ago
      The Amish are a bad control group because they have a very small gene pool among other reasons.
Frompo 10y ago
So anyone know if the WSJ has accepted climate change and apologised for denying it for decades? Or are they still to be considered unreliable handlers of science findings?
takluyver 10y ago
These are partial results from a larger study: "This report presents partial findings from these studies. The occurrences of two tumor types in male Harlan Sprague Dawley rats exposed to RFR, malignant gliomas in the brain and schwannomas of the heart, were considered of particular interest" So a key question should be: how many variables was the study looking at? If they were testing 40 different things, you'd expect two 'significant' results by chance. The discussion also mentions that pooling other studies in the program, the rate of gliomas in male controls is 11/550, rather than the 0/90 from this study. The incidence in the test group (pooling all dose levels) is 11/540, which is indistinguishable from that larger control group. The numbers for heart schwannomas are a bit more compelling, but that's now just one variable, so the question of how many things the experiment is looking at is crucial.
arrty88 10y ago
ok, now lets check wifi a/b/g/n
colordrops 10y ago
In a similar vein, don't even think of questioning GMOs. You even just hint that you wanna see more studies on their safety you will be torn limb from limb, even if you admit to trusting them and eating them yourself.
- epistasis 10y ago
  That's because there already have been many many studies, and regulations require that each new food GMO be studied as well. If you don't mention all those, I'm guess the "tearing limb from limb" is actually annoyance at your ignorance.
  - Angostura 10y ago
    Absolutely don't mention the tiny, but potential serious problems associated with introducing novel organisms into the environment, either through horizontal gene transfer or escape into the wild. Supporters will spend a lot of time patronisingly explaining that we have been indulging in GM for millennia thanks to selective breeding, while neglecting to mention the degree of novelty and rapidity of introduction that modern techniques allow.
  - colordrops 10y ago
    You and others proved my point. I wasn't even criticizing GMOs myself, only talking about the dialogue about them, and still downvoted immediately and responded to negatively. There is no other tech on this planet with the same rabidly fervent support as GMOs that disallows even discussion about discussion.
    - epistasis 10y ago
      Well I didn't downvote you, but if you refuse to even acknowledge that "torn limb from limb" is just annoyance with your inability to acknowledge the existing information, then perhaps the fault is with you and not others. One might also say that there is no tech with as rabidly fervent detractors as GMO. I don't really care about the technology much, and for some reason you think I'm a fervent supporter! Ridiculous.
bikamonki 10y ago
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174
mikekij 10y ago
Medical Physicist here. The position isn't "non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer". It's "There is no known mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer." Maybe we'll discover a mechanism one day to explain this. But we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently cancer, and produced. We should certainly research this area further. But the probability of this study having failed to control for some other variable is higher than the probability of an as of yet unknown process allowing microwaves to produce changes in the chemical bonds holding together DNA.
- tryitnow 10y ago
  "But the probability of this study having failed to control for some other variable is higher than the probability of an as of yet unknown process allowing microwaves to produce changes in the chemical bonds holding together DNA." I really like this sentence. I wish more science commentators would talk about probability like this.
- donovanr 10y ago
  I've always been curious: I understand that h.nu from cell phone radiation isn't big enough to ionize (say) DNA, but since the molecules in our body are in thermal equilibrium, can't h.nu + kT get it done every once in a while? [edited because using an asterisk to denote multiplication was a bad idea]
  - tiplus 10y ago
    kT is very little energy compared to a chemical bond. Take for example [0], they give an excitation energy for water of about 8 electron Volts which is ~750 kJ/mol, whereas kT at room temp is about 2.5 kJ/mol. [0] http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jcp/128/10/10.1063/1.2837827 http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jcp/128/10/10.1...
    - donovanr 10y ago
      Right, but it's the 'every once in a while" part that I wonder about, i.e. the variance of that distribution. Maybe you could argue that since the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution is narrower the lower its mean, if kT is small then it's an exponentially tiny effect.
rrggrr 10y ago
Sanity check: This was 9 hours per day exposure equivalency for their entire lifetime. Consume or use almost anything at the same cycle over your lifetime and one can expect blow back.
tedsanders 10y ago
A take from one of my favorite medical bloggers: >Where to begin? I didn’t see any sample size calculation, nor any discussion of what they expected to see. One of the reviewers did a power calculation for them (page 37) and found that based on 90 rats per group, the power was about 14%. This means that false positives are very likely. The cancer difference was only seen in females, not males. The incidence of brain cancer in the exposed groups was well within the historical range. There’s no clear dose response. Why schwannomas? Schwannomas in other locations than the heart were not significantly different. These are rats. I don’t know how this compares to real world exposure. And one more thing – the survival of male rats in the control group was relatively low, and if these tumors developed later in life, this could be the whole reason for the difference. >Cell phones are UBIQUITOUS in the United States. If they were causing cancer, we would expect to see rates of [brain] cancer going up, right? That’s not what we’re seeing. They’ve been decreasing since the late 1980’s. At least when we talk about vaccines and autism, the rates of the latter went up as we increased the former. With cell phones, there’s an inverse relationship. What’s going on? I suggest reading the whole post. Personally, I am unconcerned by this single study of rats, in groups of only 90, that found barely significant correlations out of many possible correlations looked for. http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/none-of-you-can-troll-me-like-austin-can-also-cell-phones-and-cancer-again/ http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/none-of-you-can-...
ChartsNGraffs 10y ago
"The tumors were gliomas, which are in the glial cells of the brain, and schwannomas of the heart." I know these are real words, but you gotta admit they sound strikingly fictitious.

203 points by mijustin 10y ago

It's important to note that according to official dogma, non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer. I've heard my own concerns about non-ionising radiation dismissed (even belittled) so many times that I've lost count. Most often this comes from educated people who think that their education constitutes the whole of all knowledge about the universe and that there is nothing left to be discovered. But one should understand that if this dogma was correct, there should be no link found at all. I did a physics degree at uni, and then spent many years working in genomics. And I've never (even before the biology work) assumed the "non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer" to be a true statement. You can only come to that conclusion if you assume that ionisation effects are the only pathways that can cause cancer. After working with biologists for many years I've come to the understanding that biology is extremely complex, we have an extremely limited understanding of it, and there could be any number of as yet undiscovered effects of non-ionising radiation on cellular biology. I would hope that as more of these studies are done (this is not the first and probably wont be the last) that we would hear less of this dogma spouted by supposedly smart people, but I doubt this will happen. It doesn't matter what you do, intelligence and education often go hand in hand with ego and a feeling of infallibility. And the dismissive "non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer" people never miss an opportunity to tell you that doubting this "proven fact" makes you stupid.

andybak 10y ago
Anyone with even a cursory understanding of the scientific method shouldn't be bandying around words like 'proof'. Science is always provisional and new evidence can always overturn a theory. Sadly many areas of debate attract cranks in larger than usual numbers and the health effects of electromagnetic radiation is one of them. So people get rather weary of fighting the same battles again and again and tend to become a little flippant in their replies.
legulere 10y ago
I guess a better way to say it is: Non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer the way UV, x-ray or gamma rays cause cancer. We haven't found any other way radiation can cause cancer yet.
- shirro 10y ago
  That may not be true. UVA is not ionising and possibly increases risk of skin cancer. Non-ionizing radiation can cause chemical reactions (photochemical, heating, burns) that damage cells and might lead to increased cancer risk. I really doubt if that is the case with mobile phones but I think it makes more sense to look at the epidemiological data rather than make a bunch of hand wavey arguments about the radiation. There are a hell of a lot of cell phone users and if there is a risk worth being concerned about I think it should have shown up before now.
  - marvin 10y ago
    Non-ionizing radiation can also cause other adverse health effects. A famous Norwegian case in the early 90s related to navy personnel on board an attack vessel, where 17 of the 85 children of soldiers who had served on the vessel, had birth defects. A disproportionate number of the employees on the electronics workshop of its home base also has children with similar birth defects The negative effects are widely believed to have been caused by a 750W radar jammer, which frequently radiated the ship deck. There hasn't been established a clear cause-and-effect link. https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvikk-saken https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvikk-saken
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      They could have shared exposure to an awful lot of things. Short of some indication that they were turning on the jammer all the time in the workshop I would sort of think chemical exposure would be a more likely explanation.
tzs 10y ago
> And I've never (even before the biology work) assumed the "non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer" to be a true statement. You can only come to that conclusion if you assume that ionisation effects are the only pathways that can cause cancer. ...and it is not justified to make that assumption, because there is reason to believe that there is another possible pathway. DNA is known to be conductive, and it is known that due to the shape of DNA in chromosomes it can act as a fractal antenna and non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation can induce currents in it. It's also know that damage to DNA can change the conductivity of the damaged section. Some major researchers suspect that part of the mechanism cells use to detect and repair DNA damage makes use of this by looking for sections of DNA where the conductivity is not what it should be. If this does turn out to be part of how damage is detected, then it is possible that currents induced by non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation when the DNA acts as a fractal antenna could confuse the repair mechanism causing it to fail to recognize and repair damage that would normally be found and dealt with. Here is a submission from a little over a year ago about the fractal antenna aspect of DNA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9447964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9447964 See my comment in that discussion for some more information on the possibility that this is connected to DNA repair and a link to one of the major research groups that is looking into this stuff (Jacqueline Barton's group at Caltech).
MicroBerto 10y ago
Be careful when dealing with absolutes. No matter how smart you think you may be, you simply don't know what you don't know, as you allude to later in your comment.
- whatisunseen 10y ago
  Very true, but the same can be said for scientists. While paying lip-service to what it doesn't know, the hubris of modern science is its vice. We live in an age of relative technological ignorance. Let's keep a proper perspective. In a few centuries, people will look back at what we know today and laugh. (Infinite examples could be given. Only 100 years ago people said man would never fly, etc. )
Houshalter 10y ago
Perhaps, but how, in 2016, is it not known? Surely scientists have tried raising rats near strong radio waves to see if they die or get cancer?
- DanBC 10y ago
  Rats get cancer. The rats used in this study get tumours. http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/33/11/2768 http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/33/11/2768 > A spontaneous tumor incidence of 45% was noted in 360 Sprague-Dawley rats (179 males and 181 females) and a 26% incidence was seen in 254 Swiss mice (101 males and 153 females) used as untreated control animals in an 18-month series of carcinogenesis experiments. A tiny increase in cancer over a large base rate is going to be tricky to find.
greatnorthz 10y ago
In a round-about-way you are hinting at the 'science is a religion' mentality. If something can't be explained by current scientific knowledge then, the people who think that way, must have the idea shot down and disregarded. It's a binary thought pattern that would probably be less common if history (and philosophy) had a greater value in society.
derptacious 10y ago
The establishment demands that non-ionizing UV can be carcinogenic, but laugh if someone thinks that microwave - at various doses - could be! Why does it take so much evidence to even propose that low doses of the frequency that cook food can have adverse health effects on living humans? The fact that they're not willing to recommend bluetooth or earbuds without a mountain of evidence is another demonstration of closed mindedness. If something in nature has an even infinitesimal chance of being harmful, then you put it closer to your hands and legs - and not your eyes, face, and brain.
- mcbits 10y ago
  Fire cooks food, but waving your hands above a candle for warmth doesn't "cook" your hands. However, if you do damage your skin (especially repeatedly), the tissue damage and repair cycle can increase the risk of cancer. So when it comes to cell phones, do those microwaves merely warm human tissue very slightly, or might it occasionally be concentrated in a way to cause micro-burns? Supposing the body is repeatedly having to heal tiny microwave burns, it wouldn't be surprising at all if cancer risk is increased.
mnsc 10y ago
"official dogma, non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer." I doubt that you can find a scientist doing research on radiations effect on the body that dogmatically has said that "non-ionising radiation _can not_ cause cancer". I will personally call this scientist up and lecture him/her on the merits of doing science scientifically. So if you "doubt" the dogma by saying "non-ionising radiation _can_ cause cancer" every scientist, and me, can go "Fk yeah, thats a working hypothesis, go prove that and bring society forward". But if you would say that "non-ionising radiation _causes_ cancer" you are "stupid" in the way that you don't base that sentence on the current state of science and you are just making things up because you have been "working with biologists for many years" and you are a proud user of Common Sense™.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
  > I will personally call this scientist up and lecture him/her on the merits of doing science scientifically. Feynman did in 1974: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm In light of these things, my working hypothesis is scientists can dogmatically claim things too.
mh-cx 10y ago
I think it would help a lot if they could somehow compile a list of the likelinessnes for getting cancer from a specific sort of radiation. It should also contain the radiation that we are naturally always exposed to. Even if the values were only rough estimates I feel like this would put the real risks more into perspective.
mathgeek 10y ago
> It doesn't matter what you do, intelligence and education often go hand in hand with ego and a feeling of infallibility. This is a bit overly general. Many of us who are highly educated and traditionally intelligent battle with imposter syndrome. We're just the ones who you won't find out there acting like we know everything. The idea that this is often the case it likely more a matter of "the squeaky wheel" than scientific fact.
kisstheblade 10y ago
No, the "dogma" is just that scary cellphone RADIATION! is no more harmful than the radiation from lightbulbs, flashlights, candles etc. And probably a couple of orders of magnitudes less so. But hey, radiation, you know, nucular, scary.
- Karunamon 10y ago
  Snark aside, those lightbulbs, flashlights, and candles are not placed directly against the head and near the reproductive organs (in pockets) for upwards of a thousand hours per year.
snake_plissken 10y ago
Aren't the ultraviolet components of sunlight non-ionizing?
xenadu02 10y ago
I'm not saying you are a quack, but you are crying the rallying cry of quacks everywhere. You also setup a straw man. Any scientist or thoughtful person says "there isn't a known/proven" link between non-ionizing radiation and cancer and so far most evidence seems negative. Of course there is a lot we don't know. That doesn't mean we are incapable of making any statements about anything at all. If cell phones caused a significant risk in the rise of cancer (say 1-10%) we'd have easily seen that by now. We haven't. This study didn't see it either... In fact the rats exposed to radiation lived longer than the ones not exposed! So what we can confidently say is that if cell phone radiation causes cancer, it is an extremely minor contributor. In all likelihood it's contribution is zero, but that is also unproven and should be further studied.
pithic 10y ago
> Most often this comes from educated people who think that their education constitutes the whole of all knowledge about the universe and that there is nothing left to be discovered. Such biologists may even believe they know how cells divide, because they've observed stages of cell division and given them fancy Latin names.

yc-kraln 10y ago

Study proves cell phone radiation makes you live longer! What about the huge, decades long study run by various governments with hundreds of thousands of people showing no association?

LoSboccacc 10y ago
yeah. one would say that even before study, this http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/brain_other_cns_incidence.jpg http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/brain_othe... and this http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/leukemia_incidence.jpg http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/leukemia_i... would show at least some acceleration the only thing that really moved the average: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/all_sites_combined_incidence.jpg http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/all_sites_... was this, I think related to HIV: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/kaposi_sarcoma_incidence.jpg http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/kaposi_sar...

kome 10y ago

Cellphones or Wi-Fi today are like cigarettes in the '50s. A huge lobby pretend they are just fine, people are in denial because they love them and we lack of longitudinal data about their effects on health. But thanks to further research, and time, we are starting to understand better the effects of cellphone radiation on health. The World Health Organization already had a rapport in 2011 about cellphones possible dangers: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/ http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/ Meanwhile, people should learn to use cellphones in a healthy way, and not living 24/24h with them (during sleep, for example). And at home would be better using cables instead of Wi-Fi...

1337biz 10y ago
> Cellphones or wi-fi today are like cigarettes in the '40s. That is exactly the same question I am always asking. But with most controversial topics this could be true.
- Johnythree 10y ago
  When the statistical evidence for Cigarette usage was closely examined it was immediately obvious that there was a link with health. But we have hundreds of detailed studies of Radio and Health, and no reproducible link has ever been found. You can't have it both ways. To conflate the two is simply wrong. The evidence doesn't support your argument.
  - andy_ppp 10y ago
    Agreed, exercise, smoking and alcohol are likely to be hundreds of times more effective at stopping cancer than giving up your mobile phone, wifi and bluetooth devices.
  - dalu 10y ago
    > But we have hundreds of detailed studies of Radio and Health, and no reproducible link has ever been found. What about http://www.bioinitiative.org/ http://www.bioinitiative.org/
10y ago

oskansavli 10y ago

Similar article but no subscription required: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/federal-study-links-cell-phone-radiation-cancer http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/federal-study...

mijustin 10y ago

I'm especially interested in hearing how this study is different than this one in 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3141594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3141594

Vanit 10y ago

Eck, worth mentioning that science is done by consensus. Individual studies might be interesting, but it means nothing until it's shown in the context of an aggregated review.

makach 10y ago
So this is the one report people will refer to when they will justify their views on mobile use

Zelmor 10y ago

Paywall

GigabyteCoin 10y ago
Click the "web" link below the title.
- Zelmor 10y ago
  Mind: blown. Thanks chap.
- __david__ 10y ago
  I feel like I'm missing something. Here's what I see: http://i.imgur.com/GAGo2y5.jpg http://i.imgur.com/GAGo2y5.jpg What should I click on?
  - adrianN 10y ago
    Look at the top of the HN page. Under the article's title that links to its website, there is a "web" link.
- NTripleOne 10y ago
  Jesus Christ this might be the most cancerous practice I've seen in a long time.
TelAviv_1 10y ago
Yes, we all know. HN doesn't object to people posting links to premium content. Why don't you try reddit?

djmdjm 10y ago

Does anyone have a link to the actual paper? As usual, it's impossible to get any useful information from a sensational mainstream science article. The article states that they studied rats and mice at 9 hrs/day exposure (at what RF power?) but aren't reporting results for mice at this stage. Of the rats (how many?), they found the "cancer association appeared in male rats" but no effect size or confidence interval is reported. No mention of dose sensitivity is mentioned. So they report some cancer association (how much? we don't know. how confident? we don't know) in a small subset of their study population (excluding female rats and all mice) at some unknown RF power and at an exposure time considerably larger than what most humans would receive. I'm sure the science behind the study is much more rigorous than this, but wow - the reporting sucks.

mcpherrinm 10y ago
The paper is linked at the beginning of the article. Abstract: http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699 http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699 Direct PDF link: http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...
- LionessLover 10y ago
  The problem with linking to websites like this is that one has to be logged int o see anything but the first line of the article...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - timpattinson 10y ago
    not this time - this is an open access preprint server like arXiv for physics and math
    - niels_olson 10y ago
      He meant the WSJ article

voltagex_ 10y ago

Sigh, this isn't going to help the (mentally ill?) people who believe cellphones / wifi are making them sick. I wish this study wasn't paywalled, it needs some careful reading to determine actual risk. And then, if phones are causing cancer? Do you think everyone will stop using them? Do you think Apple will go bankrupt?

BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> I wish this study wasn't paywalled, it needs some careful reading to determine actual risk. It's not paywalled. It's linked in the article as well as in other articles. Take a look here: http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f... > And then, if phones are causing cancer? Do you think everyone will stop using them? Do you think Apple will go bankrupt? Everything comes with a risk. If phones really do cause cancer we need to figure out the possibility and weigh it. It's likely very small if it exists whereas every person in the United States, over an average life time, has an almost 2% chance of dying in a car (which is insanely high when you think about it) and yet we're still using cars, non-stop.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Thanks.

homero 10y ago

I don't think this applies anymore due to no one using phones as phones anymore and when they do it's hands free. No more antenna to head. Also modern phones transmit at the bottom of the device. Lastly radio power is much lower now due to much smaller cells.

mr_sturd 10y ago

This paper was linked, on a MotherJones article, found via the "web" link. http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...

hayitsbacon 10y ago

"I suspect that this experiment is substantially underpowered and that the few positive results found reflect false positive findings." - Dr. Michael S Lauer, Director of Cardiovascular Sciences at NHLBI. Peer Review in Appendix G starting on page 36 of the study. http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...

cozzyd 10y ago
Indeed, I did not find their response to this reviewer to address the statistics criticisms satisfactory. Also, although they try to adjust for this, I'm not sure if their rate correction fully corrects for longevity.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

At the moment the wsj article doesn't correctly link to the abstract so I put it in my post [1] (which also includes the full PDF link to the study [2]). Considering there are an absolute ton of studies showing there isn't a link this is highly interesting. I'm not a telecom engineer so I don't entirely understand the methodology but part of their pilot study was to test various field strengths that do not raise the mouse or rat's body temperature (does this mean they are not using the same field strength as our towers?). They were also put into custom reverberation chambers; wouldn't that amplify or at least repeat the signal? Or is that not an issue and if so, why? Also this section has me confused (maybe I'm reading it incorrectly?): "At the end of the 2-year study, survival was lower in the control group of males than in all groups of male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RFR. Survival was also slightly lower in control females than in females exposed to 1.5 or 6 W/kg GSM-modulated RFR. In rats exposed to CDMA-modulated RFR, survival was higher in all groups of exposed males and in the 6 W/kg females compared to controls." This makes it sound like the ones exposed to RF lived longer than those in the control. Am I reading that right? [1] http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699 http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699 [2] http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...

elchief 10y ago

Does this same paper come out every five years, or is it just me?

lucaspiller 10y ago

Ok this is the first study that says there is a link, but let's assume for a moment that what it says is correct and it has the same effect in humans: Would the same also be true for wifi? According to Wikipedia the average cell phone TX power is 500 mW vs 200 mW for 802.11n [0]. Cell phones usually operate at lower frequency than wifi, however wifi (at 2.4Ghz) is at the same frequency as microwave ovens. In the study the rats were exposed for 10 minutes on - 10 minutes off for 18 hours a day (at an unknown TX power), if you work in an office you are going to be exposed continuously (apart from coffee / lunch) for 9+ hours a day, and even more if you then go home and use a wifi device. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm

quickben 10y ago
There are many factors. I had a friend studying the induced magnetic field and it's effects on tissues (vs frequency etc) long time ago. The conclusion was that there are overall cancer related and other brain related problems. It was her postdoc, and she also had access to the city subway lines for more tests. So from the people I've known doing research and other anegdotal evidence, there is a link. It still perplexes me how most of the studies in the end conclude there is overall no human-related high risk. So maybe cellphones+ other generators are like peanut allergies, to some are fine, to others they are fatal. It's too complex of a subject anyways. ... Edited for minor misspell
miles 10y ago
> this is the first study that says there is a link From 2011: WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk [1] "Radiation from cell phones can possibly cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization. The agency now lists mobile phone use in the same 'carcinogenic hazard' category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform. "Before its announcement Tuesday, WHO had assured consumers that no adverse health effects had been established. "A team of 31 scientists from 14 countries, including the United States, made the decision after reviewing peer-reviewed studies on cell phone safety. The team found enough evidence to categorize personal exposure as 'possibly carcinogenic to humans.'" [1] http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/ http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/

Keyframe 10y ago

I'm too much of an idiot here. What frequencies, range, power? How about other ubiquitous signals like Wi-Fi?

aortega 10y ago
Wifi exposure using a computer should be hundreds of times lower than a cellphone that is emitting radio at full power next to your head. If you are talking about Wifi in your phone, its' basically the same effect/power as GSM/CDMA.
- Keyframe 10y ago
  Ah yes, sorry, wifi in phone! Thanks.

tim333 10y ago

From the paper a sample of 90 control rats had no cancer found while the groups (90 in each) of rats exposed to radiation had between 0 and 3 instances of cancer being found. I would have though the odds of it coming out like that by chance would be fairly high. I also note the control rats seemed to have survived less well "At the end of the 2-year study, survival was lower in the control group of males than in all 2 groups of male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RFR" which shows these things are a bit random and would probably not justify saying cell radiation makes you live longer.

wmeredith 10y ago
The subtleness if the differences between the groups seems to undermine their hypothesis. How are they saying this is statistically significant?
- tim333 10y ago
  I'm not sure. Also from an NYT article: >Also it was unusual that the control group had zero tumors. In previous studies at the National Toxicology Program, an average of 2 percent of rats in control groups developed gliomas. Had that happened in this study, there would have been virtually no difference between the exposed rats and the controls.

Confusion 10y ago

One in 20 studies will find that, with 95% certainty, there is a link. You can easily find 19 others that found that, with 95% certainty, there is no link.

kome 10y ago
To be fair, a meta-analysis is already done, and it proves there is a link: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/ http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/
- takluyver 10y ago
  That article does not describe a meta-analysis (or at least it's not clear that it does), and it certainly doesn't 'prove' a link. They classified it as 'possibly carcinogenic' because there is some evidence indicating that it increases the risk of cancer. The evidence is inconsistent, and applying the precautionary principle doesn't 'prove' something.

franky303 10y ago

Well ... 900 MHz. GSM. CDMA. - Sounds like outdated to me. What about what we are using daily e.g. 2.6 GHz LTE and 3G signals.

agumonkey 10y ago
What about wifi ? Since I, we, are sitting next to routers all day long, which I guess are sending more EMW energy through us than 3G towers.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  The exposure from towers and base stations will be tiny compared to the exposure from devices. Inverse square law and all that.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    That was my assumption too but I never tested it.
  - Gnarl 10y ago
    With regard to cell-towers: the inverse-square law will underestimate your radiation exposure from a cell-tower, because they are directional and the inv.sq.law relates only to to perfectly isotropic radiators. In other words: you need to factor the cell-tower antenna gain (typically between 7-10dB) into your calculation.
Sephr 10y ago
700-900 MHz is used for LTE as well, and is usually preferred due to its building penetration characteristics.

fyhhvvfddhv 10y ago

If cellphones and WiFi caused cancer you'd think we would see the cancer rates explode over the past 20 years. Have they?

tfm 10y ago
Cancer is a very broad church. There have been a lot of lifestyle changes over the last twenty years, very difficult to specify control groups ....
- bkmartin 10y ago
  You could possibly use the Amish as a control group. They are probably exposed less than almost any other group to these types of radiation due to their distance in proximity. They, of course, do come into contact with it in minor ways when interacting in public, but far far less than the general population.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    That's actually a bad control group; you want some group whose lifestyle, including lifestyle changes, matches pretty well the rest of society but for exposure to the kind of radiating devices at issue, to isolate changes due to the effects of the devices at issue from the effects of other lifestyle changes. Since the Amish lifestyle and lifestyle changes over the time period of interest don't match the general public in ways other than cellphone/wifi exposure, they aren't really a good control.
  - takluyver 10y ago
    The Amish live in a very different environment from the general population in all sorts of ways. So they're not a good control group, because where their health differs from the general population, you don't know if it's because of radiation exposure, diet, electric lighting, chemicals in cars, or any of a thousand other things.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    The Amish are a bad control group because they have a very small gene pool among other reasons.

Frompo 10y ago

So anyone know if the WSJ has accepted climate change and apologised for denying it for decades? Or are they still to be considered unreliable handlers of science findings?

takluyver 10y ago

These are partial results from a larger study: "This report presents partial findings from these studies. The occurrences of two tumor types in male Harlan Sprague Dawley rats exposed to RFR, malignant gliomas in the brain and schwannomas of the heart, were considered of particular interest" So a key question should be: how many variables was the study looking at? If they were testing 40 different things, you'd expect two 'significant' results by chance. The discussion also mentions that pooling other studies in the program, the rate of gliomas in male controls is 11/550, rather than the 0/90 from this study. The incidence in the test group (pooling all dose levels) is 11/540, which is indistinguishable from that larger control group. The numbers for heart schwannomas are a bit more compelling, but that's now just one variable, so the question of how many things the experiment is looking at is crucial.

arrty88 10y ago

ok, now lets check wifi a/b/g/n

colordrops 10y ago

In a similar vein, don't even think of questioning GMOs. You even just hint that you wanna see more studies on their safety you will be torn limb from limb, even if you admit to trusting them and eating them yourself.

epistasis 10y ago
That's because there already have been many many studies, and regulations require that each new food GMO be studied as well. If you don't mention all those, I'm guess the "tearing limb from limb" is actually annoyance at your ignorance.
- Angostura 10y ago
  Absolutely don't mention the tiny, but potential serious problems associated with introducing novel organisms into the environment, either through horizontal gene transfer or escape into the wild. Supporters will spend a lot of time patronisingly explaining that we have been indulging in GM for millennia thanks to selective breeding, while neglecting to mention the degree of novelty and rapidity of introduction that modern techniques allow.
- colordrops 10y ago
  You and others proved my point. I wasn't even criticizing GMOs myself, only talking about the dialogue about them, and still downvoted immediately and responded to negatively. There is no other tech on this planet with the same rabidly fervent support as GMOs that disallows even discussion about discussion.
  - epistasis 10y ago
    Well I didn't downvote you, but if you refuse to even acknowledge that "torn limb from limb" is just annoyance with your inability to acknowledge the existing information, then perhaps the fault is with you and not others. One might also say that there is no tech with as rabidly fervent detractors as GMO. I don't really care about the technology much, and for some reason you think I'm a fervent supporter! Ridiculous.

bikamonki 10y ago

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174

mikekij 10y ago

Medical Physicist here. The position isn't "non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer". It's "There is no known mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer." Maybe we'll discover a mechanism one day to explain this. But we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently cancer, and produced. We should certainly research this area further. But the probability of this study having failed to control for some other variable is higher than the probability of an as of yet unknown process allowing microwaves to produce changes in the chemical bonds holding together DNA.

tryitnow 10y ago
"But the probability of this study having failed to control for some other variable is higher than the probability of an as of yet unknown process allowing microwaves to produce changes in the chemical bonds holding together DNA." I really like this sentence. I wish more science commentators would talk about probability like this.
donovanr 10y ago
I've always been curious: I understand that h.nu from cell phone radiation isn't big enough to ionize (say) DNA, but since the molecules in our body are in thermal equilibrium, can't h.nu + kT get it done every once in a while? [edited because using an asterisk to denote multiplication was a bad idea]
- tiplus 10y ago
  kT is very little energy compared to a chemical bond. Take for example [0], they give an excitation energy for water of about 8 electron Volts which is ~750 kJ/mol, whereas kT at room temp is about 2.5 kJ/mol. [0] http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jcp/128/10/10.1063/1.2837827 http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jcp/128/10/10.1...
  - donovanr 10y ago
    Right, but it's the 'every once in a while" part that I wonder about, i.e. the variance of that distribution. Maybe you could argue that since the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution is narrower the lower its mean, if kT is small then it's an exponentially tiny effect.

rrggrr 10y ago

Sanity check: This was 9 hours per day exposure equivalency for their entire lifetime. Consume or use almost anything at the same cycle over your lifetime and one can expect blow back.

tedsanders 10y ago

A take from one of my favorite medical bloggers: >Where to begin? I didn’t see any sample size calculation, nor any discussion of what they expected to see. One of the reviewers did a power calculation for them (page 37) and found that based on 90 rats per group, the power was about 14%. This means that false positives are very likely. The cancer difference was only seen in females, not males. The incidence of brain cancer in the exposed groups was well within the historical range. There’s no clear dose response. Why schwannomas? Schwannomas in other locations than the heart were not significantly different. These are rats. I don’t know how this compares to real world exposure. And one more thing – the survival of male rats in the control group was relatively low, and if these tumors developed later in life, this could be the whole reason for the difference. >Cell phones are UBIQUITOUS in the United States. If they were causing cancer, we would expect to see rates of [brain] cancer going up, right? That’s not what we’re seeing. They’ve been decreasing since the late 1980’s. At least when we talk about vaccines and autism, the rates of the latter went up as we increased the former. With cell phones, there’s an inverse relationship. What’s going on? I suggest reading the whole post. Personally, I am unconcerned by this single study of rats, in groups of only 90, that found barely significant correlations out of many possible correlations looked for. http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/none-of-you-can-troll-me-like-austin-can-also-cell-phones-and-cancer-again/ http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/none-of-you-can-...

ChartsNGraffs 10y ago

"The tumors were gliomas, which are in the glial cells of the brain, and schwannomas of the heart." I know these are real words, but you gotta admit they sound strikingly fictitious.