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Exposure to 835MHz RF-EMF induces hyperactivity and demyelination in mice (2017)
- XorNot 5y agoThe results here don't really make any sense, and as one study I'm pretty skeptical. People have been blasting mice with RF for decades and no consistent result like this is ever found upon replication. Of note: 6 mice in the experimental group is a very small sample size.
- jacobn 5y ago“C57BL/6 mice were exposed to 835 MHz RF-EMF at a specific absorption rate (SAR) of 4.0 W/kg for 5 hours/day during 12 weeks.” That’s a pretty high exposure?
- chaosmachine 5y agoIs it? The Pixel 6 has a SAR of 1.4 W/Kg.
- cpncrunch 5y agoMost of that will be blocked by the skull.
- asdff 5y agoBig assumption that all humans have an intact skull
- otherotherchris 5y agoI feel that this is an edge case that only applies to unencrypted radio transmission in Ukraine. Please get back on topic.
- scotty79 5y agoHeat from 1.4W/kg for an hour might be significantly easier to dissipate than 4W/kg for 5 continous hours. At least that's what the back of the envelope calculations seem to suggest.
- sras-me 5y agoWhy do you assume heat to be the bad guy here?
- XorNot 5y agoBecause chemically 835mhz is non ionizing radiation. It doesn't matter how much you pour in, electron and molecular orbitals will ignore it.
- sras-me 5y agoBy that logic photoelectricity should be impossible with non-ionising radiation, right?
- doikor 5y agoWe know that 835MHz is non-ionizing radiation so there isn’t really anything else than heat that it could do to cells.
- ruined 5y agoare you sure? cited studies by TFA seem to indicate other effects, such as immediate changes in dopamine, GABA, and NMDA https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15571980/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15571980/
- topspin 5y agoPlease provide a reference for that 1.4W/kg figure. 4.5kg human head would need 6.3W to see 1.4W/kg. A cell phone such as a pixel 6 is 2W and that power isn't all pointed directly at the head. I've found a FCC limit of 1.6W/kg. That's a limit, not what is actually experienced. Ok, so here is a list of mobile device figures: https://emfadvice.com/sar-ratings-radiation-levels-smartphones/ https://emfadvice.com/sar-ratings-radiation-levels-smartphon... Highest listed is One plus 7t Pro at 1.394W/kg. That's in the same order of magnitude as these as these NIH results. Perhaps if you need to use a mobile device for most of your waking hours try to keep it away from your head. Otherwise it's probably not a concern.
- zootboy 5y agoReference: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/10937646?hl=en https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/10937646?hl=en SAR is sort of a "maximum power density" measurement. It's not claiming to expose your entire head to that power density, just a small ~10 g measurement portion.
- Animats 5y agoThat's in the same order of magnitude as these as these NIH results. Yes. This is worrisome. The FCC limit is 1.6W/Kg.[1] Neural damage was observed in mice at 4W/Kg. Several high-end smartphones from Apple and Google get above 1W/Kg. Those are worst-case numbers for smartphones, says the FCC. Average values are lower. Worst case for cumulative transmit energy would probably be sustained heavy upload traffic, such as streaming outgoing HD video. Transmit power is highest when near the range limit for a cell tower, since the handset increases power when more range is needed. [1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/specific-absorption-rate-sar-cellular-telephones https://www.fcc.gov/general/specific-absorption-rate-sar-cel...
- ruined 5y agocheck out the works cited of TFA, many of them involve 1.4-1.6W/kg SAR
- otherotherchris 5y ago
- mhh__ 5y agoCitation? How does the phone have an exposure rated per kg?
- seszett 5y ago> In the countries where the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) limit is 1.6 W/kg averaged over one gram of tissue, the highest SAR values for this device type are 1.19 W/kg for Pixel 6 (G9S9B), 1.20 W/kg for Pixel 6 (GB7N6/GR1YH) and 1.11 W/kg for Pixel 6 Pro when used against head with no separation and 1.20 W/kg for Pixel 6 (G9S9B) or 1.20 W/kg for Pixel 6 (GB7N6/GR1YH) and 1.19 W/kg for Pixel 6 Pro when against body with 1.0 cm (0.4 in) separation. In the countries where the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) limit is 2.0 W/kg averaged over ten grams of tissue, the highest SAR values for this device type are 1.00 W/kg for Pixel 6 (GB7N6/GR1YH) and 0.99 W/kg for Pixel 6 Pro when used against head with no separation and 1.38 W/kg for Pixel 6 and 1.40 W/kg for Pixel 6 Pro when against body with 5 mm (0.2 in) separation. https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/10937646?hl=en-GB https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/10937646?hl=en-... Phone manufacturers are required to follow regulation in most countries on emissions with limits set in W/kg.
- hales 5y agoThis experiment seems hot. Scaled up to an approximate human mass: 4 W/kg * 70kg = 280W. Apparently an idling human burns very approximately about 80W ("basal metabolic rate").
- wtallis 5y agoI'm not sure they were testing with exposing the entire mouse to that intensity; they were specifically concerned with measuring the effects of that intensity of exposure on the cerebral cortex.
- scotty79 5y agoIt's still probably thermally cooking its brain.
- jrapdx3 5y agoAccording to the article thermal effects of the RF exposure were minimal to nil. There was evidence of damage to brain cells that was attributed to RF exposure. However mechanisms leading to damage within the cortical neurons aren't clear. The RF exposure induced intracellular responses to stress and damage to myelin sheaths, the latter was thought responsible for observed hyperactivity.
- namibj 5y agoOnly those parts of the body that happen to have good blood circulation or that are expected to need to sink a lot of heat have the structures necessary to couple significant EMF absorption into the main bloodstream "liquid cooling loop". For example, human eyeballs are really bad at it. Staring at a microwave that has been recklessly modified to run without door, or with a hole in the door, is most dangerous by turning the eye's inside which is similar to raw egg white into the cooked form: cooked egg white is unsuitable for a lens due to the very strong scattering from the coagulated proteins. I'm sure other temperature sensitive parts exist with poor cooling, as they're not naturally expected to be able to get dangerously hot without the surrounding tissue heating it. The lack of thermal effects they mentioned where whole body temperature; while hard to actually measure, I'd suggest thinking of the temperature of the blood in the arterial venous heart half when it comes to potential overtemperature. Yes, if the body as a whole has cooling issues, this blood that is about to enter the lungs (after coming from all around the body) is going to be overly hot. But if the bottleneck is the lack of blood vessel density in e.g. the eyeball, this temperature issue won't show up when measuring in the heart.
- bell-cot 5y agoAn older iPhone battery (not powering a huge screen, CPU, etc.) might have a 4Wh capacity, and be (claimed) good for 10 hours talking. Only a fraction of that goes to the radio signal, most of that signal not absorbed by the user's body, said body weighing many kg, etc. SO - actual exposure in human cellphone users is likely 2 or 3 orders of magnitude lower than in this experiment. Briefly put: Sunburns can be dangerous, but nobody gets a sunburn wearing SPF 250. Even if this experimental result is 100% correct, it does not prove any risk to normal cell phone users. (It would be interesting to look for effects in cell tower maintenance workers, and others who've generally received far higher intensities / doses.)
- upsidesinclude 5y agoThat was the total SAR for the entire cross section, not the specified tissue in question (2 orders of magnitude). Additionally, nearly everyone is in close proximity to multiple sources of EMF not their own phone solely. Working in an office with ten other people that has installed a cell phone tower will likely provide substantial EMF (2 orders of magnitude). 5G bands require much higher density tower placement due to the reduced effective range of mm wave. These all have overlap and are not being tested in any way after installation. There's clearly an effect. The question becomes how much of an effect are we currently living with and what are the limits that should be adopted.
- bell-cot 5y agoAs others have noted, scaling 4W/kg up to humans gives a heat input ~4 times what human office worker's base metabolic rate provides. It would be profoundly obvious if all those more-distant sources were actually pumping that much energy into office workers. 10% of 4W/kg would be close to the BMR heat input in many workers such as older women. At even 2% of 4W/kg, it would probably be cheaper to install Faraday cages around office buildings (bridged by low-power-inside repeaters) than it would be to pay the electric bills for increased AC use (needed to get office workers comfortable enough to be productive). Yes, there is health & safety research that needs to be done here. This particular study (mega-dose, low n, mice) is part of that. It's easily repeated at other frequencies, to compare effects. My prior comment suggested looking at a human population already receiving far-higher does of cell phone EMF. If you wanted a small control group, there's Green Bank ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bank%2C_West_Virginia#National_Radio_Quiet_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bank%2C_West_Virginia#Na... ).
- raverbashing 5y agoSounds like another bad-faith experiment designed to create controversy Same with "we gave rats massive amounts of artificial sweeteners and they have all kinds of health conditions" ok so maybe don't?
- szundi 5y agoAlternative title suggestion: Mice put in microwave showed symptoms of agitated behavior
- adrianN 5y agoThat seems like a reasonable thing to do in a study where you want to check whether there is any effect at all. You'd now do a followup study to see at which dosage you stop measuring the effect.
- throwanem 5y agoIt's twice the highest legal limit anywhere in the world.
- aphroz 5y agoI used to see the SAR in phone specs, but not anymore. I guess our phone is less stuck to our head since the smartphones?
- jjtheblunt 5y agoon iOS go to Settings / General / Legal & Regulatory and you can find that info. It's still a big regulatory deal.
- oofbey 5y agoWhat’s the chemical mechanism causing this? I thought that because these RF photons don’t have enough energy to break any bonds (so-called non-ionizing) that they should generally be assumed to be safe.
- kube-system 5y agonon-ionizing radiation can still impart heat, likely low risk of any bad effect, but it's something.
- sras-me 5y agoIt is not that you don't know that kills you, it is what you know for sure, that just ain't so.
- aeternum 5y agoI'd put my bet on the mechanism being simple heat. That never seems to be controlled-for in these high-energy non-ionizing RF experiments.
- jrapdx3 5y agoFWIW the researchers argued against the RF-induced damage being due to thermal effects. However, if not thermally-induced, how RF damages cells apparently is unknown and remains to be determined. But I can't think what else could be involved other than thermal damage. Thinking about it, I also wonder how much thermal stress is required to produce damage. If only a small increment in thermal energy at a micro-level or at particular chemical bonds is what happens, it would be a challenge to detect and measure such tiny, localized changes. Then again if the effect (that is, RF agitating some chemical entity) is small enough maybe calling it "thermal" wouldn't be exactly right. Will be very interesting to see how this line of research develops. In any case, a great question that requires a lot more work to decipher.
- aeternum 5y agoWe have plenty of real-world experiments. Military radio operators, research station personnel, air-traffic controllers. Even food-service personnel that work near a frequently in-use Microwave. They all have orders of magnitude more RF exposure than the average person and yet no statistically significant difference in health outcomes has been found. Contrast this with employees who worked closely with leaded gasoline, ionizing radiation, asbestos where the statistical signals are overwhelming.
- FrozenVoid 5y agoI've seen mobile phone users as distinctly different mentally, microwaving your brain all day can't be good, despite all these mental gymnastics about "non-ionizing radiation". I see this as 20th century shoe fitters using X-rays liberally, then discovering that X-rays aren't that good for you and cause cancer.
- mhh__ 5y agoShoe fitters never fitted shoes every few minutes. The sheer amount of people with likely no symptoms (i.e. people are looking for them, where are they) means that the harm per unit of exposure must be absolutely tiny.
- dehrmann 5y agoIt's not mental gymnastics at all. Numerous studies have failed to show a link between cell phone use and cancer, and the mechanism by which x-rays cause cancer doesn't work with higher-wavelength light. It just doesn't have enough energy to damage DNA. The obvious example is that UV is ionizing, but visible light is non-ionizing. Spend an hour in a tanning bed and there's obvious skin damage. Spend a day under office lights and there isn't.
- ornornor 5y ago> office lights Not to contradict your point but rater as a “did you know?”: typical office neon lights actually also emit UV and it can be a problem for artwork that hasn’t been framed using UV filtering glass as they turn this washed out blue shade over time as a result. I don’t think it damages skin anywhere near as much as actual sun rays but I was surprised to learn it anyway.
- Findecanor 5y agoIt is difficult to conduct a decent statistical study of cell phone radiation and health effects when there is practically no control group to compare with, and when society and technology changes faster than cancer develops. Several years ago, I read a study that had done animal testing to find that there could be a link between cell phone-type radiation and a weakened immune response against cancer. (all rats had cancer, but the radiated rats were worse off) But since then I have not seen any follow-up. The field is ... tainted, because of all the charlatans at the fringe. It is difficult to get funding for a serious study, and if you do conduct a study, people will not look at you with a mild eye no matter what: it could be a career-killer.
- sinuhe69 5y agoJust use your headphones and you’ll be fine. Who talks on the phones for hours day after day?
- sebmellen 5y agoI’m not sure exposing one’s gonads to RF-EMF is much better, if the phone is held in a pocket.
- throwanem 5y agoUnless it's a pocket in your jockeys, whatever's being emitted is getting soaked up by your thigh. (Or maybe your butt, but in that case the exposure is limited by your phone breaking in half as soon as you sit down.)
- phrasz 5y ago
- mhh__ 5y agoThere are a few papers along these lines. Lots of them really confuse 5G nuts because they mistake statistical significance (even if only just) for significance to humans. I sort of take it as a moral duty to try and point out that they're being lied to but it's very hard to talk to people who don't know the different between a strong magnetic field and a microwave, or seem to think a phased array is some kind of weapon One paper I read that makes me laugh, was one that showed that people who sleep next to their phones sleep less, which is apparently evidence that we should turn the 5G off apparently.
- doubtfuluser 5y ago#InMice… All said
- szundi 5y agoI am excited by the phone I use, but probably not the radio, but the sound waves carrying the exciting information is suspected to be the culprit
- lizardactivist 5y agoWhile the SAR is pretty high, and these are mice, that in itself doesn't imply that lower SARs have no effect on mice or other living beings, which some people seem to conclude. We are basically big lumps of bio-electric mass, it shouldn't be surprising that spending 24 hours a day in a mist of all kinds of high-frequency, penetrating EM fields would have an effect on our biology. And spare us the "so what's your solution, shut down all electrical gadgets?" type of replies. There are no immediate solutions, but it's still important to discuss the possible effects of EMR on living tissue.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- space_fountain 5y agoWell no, but this study absolutely doesn’t imply that it does. There’s decent evidence that all radio does to human, animals, etc, is heat them up. Obviously heating people up a lot will do bad things to them, but there’s no evidence Wi-Fi, cellphones or anything else radio related is hurting people
- lizardactivist 5y agoI think it's less about the heating of body tissue, but how EM fields affect the body's own bio-electric functions. There's no way getting around the fact that electrically charged particles are affected by EM fields.
- eesmith 5y agoAt that level of generality you need to remember that light from a lamp is also an EM field. Radiant heat from a fireplace is infrared - also an EM field. We know that UV light, which starts around 400 nm, causes damage beyond its heating effects, so yes, EM fields in general can be a problem. But 835 MHz is about 30 cm wavelength - far larger than the size of the cells, much less the molecules in the cell. With 25+ years of research, including epidemiological studies of people working with or living near high-power transmitters, there's very little evidence that RF causes problems beyond simple heating.
- mickelsen 5y agoCould this be the reason why whenever I'm holding a chinese Wi-fi videoscope I bought, my hand starts to feel numb after a few minutes using it? It's not just that it heats up, I think it's a different feeling than say holding a hot coffee cup for a long time, and can't quite rule out it's just the battery that powers it either, or that I'm practically holding the wifi chip very close while it's transmitting. But come on, it's such a tiny device!
- throwawayrf 5y agoBefore you reach for conclusions you should at least set up a double blind experiment. Set up 8 experiments 4 on and 4 off, have a friend either plug it in (or not) while you're in the other room and see if you can feel it when you go into the room.
- mickelsen 5y agoIt's battery powered and you only feel this numbness while operating it, on the hand you are using it, not the rest of the body. It stops once you turn it off. My girlfriend also commented on the heat, but it doesn't travel a distance other than 2-3cm, so it may be just the heat the chip/battery generates. It also seems to be a common complaint among buyers: newer generations (like some Bebird devices) advertise a "non-heating chip" on Alibaba. Just commented in case anyone out there tried one of these devices, they are usually not SAR rated at all and don't seek to meet industry standards, plus Wi-fi is a bigger deal than Bluetooth, otherwise everyone would be complaining about their bluetooth in-ear headsets.
- zalo 5y agoI've noticed Apple products can feel like they buzz when plugged in, but I assumed it was just the inverter and poor grounding... Do you think a multimeter or oscilloscope would be able to pick up the potential between the device and ground?
- eurasiantiger 5y agoIt could also be that the device is radioactive. Always check your China gadgets with a Geiger counter, there can be some nasty surprises.
- BezumnyiEgor 5y ago
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