Don’t keep cell phones next to your body, California Health Department warns
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Not "you discovered that they did, in fact, cause cancer"; just discovering a way that it is physically possible for them to do so.
This dates back to Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect: it's easy to show (and the only thing consistent with all of 20th century physics!) that light can only cause molecular damage if individual photons carry enough energy, which in turn only happens if the radiation is of sufficiently high frequency (like UV light, X-Rays, or gamma radiation.) Any radio signal from a cell phone isn't. End of discussion.
Unless you are being actually cooked by a microwave, your cell phone does not and cannot cause cancer.
"Radiation" is a scary word for non experts, but the California Health Department should know better.
Then we can presume you wouldn't mind being microwaved? Or simply heated to 6000 Kelvin? Both would be low frequency options.
I just don't subscribe to the preposterous belief that only extremely short wavelengths matter.
Science is not a static. Believing absolutely in a specific scientific result and refusing to accept that it may be wrong is as harmful to our advancement as those who refused to acknowledge that the earth isn't flat (they also used their limited understanding to justify their position).
To reuse your opening statement, you'd also win a Nobel Prize if you could conclusively prove that "your cell phone cannot cause cancer" and "any radio signal from a cell phone [doesn't]."
You are missing the primary thrust of the argument. They are saying: "This goes against known science -- proving otherwise would be a massive scientific discovery which would require reconceptualizing a century of work. This is highly unlikely".
Assuming the commenter is operating with robust scientific understanding [1], then there isn't any dogmatic belief here.
[1] I haven't researched this cellphone cancer thing personally so I can't strongly argue that point one way or another. However, my cursory understanding is that there isn't strong evidence for it.
Seems to be exactly what a lot of folks here are trying to do - „non-ionizing radiation cannot cause cancer, period.“
There are good scientific reasons to think cellphones don't cause cancer. However, if enough compelling evidence was found otherwise, then it would be important to update our understanding accordingly.
However other effects can also cause biological processes to differ or fail for example heat e.g. boiling an egg.
Now I’m not saying that the radiation form a cellphone can cook you but we don’t have a clear understanding of how non-ionizing radiation affects all biological processes such as protein folding but we know that it does:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4007673/#!po=2....
https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/119421
The fact that nonionizing radiation can affect biological processes has been well documented and is being studied.
Again this doesn’t mean that cellphones cause cancer or any other harm but you really don’t need new physics for them do so.
If you are interested, look at Prof Hamblin‘s work.
Couldn't be more vague, what a useless recommendation.
And just how are we supposed to do that? Do double blind testing with ourselves in every group? Wait until we have a tumor?
NIH has a whole page dedicated to this https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r...
And who makes money from our worrying about cell phone cancer?
I don’t trust Verisign. But I rely on companies that have their profits at stake when they conduct business. Which is not the case for government, which gets its revenue by coercion and spends it haphazardly, spasmodically with abandon.
Trusting entities that aren’t your closest relatives and friends is naive and careless.
> And who makes money from our worrying about cell phone cancer?
Every news outlet that got clicks on the subject. The Worry Industry, broadly. Why do you think people took the time to report on it? Altruism? Boredom? You think techcrunch.com is a hobby? Every day these people go to work and identify click bait so they can keep their jobs. Many people make money from this.
Been kicking around going wifi-only anyway, with a crappy burner on a prepaid plan in the car for emergencies.
https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/news/2017/08/17/concerns-...
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cellphone-5g-health-20...
The problem is no direct correlation can be found that proves this because we live in a world of so many rapid changes and the effects get lost by a host of other factors.
So is there proof of damage? Sure.
Can we isolate it to be from cell phone use? No.
Can we be sure that it is not? No.
"Keep cellphones away form body, but we won't tell you how far away or what the consequences might be"
It's not ionizing radiation, so it can't give you cancer. See Einstein's Nobel-prize winning paper from 1905.
The statement that non-ionizing radiation can't give you cancer is effectively false. It is based on applying the mechanisms by which ionizing radiation causes cancer. While non-ionizing radiation does not cause double strand breaks and other mutations that can lead to cancer, you cannot use that assertion to claim that non-ionizing radiation does not cause cancer. It could certainly cause cancer by other means- for example, through induction of heat shock proteins as a response to cellular heating. To my knowledge, nobody has demonstrated this convincingly, although, given the fact that heat shock protein activation can lead to cancer (or cause existing pre-tumors to start growing faster), you can see that we immediately have plausible mechanisms to study, if there is indication that cancer is occurring.
Another way of putting this: if people found strong epidemiological evidence that cell phones caused brain cancer in humans (they haven't, yet), the nature of that mechanism would be subjected to intense scrutiny.
Everything I've stated above is completely mainstream science; nothing I said is controversial. Your mention of the Einstein paper is really a canard- it bears no direct relationship to the biology of the situation.
Oh, and you did notice that I mentioned heating, I hope. As you know, the standard for cellphone radiation is already calibrated to prevent significant heating.
-some random guy in his underwear.
* Genetics
* Natural mutations
* Viruses
* A huge list of substances (called carcinogens), including alcohol
* Being overweight, sedentary, or otherwise unhealthy
Edit: I just had to look up how carcinogenic EB is, and all I have to say is that I'm very disappointed. I should have said radium paint.
Yes, I saw you mentioned heating. That's certainly the first place biologists would start, if there were a solid epidemiological case. however, given that your body has tons of receptors, some of which respond to low frequency radiation, so in theory there could be any number of causal mechanisms.
(you should be aware: I personally think cell phones don't cause cancer, through any mechanism, I'm just making the point that there is zero evidence non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer, there aren't any [reliable] examples of it doing so, either. There is simply no reliable data to make a reasoned determination, either way, because the biology of cellular response to non-ionizing radiation is complex, so making causal claims is very hard without good experimental evidence).
BTW, how is the 1905 paper a canard when it is accepted as the mechanism behind DNA being damaged by ionizing radiation?
You can't point at a disproved theory of high voltage power lines cause cancer and use that as evidence about cell phones at all. Completely different scenario. Anyway, epidemiologists showed a long time ago that it was much more likely that poor health associated with living near power lines was due to poverty/real estate associations.
So, here's an example of Parks writing: https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/93/3/166/2906431
"""All known cancer-inducing agents—including radiation, certain chemicals, and a few viruses—act by breaking chemical bonds, producing mutant strands of DNA.... Microwave photons heat tissue, but they do not come close to the energy needed to break chemical bonds, no matter how intense the radiation."""
His claim that "all known cancer causing agents ... act by breaking chemical bonds" is both biologically naive, and misleading. For example, the cancer-causing and cancer-preventing molecules I studied for my PhD work only through hydrogen bonding and van der waals forces (they do not make or break chemical bonds as Parks means it).
So basically, if that's representative of Parks position, then I claim he is basically wrong, due to known mainstream biology directly contradicting him.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/major-cell-phone-...
> The fact that scientists were able to expose animals to nonionizing radiation (like that emitted by cell phones) and those animals went on to develop tumors but that exposure did not significantly raise the animals' body temperatures was “important” to release, Bucher says.
Actual site: https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014341601...
Do you know of any examples where cancer is caused by non-ionizing radiation, outside of obvious extremes?
You talk vaguely about plausible mechanisms in the plural, but the only one you can name is heating -- which is tiny. We should certainly ban hair dryer and centrally heated shops before we worry about phones.
I think most of the reporting around cell phones is needlessly alarmist. It's not helped by a number of scientists who persist in running low-quality studies and producing vague, unactionable results, coupled with lots of PR.
http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2015/02/this-just-in-bein...
Good luck with that!
I say should, because I keep hearing about how phones don't really turn the radios off when you put them in airplane mode. But at least you don't get phone calls in airplane mode.
> Don’t rely on a “radiation shield” or other products claiming to block RF energy, electromagnetic fields, or radiation from cell phones. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, products that interfere with the phone’s signal may force it to work harder and emit more RF energy in order to stay connected, possibly increasing your exposure.
[1] https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DEODC/EHIB/CDPH%20Do...
But in all seriousness, I don't see this recommendation even coming close to being considered until there are proven side effects.
Cellphones communicate via microwaves, which is just electromagnetic radiation (EMR) of a lower-energy (per photon) wavelength than visible light. Yes, the UV component of sunlight can give you cancer because it's just barely high enough energy to be ionizing. Visible light won't do that, and microwaves are safer still.
Oh, thermal burns can cause cancer too you say, and we use microwave ovens to cook things! Yes. My phone has never cooked me though. A 3.7V, 3700mAh cell phone battery contains about 10 Wh of energy. A typical microwave oven uses around 1000W, so it would drain a cell-phone battery completely in around 36 seconds. Try putting a kilogram of something that's mostly water in a microwave oven for just 36 seconds. It's barely going to warm up. I wouldn't be worried about my cellphone cooking me even if it lasted just 36 seconds on a charge, but mine lasts for many hours.
Can I prove that your phone isn't giving you cancer? No. That's not how science works. I can't prove the theories of gravity or relativity either. When I admit this, some people pounce on that as if this lack of proof is something that must be acted upon. Well, I can't prove a meteor won't crash through your roof and kill you tonight, or that a mega-eruption won't end civilization tomorrow, or that a parasite from some half-cooked beef you ate last week won't spontaneously mutate into a chest-burster like in "Alien". What are you going to do about those smart guy?
Released as a partial report last year; a quick search didn't find if it had been completed yet or not.
[0] https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/general-info/proposition...
The definition of non-ionizing radiation is:
Non-ionizing (or non-ionising) radiation refers to any type of electromagnetic radiation that does not carry enough energy per quantum (photon energy) to ionize atoms or molecules—that is, to completely remove an electron from an atom or molecule.[1] Instead of producing charged ions when passing through matter, the electromagnetic radiation has sufficient energy only for excitation, the movement of an electron to a higher energy state.
1: https://www.sciencealert.com/everything-we-eat-both-causes-a...
i purchased an OBDII reader and it had a "this cable contains PVC and may cause cancer" warning label on it. i thought wtf? after some research the cause was clear: California.
Saying that, I would still recommend to minimize the exposure. The less 2-10 GHz radiation you get, the better your health is.
You can see that the worst frequency range is 30 to 300 MHz meaning that range has the lowest acceptable power levels that are considered safe.
The entire short article is quite good.
And that any power level below 7 Watt (eg any mobile phone) is completely exempt.