Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double
telegraph.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
Not only the population of UK has increased in this time, it has also gotten older on average. Moreover is 0.002% of population getting GBM per year even significant enough to blame mobile phones (that is used by everyone)?
Then you can start adding in the things that make people live longer, like less heart disease per year of life, etc., and you get the same effect they are charting.
Though I guess if car crashes were a common cause of death that doesn't require autopsy, you'd see some difference in GBM rates between car heavy places like the US, vs places with better public transit like EU.
Different ancestries carry with them different genetic predispositions. It might be that the GBM rise is due to phenotypes not phones.
[1] http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings...
Every study that measures disease or death rates takes this into account. They use standard populations (standard millions) to create age-adjusted statistics. In this case it was European Standard Population (ESP–2013) they used.
The article reports increase in all age groups. The article is not making any link between brain cancer and mobile phones. There is just little speculation to crate headlines.
How is this about mobile phones? I think this is pure clickbait and should be removed.
Although the group did apparently comment on cellphones as a thing to investigate.
> Last night the group said the increasing rate of tumours in the frontal temporal lobe “raises the suspicion that mobile and cordless phone use may be promoting gliomas”.
However, the organisation cautions that because phones are a relatively recent invention it may take many more years until the data is sufficient to make more robust conclusions."
This is literally pure speculation. There are many things that should be studied further to see if something more than a correlation exists. However those studies haven't been done yet. I am surprised to see such a poor and clearly clickbait on hackernews.
For me my main concern is I use my phone as an alarm clock and it's 30cm (1 foot) from my head all night. I also leave it there since it's my main phone so I keep it close to me. Hopefully the inverse square law is on my side.
I'd be curious to see if any studies showed butt cancer was a thing. I'm sure many people keep their phones in their pockets and seems it would exposure people more EM radiation for longer compared to holding the phone and talking into it.
I'd also be curious if different countries which use different frequencies would be a factor in the ability of the EM radiation to penetrate deeper into skin.
I'm not convinced but I'm not anti-science so I'm OK with continual studies as long as they are conducted in a professional way.
By the way I recall in the late 80s early 90s there was talk about EM radiation from cordless shavers. Close to the jaw bone, powerful motor in a small space used daily.
The danger comes from when you are actively making calls using voice; my understanding is that transmitting voice data really cranks up the EM radiation. When making phone calls you are safest using a hands-free headset. When the phone is idle at night this is all mostly irrelevant unless you're getting poor signal (for which it cranks up EM to compensate).
So, don't sleep with your phone next to your head if you get poor signal. If not, there likely isn't much to worry about.
> I'd be curious to see if any studies showed butt cancer was a thing. I'm sure many people keep their phones in their pockets and seems it would exposure people more EM radiation for longer compared to holding the phone and talking into it.
When the phone is idle the EM radiation is relatively low. Plus, if it's resting against your thigh there isn't anything critical there to irradiate, compared to having it within two inches of your brain. If anything we might see more skin cancer in the future from this (and some say EM from pocket storage may contribute to infertility), but it beats brain cancer.
It is, but more importantly, quantum mechanics is on your side. It doesn’t matter how many photons your phone bombards you with, because it transmits and receives at non-ionizing frequencies. Each photon carries too little energy to excite an electron, which means it can’t cause cancer through the same mechanism that, say, x-rays can.
Maybe there is some other mechanism and I just haven’t seen it, being a layperson. But if so, the effect would seem to be too weak to measure reproducibly, and I figure there are much more real, pressing dangers to worry about (e.g. cell phone-related car crashes).
Check teenage girls -- it's not snapchat and the like all the time, they can still spend countless hours on voice calls with their friends...
https://www.ericsson.com/en/mobility-report/mobile-traffic-r...
The provisional pdf is full of Tracked Changes.
To clarify, GBM is the only kind of cancer that increased in frequency in the data they have. I'm less inclined to think that these "findings" are accurate and more to think it's a matter of accounting and data quality. (Not to mention the quality of the manuscript itself.)
Only glioblstoma multiforme, aka the most aggressive and deadly brain cancer? Phfew, what a relief.
On the other hand, it's a subset with ~15% proportion of all brain tumors. The article's title suggests that all brain tumor rates doubled and I am clarifying.
>Our results highlight an urgent need for funding more research into the initiation and promotion of GBM tumours. This should include the use of CT imaging for diagnosis and also modern lifestyle factors that may affect tumour metabolism.
There is very little mention of cell phones in that paper, they only seem to reference a paper from 2015 regarding data from 2000-2003 (higher antennae output back then?)[0] They mention:
>a 50-minute cell phone exposure produced a statistically significant increase in brain glucose metabolism in the orbitofrontal cortex and temporal pole regions closest to the handset
[0]Hardell and M. Carlberg, “Mobile phone and cordless phone use and the risk for glioma – Analysis of pooled case–control studies in Sweden, 1997–2003 and 2007–2009,” Pathophysiology, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 1–13, 2015. doi:10.1016/j.pathophys.2014.10.001. [Online First 2014 Oct 29]
Couple years ago I started noticing these events, deja vu flashes, tingly right arm from the shoulder all the way down to my fingers, and then the inability to comprehend words for a few minutes. Never issues with coordination, because the first one I remember distinctly was riding a bike. Eventually was told they could be seizures, got an MRI and EEG and poof, there's a brain tumor, told was a DNET, in my left temporal lobe.
After issues with anti-seizure meds, which are really annoying with so many side effects, I went with surgery to get the tumor yanked with the hope of them snagging the part causing the seizures, which apparently aren't caused by the tumor itself. A few weeks after the surgery, I was called back and told the tumor wasn't a DNET as expected, but a low grade glioma. Not the GBM as talked about in the article, but a regrowth where I'm on the schedule of MRI every three months to check to see how if it's growing back yet.
I'm left handed, holding the phone to my left ear where the tumor was / is, which would fit along with what they're trying to show here. I'm 27 now, I never talked on the phone much, and I'm not going to sit here and try to find something to blame. Like casually mentioned at the end of the article, I'll go with saying it could be from "fallout from atomic bomb tests in the atmosphere", or, you know, bad luck.
Can you explain the deja vu, tingling, etc symptoms a bit more
This has me a little nervous and I want to be sure it’s something I need to get concerned about
Did you actually end up having seizures?
How did you know it was serious?
These episodes grew over time too. That first I remember on a bike, the next was when reading a book and I was so confused where the words went and why I could only see symbols. Since it's the temporal lobe, only words. Though I talk to multiple people, like my mom, she says there were times in the past where, when talking to her, I'd have to say hold on and sit in silence for 30 seconds before being able to comprehend again. Eventually got to an every other day frequency before being told that those events could be seizures and I should get it checked out.
In terms of seriousness, it's hard to say when that happened. I was told it looked like the benign DNET tumor and baby seizures that stopped with some drugs and I thought that was pretty funny how that happened to me. But then side effects from the first drugs kicked in and I had to switch. And then side effects from that drug kicked in and said screw it and have the surgery to get ride of the tumor and hopefully the part causing the seizures. Well that didn't work out, I still have different drugs and problems with those, and turns out it's a cancer tumor. Quite the turn.
The seizures themselves aren't too serious, because there are drugs to stop them, but the side effect problems are the big part.
What are the symptoms you've been having?
I expect we'll get a clearer picture in the coming years.
But having a couple watt transmitter pressed against the side of your head might be something to think about. Still, it is non-ionizing radiation and aside from the possibility of localized heating, which you would likely notice (I think?), what's going to cause cancer? Some previously unknown (to me) phenomenon?
I'm guessing that the mechanism found in this HN submission's story also uses some non-obvious, indirect mechanism. Biology is messy and complex.
[1] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/04/27/235230/blue-lig...
I distinctly remember it on a Ericsson ear piece (single ear fold out).
I've noticed that these devices dont have that warning anymore...
[1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7879218
[2] https://www.sans.edu/cyber-research/security-laboratory/arti...
All anecdotal ofc, and I have not in any way verified the instruments he used for his tests.
For a cell phone, the peak power for 2G is 2W, while for 4G/LTE it's 200 mW.
Those are peak transmit power. In practice the actual power will be lower for BT. For cellular it depends very much on the frequency band used. For low band the phone will mostly be far from the peak. For high bands the device will mostly be at peak power or close most of the time.
For the hand that's the skin. Most cells in the body don't divide after your initial growth phase (all the way to adulthood). You are "produced" once and from then on there only is "maintenance", which includes growth of new cells only in tissues that absolutely require it throughout lifetime. Evolution turned it off in as many cells of an adult body as possible because cell division always is risky, especially with increasing (cell/tissue) age.
A cell phone has only 2-4W, so it's the power is much smaller and the risk is not linear.
Here is a picture of a DynaTAC analog cell phone circa 1983: https://s.hswstatic.com/gif/cell-phone-old.jpg
I certainly knew what they looked like, before I had my first cell phone, because stockbrokers or lawyers or whatever in movies used them. But I never knew anyone who had one, or saw one in real life. They definitely preceded the current ubiquity of cell phones.
If analog cordless phones captured interference from fluorescent lighting and automotive ignition systems[1], does that mean there is a vast array of things that could cause health effects via RF?
I'm curious to know how people (and the industry) would react. We made these powerful communication tools that are connecting the world, that changed how we communicate and they are causing us harm?
Cigarettes were wonderful until they weren't. Oil was perfect until it became problematic for environmental reasons. Are cell phones the next thing on the list?
Cigarettes created hospitals full of "black lung" diseases, the scary one being cancer. The experts had their suspicions. Cellphones are as pervasive now as tobacco was in the 1950s. We aren't seeing hospitals full of brain cancers. If they are causing tumors, they are doing so only in a very few cases. So no, even if the link is made the reaction will not parallel tobacco.
Imho if a link is found we will not see a ban. We will see standards for shielding, a layer of tinfoil between the antenna and the head.
King James
Cigarettes were never wonderful. They were addictive.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-exposu...
It is certainly not an easy problem to measure and collect strong evidence for either side.
- Correlation does not imply causality.
- No link to any study is given. So we cannot be sure about what the metodology is, I would very much like to take a look at the metodology used to imply such correlation.
XKCD 925: Cell Phones
It’s not unusual for such small proportions to have large variation.
I would also be interested to know if the tumors are predominantly on the right side of the head near the ear...
And if they do need to talk for long, then they usually just put on some headsets.
Otherwise, it's probably just a quick phone call.
Many people have thought that consistently putting an intentional radiator less than an inch from your brain is a bad idea. That is not to say that it causes disease, only that it has occurred to many people that this is a hypothesis worth testing.
(a) I don't think it's typical to make direct contact with a cell phone for an hour at a time. Most calls I make are short and I don't actually hold it touching my ear. That does depend on the noise level though. (b) Microwaves are much higher power. (c) Microwaves may be constructed to looser tolerances regarding shielding.
Yes, microwaves are different, but the differences don't uniformly cut in one direction, so I think it's a little too glib to dismiss the hazard out of hand.
Edit: One could argue that in fact your ear holds your phone away from your head, providing an offset analogous to the distance one is observing a microwave from. But this is really a rhetorical answer to a rhetorical objection, when my point is more that only quantitative analysis could illuminate the accuracy of the comparison.
The prompting for my original post is that I was microwaving water to boiling and watching to make sure it didn't superheat - unlike on the stove, it can form a big bubble of steam suddenly. It seems to me that I do this nearly as often as I make a phone call (as opposed to texting and email).
Do you have any family who live more than 30 minutes away?
Also, both qualifications in that sentence are important - not only "an hour at a time", but "direct contact". I have been on long calls at work with a landline/VOIP phone and found my ear hurts after a while with the earpiece resting against my ear. So I know that when my ear does not hurt it is because I have not been holding the phone against it for a long time.
How? A cellphone literally can't shield its radiation, otherwise it wouldn't really work.
So basically yes, phones do have shielding (on the head side only)
~2000 new cases per year in a country with 53 million people? I'll take my chances.
I'm fascinated how people obsess over the unproven and ultimately minuscule health risks associated with using a cell phone or drinking a glass of wine or eating chocolate or whatever. We know for a fact that smoking, overeating, and not exercising kill literally tens of millions of people each year, but it seems like most people can't be bothered to take those health risks seriously...
BTW, exercise kills as well. There are also known cases of heavy smokers/drinkers that made it to 100.
Outliers, not in any way related to the general trend and a bad argument in general.
Numbers please.
One is just implicit.
Some of the longest living people in the world (e.g. in the island of Icaria) drink and smoke like it's 1977 and they have always been.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where...
Perhaps less stress and better lifestyle (quality of life) is the key to fewer cancers and such, as opposed to cutting smoking and drinking -- even with the increased burden on the lungs and such.
worst case, average case is more than an order of magnitude lower for cardiac related death:
2/100.000 for cardiac related death by excercise.
1278.9/100.000 normal
1879.4/100.000 obese (combined, so about 1.5 increase)
So yes, outliers. Though the numbers are difficult to compare since the timespan of the research is different and the age groups could be off. But you asked for numbers.
If this chart is accurate, 3.5 years older: https://www.statista.com/statistics/275394/median-age-of-the...
They really should have looked at rates by a given age.
Same with headset, I prefer the sound quality.
So none of these choices are made to avoid cancers.
2. Because these sensationalized risks are the ones that get coverage more than the true risks
There is plenty of coverage of the risks of smoking, bad diet and lack of exercise. It's in schools, it's in government materials, it's in posters, on packs of cigarettes, TED talks. There are non-profits dedicated to this causes creating propaganda. There are even national fitness and stop smoking days. No one in the world can claim, "Oh really? smoking isn't healthy? damn, I wish I'd known that!" They're making choices for themselves (modulo addiction and cognitive difficulties). I don't know how much more coverage would personally satisfy you.
Calling the article about cell phone risk sensationalized is out of proportion and not just a cute exaggeration. This is simply another article in a newspaper that runs hundreds of articles a day. If it were on a billboard, if television was interrupted, if a national holiday were declared, these kinds of things might render it sensational. However, it's simply a news article on a web page between an ad for women's clothing an a breast cancer medicine ad.
Maybe you think information about new health risks should be stowed further in favor of improving the health of people in general. If you feel strongly about that and you're not just trolling, I urge you to take some action and attempt to change peoples' minds about smoking, diet and exercise yourself, because you haven't changed my mind at all about the importance of researching and publishing the potential risks of cell phones.
TBH it’s a reasonable assumption in every developed country except one.
Having worked in the UK and in the US health systems, in general in the UK you have more of a risk of something that could be done, not being done (to save the government money).
Meanwhile, in the US, if you have good insurance, you are more at risk of over-testing and over-treatment (because it reduces the doctor’s perceived legal and complaint risk, and sometimes makes the doctor or hospital more money)
2) The article is vague and short but "cases of GBM in England have increased from around 1,250 a year in 1995 to just under 3,000" almost certainly refers to diagnosed cases of GBM, not including incidentals found in autopsies.
Glioblastomas are associated with Alzheimer's disease. Its entirely possible that 20 years ago the symptoms of a brain tumor would be attributed to Alzheimer's when the patient was already dying of Alzheimer's, or other terminal illness for that matter. With better awareness and detection we may pick up new diagnoses in the sick and dying.
If this is true (and I think you're likely to be right) then we should see longer survival with GBM thanks to lead-time bias.
If the cancer is basically inoperable, or if there isn't a big difference in outcome based on time of detection, then there wouldn't be an appreciable change in survival rates
Lead time bias tells you that even if there is no effective treatment, you will appear to live longer thanks to earlier discovery of the disease. It was a hot topic with regard to prostate cancer a few years ago.
The hammer makes me aware of nails.
You're comparing "most people"'s long-term, chosen, known unhealthy habits against a new phenomenon which has less flexibility and more unknowns. It's form a of whataboutism.
http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deat...
If this was a story about brain tumors going undetected because of deliberate misdiagnosis, it would get a ton more press still.
So even if this isn't a story about brain tumors going undetected because of deliberate mis-diagnosis there has been a large effort to make it seem as though there is no effect at all. And that effort was also quite deliberate.
The electromagnetic radiation that cell phones actually do produce is similar to say a radio or even more aptly a microwave and anyone who has ever nuked a spud knows what too much of it looks like and knows that your phones radio falls far short of what anyone would consider too much in the traditional sense.
Further large scale analysis has repeatedly failed to find a correlation between the introduction of cell phones and an uptick of brain cancer.
So in summary we are talking about a theory that has been repeatedly debunked by scientists and promoted by idiots if it turns out there is some novel mechanism by which it promotes brain tumors it will be a harder than average sell and it will be novel science not vindication of all the idiots who believed cell tower = plutonium.
Why don't we see a similar uptick everywhere for example instead of just in england?
That's what the article is about.
> a plausible mechanism for harm
The plausible mechanism is that EM radiation causes tissue to warm up, which can damage it. This is well documented, and will happen already at frequencies far below what a mobile phone uses.
> All we have at the moment is an uptick in a particular kind of cancer without a plausible mechanism how do we assign that to cell phones?
Because of the location of the tumors.
> Why don't we see a similar uptick everywhere for example instead of just in england?
Because that's where this research was done.
Look, no matter what this is a very subtle affair. The only thing that this research has done - according to me - is to move the needle from 'instant dismiss' to 'maybe more and more careful research should be done' to determine the exact magnitude of the effect.
Smoking kills. But I think people overestimate stuff. Unless you are smoking 60-100 cigs per day, I'd not be worried. When I worked in the cardiology department, those who suffered from pulmonary diseases were heavy smokers. Like 3-4 packets a day for 25 years. Now that kills.
But what if stress was the cause for your smoking and drinking habit. What if stress and anger reduced your concentration and led to that traffic accident.
Research focus on headlines, funding, and fame. It is another thing that is wrong with our world.
Smokers, as in all smokers not just the heaviest, have a life expectancy 10 years less than non smokers.
10s of thousands die annually just from cancers/complications from secondhand smoke.
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal...
I'm not panicked by this issue, but I think there's something there. I play cards with a bunch of neurosurgeons - every one of them has professional concerns about cellular and bluetooth usage, and 4/6 expressed those concerns to me individually about my AirPods.
Is there risk from holding a transmitting phone in the hand for an hour, or adjacent to one part of body tissue, during an extended call?
How about frequencies, e.g. will 5G alter the risk to local tissue? Is WiFi lower power & risk?
I was surprised these guys were worried about it. They all use wired earbuds, which says enough for me.
I sure have my phone adjacent to those parts of my body a whole lot more than my head.
I don't need a brain surgeon to tell me they're seeing lots of people with brain tumour. I need a public health statistician telling what my risk is with and without a cellphone.
1.5 months of life is huge, this is only ~1 order of magnitude more than the smoking takes nationwide, and only a few times more than the drinking does. Probably more than any illegal drug does, taken separately.
So if this study is true, it will definitely put mobile phones among top 10 preventable causes of death.
Humans (or at least this human) are not good at dealing with slow problems. We like to fixate on immediate, discrete threats.
Also there's a global industry that profit s from people being addicted to cheaply produced unhealthy food.
Just like eating a banana every week gives you more of a radiation dose than living next to a nuclear power plant- the possibility of getting cancer from a cell phone is almost ridiculous.