13 ms·

Major Study Finds ‘Some Evidence’ of Link Between Cellphone Radiation and Cancer

134 points by daegloe 8y ago

reptation 8y ago
Whether the effect was large or small, there is a fundamental scientific question: how does non-ionizing radiation cause cancer? The fact that it can requires better models of how EM waves and biological matter interact.
- eganist 8y ago
  > The fact that it can When was that cemented as a cause? It appears to be a possibility that can't be discounted, but when was the causation established?
- harryf 8y ago
  It may be a secondary effect. Most people know the feeling of having a “hot ear” from talking long on a cell phone when it’s against the ear. Frequent heating of cells can be inflammatory which in turn is recognized as a possible cause of cancer - https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2008/06/09/more-on-inflammation-and-bowel-cancer/ https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2008/06/09/more-on-...
  - RL_Quine 8y ago
    Note that “hot ear” can’t possibly be an effect of RF, more that you’ve just held something up to your ear. Simple evaluation based on the size of the battery in a phone tells you that there can be no significant heating effect on anything, given that there’s no functional difference between a call and a phone just using data, this effect would be constant to everything around it. There’s simply not enough energy capacity in the battery for this to be true.
    - jandrese 8y ago
      It would be interesting to do a study comparing this effect with a group of people who wear large bulky headphones/ear protectors for hours a day.
      - RL_Quine 8y ago
        I think you’d struggle to find people who wear ear protection but aren’t exposed to, for example, other hazardous conditions on a mining or building site that are hard to control for.
        jandrese 8y ago
        Maybe recording studio engineers?
        RL_Quine 8y ago
        True.
        duck 8y ago
        A lot of people that work in an open office wear them.
        SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
        Yeah, the headphones go on when I get in and only come off if someone is standing there looking at me like they just asked a question.
        stochastic_monk 8y ago
        Musicians. Drummers, guitarists, trumpeters.
    - ajkjk 8y ago
      That can't be right. I frequently my feel my phone getting hot and often take it out of my pocket because the warm patch on my leg is uncomfortable.
      - txcwpalpha 8y ago
        Yea, I dunno what that guy is talking about. Batteries carry incredible amounts of energy, certainly enough to output significant amounts of heat. After all, there was that whole scandal where Samsung cell phone batteries were exploding into burning fireballs...
        noonespecial 8y ago
        The potential energy of a battery carrying out the intended chemical reaction to generate electricity and the potential energy of lighting it on fire and burning that same battery in air are very different things. Modern batteries are impressive compared to their predecessors but adding up the watt-hours in a battery and then calculating how much that would heat a bucket of water is a serious disappointment.
        txcwpalpha 8y ago
        You're telling me that you've never held a phone on your hand and had it get hot? C'mon man. Every modern phone that I know of gets quite hot when doing something like streaming video or taking a voice call for an extended period of time. You can do a simple Google search and see that people quite often discuss how their phone gets uncomfortably hot during all kinds of normal activities. Nobody said anything about heating a bucket of water. The discussion was about heating up someone's ear, which certainly happens.
      - th0ma5 8y ago
        This is due to the battery.
      - frickinLasers 8y ago
        I think the above poster is not clearly differentiating between heating from RF radiation and heating from electrons colliding with silicon or battery components. Given that simple failure in communication, I'd like to see the calculations they performed to arrive at their conclusion.
    - gugagore 8y ago
      I don't think the parent was suggesting that what makes your ear hot is RF.(of course it's conduction from a hot phon and lack of ventilation). They were suggesting, I think, that cancer can arise from having frequent hot ear, regardless of the heating mechanism.
      - harryf 8y ago
        Exactly what I was trying to say. Thanks for taking time to think about it
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ucha 8y ago
  Yes. It has been known for decades that biological matter resonates at microwave frequencies but we've been told over and over that non-ionizing radiations cannot cause cancer [0]. DNA is an electricly charged dipole that will heat up when exposed to microwaves and that would damage it [1]. [0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006349502754738 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000634950... [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2304485 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2304485
  - xenadu02 8y ago
    There's a lot of water in the way between DNA and any microwave source. Microwaves do not penetrate water very well - part of the reason rain tends to cause problems with microwave links. Also the reason microwave ovens work: by heating the food. So what is the proposed mechanism by which microwave energy is supposed to heat DNA enough to damage it?
    - guelo 8y ago
      Microwave ovens are able to heat several pounds of meat all the way through to the center. So it can penetrate at least a few wet inches of tissue.
      - ams6110 8y ago
        In my experience they heat the outside but the center warms by conduction. If I heat a bowl of tomato sauce it can be boiling at the edges and cold in the middle. I have to stop and stir it a few times. Same with potatoes. Hot on the outside, raw in the center.
        jerf 8y ago
        So I went poking around on the Intarwebs for "microwave penetration" and found this rather intriguing page with penetration depths of various items: http://www.pueschner.com/en/microwave-technology/penetration-depths http://www.pueschner.com/en/microwave-technology/penetration... I was surprised by the table. Temperature matters way more than I'd expect for water, and it seems ice may in fact be effectively transparent to microwaves? Now I want to fiddle when I get home... it looks an awful lot like you can put a cup of water and a chunk of ice in a microwave and boil the water while the ice is still frozen... (though I'm going to assume that number for ice is pure ice; air bubbles in ice may wreck this up) Experimentation time!
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  > The fact that it can requires better models of how EM waves and biological matter interact. Can I assume you are making this claim from the study? That they showed "some effect" ? If so, it is important to differentiate by intensity. EM waves are just light, you know red, green, blue etc. And if they are strong enough can give you a burn (sunburn being something everyone has experienced). But we don't get stories of people getting moon burn from the light reflected off the moon. In part because the amount of energy per square meter in moonlight is about 2.3 million times less powerful than sunlight. We are evolved to live in an environment that is flooded with EM energy in a variety of bands. The study showed that if your cellphone put out 100x the amount of energy it does, there might be a small measurable effect on cancer rates. We know melanoma rates go up if you get a lot of sunburn (which is EM exposure). The energy per square meter in sunlight is 8 orders of magnitude higher than the energy per square meter from a cell phone. Bottom line, there is still no mechanism, study, or theory, that supports a hypothesis that 1 watt cellphones cause cancer.
- hwillis 8y ago
  > Whether the effect was large or small, there is a fundamental scientific question: how does non-ionizing radiation cause cancer? The fact that it can requires better models of how EM waves and biological matter interact. This is wrong. Non-ionizing radiation obviously causes cancer. "Ionizing radiation" for photons is (somewhat arbitrarily) defined as photons with >10 eV. That's far ultraviolet, far beyond anything in sunlight that has passed the atmosphere. But sunlight still gives you cancer. There are any number of ways that cells and genes can be disrupted by non-ionizing radiation. Just disrupting in-progress reactions can eventually damage cells, and that doesn't require anything nearly as dramatic as ionizing an atom. At the bare minimum, all waves >1 GHz interact with and are absorbed by biological matter. However the low-microwave frequencies from cell phones and wifi are hugely innocuous in addition to being crazy low power. They practically only interact through heating. I'm about as worried by the visible radiation from a cell phone's screen as I am from the transmitter. Hell, I'm pretty positive the local heating from the CPU getting hot will be more likely to contribute to cancer.
- pasbesoin 8y ago
  Microwave and other non-ionizing energy can be used to influence rate of reaction. Chemical reactions depend upon orientation and bond state/dynamics, that are influenced (not necessarily broken, but, say, "flexed", stretched, etc.) by resonant radiation. I remember learning about this decades ago, in college chemistry. (G\heck, getting out of the "radio" frequencies, many people have had photo-sensitive reactions demonstrated to them, for this very reason.) Well, say you have a chemical reaction that presents a certain risk level. And say non-ionizing radiation in your environment influences that reaction. Take it a step further down: Temperature influences rate of reaction. We certainly know that non-ionizing radiation effects temperature of absorptive materials. Look at another aspect of this: We have chemical compounds that are strongly believed -- known either through strong empirical observation or deduction of the specific chemical mechanisms -- to cause cancer. They appear or are known to be doing so without the assistance of ionizing radiation. Ergo, this effect consists of chemical reactions. We know that non-ionizing radiation can influence chemical reactions. We are nowhere near a comprehensive catalogue, much less understanding, of all the chemical reactions in the body. Chemicals that we and our natural environment evolved, much less chemicals we've manufactured and introduced into our environment. Can we say that non-ionizing radiation cannot cause or promote cancer? I don't think so.
- grecy 8y ago
  > how does non-ionizing radiation cause cancer? It's the same way that DDT caused cancer when it was first used. It's the same way that BPA caused fertility problems for decades, and it's the same way that BPA substitutes look to be causing fertility problems now. What way is that? We simply don't understand what's going on, and it's important that we acknowledge that. Our current scientific model says "we have spent decades and millions of dollars trying to see if cell phones cause cancer, and we have never found a link, therefore cellphones don't cause cancer." Which is exactly the same as saying "we have spent decades and millions of dollars searching for little green men, and we have never found any, therefore we are 100% they don't exist." Both of those statements are utter nonsense. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We honestly have no idea if little green men exist somewhere in the universe, and we also have no idea if cell phones cause cancer. We think we know, but we're just doing our best to look at evidence. You can rest assured that in ~50 years we'll look back and say "Of Course! Those scientists in 2019 were so simplistic and quaint!" "But don't worry, now it's 2070, we know so much better, so that new-fangled thing you have is perfectly safe!"
  - balfirevic 8y ago
    > Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Despite what you may have been led to believe, absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence. More details here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mnS2WYLCGJP2kQkRn/absence-of-evidence-is-evidence-of-absence https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mnS2WYLCGJP2kQkRn/absence-of...
  - GuB-42 8y ago
    Not the same thing as little green men. We have data involving a significant fraction of humanity and we didn't find a link. Cell phone aren't rare and cancer isn't rare. It means we have a very good statistical model. Cell phones have been widespread for 20 years now, which is less than we might want but still not bad. Furthermore, fundamental physics go against the idea that cell phones cause cancer. We have more or less proved that cell phones don't cause enough cancer to matter. For little green men, we can only search the tiniest fraction of space, and we have only a single data point: us. The only vaguely statical model we have come from the Drake equation, and it has more holes than Swiss cheese. It would be laughed off by the scientific community if it wasn't so exciting.
- tzs 8y ago
  It's also possible that it increases cancer rates without causing cancer. Instead, it might be preventing the body from stopping new cancers that otherwise would have been stopped. The observed cancer rate will be roughly the difference between the rates of cancers that start and cancers that are stopped by either the cell's internal repair mechanism or by the body's mechanisms for finding and killing bad cells. Something that affects the observed rate could be acting on either side of the difference.
whatshisface 8y ago
>The rodents in the studies were exposed to radiation nine hours a day for two years — far longer even than heavy users of cellphones. What about one hour per day over 18 years?
- mooneater 8y ago
  Ah, for that case -- we are the experiment
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  If second hand smoke is unhealthy, what about "second hand" radiation?
- mtgx 8y ago
  Also, I assume they are referring to humans not keeping the cellphone 9h per day close to their brain. First off, many do in fact sleep with their phones close to their head these days, and second, what about the phone being close to the body/male testicles (in the pocket) throughout the day? One other thing, wasn't the issue also not just with the phones themselves, but with the cell towers? I believe 5G towers need to be installed every 300 meters. If the towers are indeed dangerous due to how much power they radiate, then how many people will that affect in busy centers/apartment buildings?
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    Our phones should just turn off the radio when we're on WiFi. It's not like anyone I know actually uses their phone for calls that much.
    - wheelie_boy 8y ago
      Depends on carrier availability, but I believe Wifi Calling does this.
      - StavrosK 8y ago
        Oh, right, my carrier doesn't support that for my device yet, so I forgot about it. Does it turn the radio all the way off? I guess it would, since WiFi will just supplant all the cell radio's functions.
adamnemecek 8y ago
Have you ever spent some time on your cell phone and then felt this "deep warmth" in your head? I've felt the same warmth after having gone through a "full body scanner". I've mentioned this to a coworker before and he laughed at me. Then I heard him be on the phone for like 30 minutes and during lunch he mentioned that his head was feeling this weird warmth. I repeated my theory and asked him what are the odds of his phone usage and the warmth being unrelated. I've never seen him not use headphones when being on the phone since then.
- uw_rob 8y ago
  In the politest way possible, and without dismissing your feelings, it seems that you have discovered the placebo effect in action.
  - adamnemecek 8y ago
    http://weeksmd.com/2013/03/does-your-cell-phone-heat-up-your-head/ http://weeksmd.com/2013/03/does-your-cell-phone-heat-up-your... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6071445/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6071445/
    - canhascodez 8y ago
      The blog post is not credible. The author does not provide evidence for stating that heating tissue causes harm. The scientific paper describes heating of almost the exact magnitude as normal diurnal body temperature variation.
- RL_Quine 8y ago
  This is a nocebo effect. The two things you just described aren’t even in the same ballpark of RF frequency. The brain doesn’t have any way of measuring pain; let alone temperature. Brain surgery can be done with the patient awake in desirable situations as a direct result of this.
  - jobigoud 8y ago
mooneater 8y ago
2-3% vs 0 in control for brain tumors, 5-7% vs 0 in control for heart tumors. That does not sound ambiguous. > The highest level was four times higher than the permitted maximum. That's still not much of a safety factor.
- copperx 8y ago
  This is the first time I hear about heart cancer.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
chiefalchemist 8y ago
> "But the results apply only to male rats and involve radio frequencies long out of routine use." "For decades, health experts have struggled to determine whether or not cellphones can cause cancer. On Thursday, a federal agency released the final results of what experts call the world’s largest and most costly experiment to look into the question. The study originated in the Clinton administration, cost $30 million and involved some 3,000 rodents" World's largest? Most costly? And more or less not applicable to current reality? It is exactly things such as this that trigger the general public to mistrust government and mistrust science. What's most unnerving is the gov and the science expected the public to not respond as expected.
mullingitover 8y ago
Did they account for the gender of the researchers in this study?
- uw_rob 8y ago
  Yes. Some key quotes about this: > The female rats did not show evidence of a link between the radiation and such tumors. > Experts say it is not unusual for cancer patterns to vary between sexes in both people and animals, including the study’s mice and rats.
  - byproxy 8y ago
    Operative word being "researchers", here. Apparently the gender of researchers conducting experiments on rats has shown to change outcomes : https://www.nature.com/news/male-researchers-stress-out-rodents-1.15106 https://www.nature.com/news/male-researchers-stress-out-rode...
  - canhascodez 8y ago
    You misread, I think. They were referring to cases where the gender of the researcher has inadvertently skewed results: [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/10/577046624/a-scientists-gender-can-skew-research-results https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/10/5770466...
neuronexmachina 8y ago
The actual study findings: https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.html https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.htm... From the fact sheet: "Rats and mice were exposed to RFR in special chambers for up to two years, or most of their natural lives. NTP scientists looked for a range of cancers and noncancer health effects. Exposure to RFR began in the womb for rats and at 5-6 weeks old for mice. The RFR exposure was intermittent, 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off, totaling about 9 hours each day. The RFR levels ranged from 1.5 to 6 watts per kilogram of body weight in rats, and 2.5 to 10 watts per kilogram in mice. The chambers were shielded rooms with a transmitting antenna that radiated RFR fields, plus rotating stirrers that generated a uniform field.4,5 Pilot studies established field strengths that did not raise animal body temperatures excessively.6 The rats and mice were exposed to whole body RFR at frequencies of 900 and 1900 megahertz, respectively, from two technologies – Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). NTP and RFR experts from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the IT’IS Foundation designed and built the chambers specifically for these studies. " Also: "Were there any surprise findings? NTP found longer lifespans among the exposed male rats. This may be explained by an observed decrease in chronic kidney problems that are often the cause of death in older rats"
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  I particularly like "...strengths that did not raise animal body temperatures excessively." No sense microwaving the rats to death. For a 70kg person, that exposure (using the rat scale, 105 - 420 watts) for your entire life. Vs a cell phone which has an effective radiated power ERP of about 1 watt[1]. So somewhere between 1% and .25% of the power. Cell phone signals fall off with the square of the distance so the bulk of the power of a cellphones RF energy that you are exposed to comes from the handset. [1] "Meanwhile, the total power emitted from the cell phone itself ranges from 0.75 to 1 watt. According to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), this is an acceptably safe amount of power for a cell phone since their cut-off or specific absorption rate is only 1.6 watts per kilogram (W/kg). As a result, the power radiated from a cell phone is considered as non-ionizing as opposed to ionizing." -- https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/EbruBek.shtml https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/EbruBek.shtml
Reason077 8y ago
”the rat study examined the effects of a radio frequency associated with an early generation of cellphone technology, one that fell out of routine use years ago.” In some parts of the world (UK, Europe, Asia, South Africa, Nigeria, Peru), the 900Mhz GSM band is now being reused as LTE band 8.
kopo 8y ago
Man can you imagine if 1 billion people end up with brain tumors. How would that even get handled? I have no idea how hard tumor surgery is but I am guessing hospitals will have to be turned into large Foxconn type factories or something.
- dcow 8y ago
  Have you ever been to a “Foxconn type factory”? I’m not sure it’s exactly the picture you’re trying to paint.
- copperx 8y ago
  The only positive would be the trillions of dollars that would be dedicated to brain tumour research.
- hammock 8y ago
  Or at that point, they could just turn the Foxconn factories into hospitals, as I'm guessing the demand for cell phones will have plummeted.
mtgx 8y ago
> Current cellphones represent a fourth generation, known as 4G, and 5G phones are expected to debut around 2020. They employ much higher frequencies, and these radio waves are far less successful at penetrating the bodies of humans and rats, scientists say. I'm confused by this statement. 4G uses even lower frequencies than 900 MHz, and this range up to 1900MHz will continue to be used for decades more, 5G or not. As for 5G itself, as I mentioned in another comment, there's also the issue of carriers needing to install many more towers, which I believe are cancer-causing for anyone living in the immediate area due to the power they radiate. I also imagine the 5G towers will use much more power than say 3G or 4G powers because if 5G wireless tech can't pass easily through objects, then you bet the carriers are going to "maximize" the distance. How? Through more power. So I doubt 5G will be much safer overall. In fact, I'm willing to bet it will be significantly less safe than previous wireless technologies. So to ensure companies like Qualcomm and U.S. carriers don't get away with causing millions to die "because we found out too late", like this NYT article seems to be implying about the previous tech, we should already start enforcing laws or starting lawsuits against them and make them pay out billions, if evidence is indeed found (whether through more studies, or through discovery of what the company employees knew about these issues) that their tech was harmful to humans.
- driverdan 8y ago
  > which I believe are cancer-causing for anyone living in the immediate area due to the power they radiate. I downvoted you because there is no evidence of this. You also state they wiull "use more power" but power output is regulated by the FCC.
  - mooneater 8y ago
    I for one much appreciate downvoters sharing their reasons
    - driverdan 8y ago
      I usually reply with my reason, especially if it may not be obvious to the OP.
DonHopkins 8y ago
Nothing to worry about: Congress will simply pass a law that makes it illegal to get brain cancer from cell phones. Problem solved!
Leary 8y ago
I'm not sure if I'm being practical or silly, but is there a cell phone cover that would minimize such radiation?
- mataug 8y ago
  Any cover which would reduce the amount of radiation would probably also interfere with the signal strength, which in-turn would also affect the battery life of the phone
- mike22223333 8y ago
  Faraday cage.
  - justinmchase 8y ago
    How about a brain coat? http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html
- lstodd 8y ago
  Just turn on the airplane mode. And turn off the wifi.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
  The practical way to mitigate exposure would be to use a headset and keep the actual phone away from your body when possible. Any sort of cover over the phone itself would cause it to lose reception.
- driverdan 8y ago
  This isn't something to worry about unless you're using your phone for 9h a day and have boosted the power output beyond the legal limit. Even then there isn't an explanation as to how it would cause cancer.
  - vertexFarm 8y ago
    Unpopular but entirely correct. The study used power up to ten watts per kilogram. Your phone uses around a watt or less compared to your whole body mass. Let's say the average of 62 kilos. Your exposure is less than a fiftieth of what was produced in the experiment, probably less because you aren't irradiated 24 hours a day--you take it off your person to charge at some point. And the radio produces far less wattage when it's idle, which is going to be the vast majority of your day. Compared to the amount the rats were getting constantly, this would be a truly minuscule fraction of exposure over time. Even with such extraordinary amplitude, the correlation was very slight. Trust me, everyone has much bigger health risks to worry about than radio. If you've ever had a drink in your life you've done worse.
mike22223333 8y ago
The government should outlaw the link between them.
DINKDINK 8y ago
How many studies were run that /didn't/ find any evidence? If that fact isn't included in the conclusion then this could be accidental p-value hacking.
isomorph 8y ago
Check this out for some meta stuff on the possible link between mobile phones and acoustic neuroma https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-exposure/cellular-phones.html https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-exposu... Anecdotally - doctors believe it may be a cause, scientists don't
diminoten 8y ago
It's not great news, this study. It could be wrong, it could be inapplicable to reality, it could be a lot of things that mitigate the results in one way or another. But I think we can all agree that it would have been nicer to hear that there was "No Evidence" of a link.
feefie 8y ago
If you're concerned at all and interested in some safety tips (from the California Department of Public Health, page last updated December 2017): 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... https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/pages/nr17-086.aspx https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/pages/nr17-086.aspx
miles 8y ago
The World Health Organization back in 2011: WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.h... > 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.
- saulrh 8y ago
  Classified in IARC 2B, which also includes things like pickled vegetables, magnets, coffee, sassafras, styrene, and ginkgo extract. Also aflatoxin M1 (LD50 ~300 ug/kg), vanadium(V) oxide (LD50 ~10 mg/kg inhaled), HIV, and nitrogen mustards (chemotherapy drugs that also happen to be classified and stockpiled as chemical weapons). Even the items that CNN picked out, the cancer risk from those is the least of your worries. I won't call the 2B category "useless", since it actually is a list of compounds that might theoretically (but have not been shown to) cause cancer, but, well...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jgamman 8y ago
At this point in time it's not really relevant to say cellphone vs no-cellphone. It's death by cellphone vs saved by cellphone ie, you need to compare how many people have been able to call for help in an emergency, get a taxi rather than drink driving etc because they had access to a phone in their pocket. It's like comparing new drugs to the best off-patent generic, not a placebo sugar pill.
bencollier49 8y ago
So what sort of exposure does one get from standing near a mobile phone base station mast?
senectus1 8y ago
meh i'm safe... my phone is always in my hands and I use bluetooth 18 hours a day every day. Thats safe right?
sjg007 8y ago
Big market for faraday cage pocket liners now! Obviously they will have to leave the open air side on shielded to get reception.

134 points by daegloe 8y ago

Whether the effect was large or small, there is a fundamental scientific question: how does non-ionizing radiation cause cancer? The fact that it can requires better models of how EM waves and biological matter interact.

eganist 8y ago
> The fact that it can When was that cemented as a cause? It appears to be a possibility that can't be discounted, but when was the causation established?
harryf 8y ago
It may be a secondary effect. Most people know the feeling of having a “hot ear” from talking long on a cell phone when it’s against the ear. Frequent heating of cells can be inflammatory which in turn is recognized as a possible cause of cancer - https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2008/06/09/more-on-inflammation-and-bowel-cancer/ https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2008/06/09/more-on-...
- RL_Quine 8y ago
  Note that “hot ear” can’t possibly be an effect of RF, more that you’ve just held something up to your ear. Simple evaluation based on the size of the battery in a phone tells you that there can be no significant heating effect on anything, given that there’s no functional difference between a call and a phone just using data, this effect would be constant to everything around it. There’s simply not enough energy capacity in the battery for this to be true.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    It would be interesting to do a study comparing this effect with a group of people who wear large bulky headphones/ear protectors for hours a day.
    - RL_Quine 8y ago
      I think you’d struggle to find people who wear ear protection but aren’t exposed to, for example, other hazardous conditions on a mining or building site that are hard to control for.
      - jandrese 8y ago
        Maybe recording studio engineers?
        RL_Quine 8y ago
        True.
      - duck 8y ago
        A lot of people that work in an open office wear them.
        SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
        Yeah, the headphones go on when I get in and only come off if someone is standing there looking at me like they just asked a question.
      - stochastic_monk 8y ago
        Musicians. Drummers, guitarists, trumpeters.
  - ajkjk 8y ago
    That can't be right. I frequently my feel my phone getting hot and often take it out of my pocket because the warm patch on my leg is uncomfortable.
    - txcwpalpha 8y ago
      Yea, I dunno what that guy is talking about. Batteries carry incredible amounts of energy, certainly enough to output significant amounts of heat. After all, there was that whole scandal where Samsung cell phone batteries were exploding into burning fireballs...
      - noonespecial 8y ago
        The potential energy of a battery carrying out the intended chemical reaction to generate electricity and the potential energy of lighting it on fire and burning that same battery in air are very different things. Modern batteries are impressive compared to their predecessors but adding up the watt-hours in a battery and then calculating how much that would heat a bucket of water is a serious disappointment.
        txcwpalpha 8y ago
        You're telling me that you've never held a phone on your hand and had it get hot? C'mon man. Every modern phone that I know of gets quite hot when doing something like streaming video or taking a voice call for an extended period of time. You can do a simple Google search and see that people quite often discuss how their phone gets uncomfortably hot during all kinds of normal activities. Nobody said anything about heating a bucket of water. The discussion was about heating up someone's ear, which certainly happens.
    - th0ma5 8y ago
      This is due to the battery.
    - frickinLasers 8y ago
      I think the above poster is not clearly differentiating between heating from RF radiation and heating from electrons colliding with silicon or battery components. Given that simple failure in communication, I'd like to see the calculations they performed to arrive at their conclusion.
  - gugagore 8y ago
    I don't think the parent was suggesting that what makes your ear hot is RF.(of course it's conduction from a hot phon and lack of ventilation). They were suggesting, I think, that cancer can arise from having frequent hot ear, regardless of the heating mechanism.
    - harryf 8y ago
      Exactly what I was trying to say. Thanks for taking time to think about it
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ucha 8y ago
Yes. It has been known for decades that biological matter resonates at microwave frequencies but we've been told over and over that non-ionizing radiations cannot cause cancer [0]. DNA is an electricly charged dipole that will heat up when exposed to microwaves and that would damage it [1]. [0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006349502754738 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000634950... [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2304485 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2304485
- xenadu02 8y ago
  There's a lot of water in the way between DNA and any microwave source. Microwaves do not penetrate water very well - part of the reason rain tends to cause problems with microwave links. Also the reason microwave ovens work: by heating the food. So what is the proposed mechanism by which microwave energy is supposed to heat DNA enough to damage it?
  - guelo 8y ago
    Microwave ovens are able to heat several pounds of meat all the way through to the center. So it can penetrate at least a few wet inches of tissue.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      In my experience they heat the outside but the center warms by conduction. If I heat a bowl of tomato sauce it can be boiling at the edges and cold in the middle. I have to stop and stir it a few times. Same with potatoes. Hot on the outside, raw in the center.
      - jerf 8y ago
        So I went poking around on the Intarwebs for "microwave penetration" and found this rather intriguing page with penetration depths of various items: http://www.pueschner.com/en/microwave-technology/penetration-depths http://www.pueschner.com/en/microwave-technology/penetration... I was surprised by the table. Temperature matters way more than I'd expect for water, and it seems ice may in fact be effectively transparent to microwaves? Now I want to fiddle when I get home... it looks an awful lot like you can put a cup of water and a chunk of ice in a microwave and boil the water while the ice is still frozen... (though I'm going to assume that number for ice is pure ice; air bubbles in ice may wreck this up) Experimentation time!
ChuckMcM 8y ago
> The fact that it can requires better models of how EM waves and biological matter interact. Can I assume you are making this claim from the study? That they showed "some effect" ? If so, it is important to differentiate by intensity. EM waves are just light, you know red, green, blue etc. And if they are strong enough can give you a burn (sunburn being something everyone has experienced). But we don't get stories of people getting moon burn from the light reflected off the moon. In part because the amount of energy per square meter in moonlight is about 2.3 million times less powerful than sunlight. We are evolved to live in an environment that is flooded with EM energy in a variety of bands. The study showed that if your cellphone put out 100x the amount of energy it does, there might be a small measurable effect on cancer rates. We know melanoma rates go up if you get a lot of sunburn (which is EM exposure). The energy per square meter in sunlight is 8 orders of magnitude higher than the energy per square meter from a cell phone. Bottom line, there is still no mechanism, study, or theory, that supports a hypothesis that 1 watt cellphones cause cancer.
hwillis 8y ago
> Whether the effect was large or small, there is a fundamental scientific question: how does non-ionizing radiation cause cancer? The fact that it can requires better models of how EM waves and biological matter interact. This is wrong. Non-ionizing radiation obviously causes cancer. "Ionizing radiation" for photons is (somewhat arbitrarily) defined as photons with >10 eV. That's far ultraviolet, far beyond anything in sunlight that has passed the atmosphere. But sunlight still gives you cancer. There are any number of ways that cells and genes can be disrupted by non-ionizing radiation. Just disrupting in-progress reactions can eventually damage cells, and that doesn't require anything nearly as dramatic as ionizing an atom. At the bare minimum, all waves >1 GHz interact with and are absorbed by biological matter. However the low-microwave frequencies from cell phones and wifi are hugely innocuous in addition to being crazy low power. They practically only interact through heating. I'm about as worried by the visible radiation from a cell phone's screen as I am from the transmitter. Hell, I'm pretty positive the local heating from the CPU getting hot will be more likely to contribute to cancer.
pasbesoin 8y ago
Microwave and other non-ionizing energy can be used to influence rate of reaction. Chemical reactions depend upon orientation and bond state/dynamics, that are influenced (not necessarily broken, but, say, "flexed", stretched, etc.) by resonant radiation. I remember learning about this decades ago, in college chemistry. (G\heck, getting out of the "radio" frequencies, many people have had photo-sensitive reactions demonstrated to them, for this very reason.) Well, say you have a chemical reaction that presents a certain risk level. And say non-ionizing radiation in your environment influences that reaction. Take it a step further down: Temperature influences rate of reaction. We certainly know that non-ionizing radiation effects temperature of absorptive materials. Look at another aspect of this: We have chemical compounds that are strongly believed -- known either through strong empirical observation or deduction of the specific chemical mechanisms -- to cause cancer. They appear or are known to be doing so without the assistance of ionizing radiation. Ergo, this effect consists of chemical reactions. We know that non-ionizing radiation can influence chemical reactions. We are nowhere near a comprehensive catalogue, much less understanding, of all the chemical reactions in the body. Chemicals that we and our natural environment evolved, much less chemicals we've manufactured and introduced into our environment. Can we say that non-ionizing radiation cannot cause or promote cancer? I don't think so.
grecy 8y ago
> how does non-ionizing radiation cause cancer? It's the same way that DDT caused cancer when it was first used. It's the same way that BPA caused fertility problems for decades, and it's the same way that BPA substitutes look to be causing fertility problems now. What way is that? We simply don't understand what's going on, and it's important that we acknowledge that. Our current scientific model says "we have spent decades and millions of dollars trying to see if cell phones cause cancer, and we have never found a link, therefore cellphones don't cause cancer." Which is exactly the same as saying "we have spent decades and millions of dollars searching for little green men, and we have never found any, therefore we are 100% they don't exist." Both of those statements are utter nonsense. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We honestly have no idea if little green men exist somewhere in the universe, and we also have no idea if cell phones cause cancer. We think we know, but we're just doing our best to look at evidence. You can rest assured that in ~50 years we'll look back and say "Of Course! Those scientists in 2019 were so simplistic and quaint!" "But don't worry, now it's 2070, we know so much better, so that new-fangled thing you have is perfectly safe!"
- balfirevic 8y ago
  > Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Despite what you may have been led to believe, absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence. More details here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mnS2WYLCGJP2kQkRn/absence-of-evidence-is-evidence-of-absence https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mnS2WYLCGJP2kQkRn/absence-of...
- GuB-42 8y ago
  Not the same thing as little green men. We have data involving a significant fraction of humanity and we didn't find a link. Cell phone aren't rare and cancer isn't rare. It means we have a very good statistical model. Cell phones have been widespread for 20 years now, which is less than we might want but still not bad. Furthermore, fundamental physics go against the idea that cell phones cause cancer. We have more or less proved that cell phones don't cause enough cancer to matter. For little green men, we can only search the tiniest fraction of space, and we have only a single data point: us. The only vaguely statical model we have come from the Drake equation, and it has more holes than Swiss cheese. It would be laughed off by the scientific community if it wasn't so exciting.
tzs 8y ago
It's also possible that it increases cancer rates without causing cancer. Instead, it might be preventing the body from stopping new cancers that otherwise would have been stopped. The observed cancer rate will be roughly the difference between the rates of cancers that start and cancers that are stopped by either the cell's internal repair mechanism or by the body's mechanisms for finding and killing bad cells. Something that affects the observed rate could be acting on either side of the difference.

whatshisface 8y ago

>The rodents in the studies were exposed to radiation nine hours a day for two years — far longer even than heavy users of cellphones. What about one hour per day over 18 years?

mooneater 8y ago
Ah, for that case -- we are the experiment
chiefalchemist 8y ago
If second hand smoke is unhealthy, what about "second hand" radiation?
mtgx 8y ago
Also, I assume they are referring to humans not keeping the cellphone 9h per day close to their brain. First off, many do in fact sleep with their phones close to their head these days, and second, what about the phone being close to the body/male testicles (in the pocket) throughout the day? One other thing, wasn't the issue also not just with the phones themselves, but with the cell towers? I believe 5G towers need to be installed every 300 meters. If the towers are indeed dangerous due to how much power they radiate, then how many people will that affect in busy centers/apartment buildings?
- StavrosK 8y ago
  Our phones should just turn off the radio when we're on WiFi. It's not like anyone I know actually uses their phone for calls that much.
  - wheelie_boy 8y ago
    Depends on carrier availability, but I believe Wifi Calling does this.
    - StavrosK 8y ago
      Oh, right, my carrier doesn't support that for my device yet, so I forgot about it. Does it turn the radio all the way off? I guess it would, since WiFi will just supplant all the cell radio's functions.

adamnemecek 8y ago

Have you ever spent some time on your cell phone and then felt this "deep warmth" in your head? I've felt the same warmth after having gone through a "full body scanner". I've mentioned this to a coworker before and he laughed at me. Then I heard him be on the phone for like 30 minutes and during lunch he mentioned that his head was feeling this weird warmth. I repeated my theory and asked him what are the odds of his phone usage and the warmth being unrelated. I've never seen him not use headphones when being on the phone since then.

uw_rob 8y ago
In the politest way possible, and without dismissing your feelings, it seems that you have discovered the placebo effect in action.
- adamnemecek 8y ago
  http://weeksmd.com/2013/03/does-your-cell-phone-heat-up-your-head/ http://weeksmd.com/2013/03/does-your-cell-phone-heat-up-your... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6071445/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6071445/
  - canhascodez 8y ago
    The blog post is not credible. The author does not provide evidence for stating that heating tissue causes harm. The scientific paper describes heating of almost the exact magnitude as normal diurnal body temperature variation.
RL_Quine 8y ago
This is a nocebo effect. The two things you just described aren’t even in the same ballpark of RF frequency. The brain doesn’t have any way of measuring pain; let alone temperature. Brain surgery can be done with the patient awake in desirable situations as a direct result of this.
- jobigoud 8y ago

mooneater 8y ago

2-3% vs 0 in control for brain tumors, 5-7% vs 0 in control for heart tumors. That does not sound ambiguous. > The highest level was four times higher than the permitted maximum. That's still not much of a safety factor.

copperx 8y ago
This is the first time I hear about heart cancer.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

chiefalchemist 8y ago

> "But the results apply only to male rats and involve radio frequencies long out of routine use." "For decades, health experts have struggled to determine whether or not cellphones can cause cancer. On Thursday, a federal agency released the final results of what experts call the world’s largest and most costly experiment to look into the question. The study originated in the Clinton administration, cost $30 million and involved some 3,000 rodents" World's largest? Most costly? And more or less not applicable to current reality? It is exactly things such as this that trigger the general public to mistrust government and mistrust science. What's most unnerving is the gov and the science expected the public to not respond as expected.

mullingitover 8y ago

Did they account for the gender of the researchers in this study?

uw_rob 8y ago
Yes. Some key quotes about this: > The female rats did not show evidence of a link between the radiation and such tumors. > Experts say it is not unusual for cancer patterns to vary between sexes in both people and animals, including the study’s mice and rats.
- byproxy 8y ago
  Operative word being "researchers", here. Apparently the gender of researchers conducting experiments on rats has shown to change outcomes : https://www.nature.com/news/male-researchers-stress-out-rodents-1.15106 https://www.nature.com/news/male-researchers-stress-out-rode...
- canhascodez 8y ago
  You misread, I think. They were referring to cases where the gender of the researcher has inadvertently skewed results: [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/10/577046624/a-scientists-gender-can-skew-research-results https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/10/5770466...

neuronexmachina 8y ago

The actual study findings: https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.html https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/index.htm... From the fact sheet: "Rats and mice were exposed to RFR in special chambers for up to two years, or most of their natural lives. NTP scientists looked for a range of cancers and noncancer health effects. Exposure to RFR began in the womb for rats and at 5-6 weeks old for mice. The RFR exposure was intermittent, 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off, totaling about 9 hours each day. The RFR levels ranged from 1.5 to 6 watts per kilogram of body weight in rats, and 2.5 to 10 watts per kilogram in mice. The chambers were shielded rooms with a transmitting antenna that radiated RFR fields, plus rotating stirrers that generated a uniform field.4,5 Pilot studies established field strengths that did not raise animal body temperatures excessively.6 The rats and mice were exposed to whole body RFR at frequencies of 900 and 1900 megahertz, respectively, from two technologies – Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). NTP and RFR experts from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the IT’IS Foundation designed and built the chambers specifically for these studies. " Also: "Were there any surprise findings? NTP found longer lifespans among the exposed male rats. This may be explained by an observed decrease in chronic kidney problems that are often the cause of death in older rats"

ChuckMcM 8y ago
I particularly like "...strengths that did not raise animal body temperatures excessively." No sense microwaving the rats to death. For a 70kg person, that exposure (using the rat scale, 105 - 420 watts) for your entire life. Vs a cell phone which has an effective radiated power ERP of about 1 watt[1]. So somewhere between 1% and .25% of the power. Cell phone signals fall off with the square of the distance so the bulk of the power of a cellphones RF energy that you are exposed to comes from the handset. [1] "Meanwhile, the total power emitted from the cell phone itself ranges from 0.75 to 1 watt. According to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), this is an acceptably safe amount of power for a cell phone since their cut-off or specific absorption rate is only 1.6 watts per kilogram (W/kg). As a result, the power radiated from a cell phone is considered as non-ionizing as opposed to ionizing." -- https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/EbruBek.shtml https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/EbruBek.shtml

Reason077 8y ago

”the rat study examined the effects of a radio frequency associated with an early generation of cellphone technology, one that fell out of routine use years ago.” In some parts of the world (UK, Europe, Asia, South Africa, Nigeria, Peru), the 900Mhz GSM band is now being reused as LTE band 8.

kopo 8y ago

Man can you imagine if 1 billion people end up with brain tumors. How would that even get handled? I have no idea how hard tumor surgery is but I am guessing hospitals will have to be turned into large Foxconn type factories or something.

dcow 8y ago
Have you ever been to a “Foxconn type factory”? I’m not sure it’s exactly the picture you’re trying to paint.
copperx 8y ago
The only positive would be the trillions of dollars that would be dedicated to brain tumour research.
hammock 8y ago
Or at that point, they could just turn the Foxconn factories into hospitals, as I'm guessing the demand for cell phones will have plummeted.

mtgx 8y ago

> Current cellphones represent a fourth generation, known as 4G, and 5G phones are expected to debut around 2020. They employ much higher frequencies, and these radio waves are far less successful at penetrating the bodies of humans and rats, scientists say. I'm confused by this statement. 4G uses even lower frequencies than 900 MHz, and this range up to 1900MHz will continue to be used for decades more, 5G or not. As for 5G itself, as I mentioned in another comment, there's also the issue of carriers needing to install many more towers, which I believe are cancer-causing for anyone living in the immediate area due to the power they radiate. I also imagine the 5G towers will use much more power than say 3G or 4G powers because if 5G wireless tech can't pass easily through objects, then you bet the carriers are going to "maximize" the distance. How? Through more power. So I doubt 5G will be much safer overall. In fact, I'm willing to bet it will be significantly less safe than previous wireless technologies. So to ensure companies like Qualcomm and U.S. carriers don't get away with causing millions to die "because we found out too late", like this NYT article seems to be implying about the previous tech, we should already start enforcing laws or starting lawsuits against them and make them pay out billions, if evidence is indeed found (whether through more studies, or through discovery of what the company employees knew about these issues) that their tech was harmful to humans.

driverdan 8y ago
> which I believe are cancer-causing for anyone living in the immediate area due to the power they radiate. I downvoted you because there is no evidence of this. You also state they wiull "use more power" but power output is regulated by the FCC.
- mooneater 8y ago
  I for one much appreciate downvoters sharing their reasons
  - driverdan 8y ago
    I usually reply with my reason, especially if it may not be obvious to the OP.

DonHopkins 8y ago

Nothing to worry about: Congress will simply pass a law that makes it illegal to get brain cancer from cell phones. Problem solved!

Leary 8y ago

I'm not sure if I'm being practical or silly, but is there a cell phone cover that would minimize such radiation?

mataug 8y ago
Any cover which would reduce the amount of radiation would probably also interfere with the signal strength, which in-turn would also affect the battery life of the phone
mike22223333 8y ago
Faraday cage.
- justinmchase 8y ago
  How about a brain coat? http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html
lstodd 8y ago
Just turn on the airplane mode. And turn off the wifi.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
The practical way to mitigate exposure would be to use a headset and keep the actual phone away from your body when possible. Any sort of cover over the phone itself would cause it to lose reception.
driverdan 8y ago
This isn't something to worry about unless you're using your phone for 9h a day and have boosted the power output beyond the legal limit. Even then there isn't an explanation as to how it would cause cancer.
- vertexFarm 8y ago
  Unpopular but entirely correct. The study used power up to ten watts per kilogram. Your phone uses around a watt or less compared to your whole body mass. Let's say the average of 62 kilos. Your exposure is less than a fiftieth of what was produced in the experiment, probably less because you aren't irradiated 24 hours a day--you take it off your person to charge at some point. And the radio produces far less wattage when it's idle, which is going to be the vast majority of your day. Compared to the amount the rats were getting constantly, this would be a truly minuscule fraction of exposure over time. Even with such extraordinary amplitude, the correlation was very slight. Trust me, everyone has much bigger health risks to worry about than radio. If you've ever had a drink in your life you've done worse.

mike22223333 8y ago

The government should outlaw the link between them.

DINKDINK 8y ago

How many studies were run that /didn't/ find any evidence? If that fact isn't included in the conclusion then this could be accidental p-value hacking.

isomorph 8y ago

Check this out for some meta stuff on the possible link between mobile phones and acoustic neuroma https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-exposure/cellular-phones.html https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-exposu... Anecdotally - doctors believe it may be a cause, scientists don't

diminoten 8y ago

It's not great news, this study. It could be wrong, it could be inapplicable to reality, it could be a lot of things that mitigate the results in one way or another. But I think we can all agree that it would have been nicer to hear that there was "No Evidence" of a link.

feefie 8y ago

If you're concerned at all and interested in some safety tips (from the California Department of Public Health, page last updated December 2017): 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... https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/pages/nr17-086.aspx https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/pages/nr17-086.aspx

miles 8y ago

The World Health Organization back in 2011: WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.h... > 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.

saulrh 8y ago
Classified in IARC 2B, which also includes things like pickled vegetables, magnets, coffee, sassafras, styrene, and ginkgo extract. Also aflatoxin M1 (LD50 ~300 ug/kg), vanadium(V) oxide (LD50 ~10 mg/kg inhaled), HIV, and nitrogen mustards (chemotherapy drugs that also happen to be classified and stockpiled as chemical weapons). Even the items that CNN picked out, the cancer risk from those is the least of your worries. I won't call the 2B category "useless", since it actually is a list of compounds that might theoretically (but have not been shown to) cause cancer, but, well...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jgamman 8y ago

At this point in time it's not really relevant to say cellphone vs no-cellphone. It's death by cellphone vs saved by cellphone ie, you need to compare how many people have been able to call for help in an emergency, get a taxi rather than drink driving etc because they had access to a phone in their pocket. It's like comparing new drugs to the best off-patent generic, not a placebo sugar pill.

bencollier49 8y ago

So what sort of exposure does one get from standing near a mobile phone base station mast?

senectus1 8y ago

meh i'm safe... my phone is always in my hands and I use bluetooth 18 hours a day every day. Thats safe right?

sjg007 8y ago

Big market for faraday cage pocket liners now! Obviously they will have to leave the open air side on shielded to get reception.