8 ms·
Don’t keep cell phones next to your body, California Health Department warns
- LeoPanthera 9y ago> The CDHP recommends not keeping your phone in your pocket Good luck with that!
- Toast_25 9y agoA faraday bag might be a decent solution, they're expensive to buy, but cheap to DIY.
- meitham 9y agoKeep your phone in a Faraday's pocket/bag? How do you receive calls then?
- floren 9y agoYou don't, that's the beauty of it. But you can make a call when you need it.
- meitham 9y agoWhy can't we replace airplane mode with farady mode?
- floren 9y agoActually that's a good point, you don't really need a Faraday bag because airplane mode should have the same effect. I say should, because I keep hearing about how phones don't really turn the radios off when you put them in airplane mode. But at least you don't get phone calls in airplane mode.
- adrianratnapala 9y agoI think you are talking about my Mother's handbag.
- jackhack 9y agoThen just turn if off when not talking and as an added bonus the battery will last for weeks.
- azangru 9y agoYou don't. That's an additional bonus :-)
- ch4s3 9y agoSkin side only lined pocket? ;)
- manmal 9y agoLevi's tried to launch such a jeans back in 2002, but apparently got sued out of it.
- shortoncash 9y agoPerhaps we should consider it an enhanced form of the ios11 driving mode.
- LeoPanthera 9y agoIf you are willing to be disconnected, you don't need a magic bag, just turn your phone off!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- metaphor 9y ago...except CDPH advised against those as well[1]: > Don’t rely on a “radiation shield” or other products claiming to block RF energy, electromagnetic fields, or radiation from cell phones. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, products that interfere with the phone’s signal may force it to work harder and emit more RF energy in order to stay connected, possibly increasing your exposure. [1] https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DEODC/EHIB/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Cell-Phone-Guidance.pdf https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DEODC/EHIB/CDPH%20Do...
- joecasson 9y agoSeriously. What am I supposed to wear - a man purse?! But in all seriousness, I don't see this recommendation even coming close to being considered until there are proven side effects.
- ezequiel-garzon 9y agoI for one generally carry it in my backpack, in the outer pocket. That’s a bit more distance than my own pockets...
- sliverstorm 9y agoYou can at least pick & choose what pocket. Front pocket & breast pocket, for example, might be close to sensitive things you care about.
- Toast_25 9y agoWell this is vague... "Keep cellphones away form body, but we won't tell you how far away or what the consequences might be"
- greglindahl 9y agoThat's because there are none, other than a little heating. It's not ionizing radiation, so it can't give you cancer. See Einstein's Nobel-prize winning paper from 1905.
- dekhn 9y agoHi, I'm a scientist. I have a PhD in Biophysics, and I've studied a lot of biology and radiation. The statement that non-ionizing radiation can't give you cancer is effectively false. It is based on applying the mechanisms by which ionizing radiation causes cancer. While non-ionizing radiation does not cause double strand breaks and other mutations that can lead to cancer, you cannot use that assertion to claim that non-ionizing radiation does not cause cancer. It could certainly cause cancer by other means- for example, through induction of heat shock proteins as a response to cellular heating. To my knowledge, nobody has demonstrated this convincingly, although, given the fact that heat shock protein activation can lead to cancer (or cause existing pre-tumors to start growing faster), you can see that we immediately have plausible mechanisms to study, if there is indication that cancer is occurring. Another way of putting this: if people found strong epidemiological evidence that cell phones caused brain cancer in humans (they haven't, yet), the nature of that mechanism would be subjected to intense scrutiny. Everything I've stated above is completely mainstream science; nothing I said is controversial. Your mention of the Einstein paper is really a canard- it bears no direct relationship to the biology of the situation.
- greglindahl 9y agoHi, I'm a physicist. Our community doesn't agree with your community on this issue. Oh, and you did notice that I mentioned heating, I hope. As you know, the standard for cellphone radiation is already calibrated to prevent significant heating.
- mrigor 9y agoJoel Moskowitz is a psychology professor. NIH has a whole page dedicated to this https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r...
- linkmotif 9y agoReally don’t understand how or why people trust the government. It’s one thing not to buy into FUD. It’s another thing to say the government having a page on the Internet is some conclusive thing.
- stephengillie 9y agoThe government is made from people, just like businesses are. Who do you trust, Verisign? And who makes money from our worrying about cell phone cancer?
- linkmotif 9y agoThe government is paid to say things by lobbyists and currently denies global warming. A year ago global warming was a national security threat. I don’t trust Verisign. But I rely on companies that have their profits at stake when they conduct business. Which is not the case for government, which gets its revenue by coercion and spends it haphazardly, spasmodically with abandon. Trusting entities that aren’t your closest relatives and friends is naive and careless. > And who makes money from our worrying about cell phone cancer? Every news outlet that got clicks on the subject. The Worry Industry, broadly. Why do you think people took the time to report on it? Altruism? Boredom? You think techcrunch.com is a hobby? Every day these people go to work and identify click bait so they can keep their jobs. Many people make money from this.
- ashark 9y agoWhat about wifi-only mode? Is Bluetooth fine? Those'd also affect tablets, laptops, and maybe eink readers, among other things. Gaming handhelds. Been kicking around going wifi-only anyway, with a crappy burner on a prepaid plan in the car for emergencies.
- ct0 9y agothey're all microwaves
- LeoPanthera 9y agoAt power levels that differ by orders of magnitude.
- ASalazarMX 9y agoAlso, don't keep smartwatches next to your body!
- manmal 9y agoYeah I'm wondering about that one. I guess the Apple watch with LTE has a lower power chip than usual such that it is ok to wear.
- mtgx 9y ago5G will likely be way up there, above all the others. They seem to be focusing on performance over anything else. https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/news/2017/08/17/concerns-rise-over-potential-adverse-health-effects-of-5g-technology/ https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/news/2017/08/17/concerns-... http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cellphone-5g-health-20160808-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cellphone-5g-health-20... https://www.electricsense.com/12399/5g-radiation-dangers/ https://www.electricsense.com/12399/5g-radiation-dangers/
- manmal 9y agoI sure hope BT is fine since many put headsets (Airpods?) right next to their brain.
- ASalazarMX 9y ago“The cellphone manufacturers want you to keep a minimum distance away from your body and you should find out what that distance is,” Couldn't be more vague, what a useless recommendation.
- theandrewbailey 9y ago> ...you should find out what that distance is And just how are we supposed to do that? Do double blind testing with ourselves in every group? Wait until we have a tumor?
- icantdrive55 9y agoI just bought a $99 phone. Forget the name right now, but it came with a little book. The book was 39 pages of legalese on cell phone radiation. Kinda suprised me. It said hold the back of the phone at least a 1 cm away from the body--that's a FCC requirement. Yes, the lawyers are probally being proactive, but in my county, a local doctor who had a running column reluctantly said he just had three young patients with temporal tumors. The patients were all heavy cell phone users. He told his readers, the science says it's safe, but-----. I could tell he was a man of science, but felt a need to pass antidotal info along.
- mcknz 9y agoSelfie stick.
- georgewsinger 9y agoWhat about bluetooth headphones?
- garganzol 9y agoBluetooth radiation is considerably less powerful than cell network or WiFi signals. Most headphones belong to Bluetooth Class 2 which limits the maximum output power to 2,5 mW (4 dBm). 2.5 mW is pretty safe even in a close contact with the body. Saying that, I would still recommend to minimize the exposure. The less 2-10 GHz radiation you get, the better your health is.
- GeorgeTirebiter 9y agoLook at the graph in http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/hbkrf.pdf http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/hbkrf... You can see that the worst frequency range is 30 to 300 MHz meaning that range has the lowest acceptable power levels that are considered safe. The entire short article is quite good.
- Johnythree 9y agoBut the article explains that is only for Thermal effects, and that there is no correlation with cancer risk. And that any power level below 7 Watt (eg any mobile phone) is completely exempt.
- sporkologist 9y agoI was hoping this article published new findings from a medical study, or at least some evidence. Nope. I think their lawyers are just freaking out preemptively just in case anyone finds an effect and a cause.
- dugluak 9y agowhat about apple watch? people wear that on the wrist all day long.
- leeoniya 9y agoreminds me of http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/28/cancer-warning-labels-on-products-a-cause-for-concern/comment-page-1/ http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/28/cancer-warning-labe... i purchased an OBDII reader and it had a "this cable contains PVC and may cause cancer" warning label on it. i thought wtf? after some research the cause was clear: California.
- reallifestuff 9y agoCell phone holsters to make a comeback. Now I'll know who to avoid hiring for being too dumb to function.
- colordrops 9y agoSo does non-ionizing radiation cause health issues or not? I get called a conspiracy nut for worrying about ELF radiation even though there are studies showing some correlation with health issues.
- mullen 9y agoNon-ionizing radiation does not cause health issues. The definition of non-ionizing radiation is: Non-ionizing (or non-ionising) radiation refers to any type of electromagnetic radiation that does not carry enough energy per quantum (photon energy) to ionize atoms or molecules—that is, to completely remove an electron from an atom or molecule.[1] Instead of producing charged ions when passing through matter, the electromagnetic radiation has sufficient energy only for excitation, the movement of an electron to a higher energy state.
- manmal 9y agoHow can you be so sure if e.g. everything we eat both prevents and causes cancer [1]? Do we have proof that exciting electrons won't do anything on a higher level like enzyme production, or one of the many metabolic pathways? 1: https://www.sciencealert.com/everything-we-eat-both-causes-and-prevents-cancer https://www.sciencealert.com/everything-we-eat-both-causes-a...
- colordrops 9y agoSo how do you explain UV rays causing skin cancer?
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoWell, I guess humans are going extinct then.
- ilaksh 9y agoHas anyone here looked at these studies? In what way are cell phones supposed to be dangerous? Do the studies say that they raised mice with smart phones in their cage and they got cancer or something?
- MikeTV 9y agoThis one suggests so: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055... Released as a partial report last year; a quick search didn't find if it had been completed yet or not.
- valuearb 9y agoThere are a lot of bad studies with meaningless conclusions.
- ahh 9y agoIf you discovered a mechanism by which it was possible for a cell phone to cause cancer, you'd win a Nobel Prize in physics. Not "you discovered that they did, in fact, cause cancer"; just discovering a way that it is physically possible for them to do so. This dates back to Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect: it's easy to show (and the only thing consistent with all of 20th century physics!) that light can only cause molecular damage if individual photons carry enough energy, which in turn only happens if the radiation is of sufficiently high frequency (like UV light, X-Rays, or gamma radiation.) Any radio signal from a cell phone isn't. End of discussion. Unless you are being actually cooked by a microwave, your cell phone does not and cannot cause cancer. "Radiation" is a scary word for non experts, but the California Health Department should know better.
- saurik 9y agoI was under the impression that low frequency waves (all the studies being on frequencies lower than those used by cell phones, so I still haven't been concerned, but maybe I should be) showed that they could vibrate DNA and chance how it is folded, adjusting its epigenetic profile. Why do you assume that the only way to cause cancer is "molecular damage"?
- tiplus 9y agoBiomolecules are remarkably fast (picosecond timescales) at dissipating excess heat into the solvent, like heat from an excited vibrational mode. In order to cause serious damage through unfolding, I think, you would need much higher intensities than a few milliwatts from a cellphone. Serious local heating requires visible, UV light and above. Sunlight, however, does massive damage to all parts of your skin, including base pair changes in your DNA beyond epigenetics but your body has repair mechanisms, which recover changes and/or destroy damaged cells. Proof of cellphone induced damage would be remarkable.
- whatyoucantsay 9y ago> light can only cause molecular damage if individual photons carry enough energy, which in turn only happens if the radiation is of sufficiently high frequency (like UV light, X-Rays, or gamma radiation.) Then we can presume you wouldn't mind being microwaved? Or simply heated to 6000 Kelvin? Both would be low frequency options.
- Cyberdog 9y agoOkay, so we've had maybe a good ten or fifteen years or so of a significant portion of the American population carrying cell phones very close to their bodies for several hours a day. If this were a significant cause of cancer, wouldn't we have more concrete evidence of it by this point? If not now, then when?
- tnzn 9y agoWithout a controlled environment, it's unlikely. Life has changed in many other ways in the past 20 years
- nashashmi 9y agoAny tinfoil hat expert can claim the recent trends of increase in (fill in illness here) is a direct result of cell phone use. The problem is no direct correlation can be found that proves this because we live in a world of so many rapid changes and the effects get lost by a host of other factors. So is there proof of damage? Sure. Can we isolate it to be from cell phone use? No. Can we be sure that it is not? No.
- styfle 9y agoWhat about if I don't have a cell phone but I'm standing between a cell tower and someone talking on their phone?
- manmal 9y agoRadiation intensity declines so quickly with distance to the source that it's a no-brainer if you are 1-2m from a normally functioning phone.
- greglindahl 9y agoIf you stand anywhere in the universe, you will be bathed in non-ionizing radiation at a large variety of frequencies.
- yincrash 9y agoWill they also recommend to opt out of millimeter wave scanners? If we're going to talk about risks of one type of nonionizing radiation, why not that one too?
- lend000 9y agoThis one seems far more relevant, being higher frequency than cell phones. Not a big fan of government-imposed radiation.
- TylerH 9y agoCalifornia also requires bottles of water to say that they cause cancer, so... yawn.
- Nadya 9y agoPractically everything has a Prop 65 warning to the point where it's meaningless and everyone I know ignores it. [0] https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/general-info/proposition-65-plain-language https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/general-info/proposition...
- beloch 9y agoWhen people try to convince me my cellphone is giving me cancer, I ask them to prove to me that using a cellphone for fifteen minutes is worse than going outside in the sun for fifteen minutes (sunlight is objectively more likely to give you cancer). Cellphones communicate via microwaves, which is just electromagnetic radiation (EMR) of a lower-energy (per photon) wavelength than visible light. Yes, the UV component of sunlight can give you cancer because it's just barely high enough energy to be ionizing. Visible light won't do that, and microwaves are safer still. Oh, thermal burns can cause cancer too you say, and we use microwave ovens to cook things! Yes. My phone has never cooked me though. A 3.7V, 3700mAh cell phone battery contains about 10 Wh of energy. A typical microwave oven uses around 1000W, so it would drain a cell-phone battery completely in around 36 seconds. Try putting a kilogram of something that's mostly water in a microwave oven for just 36 seconds. It's barely going to warm up. I wouldn't be worried about my cellphone cooking me even if it lasted just 36 seconds on a charge, but mine lasts for many hours. Can I prove that your phone isn't giving you cancer? No. That's not how science works. I can't prove the theories of gravity or relativity either. When I admit this, some people pounce on that as if this lack of proof is something that must be acted upon. Well, I can't prove a meteor won't crash through your roof and kill you tonight, or that a mega-eruption won't end civilization tomorrow, or that a parasite from some half-cooked beef you ate last week won't spontaneously mutate into a chest-burster like in "Alien". What are you going to do about those smart guy?
- Clanan 9y agoIs this the same department that requires the carcinogen label on every product under the sun? I'm probably being pithy, but that alone pushes me to ignore their recommendations. Never mind the dodgy physics...
- fsohrabiii 9y agohttps://www.sitesazan.net/ https://www.sitesazan.net/