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Comment by mevile | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious how this affects the NIMBY fights about antennas. Some of those fights are about aesthetics of the antennas, but some of the concern is around the radiation, which is not a finished debate. Mobile phone signals have been designated as possibly a cause of cancer by the WHO if I recall correctly. It hasn't been possible to rule out that mobile phones do not cause harm, which is something I was surprised to learn. I thought it was a settled debate that mobile phones were safe.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r...

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> phone signals have been designated as possibly a cause of cancer by the WHO

No, it has not. "To date, research does not suggest any consistent evidence of adverse health effects from exposure to radiofrequency fields at levels below those that cause tissue heating" [1].

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/electromagn...

And yet the second bullet in that article:

> The electromagnetic fields produced by mobile phones are classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

So it's not settled science, even though there is some evidence pointing toward it not causing cancer.

There is a lot of evidence, long term studies, showing they do not do cancer. So the question is why are they listed as a possible cause? It invalidates the entire list. My car keys may well "possibly" cause cancer if the bar is so low.

The specific item that is on the IARC Group 2B ("possibly carcinogenic") is "radiofrequency electromagnetic fields", which includes exposures due to cell phone use-- cell phone radiation specifically is not classified.

So, if your car has keyless entry, your car keys would technically also be on the list.

What has IARC excluded from causing cancer?

From wikipedia, it says "limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and less than sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. It may also be used when there is inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity in humans but there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. In some instances, an agent, mixture or exposure circumstance for which there is inadequate evidence of carcinogenicity in humans but limited evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals together with supporting evidence from other relevant data may be placed in this group."

Anecdotally, I see alongside some unpleasant-sounding items, a lot of common things on that same list like: aloe vera, Ginkgo biloba, engine exhaust, pickled vegetables, and cocamide DEA. It seems to me that mere presence on that list doesn't mean much without further context -- why it was put on the list, the relative danger of it compared to other things on that list, etc.

I see as another datapoint the fact that we've had broadcast radio for over a century, some using several orders of magnitude higher power levels[1] than mobile phones today, yet no corresponding increases in cancer were seen.

On the chance that there is an effect, it might not even be detectable, which means for all practical purposes it doesn't.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLW

Absorbance characteristics of sub 100 MHz are substantially different from those of multiple GHz.

When you extract temporal and frontal lobe glioblastoma from the rest of brain tumor numbers you get a graph like this:

https://microwavenews.com/sites/default/files/de-vocht-respo...

Not saying it's a direct correlation, this is a very difficult topic to analyze, but if you are a heavy phone user you take your chances. Cancer has a long latency period, so you may die of other causes before the damage is realized.

Personally I think other more immediate non-thermal effects of pulsed RF are of more concern than cancer at the moment. This may change, but that's what the current research seems to point towards.

What does that have to do with radio waves? And how often do people actually put cell phones close to their head compared to 10 years ago? For all we know it could be related to increasing obesity rates.

Mine's right in front of my head (frontal lobes), as I squint to read your comment.

The radiation pattern isn't the strongest there, however. Antennae on mobiles will be strongest emitting from the back and sides, with less out the front. Any RF that gets absorbed by the body is wasted energy, so they optimise the antennae to emit away from the body in the typical orientation.

I've been following this debate for a long time, and it's definitely not settled science.

In fact The Lancet just published this article:

"Planetary electromagnetic pollution: it is time to assess its impact" https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...

There is plenty of evidence of non-thermal and non-ionizing biological effects [1]. The problem is at the moment most people are focused on cancer, when in fact there are a lot of other published effects that need to be looked into.

ICNIRP and FCC are both focused solely on thermal effects, with human modeling as a blob of jelly, when the latest science shows there also exists non-thermal effects on a cellular and bio-molecular level.

[1] An example of 500 published papers on EMR (electromagnetic radiation) since August 2016: https://www.saferemr.com/2018/04/recent-research.html

I cannot speak about the biological effects of RF but I'm pretty sure that the denser the coverage, the less power will end up being used by the phone (or base stations) to complete the link (since on average phones will be closer to base stations) -- leading to less RF exposure.

I wonder if there's any Monsanto-esque funny business going on in this debate about EM radiation and cancer. If there was, how could we tell?

Personally I think the better reference is Wakefield - trying to fabricate a danger for fiscal gain. They keep on trying to find a smoking gun so they can have 'the next tobacco lawsuit' but it just isn't there.

The answer is objective and trusted third party analysis. But since we don't have the time or resources as individuals to know and follow the work of the myriad researchers in the world, we need at least third party certification agencies to certify their ongoing work and not just their initial education.

Thus a gap could be filled by a foundation which had the resources to provide a brand to peer review and follow up study for the most impactful publications/findings of the year. If this foundation had a significant amount of funding for research well beyond typical peer review, it would inspire some level of confidence in results that otherwise we cannot have from the peer review performed by people working for the publishing companies that profit from publication.

We don't let farmer joe and farmer bob review each other's operations, yet that is often what we do with the food for our minds.

The beauty of science is that we never know anything with absolute certainty. However, things like burnt toast and cured meat have been shown to be carcinogenic. On the other hand, non-ionizing radiation has not been shown to be cancer causing despite a lot of studies. In that context, I would say it is absolutely absurd to worry about mobile phones without some clear new evidence.

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