Doesn't matter how many times it is studied. Paranoia will always reign.
Whenever someone talks about electro magnetic radiation from wifi or phones, I usually point out the massive ball of radiation in the sky that will burn their skin in 15 minutes of exposure and is known to cause cancers in millions of people. People tend to forget about that one when they are obsessing about low powered mobile devices.
Is there really even much public paranoia? I've never heard of anyone that refuses to use a cell phone because of perceived risk, other than the tiny few people who try to sue claiming that cell phones or cell towers caused cancer or a rash. At worst, I imagine many people probably think there's an extremely small negligible risk.
In my experience cell phones and microwaves ovens are thought by the random public member to be carcinogenic. Never mind that some of these people smoke heavily and binge drink. Heck there is a more logical basis to suspect flame grilling to be cancer causing than mobiles. There is no escaping the damn thing, life causes cancer.
One random dude handed me a pamphlet about stopping the smart meters, citing that it was 10 feet from his head when he slept and that he'd have to find a new home if they actually install it.
I feel like I'm watching people make themselves crazy with panic over something that has little science to back it up.
In my neighborhood, many people are protesting WiFi and new cell towers near their kids' schools. And then there are the people who are "allergic" to WiFi.
When I first installed wi-fi in my house in 2001, one of my friends declared (jokingly) that he would be wearing tin-foil underpants when visiting. While he was joking, he was the kind of person who easily believes things they are told, and lets go of beliefs slowly. He did say he would never install it in his own house.
Yes, there is a widespread belief amongst the general public that wi-fi and mobile phones are dangerous.
I wouldn't call it mass hysteria, but yeah there's paranoia. I was in a doctor's office recently (a doctor specializing in "holistic" medicine) where there was a sign in the waiting room asking people to turn off their cell phones because it interferes with the nervous system. With all this radiation messing up our nervous system, no wonder we're all crazy (and have been from prehistoric times)
The sun puts out amazing power (roughly one kilowatt per square meter), but most of that power is in the visible spectrum. As a black body, only a tiny fraction of that power would be emitted at frequencies used by mobiles. Unfortunately, I've been unable to find hard figures, so I so I can't directly compare mobile phone power output with sun exposure at identical frequencies. Does anyone have a good number?
I don't think you used black body in a way that makes sense to your point. Could you clarify? That is, it is true the sun is (approximately) a black body radiator but I am unclear how that supports what you are trying to say.
Ionizing radiation is the main cancer culprit and you can be sure the sun emits far more such radiation - mainly in the form of UV rays - than your cell phone. Which is at frequency levels below visible - mainly microwaves I think.
> Ionizing radiation is the main cancer culprit and you can be sure the sun emits far more such radiation - mainly in the form of UV rays - than your cell phone. Which is at frequency levels below visible - mainly microwaves I think.
I thought you were mixing them up at first, but re-reading you did get it right. To clarify, in case anyone else got confused too:
UV is just above the visible spectrum in frequency.
Microwaves are below infrared, below visible.
(from Wikipedia) "Radiation on the short-wavelength [high frequency] end of the electromagnetic spectrum—high-frequency ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays—is ionizing, due to its composition of high-energy photons. Lower-energy radiation, such as visible light, infrared, microwaves, and radio waves, are not ionizing. The latter types of low-energy non-ionizing radiation may damage molecules, but the effect is generally indistinguishable from the effects of simple heating."
It is claimed that mobile phone risks are insignificant compared to the risks of the sun, because the sun puts out way more radiation. However, risks may depend on power and frequency of the radiation (while it is true that ionizing radiation causes cancer, one can't rule out cancer effects at other, non-ionizong frequencies through unknown mechanisms). If it can be shown the sun puts out much less mobile-phone like radiation than your phone, then the conparison is not really valid. Put another way, the question is, "will I be exposed to more mobile-phone like radiation (1.8 Ghz) from a five minute call, or from standing in the sun for five minutes?" I tried to use a blackbody model of the sun to answer this, but I failed.
There's also effects of the heat given off by the phone heating your head, but I ignore that.
> one can't rule out cancer effects at other, non-ionizong frequencies through unknown mechanisms
Well, you can. That's the whole point.
You pose the hypothesis "unknown mechanisms in non-ionizing radiation cause cancer". Then you do the research, and then when you don't find the cancer effects, you rule out these "unknown mechanisms".
That's science.
> There's also effects of the heat given off by the phone heating your head, but I ignore that.
And so does everybody else, because heat doesn't cause cancer.
Additionally, the phone heats your head? Citation? And not just "well it's microwaves so it probably heats things around it by some billion-thousandth of a degree", but an actual citation of mobile phone radiation heating your head, preferably in a manner that is still somewhat significant when compared to the tiny temperature fluctuations caused by natural cell processes (as, you know, if a mitochondria generates more heat than a nearby phone, the point is probably moot, no?).
The sun puts more infrared radiation on your head. And while I have not looked it up or done any calculations, I suspect that if you integrate over total exposure (watts/m^2) to microwave radiation per unit time on your head, for the average person, the sun will come out on top over the mobile. Especially those near the equator. And since you can't hold all variables as equal we can likely usually find two people where phone + sun is equal but phone or sun exposure for the other person is more. So I argue for many persons we can find another who is doing okay whose total microwave power absorption from sun is equal to that of our person's sun and mobile exposure.
My comment isn't necessarily directed at the same frequencies as electronic devices. It's just directed to people who think electronic devices are dangerous, but pay little attention to a known danger - ie, the sun. If you asked the average person on the street if the sun's rays were dangerous radiation, I wonder what answers you'd get.
And don't forget there are millions of people lining up every day to actually pay money to submit their body to uv radiation in tanning booths. The dangers are pretty well known now, but they're still around.
All I'm saying is that, like most paranoias, from sharks to terrorists and mobile phones along the way, the risk ratio is skewed when fantasy and imagination takes over cold hard facts.
To be fair, all forms of invisible rays/waves can be dangerous in large enough quantities. I figure the fact that they are potentially harmful combined with their strange and invisible nature causes the uninformed to freak out disproportionately. Reference the Californias who were afraid radiation from Fukushima would kill them.
They're not very low powered though. 3 watts in the low GHz band is very penetrative and can heat very deep inside an object, like a human brain. The sun doesn't penetrate that way.
Can it? From what I've read it will only raise the temperature of the skin and skull by a fraction of a degree, far less than that absorbed from sunlight. The brain is very sensitive to temperature changes and even a bit more than a couple degrees above normal would be very noticeable damage wise - so if your brain cells were being fried the effects would be very visible.
Note too that exercise also raises brain temp but your brain is quite able to regulate its temperature under normal conditions (e.g. no certain drugs or overly hot).
There are some caveats to this study which mean isn't as spectacularly powerful as Ars makes it.
- They only have subscriber data from 1987-1995, when almost nobody had mobile phones (7%), and they were so expensive to use that they were used rarely (mostly outdoors and in cars).
- But since then, 86% of the population has started to use mobile phones, and because they don't have tracking data for them, all of these mobile phone users are in the control group. So they're comparing exposed users to only-slightly-more exposed users (as I mention above, cell phones were rare and had quite expensive per-minute fees before 1995). They only know that most in the control group didn't have a mobile before 1995. Since then, they don't know how long any user in either group has used their mobile.
- During the period for which they have data (pre-1996) 30% of users were on corporate plans and couldn't be tracked--so the heaviest users were lumped in with the control group too.
- The 1987-1995 group mostly used analog phones, not today's GSM phones.
Still, earlier phone users have used their phones slightly more than non-users in aggregate, so this study is noteworthy despite the lumping of the 30% heaviest users with the controls and the massive cell phone use by both groups since 1995. You'd expect cancer rate to correlate with mobile phone exposure, and both groups are very large.
I read somewhere, many years ago, that there were thousands of suspected carcinogens, but only dozens of known carcinogens. The known carcinogens are things that raise your (fairly low) chance of getting some particular form of cancer by a factor of ten or a hundred or a thousand -- things like cigarette smoke and ionizing radiation.
The suspected carcinogens are things that may or may not raise your chance of getting some particular form of cancer by a few percent. We'll likely never know whether some of these things really do cause cancer, because you're looking for tiny correlations in data which is already pretty sparse.
Anyway, either you'll get brain cancer or you won't. The difference made by using or not using a phone is not a significant factor in determining the way you die.
Unless, of course, you use it while driving. Heck, even using it while crossing the street has probably cost thousands of lives so far.
There are still other things which I find concerning. For example
" electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobile phones alters the permeability of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), resulting in albumin extravasation immediately and 14 days after 2h of exposure."
Hilariously it is not allowed to use the social security number as the primary key (nor is it recommended since they can, and do, change e.g. after a sex-change operation people are assigned a new number because the final digit indicate the sex of the person) but you may store it in the database along with the other information you have on the subscribers.
How they got it past the privacy officials I have no idea, you cannot normally get sensitive medical records on that many people.
Not exactly scientific, but I know a guy who's sperm count increased (enough to knock up his wife anyway) once he stopped carrying his phone in his pocket. Tim Ferriss, of 4-hour body fame, tested this and seems to agree. He mentions in his book that he now carries his phone on an arm-band.
...which is why I linked to some actual science. The fact that anecdote seems to coincide with the science, while perhaps statistically irrelevant, I thought others might find interesting.
The percentage of users on HN that are currently attempting to conceive a child is probably very low, and that's the only cohort that would be worried about a temporary drop in sperm count.
The percentage that do not want to have a child, either accidently or on purpose, will be much higher. For that cohort, a low sperm count can only be a good thing.
Title is slightly misleading because the study didn't go on for 15 years, they used an existing database with 15 years of information.
I also hate the use of the word 'link' because it seems to imply causality in many people's minds. This is a correlational study - a finding either way is good for suggesting a hypothesis, but we cannot infer (in this case a lack of) cause and effect. There could easily be gigantic unknown confounding variables.
There could also be a very small minority of people very sensitive to radiation that can easily be brushed aside as outliers in these kinds of studies.
I am even more interested in any wifi studies now that I am constantly near wifi. But my guess is that wifi radiation is orders of magnitude less powerful than cellphone radiation so it won't be as great of a concern.
Lack of correlation isn't "proof" of lack of causation, but it's damned strong evidence. Yes, in theory a precisely calibrated confounding variable could be precisely canceling the real effect, but until you've got some sort of actual evidence of such a factor you're in blatent violation of Occam's Razor.
I'm really starting to loathe the thoughtless chants of "correlations doesn't imply causation"; it used to signal a deep understanding of science, now it tends to signal quite the opposite.
No, it is not strong evidence. It is only evidence of a correlation which is meaningless.
You shouldn't loath those thoughtless chants, you should embrace them. The first thing someone should say when presented with "linkage" is think, that is meaningless on its own.
The real problem is that there are so many scientists (people with the ability to conduct statistical analysis) and so much data, that every possible correlation is being discovered. Even correlations that have nothing to do with anything.
The best examples come from Finance, where the data has been more attainable, and where the rewards for finding real causality have been available longer and allowed for advanced computations on super computers before we all had excel (or put more useful statistical tool here).
One of the go to papers on Motley Fool's completely loosing stock selection strategy is here:
There are lots of papers and examples in finance where people tried to find causality, but really only found correlation. Doing so is the best way to loose a ton of money.
It is also the best way to get people to do stuff you do/don't want them to do and it is the best way to stop progress.
So, don't make assumptions about causality, you should provide real evidence of causality beyond correlation if you write the word linkage.
Lack of correlation, wtvanfest. Important word! Lack of correlation is evidence of lack of causation. It isn't absolute proof but it is good evidence. After all, "lack of correlation is evidence of lack of causation" is the contrapositive(ish) of "Causation is evidence of correlation". If that's not true then all hope is lost of ever learning anything.
Sorry, but that's exactly the sort of thoughtless repetition I'm talking about. You're in such a hurry to chant the mantra and wave your scienciness around you didn't even take the time to notice it was the precise opposite of the conversation at hand. Which is precisely what my complaint was in the first place.
Not always. For instance, the temperature in my fridge is a pleasant four degrees celsius constantly, but the compressor keeps on switching on and off.
Eh, that's just a lack of detail. With a sufficiently precise thermometer, you'd see the temperature rising when the compressor is off, and falling when it's on.
Right, but that just means that you're only able to disprove correlation to within a certain accuracy. Correlation below the detection threshold could still exist, and could still be due to causation. Correlation above the detection threshold does not exist, and rules out causation above the detection threshold.
That explains why lack of detection of correlation does not imply lack of causation. But all of the possible failures that it outlines are failures in detection, not an actual lack of correlation. It's a subtle distinction, but I think it's an important one.
That is a good point - the most accurate statement would be: lack of correlation cannot imply there is no relation.
I think we risk oversimplification by referring to it solely as a failure of detection. The first 3 points of the article mean we could probably adjust the experiment right now (or should have before the experiment began). The 4th point, while technically a failure of detection, could be due to unknown confounders (or as Rumsfeld would say - unknown unknowns). So it could be a failure in detection or a failure in knowledge.
My terminology may not be the best. But to put it simply, if you do an experiment and that experiment says that there is no correlation, then to within the limits of your knowledge that there is no correlation, you can also say that there is no causation. Whether those limits are based on your experimental design, external factors, or what have you, is a separate (but completely interesting) question.
I think the key to terminology here is to make the statement in a negative fashion: knowledge is always limited so we can never be certain there is no relation.
It is interesting in this case to try to make the claim that because there is no correlation of cancer to proximity of cell phone use that cell phones probably don't cause cancer in nearby locations in the body. I think we have enough knowledge to make that case, but I might just be arrogant.
> There could also be a very small minority of people very sensitive to radiation that can easily be brushed aside as outliers in these kinds of studies.
There could be pixies inhabiting the space between Earth and Mars whose existence can easily be brushed aside as noise in all of the sensors of all of the telescopes we have pointed in that direction.
Russell's Teapot is usually used when debating with religious people but it is equally valid whenever someone keeps proposing a theory based on no stronger evidence than "Well, we haven't looked everywhere, now have we?"
To the extent that other studies have found such links in the past, I'm curious how much is due to pure correlation: ie, people who own cell phones and also engage in other behavior that increases the risk of cancer. This would also be much more relevant in the days when only a few early adopters owned mobiles, as opposed to now, when practically everybody does.
Valid point, but this concern should be somewhat alleviated by the massiveness of the study. I imagine that in 360,000 people, "pure correlation" should be relatively uniformly-spaced, meaning that there's enough people for all "correlative" behaviors to be statistic noise.
This is interesting but doesn't prove there is no link, as brain cancer is very infrequent, trying to show the incidence increasing by studying hundreds of thousands of people is actually not the most accurate method. It's more logical to investigate it in the following way:
Look at people who have brain cancer, and see if it's more likely to be on the side of the head where the person uses their mobile phone. If statistically significant, then it's a much easier way to prove a link.
This doesn't mean for all brain cancer and doesn't mean it's a strong effect. But if you are studying brain cancer, you have to compare apples to apples, and this study, whilst useful doesn't prove that there is link to brain cancer it only proves that they did not find a link. A more precise study is more effective.
I'm not sure if there's a causal link in this case.
It could also be argued that, because the acoustic neurons on that side of the head are being used more, they're more likely to be cancerous, or that both are caused by a similar issue.
For example, left handed women are more likely to have breast cancer, and a similar minor preference like which ear you use for a phone might correlate with health issues.
It could also be argued that, because the acoustic neurons on that side of the head are being used more, they're more likely to be cancerous, or that both are caused by a similar issue.
That sounds pretty convoluted to me. It could be true, but it probably isn't. If, as the paper abstract seems to indicate, long-term (but not short-term) cellphone users are getting fourfold more acoustic neuroma on the side of the head they use their cellphone on, as compared with the other side of their head, I'd say that the most likely explanation is that cellphone use is responsible.
Suppose you are injured or are having chest pains and need medical attention urgently.
Then what is the link between having a cell phone and surviving?
I would wager that effect is several orders of magnitude greater than any cancer effect.
Not a complete shock. If I understand it right, the frequencies chosen for mobile phones shouldn't interact with flesh; otherwise you're wasting energy.
It's about time someone shut these sensationalist scientists up. I was getting tired of the constant conflicting reports. Unless you can refute a 15-year longitudinal study with a longer study and a more concrete conclusion, keep your mouth shut.
While this study is great, you seem to be under the impression that science is so cut and dry when it comes to disproving theories. A shorter study with the right constraints could easily disagree with this one and warrant further investigation. While I find it highly unlikely that cell phones are cancer-causing agents, there's no reason to simply say "great, we've solved it, let's stop looking at this." That's not how science should or does work, when you're talking about something like this.
I would wager that the behavioral/psychological side effects of owning a mobile or smartphone far outweigh any physiological effects of the radiation. Either way, I'm curious as well.
Whenever someone talks about electro magnetic radiation from wifi or phones, I usually point out the massive ball of radiation in the sky that will burn their skin in 15 minutes of exposure and is known to cause cancers in millions of people. People tend to forget about that one when they are obsessing about low powered mobile devices.