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For example, imagine an enzyme that was designed to (a) receive microwave radiation-

In that case, why privilege microwaves over all other non-ionizing frequencies? If people are concerned about microwaves causing cancer, they should also be concerned about infrared, radio, and power lines. You bring up a good point: If cell phones cause cancer, it would tell us something new about biology, chemistry, and/or physics.

Even if the worst-case studies are true and cell phones double your risk of brain cancer, I still don't think people should change their habits. Brain cancer is incredibly rare and phones are incredibly useful. We make these usefulness-safety tradeoffs all the time. For example, automobiles cause around 2% of deaths worldwide (1-2 million people per year) but we use them anyway.

Yes, good points. It's so unexpected by you, me, and most everyone who does science that it would probably be a Nobel-worthy observation.

The point about effect size is also critical. If my probability of developing brain cancer is 0.00001% and talking on a phone multiplies my risk by 3 (quite a large effect size), I'm still far more likely to die from heart disease, or an accident, or some other cancer, or, well, anything else.

Or you're more likely to die from not having a cell phone handy in an emergency, or not living in a society where they're ubiquitous, etc.

Even purely in lives cost or saved there are two sides of the ledger.

Multiply or more by N times for societies that never got serious landline coverage and jumped to major cell phone availability.

…they should also be concerned about infrared, radio, and power lines.

Unfortunately, many people are worried about these things.

You're technically correct -- the best kind of correct. The first thing I thought about the headline as I clicked it was "that's a rather irresponsible thing to say" because it's generally impossible to prove that a given thing is impossible without taking assumptions as fact. In this case the assumption was that the only kinds of cancer in question were the ones we already know about, which is certainly not true. That said, the probability of a correlation, let alone causation, between cell phones and cancer is effectively zero, and for now that has to be good enough.

Important fact 2: No study has ever shown a correlation between the rise in cell phone usage and any rise in cancer rates.

If there were some unknown indirect method by which cell phone radiation causes cancer, where is all the cancer? Because no study has ever found it.

I actually considered making that fact #1, since I personally consider it to be more convincing. At any rate, we agree.

Playing the devil's advocate here, but wouldn't exposure rates be more important than usage? Most people would likely be exposed more to other phone's radiation than just their own phone's.

Inverse square law. Radiation from a phone 10 cm from your brain is 100 times more intense than radiation from your friend's phone a meter away.

However, a person often in crowded areas will likely experience far more radiation over time simply from others around them on their cell phones.

That fact is far, far weaker than the other. It turns out that many types of cancer don't start to show up in the epidemiology for periods of 20 years or so. Well known examples include lung cancer from smoking and various cancer rates among those exposed to nuclear bombs.

Based on that if cellphones cause cancer, the odds are very low that we would have noticed yet.

Cell phones have easily been in use for 20 years, and handheld radios have been in use for far longer than that, at far higher power levels.

I don't recall hearing how everyone had a handheld radio stuck to their head for substantial amounts of time every day, as cell phones have today.

Radiation damage, if it occurs, is cumulative. I'd be willing to bet that the heavier-use side of cell phone users have encountered far more radiation from their phones than a similar fraction of handheld radio users, even before accounting for the difference in proximity (phones = inches at best, radios = inches at minimum) which would give radiation from radios exponentially less radiation than they emit compared to phones.

(not that I'm claiming they do cause cancer. Merely that the handheld radio side of the argument doesn't really work)

Radiation damage, if it occurs, is cumulative.

"I don't know what effect I'm talking about, exactly, but I'm sure it's cumulative."

I can tell you've typed, but all I'm seeing is idiocy and an attempted insult thinly disguised as snark.

Radiation damage, ie anything not from excess energy in the area causing injury like burns, but referring to genetic damage, is rather obviously cumulative if you consider it for more time than it took you to type that out.

Genetic damage cannot be repaired. At best, the offending cell is killed. At worst, it divides and spreads its damaged code, sometimes becoming cancerous.

Cancers frequently come from mutations. Radiation damage causes random mutations. Put 1 and 1 together, and you get an increased risk of cancers based exclusively off the sum total of radiation received, ignoring any time dimension.

Look at any studies looking for "safe radiation doses", or consider why people don't snuggle up to radium-glowing blankets every night, or take a peek at why revigators are banned, or why you don't want radon in your basement; you'll see the same information pop up every time. Radiation is cumulative. Small amounts for a long time are just as dangerous as large amounts for a short time, except they don't cause burns.

Yeah. Because it's not as if there are different kinds of radiation, or anything.

And the dangers of these multiple kinds of radiation are...?

Damage to cells and damage to DNA. One is repaired.

Modifying protein structures results in one of the above, as does causing higher energy molecular interactions potentially causing abnormal chemicals for a particular area. We've now covered every effect radiation can have on your body. One is guaranteed permanent and thus cumulative. One is not, and is only dangerous in higher degrees, and by the time that gets high enough to kill you, you've suffered massive genetic damage and will probably die anyway from cancers.

All this of course is ignoring the possibility of radiation creating prions. I've heard of no studies which have found this to be the case, so I don't include it. And they cause cellular or genetic damage as well, so they're still accounted for, just more remotely.

The different kinds of radiation effectively just determine how much damage (energy of the particle / wave) and how far they penetrate. ie, alpha particles typically only penetrate up to a few centimeters, but have massively more energy, while gamma rays can easily pass through you entirely, with beta particles roughly in between.

15 years ago, Danish researchers completed a 13 year study of over 400,000 mobile phone users and found no increased cancer risk. So there has been enough time for that data to start to show itself.

http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/3/203.abstract?ijk...

Shermer's stuff is usually good, but this article hinges on a false argument. Many things other than ionizing radiation cause cancer. Electromagnetic radiation is shown to cause small changes in biological function, and that could certainly include accelerating growth or halting programmed cell death, both of which increase risk of serious cancers.

Obviously the excess cancer risk must be small or we'd have seen it, so not to worry. I'd much rather see studies on the long-term impact of non-ionizing radiation on overall brain function.

I'm glad you don't believe it, but isn't there some harm to even entertaining the idea when people react so strongly to someone mentioning a 'possibility' however obscure?

It's good to play devil's advocate and conceive of possibilities within our knowledge of biology/physics or what-have-have but I'm afraid that a large portion of the public wants to jump to conclusions on mere thought experiments.

I think that the most intellectually honest thing to do is to say, "Well, we performed an epidemiological study that looked for an association between cancer and cell phone usage, and we found nothing. In fact, nobody has ever found anything, and we are confident now that there is no association; we can put a statistical upper bound of the effect of cell phone radiation on cancer at X (small effect size) within Y (years) of exposure. In fact, the evidence is equally supportive of the idea that cell radiation is protective as it is of the notion that it is harmful."

What I don't think is intellectually honest is to say, "Physics says X can't happen." I don't care if microwaves cause DNA breakage. I care if microwaves somehow ultimately cause cancer, and if it doesn't happen through the mechanism that physicists posit, then we'd be in a world of hurt if we acted as though it was impossible because it didn't fit their model.

So in summary, yeah, I normally never bring up this point of view because it's probably more helpful to deliver a correct message than a subtle one, but that's because the correct response to "Does X cause Y" has to do with biology and epidemiology, not physical claims of biological impossibility.[1] When someone does the latter, I think it's more important to be intellectually honest (and intellectually humble; admitting how little we know) by giving a more complete picture.

[1] = Unless they are actually claiming something that is physically impossible, too, such as superluminal signalling between organisms or something.

A few comments here have discussed microwaves influencing biochemistry by non-ionizing mechanisms. To address these concerns, it’s easy to show that microwaves cannot provide enough energy to alter any biochemical pathway unless one imagines a very specific molecular system to absorb energy at this wavelength; similar to chlorophyll absorbing visible light in photosynthesis.

Given the complexity of chlorophyll and its significant support system in photosynthesis, I would highly doubt such a similarly complex molecular system would evade discovery. Further, due to the weak energy of microwaves, as quantified next, such a microwave harvesting system would have to be located at the surface of our skin (or other periphery tissue like hair) to absorb this energy before other biomolecules absorb it non-specifically. I believe these relatively simple periphery tissues have been exhaustively studied.

As the article mentions, microwave energy is on the order of 0.001 kJ/mole. Just to put that in perspective, the random thermal (kinetic) energy contained in each degree of freedom of a biochemical systems is on the order of 2.5 kJ/mole. Due to their weak energy, microwaves have only been shown to non-trivially interact with molecular systems in the gas phase, where collisions between molecules are suppressed, as each molecular collision occurs with enough energy (thermal energy) to overwhelm the much weaker microwave interactions. In the fluid tissues of the body this energy would only be non-specifically absorbed causing a trivial and temporary rise in temperature (1e-4 deg C) within the tissue.

Therefore, I highly doubt microwaves interact with human biochemistry in any interesting or pathology-relevant way.

No, that's not how it works. The overwhelming evidence from physics consideration to actual studies suggests there is no such connection so it's a little silly to be say 'this is false because it's possible for nanites built into our DNA by Xenu to awaken when you call this special 1-900 number and hold your cellphone just so'.

You've probably read this before but what you're saying sounds a lot like the argument described by Carl Sagan here -

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

I don't think that's a remotely fair reading of what I wrote. Perhaps our perspective is informed by our backgrounds; mine is more biological, so seeing proteins do totally unexpected things is commonplace for me. I'm not inventing a dragon.

I'm sure proteins do unexpected things but that alone does not make your argument very plausible. For instance, wouldn't any strange biological mechanism be more prevalent with more exposure? If one's exposed to more toxins, coal dust or ionizing radiation, it's more likely it is for adverse effects to be apparent. Microwaves have been around for quite a while and exposures to levels far beyond a cellphone have occurred many times. Would those mechanisms have been triggered then, with statistically noticeable effects? 'Proteins do strange things' is pretty much 'the dragon is kinda shy and quirky'.

I can't tell if I'm writing so unclearly that I'm being interpreted to say the opposite of what I mean, or if you're accidentally or willfully misunderstanding me, but my argument is not that there is some cryptic biological mechanism for this.

My argument is that, though there could be--and you wouldn't even have to invoke magical dragons to get there, because biology already has EM transducers at its disposal--all evidence suggests that there is not. My argument is that cell phones do not cause cancer. Hopefully that is clear.

Your writing is clear, at least to this reader, and your point is completely valid.

I think the issue is that the general structure of what you're saying is triggering false alarms in people's bullshit detectors, and so they fail to read for comprehension.

Given that dishonest participants will specifically pretend to take positions counter to their agenda for the purpose of implying validity, authenticity, or just creating doubt, it really makes it hard to make the kind of valid point you tried to without getting misread.

The fundamental problem is that there is just no direct way to win in the face of dishonesty:

"Cellphones cannot cause cancer" -> "What about mechanism X! You can't prove it doesn't! OMG scientists are all liars! (Therefore homeopathy!)"

"Cellphones almost certainly do not cause cancer, as there is no known mechanism, and no epidemiology suggesting that they do" -> "Scientists admit that it's not impossible for cellphones to cause cancer! They admit they don't know if there is a mechanism! They can't prove anything! (Therefore homeopathy!)"

Anyhow thanks for kicking off an interesting discussion, and being a direct example of how dishonest participants have poisoned the discourse even when they aren't directly participating in it.

For example, imagine an enzyme that was designed to (a) receive microwave radiation

You can't possibly design such a molecule unless you can come up with a way to make it several centimeters long. (Folding doesn't count; a folded structure doesn't have anything close to the same electrical properties as a straight one.)

The reason why non-ionizing radiation doesn't cause cancer at athermal levels is just that: physical size. To receive EM energy you need a structure that's a substantial fraction of the wavelength.

But I am saying that physics cannot tell us that "low energy thing X" cannot do "high energy thing Y."

It most certainly can.

You can't possibly design such a molecule unless you can come up with a way to make it several centimeters long.

One would think that liquid water, which absorbs microwaves, would be a sufficient counterexample to your claim.

I'm assuming that your last sentence is merely snark, or perhaps you didn't finish reading my post in its entirety. If you don't feel that the sentence immediately following the one that I quoted clarifies things, let me know.

Heating of water is a bulk thermal effect. Absolutely nothing happens when you microwave a glass of water that wouldn't also happen if you heated it on the stove, or put it under a heat lamp. Only the spatial distribution of the heat is different.

I'm assuming that your last sentence is merely snark, or perhaps you didn't finish reading my post in its entirety.

I already have too many books on EM physics written by people who are actually familiar with the subject that I don't have time to read or understand. Uninformed online posts end up being skimmed, for better or worse.

I already have too many books on EM physics written by people who are actually familiar with the subject

Good, perhaps you can explain yourself in more detail, then, because your post seems quite wrong to me and I would like what I assume to be my misunderstanding to be corrected.

Absolutely nothing happens when you microwave a glass of water that wouldn't also happen if you heated it on the stove, or put it under a heat lamp.

I was always under the impression that your stove heated via conduction (e.g., the transfer of heat from molecules on the stove to molecules in the pan holding your water to molecules of water).

I was also under the impression that microwaves heated water via a dielectric effect (i.e., the water molecules interacting with the microwaves directly and heating up due to their 'attempts' to align with the rapidly-oscillating field + friction).

Finally, I was under the impression that heat lamps heated things via radiative (e.g., infrared) heating.

Radiative, conductive, and dielectric heating can all warm up the right substance. But I cannot agree that "absolutely nothing [different] happens" since their mechanisms are quite distinct. Please tell me why this is incorrect.

Now, once you deposit the thermal energy into the water by one of the three methods listed above, I think we can all agree that convection will cause it to dissipate in the same fashion, regardless of how you got it there.

>>Absolutely nothing happens when you microwave a glass of water that wouldn't also happen if you heated it on the stove, or put it under a heat lamp.

I'd like to see someone superheat water on the stove or indeed boil water inside a block of ice under a heat lamp.

Yeah. Superheating. That's what must be causing all these new cases of cancer that have appeared since people began using hand-held cellular phones in the late 1980s.

/rolls eyes

>>Absolutely nothing happens when you microwave a glass of water that wouldn't also happen [...]

You can roll your eyes all you like it won't make that true.

The parent made a general statement for which I believe there to be clear factual objection which I mentioned. The only logical contradiction would be to show the falsehood of such objection. I did consider saying "obviously this isn't the mechanism here" but I think the take-away is that you shouldn't make universal statements that are obviously false.

This does actually then have a bearing on the matter in hand. If the universal is false then it opens the path for other unknown mechanisms to be considered that may also contradict such a universal statement. If people are willing to make such demonstrably false claims at such a low level then trusting them to clearly and accurately present the more complex situations becomes extremely difficult [for me].

Perhaps I'm unique in this but if you lie to me about one thing then I'm disinclined to believe you about another.

At this point, of course, you've moved the goalposts to the thermal side of the field. Are we talking about 'teaching the controversy' of athermal effects, or of thermal ones? ...

Radiative, conductive, and dielectric heating can all warm up the right substance. But I cannot agree that "absolutely nothing [different] happens" since their mechanisms are quite distinct. Please tell me why this is incorrect.

The mechanisms are not the least bit distinct at the molecular level. In each of these cases, heating occurs by simple friction.

It comes down to the difference between a chemical change and a physical change. Microwaving the water, shining a light on it, or cooking it on a stove burner will cause physical changes. Ionizing radiation causes chemical changes. The distinction between these two types of effects isn't just important, it's the only one that matters.

"To receive EM energy you need a structure that's a substantial fraction of the wavelength."

The axons of nerve cells are millimeters to meters long.

It's also an open question just how sensitive neurological processes are to externally applied voltage. Neurons are polarized to about 50 mV, so a noisy oscillator composed of neurons could be measurably affected by a few millivolts of imposed potential. Fortunately it would be a statistical effect of similar magnitude to dietary changes or mechanical vibration, so the health effects would be microscopic.

"It most certainly can."

Stick a neon bulb in a microwave oven. The result is spectacular ionization resulting in bulk plasma formation, via nonthermal effects. And before you complain, certain proteins have a highly-hydrophobic cavity that does a remarkable impersonation of a vacuum chamber, and which would tend to accumulate noble gases.

The actual argument against this being a problem is not Sci Am's half-assed physics theory but practical data. Many people have implanted pacemakers and nerve stimulators that apply substantial electrical potentials to living tissues: muscle, peripheral nerves, even the brain itself. No apparent pathology results over thousands of patient years of intensive use.

Stick a neon bulb in a microwave oven. The result is spectacular ionization resulting in bulk plasma formation, via nonthermal effects.

Funny, the same thing happens if I hold it near a Van de Graaff generator. Do you suppose we should apply the precautionary principle, and avoid combing our hair on a dry day?

The axons of nerve cells are millimeters to meters long.

In a medium that is not distinguishable from the rest of their environment at RF.

This whole thread falls into the "not even wrong" category. I'm sorry I interfered, at this point.

> To receive EM energy you need a structure that's a substantial fraction of the wavelength.

Fractal antennae don't work then? Oh wait.

But at least self-similarity is rare in natural systems ... oh, fiddlesticks.

</sarcasm>

No, not at these scales, they don't. As with any other antenna, the lowest frequency at which a fractal antenna is effective is still strongly influenced by the size of its largest dimension.

Again, as with your other objection you're defending a invalid statement claimed as a universal truth that is demonstrably false.

>>To receive EM energy you need a structure that's a substantial fraction of the wavelength.

Except you don't and again the point is that it is non-obvious (or at least was) that fractal antennae would work and again this leads us to the position that we shouldn't simply assume we know the truth of extremely complex systems and particularly not based on hand-wavy false statements.

---

Edit: FWIW I don't believe that cell-phones|mobiles cause cancer (generally, though I can imagine there are very specific instances where it might occur and that there are doubtless mechanisms that we don't understand at play).

Sigh.

Yes. You're right. You win. Anything will "work" as an antenna at any frequency. You can match your radio's antenna stage to the impedance of a wet noodle, a nerve cell, or an intracellular vacuum cavity with the right network. Whether the antenna ends up electrically distinct from any other object in the vicinity is another question entirely.

As I suggested before I have neither the time nor the qualifications to offer lectures on EM physics, nor to calibrate my words carefully enough to keep them from being recast by verbal anklebiters, so I'll grant you the point.

>so I'll grant you the point

Nice verbiage. You should definitely try politics - you appear to accede graciously whilst acceding to something completely ridiculous thus belying your contempt of the result of the argument. I don't want your offered point, I'll take my sensible one instead. Thanks.