Major Study Finds ‘Some Evidence’ of Link Between Cellphone Radiation and Cancer
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
From the fact sheet:
"Rats and mice were exposed to RFR in special chambers for up to two years, or most of their natural lives. NTP scientists looked for a range of cancers and noncancer health effects.
Exposure to RFR began in the womb for rats and at 5-6 weeks old for mice. The RFR exposure was intermittent, 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off, totaling about 9 hours each day. The RFR levels ranged from 1.5 to 6 watts per kilogram of body weight in rats, and 2.5 to 10 watts per kilogram in mice.
The chambers were shielded rooms with a transmitting antenna that radiated RFR fields, plus rotating stirrers that generated a uniform field.4,5 Pilot studies established field strengths that did not raise animal body temperatures excessively.6
The rats and mice were exposed to whole body RFR at frequencies of 900 and 1900 megahertz, respectively, from two technologies – Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).
NTP and RFR experts from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the IT’IS Foundation designed and built the chambers specifically for these studies. "
Also:
"Were there any surprise findings? NTP found longer lifespans among the exposed male rats. This may be explained by an observed decrease in chronic kidney problems that are often the cause of death in older rats"
Cell phone signals fall off with the square of the distance so the bulk of the power of a cellphones RF energy that you are exposed to comes from the handset.
[1] "Meanwhile, the total power emitted from the cell phone itself ranges from 0.75 to 1 watt. According to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), this is an acceptably safe amount of power for a cell phone since their cut-off or specific absorption rate is only 1.6 watts per kilogram (W/kg). As a result, the power radiated from a cell phone is considered as non-ionizing as opposed to ionizing." -- https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/EbruBek.shtml
The energy of the cell phone transmitter is spread out further and further as you move way, and because the 'bubble' is both taller and wider, each meter (about 3') you step away from the phone, the signal is 1/distance^2 less powerful. So 2 meters away, 1/4 as powerful, three meters, 1/9th etc.
I like the Tokyo subway image, and others have gone to the trouble of computing people densities[1], if you take their number of 7 people per square meter as a good maximum, then 100 people divide into 7 person groups and you get a box that is about 4 meters on a side (12' x 12'). You're only getting 10% of the energy from the phones that are 3 meters away.
[1]: as evidenced by the fact that cell phones actually work. When you cover them up with your hand, you don't suddenly drop the call.
That's not at all how it works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_absorption_rate#Mobil...
It's not totally harmless. Just orders of magnitude less than ionizing radiation.
Microwaves have wavelengths orders of magnitude longer than infrared light and can penetrate even deeper at the same wattage. It would IMO be VERY iffy to say that the possibility of photons emitted by a cellphone reaching the brain is zero.
The increased lifespan could be at least partially responsible for the increased cancer rates. All populations that see an increase in lifespan see an increase in cancer rates. Cancer seems to be the default prize for living a long life.
Also, the caption on slide 20 for their BioEM2016 Meeting, Ghent, Belgium, June 8, 2016 presentation surprised me a litte. It states that the historical control incidence of malignant gliomas is in the range of 0-8%. This study saw a rate of 0% for its controls. That's not unreasonable but it is interesting. It's also odd that they did not see an indication of a dose response curve for GSM modulation, though admittedly the number of samples is low.
I don't doubt the statistical significance of the evidence presented, but data patterns suggest that it's at least a little possible that there's an issue with their protocol.
Of course, but wouldn't this be so obvious that the researchers would undoubtedly have accounted for that as a confounding variable? At least I hope so.
Woudln't count on that these days, in general. If something is accounted for, it's usually stated in the paper.
When was that cemented as a cause? It appears to be a possibility that can't be discounted, but when was the causation established?
Simple evaluation based on the size of the battery in a phone tells you that there can be no significant heating effect on anything, given that there’s no functional difference between a call and a phone just using data, this effect would be constant to everything around it. There’s simply not enough energy capacity in the battery for this to be true.
Modern batteries are impressive compared to their predecessors but adding up the watt-hours in a battery and then calculating how much that would heat a bucket of water is a serious disappointment.
Nobody said anything about heating a bucket of water. The discussion was about heating up someone's ear, which certainly happens.
[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000634950...
So what is the proposed mechanism by which microwave energy is supposed to heat DNA enough to damage it?
If I heat a bowl of tomato sauce it can be boiling at the edges and cold in the middle. I have to stop and stir it a few times.
Same with potatoes. Hot on the outside, raw in the center.
I was surprised by the table. Temperature matters way more than I'd expect for water, and it seems ice may in fact be effectively transparent to microwaves? Now I want to fiddle when I get home... it looks an awful lot like you can put a cup of water and a chunk of ice in a microwave and boil the water while the ice is still frozen... (though I'm going to assume that number for ice is pure ice; air bubbles in ice may wreck this up) Experimentation time!
About the only thing that can be reasonably uniformly heated in a microwave at continuous full power is a water-based liquid and that only because of convection.
Put a slab of meat in for a minute at 100% power and it'll be still cold in the center.
As anyone who's used a microwave a few times in their life will tell you, microwaves, at best, manage to super-heat a fraction of an inch of food.
And that's from blasting >1,000 watts of radiation at it.
Even then they’re generally only heating the outer layers, which in turn heat the inner layers through thermal conduction.
The journal article below contains lots of detail. It claims that microwaves penetrate about 3.8 mm in cooked ham and 9.9 mm in cooked beef.
Then why does the plate have to be slowly rotated within the oven? I used to believe that it was for the waves peaks (distant from one another by a pair of centimeters) to be able to reach every point of the inside.
But if the inside is heated by conduction, which propagates evenly in all directions, then why care rotating the plate?
[0] https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2011/microwave-oven-diagnostics-with-indian-snack-food/The decay over distance should be roughly exponential: every x millimeters, you're left with only half of the radiation. Given the radiation caused by a cellphone in your pocket, how many microns of water do you need to attenuate the intensity to a non-mutagenic level?
By comparison most cell equipment is either not at this frequency or a harmonic if it, limited to <<50W, or both.
Would this be bad or good from a (hypothetical) carcinogenic standpoint? Since we are mostly water would this mean our interior below say the first few layers of skin are fairly effectively shielded from WiFi radiation?
Can I assume you are making this claim from the study? That they showed "some effect" ? If so, it is important to differentiate by intensity. EM waves are just light, you know red, green, blue etc. And if they are strong enough can give you a burn (sunburn being something everyone has experienced). But we don't get stories of people getting moon burn from the light reflected off the moon. In part because the amount of energy per square meter in moonlight is about 2.3 million times less powerful than sunlight. We are evolved to live in an environment that is flooded with EM energy in a variety of bands.
The study showed that if your cellphone put out 100x the amount of energy it does, there might be a small measurable effect on cancer rates. We know melanoma rates go up if you get a lot of sunburn (which is EM exposure). The energy per square meter in sunlight is 8 orders of magnitude higher than the energy per square meter from a cell phone.
Bottom line, there is still no mechanism, study, or theory, that supports a hypothesis that 1 watt cellphones cause cancer.
This is wrong. Non-ionizing radiation obviously causes cancer. "Ionizing radiation" for photons is (somewhat arbitrarily) defined as photons with >10 eV. That's far ultraviolet, far beyond anything in sunlight that has passed the atmosphere. But sunlight still gives you cancer.
There are any number of ways that cells and genes can be disrupted by non-ionizing radiation. Just disrupting in-progress reactions can eventually damage cells, and that doesn't require anything nearly as dramatic as ionizing an atom. At the bare minimum, all waves >1 GHz interact with and are absorbed by biological matter.
However the low-microwave frequencies from cell phones and wifi are hugely innocuous in addition to being crazy low power. They practically only interact through heating. I'm about as worried by the visible radiation from a cell phone's screen as I am from the transmitter. Hell, I'm pretty positive the local heating from the CPU getting hot will be more likely to contribute to cancer.
I remember learning about this decades ago, in college chemistry. (G\heck, getting out of the "radio" frequencies, many people have had photo-sensitive reactions demonstrated to them, for this very reason.)
Well, say you have a chemical reaction that presents a certain risk level. And say non-ionizing radiation in your environment influences that reaction.
Take it a step further down: Temperature influences rate of reaction. We certainly know that non-ionizing radiation effects temperature of absorptive materials.
Look at another aspect of this: We have chemical compounds that are strongly believed -- known either through strong empirical observation or deduction of the specific chemical mechanisms -- to cause cancer.
They appear or are known to be doing so without the assistance of ionizing radiation. Ergo, this effect consists of chemical reactions.
We know that non-ionizing radiation can influence chemical reactions.
We are nowhere near a comprehensive catalogue, much less understanding, of all the chemical reactions in the body. Chemicals that we and our natural environment evolved, much less chemicals we've manufactured and introduced into our environment.
Can we say that non-ionizing radiation cannot cause or promote cancer? I don't think so.
It's the same way that DDT caused cancer when it was first used. It's the same way that BPA caused fertility problems for decades, and it's the same way that BPA substitutes look to be causing fertility problems now.
What way is that?
We simply don't understand what's going on, and it's important that we acknowledge that.
Our current scientific model says "we have spent decades and millions of dollars trying to see if cell phones cause cancer, and we have never found a link, therefore cellphones don't cause cancer."
Which is exactly the same as saying "we have spent decades and millions of dollars searching for little green men, and we have never found any, therefore we are 100% they don't exist."
Both of those statements are utter nonsense. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
We honestly have no idea if little green men exist somewhere in the universe, and we also have no idea if cell phones cause cancer. We think we know, but we're just doing our best to look at evidence.
You can rest assured that in ~50 years we'll look back and say "Of Course! Those scientists in 2019 were so simplistic and quaint!"
"But don't worry, now it's 2070, we know so much better, so that new-fangled thing you have is perfectly safe!"
Despite what you may have been led to believe, absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence.
More details here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mnS2WYLCGJP2kQkRn/absence-of...
We have data involving a significant fraction of humanity and we didn't find a link. Cell phone aren't rare and cancer isn't rare. It means we have a very good statistical model. Cell phones have been widespread for 20 years now, which is less than we might want but still not bad. Furthermore, fundamental physics go against the idea that cell phones cause cancer. We have more or less proved that cell phones don't cause enough cancer to matter.
For little green men, we can only search the tiniest fraction of space, and we have only a single data point: us. The only vaguely statical model we have come from the Drake equation, and it has more holes than Swiss cheese. It would be laughed off by the scientific community if it wasn't so exciting.
Uh-huh, and cancer rates are absolutely skyrocketing, soon to be 50% of the population.
Why is that?
> fundamental physics go against the idea that cell phones cause cancer. We have more or less proved that cell phones don't cause enough cancer to matter.
You're missing my point. You should have said "fundamental physics, as we understand it today, can't explain how or why cell phones cause cancer, but there could be stuff we don't understand"
Have a good look at history and look at all the times we didn't understand stuff that we were doing, but we were pretty damn sure we did.
As we eliminate causes of death, others raise naturally. Right now, in the first word, we are at about 1/3 heart disease, 1/3 cancer, 1/3 others. If we get to 50% cancer, I guess all we can do is blame cardiologists for doing a good job ;)
The observed cancer rate will be roughly the difference between the rates of cancers that start and cancers that are stopped by either the cell's internal repair mechanism or by the body's mechanisms for finding and killing bad cells. Something that affects the observed rate could be acting on either side of the difference.
"For decades, health experts have struggled to determine whether or not cellphones can cause cancer. On Thursday, a federal agency released the final results of what experts call the world’s largest and most costly experiment to look into the question. The study originated in the Clinton administration, cost $30 million and involved some 3,000 rodents"
World's largest? Most costly? And more or less not applicable to current reality?
It is exactly things such as this that trigger the general public to mistrust government and mistrust science. What's most unnerving is the gov and the science expected the public to not respond as expected.
What about one hour per day over 18 years?
First off, many do in fact sleep with their phones close to their head these days, and second, what about the phone being close to the body/male testicles (in the pocket) throughout the day?
One other thing, wasn't the issue also not just with the phones themselves, but with the cell towers? I believe 5G towers need to be installed every 300 meters. If the towers are indeed dangerous due to how much power they radiate, then how many people will that affect in busy centers/apartment buildings?
I'd like to see the results of an experiment where they have a highly controlled pair of populations that are identical in every way except one group of rats is in a Faraday cage. It would be ideal if they were still exposed to natural radio frequencies--after all, radio is not an exclusively man-made phenomenon. But of course GSM doesn't get through the atmosphere easily. A long-term study like that might actually be useful.
These studies where they bathe the rats in a few thousand times the average ambient power of our cell network are utterly blatant examples of confirmation bias in science publishing. They cranked up the amplitude until it had to have an effect on biology--stopping just shy of "significant heating" of tissues. Basically it's a microwave on defrost, complete with a scattering reflector and turntable to make sure the rats cook evenly. Doesn't seem like good faith to me. And of course dumbed-down science journalism will immediately clickbait it into the headline "Cellphones Will Literally Kill You," as is tradition.
WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.h...
> Radiation from cell phones can possibly cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization. The agency now lists mobile phone use in the same "carcinogenic hazard" category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform.
It's like comparing new drugs to the best off-patent generic, not a placebo sugar pill.
In some parts of the world (UK, Europe, Asia, South Africa, Nigeria, Peru), the 900Mhz GSM band is now being reused as LTE band 8.
But I think we can all agree that it would have been nicer to hear that there was "No Evidence" of a link.
https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CCDPHP/DEODC/EHIB/CDPH%20Do...
I'm confused by this statement. 4G uses even lower frequencies than 900 MHz, and this range up to 1900MHz will continue to be used for decades more, 5G or not.
As for 5G itself, as I mentioned in another comment, there's also the issue of carriers needing to install many more towers, which I believe are cancer-causing for anyone living in the immediate area due to the power they radiate.
I also imagine the 5G towers will use much more power than say 3G or 4G powers because if 5G wireless tech can't pass easily through objects, then you bet the carriers are going to "maximize" the distance. How? Through more power. So I doubt 5G will be much safer overall. In fact, I'm willing to bet it will be significantly less safe than previous wireless technologies.
So to ensure companies like Qualcomm and U.S. carriers don't get away with causing millions to die "because we found out too late", like this NYT article seems to be implying about the previous tech, we should already start enforcing laws or starting lawsuits against them and make them pay out billions, if evidence is indeed found (whether through more studies, or through discovery of what the company employees knew about these issues) that their tech was harmful to humans.
I downvoted you because there is no evidence of this. You also state they wiull "use more power" but power output is regulated by the FCC.
As the frequencies increase penetrating power drops off dramatically. I don't care how many nerf darts get thrown at me if they can't pierce my skin they aren't going to kill me. Photons can't gang up and become more penetrative by just having more of them.
Any sort of cover over the phone itself would cause it to lose reception.
Even with such extraordinary amplitude, the correlation was very slight. Trust me, everyone has much bigger health risks to worry about than radio. If you've ever had a drink in your life you've done worse.
Some key quotes about this:
> The female rats did not show evidence of a link between the radiation and such tumors.
> Experts say it is not unusual for cancer patterns to vary between sexes in both people and animals, including the study’s mice and rats.
[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/01/10/5770466...
Thats safe right?
> The highest level was four times higher than the permitted maximum.
That's still not much of a safety factor.
I've mentioned this to a coworker before and he laughed at me. Then I heard him be on the phone for like 30 minutes and during lunch he mentioned that his head was feeling this weird warmth. I repeated my theory and asked him what are the odds of his phone usage and the warmth being unrelated. I've never seen him not use headphones when being on the phone since then.
Wait, what about headaches?
Interesting enough I have been disabling my wifi at home at night because I was challenged to see if I felt a better deeper sleep. I did, but I have not ruled out placebo effect. I want to randomize this somehow and record which days I think it is off (depending on my sleep) vs days it is on, to rule this out. I am horrified that EMF could be affecting me like this if it is true. I live in an area without other wifi, 3g, or 4g. I do not own a frequency counter, but that would help me eliminate other interference for better test results.
And the sleep experiment is even worse. How do you quantify "better deeper sleep?" Please don't spread this kind of anecdotal pseudoscience, it just makes the rest of the world more uninformed. The more confidence you have in your objectivity and expertise on the subject, the worse your bias gets. People who work with tech have to be doubly sure to control for bias.