6 ms·

Scientists Sue FCC for Ignoring Cell Phone Radiation Risk

24 points by elorant 7y ago

AWildC182 7y ago
RF software person here. I strongly encourage anyone reading this headline to take it with a MASSIVE grain of salt. There hasn't been any conclusive science on the issue and people aren't dropping dead from cell phone death rays left and right. The RF emitted by cell phones and even 5G systems is many orders of magnitude lower energy than the light you're exposed to all day. The only connection we know of at the moment would be through RF heating but that requires way more radiated power than anything you will likely interact with unless you stick your head in a microwave oven. Edit: also, things RF can interact with are dependent on feature size. 5GHz has a wavelength of ~6cm so in the same way that you can't see a virus with a microscope because it's too small for light to interact with, it's just not going to be able to cause localized heating on anything smaller than about 3cm. The singular scientist in the article is mostly just taking issue with the testing methodology and wants software to minimize RF emissions to the lowest level possible for communication which is already the case as otherwise your battery would be depleted very rapidly.
- carapace 7y ago
  > There hasn't been any conclusive science on the issue Isn't that the reason for the suit? > ”The FCC has for years failed to protect public health by relying on 24-year-old safety tests designed when phones were the size of a shoe and used by few,” Davis told Law&Crime via email. ”We filed this appeal in order to insist that the agency take full measure of the U.S. government and other scientific evidence that cellphone radiation can be harmful.” > Davis continued, noting the FCC’s hands-off approach to cell phone-related regulation over the last three presidential administrations. > ”The agency has dismissed hundreds of scientific studies submitted to its inquiry on wireless radiation and the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and others, without providing any rationale for doing so,”
  - bluGill 7y ago
    The suit should be dismissed based on that. What he wants is the constitutional job of congress to decide.
  - AWildC182 7y ago
    That's not really how science works. You can't prove anything doesn't cause cancer in any way, but nobody has been able to demonstrate RF causing cancer. If you just assume everything causes cancer then you get California prop 65 style warnings on EVERYTHING and nobody takes anything seriously anymore.
    - carapace 7y ago
      > nobody has been able to demonstrate RF causing cancer Like how nobody was able to demonstrate that smoking causes cancer? Or how nobody was able to demonstrate how leaded gasoline was bad?
      - AWildC182 7y ago
        In both of those cases an causal link was established. Unless you have actual evidence cell phones cause cancer you can't say something is bad because you feel like it might be bad in the same way you can't say vaccines are evil because they feel like they might be bad.
        carapace 7y ago
        > In both of those cases an causal link was established. Eventually, after science, and decades of politics and deliberate disinformation. Look we know light pollution is a thing, right? And these transmitters are lights, right? To me it seems unscientific to think that these lights don't cause some sort of pollution just because they don't tickle the cells in our retinas. > Unless you have actual evidence cell phones cause cancer you can't say something is bad because you feel like it might be bad in the same way you can't say vaccines are evil because they feel like they might be bad. I hope it's clear that I am pro-science, and want more science, not less. You can't find evidence of a causal link between EM transmitters and cancer (or other problems) if you're not looking, or ignoring the people who are looking, which is the point of the lawsuit.
- m-watson 7y ago
  Yea it seems like this person has a history of potentially controversial claims and not always the best science [0][1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devra_Davis#controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devra_Davis#controversies [1] https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-disconnect-between-cell-phone-fears-and-science/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-disconnect-between-cell-p...
ars 7y ago
"Unlike France and Israel, many Americans are ignorant of the fact that phones are two-way microwave radios that are tested while held inches away from the body." Curious what's different in France and Israel that they get called out special? Don't they sell the same phones there?
- zadkey 7y ago
  Agreed, this article could have gone into much greater depth on this point.
- lioeters 7y ago
  A quick search brought up this possibly relevant snippet: > The World Health Organisation in 2011 [classified] mobile phone radiation as a “possible” human carcinogen and the governments of the United Kingdom, France and Israel issued warnings against mobile phone use by children. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/14/mobile-phones-cancer-inconvenient-truths https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/14/mobile-ph...
godelski 7y ago
This comes up all the time and every time it's debunked. Did something change? As someone who's worked on radiation shielding, my understanding is that rf doesn't really heart up cells enough to cause lasting damage. I mean this isn't even ionizing radiation. The sun puts out A TON of rf radiation all day and it's the UV that causes skin damage. So did something change?
- deftnerd 7y ago
  I don't personally believe that non-ionizing radiation can cause any damage, but if I put on my "brainstorming" hat, I can think of some things to test to at least rule them out. Non-ionizing radiation doesn't have the power necessary to remove charged particles like electrons from atoms, but it does have the energy necessary to physically move or manipulate atoms. It's probably not enough to actually remove atoms from molecules (although, I'm curious how much energy would be necessary to do that)... But, if certain atoms are able to have their motion or position in molecules affected, even in minute amounts, could that affect biological processes such as the energy necessary for cellular machinery to split DNA? Or to work with RNA? Or could it affect protein folding? Just how sensitive is our biological machinery to small adjustments of those reliable constants? And would that cause any problems, or just make our cellular machinery use a tiny bit more or less ATP? Overall, I think the cellular processes in all the life on earth are likely very robust. the tiny amount of inefficiencies (possibly) brought on due to an increasing background RF level likely has no effect at all, but it wouldn't hurt to check it out. It would be like asking "how does the introduction of a single drop of water in a car gas tank affect performance". The answer is probably "pretty much not at all", but it gives an opportunity to design some exciting and useful testing methods that could be used for other purposes in other experiments. Learning how to determine energy used by cellular machinery with that kind of precision could be very useful for a lot of biological science and drug research. Learning how, and what kind, of RF can affect different atomic bonds might yield useful information like how to slightly strengthen or weaken molecules temporarily, which might open up possible chemical reactions that were previously "almost possible".
briefcomment 7y ago
I don't know what to think, and there is likely tons of misinformation on both sides from perverse incentives. For anything that may have long term effects from chronic exposure, as opposed to obvious effects from acute exposure, there is always going to be an uphill battle to correctly regulate it. That's sad. Wish more decision makers would take the precautionary principle to heart.
unlinked_dll 7y ago
What is a Nobel co-laureate? I can't find any information that the person mentioned has been awarded a Nobel prize.
- briefcomment 7y ago
  The climate change panel she was a part of won the peace prize in 2007. https://www.un.org/en/sections/nobel-peace-prize/intergovernmental-panel-climate-change-ipcc-and-albert-arnold-al-gore-jr/index.html https://www.un.org/en/sections/nobel-peace-prize/intergovern...
- 1980phipsi 7y ago
  Found another article [1] that says she was a lead author on IPCC, so she is counting the 2007 award. Wikipedia mentions a specific IPCC report [2]. She is listed in Chapter 8 as one of many of the lead authors. [1] https://www.greenamerica.org/do-cell-phones-cause-cancer/our-interview-dr-devra-davis-0 https://www.greenamerica.org/do-cell-phones-cause-cancer/our... [2] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/WGIII_TAR_full_report.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/WGIII_TAR_fu...
- duskwuff 7y ago
  A misrepresentation. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, not to the members of the panel (like this scientist).
zadkey 7y ago
This article would be massively better if it cited some of the studies that the scientists were using in their argument. Leaving out these important details can unfairly undermine their argument.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  As it should, since they have no hard evidence.
kstrauser 7y ago
"Nobel co-laureate Devra Davis" is interesting, as it's not mentioned on her Wikipedia page. Factually, she was one of 400 scientists in the group that was co-awarded the 2007 Peace Price (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Nobel_Peace_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Nobel_Peace_Prize). Which is still pretty cool, mind you, and far above any award I've ever gotten! But I still think that description is a little disingenuous, as I think it was meant to imply that she and a few coworkers were awarded a prize for work they'd personally done.
- duskwuff 7y ago
  It's outright misleading. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was a co-recipient of the 2007 Peace Prize, has specifically stated that the the prize "was awarded to the IPCC as an organization, and not to any individual associated with the IPCC", and that "it is incorrect to refer to any IPCC official, or scientist who worked on IPCC reports, as a Nobel laureate or Nobel Prize winner". For a member of the IPCC to describe themselves as a "Nobel co-laureate" or "a Nobel Prize-winning scientist" borders on fraudulent misrepresentation. -- https://web.archive.org/web/20150525014000/http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/nobel/Nobel_statement_final.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20150525014000/http://www.ipcc.c...
  - garmaine 7y ago
    Wouldn’t the Nobel committee be the one to decide on that?
    - duskwuff 7y ago
      The Nobel Committee has never awarded a prize to more than three recipients. It would have been highly irregular for the committee to award a prize jointly to a panel of hundreds of scientists.
      - garmaine 7y ago
        That’s missing the point. What does it mean to award a prize to a committee of scientists? Only the Nobel Committee can say because they awarded it.
bluGill 7y ago
Anyone can sue for anything, and it is a jury who decides not sound science. Thus this means nothing, and the result - either way - means nothing. A few groups are trying to fight that with some success. Doctors often lose malpractice suits even when they did follow best practice because tears mean more than best practice in court, so they tend to speak up. The supreme court has overturned some lawsuits because some testimony wasn't scientifically accepted fact. However in the end tears are worth more to a jury than facts which means the truth isn't a defense in court.
deftnerd 7y ago
I'm of the personal belief that most likely, non-ionizing radiation has no affect on living tissue, but I don't see anything wrong with more open and peer-reviewed research into the subject. It would be nice to know what dangers the most extreme amounts of non-ionizing radiation causes living tissue and biological systems to at least get a modern perspective on the range that things are finally being affected (if at all). Then we'll be able to more easily say "no effects were found until X amount of energy, and this phone puts out 0.000004% of that" to calm the public down. Until there is a documented reference point that is actually dangerous, people are hesitant to believe any figures showing how safe something is.
- bluGill 7y ago
  I see something wrong with more research: opportunity cost. All the scientist taking time to study this are not spending their time on paths of research that could result in some new knowledge.
_bxg1 7y ago
Everyone has had smartphones for 10 years, cell phones for 20 years. There's a massive sample group. If they caused cancer there would be an incredibly obvious global uptick in people getting cancer around their ear and/or hands.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  It's like the second coming of Jesus. When a group says it'll definitely happen next week, they get breathless reporting. Then it doesn't happen - do they realise they know nothing? Nope, they're now convinced it'll be in two weeks time, rinse and repeat. Religious movements have been known to spend a whole lifetime saying Jesus is definitely coming next week, only to then go er, actually maybe the week after. You won't find any where the group of believers went "We were wrong". That's hard for individual people and essentially impossible for groups. Even actual scientists are not always great at this. Michelson-Morley (the experiment to look for the aether against which all things have absolute position) is the best example I can think of scientists going "OK, we were wrong" (there is no absolute position, see Einstein) but there are lots where all you see is incremental shifts to be gradually less wrong, one scientist at a time, nobody outright saying (metaphorically) that Jesus isn't coming.
jwkane 7y ago
Note -- nobel peace prize 2007 as part of the Gore team for work on climate change. There is no implied credibility regarding RF or biology.

24 points by elorant 7y ago

RF software person here. I strongly encourage anyone reading this headline to take it with a MASSIVE grain of salt. There hasn't been any conclusive science on the issue and people aren't dropping dead from cell phone death rays left and right. The RF emitted by cell phones and even 5G systems is many orders of magnitude lower energy than the light you're exposed to all day. The only connection we know of at the moment would be through RF heating but that requires way more radiated power than anything you will likely interact with unless you stick your head in a microwave oven. Edit: also, things RF can interact with are dependent on feature size. 5GHz has a wavelength of ~6cm so in the same way that you can't see a virus with a microscope because it's too small for light to interact with, it's just not going to be able to cause localized heating on anything smaller than about 3cm. The singular scientist in the article is mostly just taking issue with the testing methodology and wants software to minimize RF emissions to the lowest level possible for communication which is already the case as otherwise your battery would be depleted very rapidly.

carapace 7y ago
> There hasn't been any conclusive science on the issue Isn't that the reason for the suit? > ”The FCC has for years failed to protect public health by relying on 24-year-old safety tests designed when phones were the size of a shoe and used by few,” Davis told Law&Crime via email. ”We filed this appeal in order to insist that the agency take full measure of the U.S. government and other scientific evidence that cellphone radiation can be harmful.” > Davis continued, noting the FCC’s hands-off approach to cell phone-related regulation over the last three presidential administrations. > ”The agency has dismissed hundreds of scientific studies submitted to its inquiry on wireless radiation and the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and others, without providing any rationale for doing so,”
- bluGill 7y ago
  The suit should be dismissed based on that. What he wants is the constitutional job of congress to decide.
- AWildC182 7y ago
  That's not really how science works. You can't prove anything doesn't cause cancer in any way, but nobody has been able to demonstrate RF causing cancer. If you just assume everything causes cancer then you get California prop 65 style warnings on EVERYTHING and nobody takes anything seriously anymore.
  - carapace 7y ago
    > nobody has been able to demonstrate RF causing cancer Like how nobody was able to demonstrate that smoking causes cancer? Or how nobody was able to demonstrate how leaded gasoline was bad?
    - AWildC182 7y ago
      In both of those cases an causal link was established. Unless you have actual evidence cell phones cause cancer you can't say something is bad because you feel like it might be bad in the same way you can't say vaccines are evil because they feel like they might be bad.
      - carapace 7y ago
        > In both of those cases an causal link was established. Eventually, after science, and decades of politics and deliberate disinformation. Look we know light pollution is a thing, right? And these transmitters are lights, right? To me it seems unscientific to think that these lights don't cause some sort of pollution just because they don't tickle the cells in our retinas. > Unless you have actual evidence cell phones cause cancer you can't say something is bad because you feel like it might be bad in the same way you can't say vaccines are evil because they feel like they might be bad. I hope it's clear that I am pro-science, and want more science, not less. You can't find evidence of a causal link between EM transmitters and cancer (or other problems) if you're not looking, or ignoring the people who are looking, which is the point of the lawsuit.
m-watson 7y ago
Yea it seems like this person has a history of potentially controversial claims and not always the best science [0][1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devra_Davis#controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devra_Davis#controversies [1] https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-disconnect-between-cell-phone-fears-and-science/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-disconnect-between-cell-p...

ars 7y ago

"Unlike France and Israel, many Americans are ignorant of the fact that phones are two-way microwave radios that are tested while held inches away from the body." Curious what's different in France and Israel that they get called out special? Don't they sell the same phones there?

zadkey 7y ago
Agreed, this article could have gone into much greater depth on this point.
lioeters 7y ago
A quick search brought up this possibly relevant snippet: > The World Health Organisation in 2011 [classified] mobile phone radiation as a “possible” human carcinogen and the governments of the United Kingdom, France and Israel issued warnings against mobile phone use by children. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/14/mobile-phones-cancer-inconvenient-truths https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/14/mobile-ph...

godelski 7y ago

This comes up all the time and every time it's debunked. Did something change? As someone who's worked on radiation shielding, my understanding is that rf doesn't really heart up cells enough to cause lasting damage. I mean this isn't even ionizing radiation. The sun puts out A TON of rf radiation all day and it's the UV that causes skin damage. So did something change?

deftnerd 7y ago
I don't personally believe that non-ionizing radiation can cause any damage, but if I put on my "brainstorming" hat, I can think of some things to test to at least rule them out. Non-ionizing radiation doesn't have the power necessary to remove charged particles like electrons from atoms, but it does have the energy necessary to physically move or manipulate atoms. It's probably not enough to actually remove atoms from molecules (although, I'm curious how much energy would be necessary to do that)... But, if certain atoms are able to have their motion or position in molecules affected, even in minute amounts, could that affect biological processes such as the energy necessary for cellular machinery to split DNA? Or to work with RNA? Or could it affect protein folding? Just how sensitive is our biological machinery to small adjustments of those reliable constants? And would that cause any problems, or just make our cellular machinery use a tiny bit more or less ATP? Overall, I think the cellular processes in all the life on earth are likely very robust. the tiny amount of inefficiencies (possibly) brought on due to an increasing background RF level likely has no effect at all, but it wouldn't hurt to check it out. It would be like asking "how does the introduction of a single drop of water in a car gas tank affect performance". The answer is probably "pretty much not at all", but it gives an opportunity to design some exciting and useful testing methods that could be used for other purposes in other experiments. Learning how to determine energy used by cellular machinery with that kind of precision could be very useful for a lot of biological science and drug research. Learning how, and what kind, of RF can affect different atomic bonds might yield useful information like how to slightly strengthen or weaken molecules temporarily, which might open up possible chemical reactions that were previously "almost possible".

briefcomment 7y ago

I don't know what to think, and there is likely tons of misinformation on both sides from perverse incentives. For anything that may have long term effects from chronic exposure, as opposed to obvious effects from acute exposure, there is always going to be an uphill battle to correctly regulate it. That's sad. Wish more decision makers would take the precautionary principle to heart.

unlinked_dll 7y ago

What is a Nobel co-laureate? I can't find any information that the person mentioned has been awarded a Nobel prize.

briefcomment 7y ago
The climate change panel she was a part of won the peace prize in 2007. https://www.un.org/en/sections/nobel-peace-prize/intergovernmental-panel-climate-change-ipcc-and-albert-arnold-al-gore-jr/index.html https://www.un.org/en/sections/nobel-peace-prize/intergovern...
1980phipsi 7y ago
Found another article [1] that says she was a lead author on IPCC, so she is counting the 2007 award. Wikipedia mentions a specific IPCC report [2]. She is listed in Chapter 8 as one of many of the lead authors. [1] https://www.greenamerica.org/do-cell-phones-cause-cancer/our-interview-dr-devra-davis-0 https://www.greenamerica.org/do-cell-phones-cause-cancer/our... [2] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/WGIII_TAR_full_report.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/WGIII_TAR_fu...
duskwuff 7y ago
A misrepresentation. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, not to the members of the panel (like this scientist).

zadkey 7y ago

This article would be massively better if it cited some of the studies that the scientists were using in their argument. Leaving out these important details can unfairly undermine their argument.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
As it should, since they have no hard evidence.

kstrauser 7y ago

"Nobel co-laureate Devra Davis" is interesting, as it's not mentioned on her Wikipedia page. Factually, she was one of 400 scientists in the group that was co-awarded the 2007 Peace Price (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Nobel_Peace_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Nobel_Peace_Prize). Which is still pretty cool, mind you, and far above any award I've ever gotten! But I still think that description is a little disingenuous, as I think it was meant to imply that she and a few coworkers were awarded a prize for work they'd personally done.

duskwuff 7y ago
It's outright misleading. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was a co-recipient of the 2007 Peace Prize, has specifically stated that the the prize "was awarded to the IPCC as an organization, and not to any individual associated with the IPCC", and that "it is incorrect to refer to any IPCC official, or scientist who worked on IPCC reports, as a Nobel laureate or Nobel Prize winner". For a member of the IPCC to describe themselves as a "Nobel co-laureate" or "a Nobel Prize-winning scientist" borders on fraudulent misrepresentation. -- https://web.archive.org/web/20150525014000/http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/nobel/Nobel_statement_final.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20150525014000/http://www.ipcc.c...
- garmaine 7y ago
  Wouldn’t the Nobel committee be the one to decide on that?
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    The Nobel Committee has never awarded a prize to more than three recipients. It would have been highly irregular for the committee to award a prize jointly to a panel of hundreds of scientists.
    - garmaine 7y ago
      That’s missing the point. What does it mean to award a prize to a committee of scientists? Only the Nobel Committee can say because they awarded it.

bluGill 7y ago

Anyone can sue for anything, and it is a jury who decides not sound science. Thus this means nothing, and the result - either way - means nothing. A few groups are trying to fight that with some success. Doctors often lose malpractice suits even when they did follow best practice because tears mean more than best practice in court, so they tend to speak up. The supreme court has overturned some lawsuits because some testimony wasn't scientifically accepted fact. However in the end tears are worth more to a jury than facts which means the truth isn't a defense in court.

deftnerd 7y ago

I'm of the personal belief that most likely, non-ionizing radiation has no affect on living tissue, but I don't see anything wrong with more open and peer-reviewed research into the subject. It would be nice to know what dangers the most extreme amounts of non-ionizing radiation causes living tissue and biological systems to at least get a modern perspective on the range that things are finally being affected (if at all). Then we'll be able to more easily say "no effects were found until X amount of energy, and this phone puts out 0.000004% of that" to calm the public down. Until there is a documented reference point that is actually dangerous, people are hesitant to believe any figures showing how safe something is.

bluGill 7y ago
I see something wrong with more research: opportunity cost. All the scientist taking time to study this are not spending their time on paths of research that could result in some new knowledge.

_bxg1 7y ago

Everyone has had smartphones for 10 years, cell phones for 20 years. There's a massive sample group. If they caused cancer there would be an incredibly obvious global uptick in people getting cancer around their ear and/or hands.

tialaramex 7y ago
It's like the second coming of Jesus. When a group says it'll definitely happen next week, they get breathless reporting. Then it doesn't happen - do they realise they know nothing? Nope, they're now convinced it'll be in two weeks time, rinse and repeat. Religious movements have been known to spend a whole lifetime saying Jesus is definitely coming next week, only to then go er, actually maybe the week after. You won't find any where the group of believers went "We were wrong". That's hard for individual people and essentially impossible for groups. Even actual scientists are not always great at this. Michelson-Morley (the experiment to look for the aether against which all things have absolute position) is the best example I can think of scientists going "OK, we were wrong" (there is no absolute position, see Einstein) but there are lots where all you see is incremental shifts to be gradually less wrong, one scientist at a time, nobody outright saying (metaphorically) that Jesus isn't coming.

jwkane 7y ago

Note -- nobel peace prize 2007 as part of the Gore team for work on climate change. There is no implied credibility regarding RF or biology.