Massive 15-year Study finds no link between cell phones, cancer
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Whenever someone talks about electro magnetic radiation from wifi or phones, I usually point out the massive ball of radiation in the sky that will burn their skin in 15 minutes of exposure and is known to cause cancers in millions of people. People tend to forget about that one when they are obsessing about low powered mobile devices.
Ionizing radiation is the main cancer culprit and you can be sure the sun emits far more such radiation - mainly in the form of UV rays - than your cell phone. Which is at frequency levels below visible - mainly microwaves I think.
There's also effects of the heat given off by the phone heating your head, but I ignore that.
Well, you can. That's the whole point.
You pose the hypothesis "unknown mechanisms in non-ionizing radiation cause cancer". Then you do the research, and then when you don't find the cancer effects, you rule out these "unknown mechanisms".
That's science.
> There's also effects of the heat given off by the phone heating your head, but I ignore that.
And so does everybody else, because heat doesn't cause cancer.
Additionally, the phone heats your head? Citation? And not just "well it's microwaves so it probably heats things around it by some billion-thousandth of a degree", but an actual citation of mobile phone radiation heating your head, preferably in a manner that is still somewhat significant when compared to the tiny temperature fluctuations caused by natural cell processes (as, you know, if a mitochondria generates more heat than a nearby phone, the point is probably moot, no?).
It would not surprise me if the temperature raise due to incepreased thermal insulation when using a mobile phone where higher than that 0.1 degree.
I thought you were mixing them up at first, but re-reading you did get it right. To clarify, in case anyone else got confused too:
UV is just above the visible spectrum in frequency.
Microwaves are below infrared, below visible.
(from Wikipedia) "Radiation on the short-wavelength [high frequency] end of the electromagnetic spectrum—high-frequency ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays—is ionizing, due to its composition of high-energy photons. Lower-energy radiation, such as visible light, infrared, microwaves, and radio waves, are not ionizing. The latter types of low-energy non-ionizing radiation may damage molecules, but the effect is generally indistinguishable from the effects of simple heating."
See here the EM spectrum for reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EM_Spectrum_Properties_edi...
And don't forget there are millions of people lining up every day to actually pay money to submit their body to uv radiation in tanning booths. The dangers are pretty well known now, but they're still around.
All I'm saying is that, like most paranoias, from sharks to terrorists and mobile phones along the way, the risk ratio is skewed when fantasy and imagination takes over cold hard facts.
Paranoia like this from the original WHO doc http://www.magdahavas.com/2010/12/02/are-smart-meters-safe/
and then there's whole orgs worried they're gonna get cancer http://stopsmartmeters.org/2011/08/11/smart-meters-not-green...
One random dude handed me a pamphlet about stopping the smart meters, citing that it was 10 feet from his head when he slept and that he'd have to find a new home if they actually install it.
I feel like I'm watching people make themselves crazy with panic over something that has little science to back it up.
Yes, there is a widespread belief amongst the general public that wi-fi and mobile phones are dangerous.
Note too that exercise also raises brain temp but your brain is quite able to regulate its temperature under normal conditions (e.g. no certain drugs or overly hot).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_heal...
- They only have subscriber data from 1987-1995, when almost nobody had mobile phones (7%), and they were so expensive to use that they were used rarely (mostly outdoors and in cars).
- But since then, 86% of the population has started to use mobile phones, and because they don't have tracking data for them, all of these mobile phone users are in the control group. So they're comparing exposed users to only-slightly-more exposed users (as I mention above, cell phones were rare and had quite expensive per-minute fees before 1995). They only know that most in the control group didn't have a mobile before 1995. Since then, they don't know how long any user in either group has used their mobile.
- During the period for which they have data (pre-1996) 30% of users were on corporate plans and couldn't be tracked--so the heaviest users were lumped in with the control group too.
- The 1987-1995 group mostly used analog phones, not today's GSM phones.
Still, earlier phone users have used their phones slightly more than non-users in aggregate, so this study is noteworthy despite the lumping of the 30% heaviest users with the controls and the massive cell phone use by both groups since 1995. You'd expect cancer rate to correlate with mobile phone exposure, and both groups are very large.
The suspected carcinogens are things that may or may not raise your chance of getting some particular form of cancer by a few percent. We'll likely never know whether some of these things really do cause cancer, because you're looking for tiny correlations in data which is already pretty sparse.
Anyway, either you'll get brain cancer or you won't. The difference made by using or not using a phone is not a significant factor in determining the way you die.
Unless, of course, you use it while driving. Heck, even using it while crossing the street has probably cost thousands of lives so far.
" electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobile phones alters the permeability of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), resulting in albumin extravasation immediately and 14 days after 2h of exposure."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19345073
So I don't think there will be a definitive answer on the safety of these devices for a while.
How they got it past the privacy officials I have no idea, you cannot normally get sensitive medical records on that many people.
Not exactly scientific, but I know a guy who's sperm count increased (enough to knock up his wife anyway) once he stopped carrying his phone in his pocket. Tim Ferriss, of 4-hour body fame, tested this and seems to agree. He mentions in his book that he now carries his phone on an arm-band.
The percentage that do not want to have a child, either accidently or on purpose, will be much higher. For that cohort, a low sperm count can only be a good thing.
I also hate the use of the word 'link' because it seems to imply causality in many people's minds. This is a correlational study - a finding either way is good for suggesting a hypothesis, but we cannot infer (in this case a lack of) cause and effect. There could easily be gigantic unknown confounding variables.
There could also be a very small minority of people very sensitive to radiation that can easily be brushed aside as outliers in these kinds of studies.
I am even more interested in any wifi studies now that I am constantly near wifi. But my guess is that wifi radiation is orders of magnitude less powerful than cellphone radiation so it won't be as great of a concern.
I'm really starting to loathe the thoughtless chants of "correlations doesn't imply causation"; it used to signal a deep understanding of science, now it tends to signal quite the opposite.
You shouldn't loath those thoughtless chants, you should embrace them. The first thing someone should say when presented with "linkage" is think, that is meaningless on its own.
The real problem is that there are so many scientists (people with the ability to conduct statistical analysis) and so much data, that every possible correlation is being discovered. Even correlations that have nothing to do with anything.
The best examples come from Finance, where the data has been more attainable, and where the rewards for finding real causality have been available longer and allowed for advanced computations on super computers before we all had excel (or put more useful statistical tool here).
One of the go to papers on Motley Fool's completely loosing stock selection strategy is here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=158409
There are lots of papers and examples in finance where people tried to find causality, but really only found correlation. Doing so is the best way to loose a ton of money.
It is also the best way to get people to do stuff you do/don't want them to do and it is the best way to stop progress.
So, don't make assumptions about causality, you should provide real evidence of causality beyond correlation if you write the word linkage.
Sorry, but that's exactly the sort of thoughtless repetition I'm talking about. You're in such a hurry to chant the mantra and wave your scienciness around you didn't even take the time to notice it was the precise opposite of the conversation at hand. Which is precisely what my complaint was in the first place.
Ignorance is excusable, but the insulting tone you take on is not. Please stop ruining Hacker News.
There could be pixies inhabiting the space between Earth and Mars whose existence can easily be brushed aside as noise in all of the sensors of all of the telescopes we have pointed in that direction.
Russell's Teapot is usually used when debating with religious people but it is equally valid whenever someone keeps proposing a theory based on no stronger evidence than "Well, we haven't looked everywhere, now have we?"
In the absence of a feedback loop, though... yes.
I think we risk oversimplification by referring to it solely as a failure of detection. The first 3 points of the article mean we could probably adjust the experiment right now (or should have before the experiment began). The 4th point, while technically a failure of detection, could be due to unknown confounders (or as Rumsfeld would say - unknown unknowns). So it could be a failure in detection or a failure in knowledge.
It is interesting in this case to try to make the claim that because there is no correlation of cancer to proximity of cell phone use that cell phones probably don't cause cancer in nearby locations in the body. I think we have enough knowledge to make that case, but I might just be arrogant.
Look at people who have brain cancer, and see if it's more likely to be on the side of the head where the person uses their mobile phone. If statistically significant, then it's a much easier way to prove a link.
This link has been shown in this study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15475713 for acoustic neuromas.
This doesn't mean for all brain cancer and doesn't mean it's a strong effect. But if you are studying brain cancer, you have to compare apples to apples, and this study, whilst useful doesn't prove that there is link to brain cancer it only proves that they did not find a link. A more precise study is more effective.
It could also be argued that, because the acoustic neurons on that side of the head are being used more, they're more likely to be cancerous, or that both are caused by a similar issue.
For example, left handed women are more likely to have breast cancer, and a similar minor preference like which ear you use for a phone might correlate with health issues.
That sounds pretty convoluted to me. It could be true, but it probably isn't. If, as the paper abstract seems to indicate, long-term (but not short-term) cellphone users are getting fourfold more acoustic neuroma on the side of the head they use their cellphone on, as compared with the other side of their head, I'd say that the most likely explanation is that cellphone use is responsible.
If you carry a cell phone, but use it ONLY for emergencies, then your exposure to radiation is tiny, and it would be a potentially valuable tool.
If you carry it and hold it against your head 5 hours a day, then your risk increases (or so some "studies" would claim).
You're not making any kind of a logical analogy here.