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Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double
- bhouston 9y agoIt is curious. I wonder why non-ionizing radiation causes cancer? Given we are constantly bathing in wifi signals and cellphone signals, I wonder what the effects will be?
- pasabagi 9y agoI think there were some proposed mechanisms - involving interference between EM radiation and some cell membranes, for example. I expect we'll get a clearer picture in the coming years.
- gsich 9y agoWlan has much lower transmission power then cellular.
- iknowstuff 9y agoBoth are non-ionizing though.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gnode 9y agoCurrent scientific consensus is that it's unlikely that it does, however it's not completely ruled out. Risk of cancer from microwave radiation is considered to be thermal in nature. Unlike the background signals we are surrounded by, when making a phone call, you hold the phone to your head, meaning roughly half of the transmission energy is directed towards it. Furthermore, your brain is mostly water which absorbs microwaves well. That said, the heat generated by the absorption results in a very minimal increase in temperature, which is carried away by blood flow. Nerves are particularly sensitive to microwave burns, but this it observed at higher intensities.
- geomark 9y agoThe strength of those signals is very, very low. WiFi around -60dBm or lower most of the time and the cellular signal where I go is usually well below -80dBm. For comparison, the power received from Earth's nearest star Alpha Centauri A is on the order of -50dBm. If I'm concerned about WiFi and cellular signals I should be positively freaked out about natural sources of em radiation. But having a couple watt transmitter pressed against the side of your head might be something to think about. Still, it is non-ionizing radiation and aside from the possibility of localized heating, which you would likely notice (I think?), what's going to cause cancer? Some previously unknown (to me) phenomenon?
- jobigoud 9y agoEarth's nearest star is the Sun :-) Which incidentally also emits ionizing photons in the UV zone.
- geomark 9y agoOk smarty. But you can choose to go outside only at night when the Sun isn't in the sky. But the sky is filled with other stars day and night. So you can never go outside if you are afraid of em radiation as weak as that emitted by WiFi hotspots or cellular phone towers.
- dnautics 9y agoDNA is a conductor, and it's possible that inducing current on the wire will jam electrical signals used by certain DNA correcting proteins (like the BER system) to hone in on mutations. The frequencies that cellphones operate on are known to induce currents on DNA.
- FooBarWidget 9y agoA recent study[1] found that blue light from smartphones are linked to some cancers. The cancers are not caused directly by blue light, but are caused by the fact that melatonine is surpressed by certain light temperatures, and disrupting melatonine and thus the circadian rythm can increase cancer risk. I'm guessing that the mechanism found in this HN submission's story also uses some non-obvious, indirect mechanism. Biology is messy and complex. [1] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/04/27/235230/blue-light-like-that-from-smartphones-linked-to-some-cancers-study-finds https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/04/27/235230/blue-lig...
- jdhn 9y agoPerhaps the ending scene of Thank You For Smoking will start to become a reality instead of fiction.
- Asgardr 9y agoWhat's the connection between the rise of malignant brain tumours and mobile phones? It seems like a bit of a jump to conclude that they're connected.
- jimhefferon 9y ago> a bit of a jump Many people have thought that consistently putting an intentional radiator less than an inch from your brain is a bad idea. That is not to say that it causes disease, only that it has occurred to many people that this is a hypothesis worth testing.
- w0utert 9y agoNeither the article nor the research seem to even suggest there is a connection, so the headline is pure clickbait IMO.
- mhb 9y agoMaybe the paper addresses this, but don't most people hold the phone predominantly on one side or the other? Wouldn't the locations of the tumors be more on that side of the brain? And wouldn't that provide some pretty good support for the association?
- CommieBobDole 9y agoI can't find the cite right now, but I recall there was a study some years back that found that heavy mobile phone users didn't have any higher rate of brain cancer than the general population, but among those who did get cancer, there was a strong statistical correlation between the side of the head where they most used the phone and the location of the cancer.
- jdironman 9y agoMaybe it has something to do with predisposition to their dominant side and not specifically the use of a mobile device.
- fluidcruft 9y ago"Dominant side of the brain" is actually on the opposite side. If you're right dominant, it's left hemisphere.
- taneq 9y agoI'm calling it now, there's some gene which codes for "sense of direction" and results in some kind of magnetic element embedded in some nerve cells (the way some birds 'see' the Earth's magnetic field), which also makes them vulnerable to excessive EMF radiaton.
- aaron_m04 9y agoThat's a reasonable hypothesis. Still just a hypothesis of course.
- emodendroket 9y ago
- Numberwang 9y agoIs anyone calling anyone these days? Mobile Phones seems to mostly be used for messaging and surfing these days.
- tluyben2 9y agoThat is what I thought as well, but on HN of all places I see people fretting about speech quality of mobile phones and networks and such. When I walk around in big cities I see people text and, especially in China, people leaving eachother voice messages via wechat.
- dx034 9y agoMost people I see leaving voice messages do that by just holding the microphone towards them to be able to still use the screen (for Whatsapp you had to keep pressing the button until recently). That keeps the phone away from your head. Same goes for Skyping or using headsets.
- hajhatten 9y agoTell that to my mom
- coldtea 9y agoAs if it's just older people? Check teenage girls -- it's not snapchat and the like all the time, they can still spend countless hours on voice calls with their friends...
- 2sk21 9y agoGood point - I hardly ever see anyone talking on their phones
- cafard 9y agoPlenty are. Look at the pedestrians, or that matter at the drivers. A lot of them do use headsets.
- misspatel1358 9y ago
- ainiriand 9y agoI would like to say just a couple of things thast I'm sure everybody is already aware of: - Correlation does not imply causality. - No link to any study is given. So we cannot be sure about what the metodology is, I would very much like to take a look at the metodology used to imply such correlation.
- andai 9y ago> Correlation does not imply causality XKCD 925: Cell Phones https://xkcd.com/925/ https://xkcd.com/925/
- Zigurd 9y agoBrain tumors take several years to even decades to develop and become apparent. This rise in tumors detected now could have been caused in the days of analog phones with radios that had vastly higher power output. Or, for that matter, analog cordless phones.
- mgamache 9y agoGBM tumors are super aggressive and there's no known cause. If you get diagnosed with a GBM your five year survival rate is 10%. Whatever the cause once the tumor gets started you have a months, not years before you know it.
- ItsMe000001 9y agoYou mention a key key point: "once the tumor gets started ". Cancer does not start immediately, the effects leading up to it accumulate over long periods. That was OPs point, although I disagree for the reason mentioned in the other reply.
- perl4ever 9y agoIt doesn't make sense to me that we would find a detectable rise on that basis, because in the days of analog phones with high powered radios, it was a very small proportion of the population using them. Here is a picture of a DynaTAC analog cell phone circa 1983: https://s.hswstatic.com/gif/cell-phone-old.jpg https://s.hswstatic.com/gif/cell-phone-old.jpg I certainly knew what they looked like, before I had my first cell phone, because stockbrokers or lawyers or whatever in movies used them. But I never knew anyone who had one, or saw one in real life. They definitely preceded the current ubiquity of cell phones.
- stochastic_monk 9y agoSource: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/aip/7910754/ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/aip/7910754/ The provisional pdf is full of Tracked Changes. To clarify, GBM is the only kind of cancer that increased in frequency in the data they have. I'm less inclined to think that these "findings" are accurate and more to think it's a matter of accounting and data quality. (Not to mention the quality of the manuscript itself.)
- tzahola 9y ago>To clarify, GBM is the only kind of cancer that increased in frequency in the data they have. Only glioblstoma multiforme, aka the most aggressive and deadly brain cancer? Phfew, what a relief.
- stochastic_monk 9y agoIn fairness, GBM is brutal and has a life expectancy measured in months, not years, even with treatment. On the other hand, it's a subset with ~15% proportion of all brain tumors. The article's title suggests that all brain tumor rates doubled and I am clarifying.
- 24gttghh 9y agoFrom that paper: >Our results highlight an urgent need for funding more research into the initiation and promotion of GBM tumours. This should include the use of CT imaging for diagnosis and also modern lifestyle factors that may affect tumour metabolism. There is very little mention of cell phones in that paper, they only seem to reference a paper from 2015 regarding data from 2000-2003 (higher antennae output back then?)[0] They mention: >a 50-minute cell phone exposure produced a statistically significant increase in brain glucose metabolism in the orbitofrontal cortex and temporal pole regions closest to the handset [0]Hardell and M. Carlberg, “Mobile phone and cordless phone use and the risk for glioma – Analysis of pooled case–control studies in Sweden, 1997–2003 and 2007–2009,” Pathophysiology, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 1–13, 2015. doi:10.1016/j.pathophys.2014.10.001. [Online First 2014 Oct 29]
- dbatten 9y ago"They analysed 79,241 malignant brain tumours over 21 years, finding that cases of GBM in England have increased from around 1,250 a year in 1995 to just under 3,000." ~2000 new cases per year in a country with 53 million people? I'll take my chances. I'm fascinated how people obsess over the unproven and ultimately minuscule health risks associated with using a cell phone or drinking a glass of wine or eating chocolate or whatever. We know for a fact that smoking, overeating, and not exercising kill literally tens of millions of people each year, but it seems like most people can't be bothered to take those health risks seriously...
- pbnjay 9y agoAlso, in a country that grew by approximately 10 Million people in the same span.
- graeme 9y agoProbably got older too - are brain tumours linked with age? If this chart is accurate, 3.5 years older: https://www.statista.com/statistics/275394/median-age-of-the-population-in-the-united-kingdom/#0 https://www.statista.com/statistics/275394/median-age-of-the... They really should have looked at rates by a given age.
- blowski 9y agoAnd were exposed to different types of pollution, stress, and all sorts of stuff.
- dghughes 9y agoNot just age but like the Baby Boomers a very large group close to the same age (20 year range?).
- digikata 9y agoYes, with an age distribution, one can ask if certain ages tend to be higher rate users of early-gen cell tech, which used much more power.
- tonmoy 9y ago> cases of GBM in England have increased from around 1,250 a year in 1995 to just under 3,000. Not only the population of UK has increased in this time, it has also gotten older on average. Moreover is 0.002% of population getting GBM per year even significant enough to blame mobile phones (that is used by everyone)?
- gnode 9y agoAre there any statistics available which can link GBM to age?
- jhayward 9y agoIt doesn't have to be linked to age, just a yearly probability summed over more years. Then you can start adding in the things that make people live longer, like less heart disease per year of life, etc., and you get the same effect they are charting.
- pdpi 9y agoIf the effect isn't related to age, then what you're describing is captured by population.
- taoistextremist 9y agoAny cancer is related to age in the sense that the older a person is, the more opportunity they've had to encounter it. I suppose the best way to look at it is see how many cumulative years a population represents: if a population is getting older on average, then the cumulative years have risen, therefore there's been more opportunity to encounter this disease.
- jhayward 9y agoTrue.
- emsy 9y agoAnd brain cancer detection probably got better as well.
- knaik94 9y ago"According to Cancer Research UK, it is “unlikely” that mobile phones increase the risk of brain tumours however “we do not know enough to completely rule out a risk”. However, the organisation cautions that because phones are a relatively recent invention it may take many more years until the data is sufficient to make more robust conclusions." This is literally pure speculation. There are many things that should be studied further to see if something more than a correlation exists. However those studies haven't been done yet. I am surprised to see such a poor and clearly clickbait on hackernews.
- everdev 9y agoIs it possible to get cancer in your hand or thigh? I'm sure phones are held in hands or pockets for longer durations than they're held up to heads.
- tzahola 9y agoMale infertility is rising in the developed world.
- ItsMe000001 9y agoYou only get cancer in tissues with active cell division, such as the skin or epithelial tissue. For the hand that's the skin. Most cells in the body don't divide after your initial growth phase (all the way to adulthood). You are "produced" once and from then on there only is "maintenance", which includes growth of new cells only in tissues that absolutely require it throughout lifetime. Evolution turned it off in as many cells of an adult body as possible because cell division always is risky, especially with increasing (cell/tissue) age.
- gnode 9y agoWhile cancer rates are often higher in cell types with higher division rates, there are many other risk factors. The increased incidence of skin cancer is due largely to exposure to mutagenic ionising radiation from the sun, which is absorbed readily by the skin. Microwave radiation is more deeply penetrating. Although I believe it is unlikely to cause cancer.
- ItsMe000001 9y agoYes of course. My point was merely binary, about what kinds of tissue can get cancer. I thought that was appropriate for a question starting with "Is it possible".
- Beltiras 9y agoThose tissues might not be as susceptible to damage by radiation, or have more corrective mechanisms to deal with the damage.
- perl4ever 9y agoI wonder how many people hold their heads close to a running microwave while they are watching to see if something is overheating...
- emodendroket 9y agoThey probably don't do that making direct contact between their heads and the machine for an hour at a time. Seems like a bad comparison.
- perl4ever 9y agoIt's not clear to me that it's a bad comparison for several reasons. (a) I don't think it's typical to make direct contact with a cell phone for an hour at a time. Most calls I make are short and I don't actually hold it touching my ear. That does depend on the noise level though. (b) Microwaves are much higher power. (c) Microwaves may be constructed to looser tolerances regarding shielding. Yes, microwaves are different, but the differences don't uniformly cut in one direction, so I think it's a little too glib to dismiss the hazard out of hand. Edit: One could argue that in fact your ear holds your phone away from your head, providing an offset analogous to the distance one is observing a microwave from. But this is really a rhetorical answer to a rhetorical objection, when my point is more that only quantitative analysis could illuminate the accuracy of the comparison. The prompting for my original post is that I was microwaving water to boiling and watching to make sure it didn't superheat - unlike on the stove, it can form a big bubble of steam suddenly. It seems to me that I do this nearly as often as I make a phone call (as opposed to texting and email).
- emodendroket 9y ago> I don't think it's typical to make direct contact with a cell phone for an hour at a time. Do you have any family who live more than 30 minutes away?
- perl4ever 9y agoThat's not how I meant it. I don't think it's typical of phone calls; it is certainly common among people who make phone calls. Also, both qualifications in that sentence are important - not only "an hour at a time", but "direct contact". I have been on long calls at work with a landline/VOIP phone and found my ear hurts after a while with the earpiece resting against my ear. So I know that when my ear does not hurt it is because I have not been holding the phone against it for a long time.
- lerie82 9y agomaybe research has doubled.
- emodendroket 9y agoI'm curious how much time most people spend actually talking on their phones now compared to pre-smartphones. Also, while I suppose being in an active call probably changes the amount of radiation at play, I'd expect, if cell phones are causing cancer, an attendant rise in, say, testicular cancer.
- coldtea 9y agoSlightly more... https://qz.com/509442/why-are-we-still-calling-them-phones/ https://qz.com/509442/why-are-we-still-calling-them-phones/
- parvenu74 9y agoI've never been a fan of holding an active transmitter (cell phone) against the side of my head, preferring to use either speakerphone or a corded headset of some type. But I wonder: how much danger does a Bluetooth wireless headset present compared to the phone itself?
- senectus1 9y agoi remember when bluetooth ear pieces first came out they had warnings on them about extended use may cause drying out of the eyeball. I distinctly remember it on a Ericsson ear piece (single ear fold out). I've noticed that these devices dont have that warning anymore...
- rossdavidh 9y agoI have the impression that, since the era of smartphones, people actually talk on their cellphones less, and text more. If so, and if there were anything to this article's posited link, then we would expect the rate of tumors to drop again in the coming years. Just a speculation.
- parvenu74 9y ago1. Fewer tumors with texting, yes, especially when fatal car crashes due to texting are factored in. 2. Texting, especially long-form MMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, etc., replace the need for phone calls in a lot of cases. I do think of my iPhone as a portable computer that also has voice-communications capability...
- icebraining 9y agoIt's probably very hard to tell, specially since cellphones will dynamically adapt their transmission power depending on the conditions - anything from 0.7mW to 4.4mW[1]. By contrast, a bluetooth device of class 2 (most headsets) is limited to 2.5mW[2], but who knows how much they actually use within that limit. [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7879218 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7879218 [2] https://www.sans.edu/cyber-research/security-laboratory/article/bluetooth https://www.sans.edu/cyber-research/security-laboratory/arti...
- RandomInteger4 9y agoPretty sure this is complete B.S considering the view of talking on the phone millenials and younger have. Like, there are literal memes about one being horrified and the sound of a phone ringing, which to me seems like a good indicator that we're talking less on the phone, so why would brain tumors increase?
- kalleboo 9y agoI tried to find some statistics on Google, the statistics are all over the place but they all still show far far higher rates of making voice calls than I would have predicted (numbers look something like: 20% of time on phone spent talking, 1 hour a day spent talking, average 10 calls per day, even for teens - for the last stat, teens made more calls than anyone)
- gnode 9y agoWhile there may be less calls made overall, one thing to consider is that more calls may be being made by mobile phones rather than by landlines, which are increasingly replaced by mobile phones.
- vibrio 9y agoThis finding (fully believing it is at best anecdotal and preliminary at this point) brought TTF "tumor treating fields" therapy to mind. In the last year or so a medical device was approved by the FDA to treat brain tumors (Optune, Novocure Inc) in which the patient uses helmet that introduces alternating electrical field though the area of the tumor ( ie the patient head). It sounds super crazy, but it seems to have reached statistical significance in a couple large brain cancer studies. There are some caveats about selection bias of patients in these studies ( e.g, patients that enrolled/stayed in the study were motivated/strong enough to carry the heavy backpack and wear an onerous helmet) but it is being used and has some scientists and clinicians scratching their heads. Novocure is expanding application to multiple other cancers.
- gus_massa 9y agoHow much power did the helmet had? If you put your head inside a microwave oven with a power of 800W for a day it will probably hurt you. You can probably fry the tumor (and all your brain) with 800W. (IANAMD) A cell phone has only 2-4W, so it's the power is much smaller and the risk is not linear.
- JTbane 9y agoThese types of articles are fear mongering, pure and simple. Just like eating a banana every week gives you more of a radiation dose than living next to a nuclear power plant- the possibility of getting cancer from a cell phone is almost ridiculous.
- darkstar999 9y ago> “It’s important, though, to understand that this new paper did not examine any new data at all about potential causes for the increase.” How is this about mobile phones? I think this is pure clickbait and should be removed.
- d0lph 9y agoThe title is pretty deceptive, it seems to claim the study finds a link between cellphones and cancer. Although the group did apparently comment on cellphones as a thing to investigate. > Last night the group said the increasing rate of tumours in the frontal temporal lobe “raises the suspicion that mobile and cordless phone use may be promoting gliomas”.
- throwawaymanbot 9y agoAre we all mature enough to agree that we can still acknowledge that Cell phones might cause cancer in some people, and still be pro Technology? I dont see that much in the comments here. Poo-poo-ing this cancer issue is not helpful.
- reneberlin 9y agoThere has to be an app for that. Wait ...
- dghughes 9y agoI'd also be interested to see how many more people just text or IM not talk compared to ten or twenty years ago. If there is a risk from cellphone EM radiation so it must also depend on phone usage and also modern phones emit less EM radiation? For me my main concern is I use my phone as an alarm clock and it's 30cm (1 foot) from my head all night. I also leave it there since it's my main phone so I keep it close to me. Hopefully the inverse square law is on my side. I'd be curious to see if any studies showed butt cancer was a thing. I'm sure many people keep their phones in their pockets and seems it would exposure people more EM radiation for longer compared to holding the phone and talking into it. I'd also be curious if different countries which use different frequencies would be a factor in the ability of the EM radiation to penetrate deeper into skin. I'm not convinced but I'm not anti-science so I'm OK with continual studies as long as they are conducted in a professional way. By the way I recall in the late 80s early 90s there was talk about EM radiation from cordless shavers. Close to the jaw bone, powerful motor in a small space used daily.
- Frqy3 9y agoThe densification of the mobile/cellular network (greater number of cell sites and infill using smaller micro, pico and indoor sites) over the last 20 years also means that devices statistically operate at lower power levels most of the time.
- wrycoder 9y agoPut it in airplane mode overnight.
- pepijndevos 9y agoButt cancer you say? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhjuRf5wPkc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhjuRf5wPkc
- jstarfish 9y ago> For me my main concern is I use my phone as an alarm clock and it's 30cm (1 foot) from my head all night. I also leave it there since it's my main phone so I keep it close to me. Hopefully the inverse square law is on my side. The danger comes from when you are actively making calls using voice; my understanding is that transmitting voice data really cranks up the EM radiation. When making phone calls you are safest using a hands-free headset. When the phone is idle at night this is all mostly irrelevant unless you're getting poor signal (for which it cranks up EM to compensate). So, don't sleep with your phone next to your head if you get poor signal. If not, there likely isn't much to worry about. > I'd be curious to see if any studies showed butt cancer was a thing. I'm sure many people keep their phones in their pockets and seems it would exposure people more EM radiation for longer compared to holding the phone and talking into it. When the phone is idle the EM radiation is relatively low. Plus, if it's resting against your thigh there isn't anything critical there to irradiate, compared to having it within two inches of your brain. If anything we might see more skin cancer in the future from this (and some say EM from pocket storage may contribute to infertility), but it beats brain cancer.
- thenaturalist 9y agoRelevant reading: http://nautil.us/issue/59/connections/pick-the-statistic-you-want-to-be http://nautil.us/issue/59/connections/pick-the-statistic-you...
- jackschultz 9y agoStory time, as is often the case when "studies" talk about medical risks. Couple years ago I started noticing these events, deja vu flashes, tingly right arm from the shoulder all the way down to my fingers, and then the inability to comprehend words for a few minutes. Never issues with coordination, because the first one I remember distinctly was riding a bike. Eventually was told they could be seizures, got an MRI and EEG and poof, there's a brain tumor, told was a DNET, in my left temporal lobe. After issues with anti-seizure meds, which are really annoying with so many side effects, I went with surgery to get the tumor yanked with the hope of them snagging the part causing the seizures, which apparently aren't caused by the tumor itself. A few weeks after the surgery, I was called back and told the tumor wasn't a DNET as expected, but a low grade glioma. Not the GBM as talked about in the article, but a regrowth where I'm on the schedule of MRI every three months to check to see how if it's growing back yet. I'm left handed, holding the phone to my left ear where the tumor was / is, which would fit along with what they're trying to show here. I'm 27 now, I never talked on the phone much, and I'm not going to sit here and try to find something to blame. Like casually mentioned at the end of the article, I'll go with saying it could be from "fallout from atomic bomb tests in the atmosphere", or, you know, bad luck.
- cgb223 9y agoHey so I’m also left handed and have a lot of the same symptoms you’ve described. Can you explain the deja vu, tingling, etc symptoms a bit more This has me a little nervous and I want to be sure it’s something I need to get concerned about Did you actually end up having seizures? How did you know it was serious?
- jackschultz 9y agoIt would be these events were I'd get the deja vu, the feeling of having a memory of experiencing something before, then tingling from the right shoulder down my arm to when it hit my fingers I'd feel a little hit in the head and lose words. That part is the seizure. I didn't know that was a type at all before looking it up online. These episodes grew over time too. That first I remember on a bike, the next was when reading a book and I was so confused where the words went and why I could only see symbols. Since it's the temporal lobe, only words. Though I talk to multiple people, like my mom, she says there were times in the past where, when talking to her, I'd have to say hold on and sit in silence for 30 seconds before being able to comprehend again. Eventually got to an every other day frequency before being told that those events could be seizures and I should get it checked out. In terms of seriousness, it's hard to say when that happened. I was told it looked like the benign DNET tumor and baby seizures that stopped with some drugs and I thought that was pretty funny how that happened to me. But then side effects from the first drugs kicked in and I had to switch. And then side effects from that drug kicked in and said screw it and have the surgery to get ride of the tumor and hopefully the part causing the seizures. Well that didn't work out, I still have different drugs and problems with those, and turns out it's a cancer tumor. Quite the turn. The seizures themselves aren't too serious, because there are drugs to stop them, but the side effect problems are the big part. What are the symptoms you've been having?
- TheAdamist 9y agoNothing in this article shows that mobile phones are the cause. Headphones, Bike helmets or avocado toast might be just as likely. Only thing for certain is that a particular type of tumor has increased.
- gnulinux 9y agoSo did UK's population.
- remir 9y agoImagine we have solid evidence that cell phones, Bluetooth headphones, smart watches, etc are responsible for the rise in tumors. I'm curious to know how people (and the industry) would react. We made these powerful communication tools that are connecting the world, that changed how we communicate and they are causing us harm? Cigarettes were wonderful until they weren't. Oil was perfect until it became problematic for environmental reasons. Are cell phones the next thing on the list?
- matte_black 9y agoWe could finally eliminate the dumb speaker you hold up your ear and just have every phone be a speaker or FaceTime only phone. Maybe then the iPhone can eliminate the notch.
- sandworm101 9y ago>> Are cell phones the next thing on the list? Cigarettes created hospitals full of "black lung" diseases, the scary one being cancer. The experts had their suspicions. Cellphones are as pervasive now as tobacco was in the 1950s. We aren't seeing hospitals full of brain cancers. If they are causing tumors, they are doing so only in a very few cases. So no, even if the link is made the reaction will not parallel tobacco. Imho if a link is found we will not see a ban. We will see standards for shielding, a layer of tinfoil between the antenna and the head.
- Tloewald 9y ago"A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." King James Cigarettes were never wonderful. They were addictive.
- niahmiah 9y agoBut hardly anyone actually holds the device to their head anymore...
- gelo 9y agoThis article like the telegraph is utter bs. The power output of a mobile phone by standard is a max of 1 watt. And even then the mobile phone does not use 1 watt constantly. Hell, if it was the case that we were getting damaged by these ranges of frequency bands we wouldn't be having WIFI all over the place for the same reason. Now Hypothetically if one was to be stupid enough to stand next to an active Mobile base-station antenna then yes, you would start having head-aches because of the emissive power concentration from the antenna, and also the fact that base stations are at max i think between 30-50 watts.
- wuschel 9y agoHere is a discussion/summary of the American Cancer Society: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-exposure/cellular-phones.html https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-exposu... It is certainly not an easy problem to measure and collect strong evidence for either side.
- ohyes 9y agoEven if this were the case, luckily no one really talks on their mobile phones anymore, it's predominantly FaceTime and candy crush. I would also be interested to know if the tumors are predominantly on the right side of the head near the ear...
- blackrock 9y agoI don't really know if anyone uses the phone to talk anymore. It's mostly just texting now. And if they do need to talk for long, then they usually just put on some headsets. Otherwise, it's probably just a quick phone call.
- mr_toad 9y ago> Responding to the new resaerch, Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics at The Open University, said the significance of the trend may be less clear cut than the research group claim. It’s not unusual for such small proportions to have large variation.
- Hemminen66 9y agoThe comments are really helping. I can have a bigger picture just by reading the comment section. hahaha/