Cancer and mobile phones

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/14/mobile-phones-cancer-inconvenient-truths

by jrwan • 8 years ago

70 58 8 years ago

dwaltrip2• 8 years ago

Yet another example of how the world is hard...

I'm not sure what to make of this. I thought there wasn't any good evidence of radiation from mobile phones being harfmul.

blindpixel• 8 years ago

I am in the same boat. I get a creeping sense of horror when I read such reports.

SimbaOnSteroids• 8 years ago

When I read such reports I try to assume the worst is true, in this example that cell phone towers do in fact cause increased rates of cancer, however minuscule. Then I ask, is this a cost that we as a society are willing to bear for value add of the thing in question. In this case, I think the increase in cancer rates would have to be astronomically high for us to say that's too dangerous.

bittercynic2• 8 years ago

There still isn't any good evidence. Sometimes seems like the hardest thing about the world right now is to avoid getting scared/depressed by excessive exposure to reports like this one.

dwaltrip2• 8 years ago

Yeah.. reading all the comments that appeared after I wrote mine, it looks like I don't need to worry too much. That is, assuming the HN hivemind is on the right track -- which, for something like this, I think is generally the case.

jjoonathan4• 8 years ago

NTP scientists had exposed thousands of rats and mice ... to doses of radiation equivalent to an average mobile user’s lifetime exposure.

Misleading. From the study:

Rats were exposed to ... whole-body SAR exposures of 0, 1.5, 3, or 6 W/kg

The lowest exposure they tested was equivalent to an average person (80kg in North America, evidently) standing right in front of the antenna of a 120W transmitter 24/7.

st263• 8 years ago

Well, they had to jack it up because the experiment (and the rats) would not go on for seventy years. And if the mechanism of action is anything like other types of radiation, risk is proportional to total lifetime exposure, not peak exposure.

dbcurtis• 8 years ago

And if the mechanism of action is anything like other types of radiation,

And if the mechanism is mocrowave heating, then power density driven heating rate is the first order effect.

Which 'if' is it? Perhaps neither of the above.

jjoonathan4• 8 years ago

That's the "linear-no-threshold" model (LNT) and I see no attempt to show that it holds here. They jumped straight to exposures thousands of times higher than typical heavy use, which smells like they were fishing for a positive result.

joecool10293• 8 years ago

Nah, jacking it up has its own new set of problems. Cellphone radiation isn't ionizing radiation, at most you're ever so slightly heating cells around it. By increasing the intensity you might be literally baking and killing cells in the process (think the difference between drinking a scalding beverage and burning the shit out of your mouth vs. letting it cool and not being injured or having the cells get killed off).

Now take my hot beverage example and repeat it a bunch of times. I would bet that cancer incidence would increase in the scalding group. (as you're destroying epithelial cells and forcing them to regenerate... and cancer is really biological lotto).

To top all the above off. With the exception of the migration from GSM to WCDMA technology (GSM pulsed the radio), cell phone radio output power has actually been on the decline due to smaller cells sizes being used in cities. It's nothing like using an analog cellphone in the 80's was in terms of output.

jamroom• 8 years ago

This is true if you believe in the LNT (Linear No Threshold) model:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model

Then check out the idea of Radiation Hormesis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

It's an interesting idea.

mtgx2• 8 years ago

5G towers are going to be much closer to more people (every 300 meters or so, I believe) to deliver those 1+ Gbps speeds.

PakG1• 8 years ago

Lack of definitive proof that a technology is harmful does not mean the technology is safe, yet the wireless industry has succeeded in selling this logical fallacy to the world. The upshot is that, over the past 30 years, billions of people around the world have been subjected to a public-health experiment: use a mobile phone today, find out later if it causes genetic damage or cancer.

I've always said this, and I know it's putting the cart before the horse in terms of scientific investigation, and I know that in the worst case, I sound like a tin foil hat. And I use a mobile phone regularly myself. But I've always always wondered. The article doesn't say anything definitive in either direction, so I still am left to wonder.

naasking2• 8 years ago

The upshot is that, over the past 30 years, billions of people around the world have been subjected to a public-health experiment

They say this like it's somehow unique to cell phones. Really, how does this differ from any technological advancement? Didn't the invention of cars, wired phones, the printing press, the transistor, etc. also start distributing without any scientific analysis of the possible dangers to health?

adamsea• 8 years ago

Those are weird examples (asbestos and lead in paint/gasoline might be better ones) for this particular topic, but, no?

Again using asbestos and lead in various products as examples, there are real dangers to public health in new products/technologies, and while I don't want to see the technological progress we've made stopped I do want to see more effort made to anticipate, mitigate, and lessen the potential harm caused by new technologies (and the irresponsible behavior of many of the companies pushing them).

jjoonathan4• 8 years ago

Radio waves were not invented by Steve Jobs. They have been studied extensively for well over a century. The "public-health experiment" the article wrings its hands about is not "causes cancer vs doesn't," it's whether the cancer effect is miniscule or even more miniscule.

Compared to other everyday safety hazards (cars, sunlight, pathogen exposure, bath mats...) this one is laughable even if you take extremely cynical confidence bounds.

joecool10293• 8 years ago

Back to beating a dead horse with the rats in a microwave oven study.

How about a large scale human study performed over 30 years? http://sci-hub.mu/10.1016/j.canep.2016.04.010

api• 8 years ago

That doesn't provide a click bait headline.

madengr• 8 years ago

I suppose the good thing is the phone is mostly in people’s hands now as opposed to their ear. Has phone use declined now due to texting? I know my 12 YO uses FaceTime with her friends instead of a traditional phone.

extrapickles• 8 years ago

It would move the location to a better spot if mobile phones caused cancer. I haven’t see any solid data on voice usage, but from a few poor quality articles its down at least 10-25% over the last decade.

The main problem with these studies is that they are “rats in a microwave oven”, so they are subject to the same amount of RF as if you were sleeping in a pile of cellphones transmitting constantly (not recommended). They never bother exposing some of the rats to 1 cellphones worth of power.

There have been large multiple decade studies done of cellphone users that indicate cancer is not an issue (see elsewhere in this thread for a link).

tehduder9• 8 years ago

So no "truth" at all? Alright.

pmoriarty• 8 years ago

Are bluetooth headphones and headsets any safer? Have there been any studies on those?

hrnnnnnn• 8 years ago

It seems like Bluetooth is safe, and using a phone with a headset might be the safest combination.

https://youtu.be/AnOm_nTupGg

bittercynic2• 8 years ago

Bluetooth seems safe, and simply holding the phone up to your head the old fashioned way also seems safe. The article is trying to drum up fear when there is no evidence of real danger.

alangpierce• 8 years ago

The video says that bluetooth operates at higher frequency but about 1000x lower power, which makes a lot of sense. Having a small device near your head broadcast a message a few feet seems much lower risk than having to broadcast all the way to the nearest cell phone tower.

Another thought: my phone and provider (Pixel 2, Google Fi) will automatically use WiFi for calls when available. I wonder if that mode is significantly lower radiation for the same reason (shorter distance to cover, so the signal doesn't need to be as strong).

musage• 8 years ago

Ugh.

There is a catch, though: the Internet of Things will require augmenting today’s 4G technology with 5G technology, thus “massively increasing” the general population’s exposure to radiation, according to a petition signed by 236 scientists worldwide who have published more than 2,000 peer-reviewed studies and represent “a significant portion of the credentialled scientists in the radiation research field”, according to Joel Moskowitz, the director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California, Berkeley, who helped circulate the petition. Nevertheless, like mobiles, 5G technology is on the verge of being introduced without pre-market safety testing.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B14R6QNkmaXuelFrNWRQcThNV0U...

Just out of curiosity, how would one go about locating the direction of 5G antennas? At the very least, I'd gleefully shit-talk anyone involved I come across. Just out of principle. It doesn't even matter how safe it turns out to be -- just how needy and dumb people are adopting anything thrown into their through, how reckless not just with their own lives, but with their effects on others and the environment, calls for some serious fucking wrath. And this is as good a starting point as any.

dvfjsdhgfv4• 8 years ago

There is no way 5G is blocked, too much money has been invested in it.

Nokinside• 8 years ago

We dismiss claims about mobiles being bad for our health – but is that because studies showing a link to cancer have been cast into doubt by the industry?

No. Industry probably casts doubt even when it's undeserved, but there is no reason to believe claims that mobile phone radiation causes cancer.

Even if the evidence provided would prove true, it would not matter. Reported effect sizes are so small it would not be reason to change behavior.

Microwave radiation has multiple potential ways it can change biological function, not just thermal effects. But things like EM radiation as calcium-channel antagonist works only with cells in vitro. If you are Multicellular organism with skin, there is no evidence that you are in any danger.

tzs2• 8 years ago

I'd like to see some studies that look at combining mobile phone radiation with things that are definitely known to cause cancer.

I'm curious about the possibility that mobile phone radiation does not cause cancer, but its presence can increase the effectiveness of other things the can cause cancer.

There are some researchers who think that the mechanism cells use to detect and repair damage to DNA finds the damage by looking for places along the DNA where there are unexpected changes in electrical conductivity such as due to broken bonds. There has been speculation that passing non-ionization electromagnetic radiation could interfere with that mechanism, causing it to overlook damaged DNA that it would have otherwise found and repaired.

Note that if it does indeed have some kind of "suppress preventing cancer" effect, then the intensity of the radiation might not matter much as long as it is above some threshold. What might matter most is the length of continuous exposure, and the time between intervals of exposure. As long as the times of little or no exposure are frequent enough and long enough that the cells will be able to do their find and repair operations before a cell on its way to cancer has time to start reproducing, you should be fine.

This would differ quite a bit from the usual radiation testing situation, where all that matters is total exposure, so you can simulate long term low level exposure by short term, higher level exposure.

It could turn out, say, that 100 short calls spread throughout the day are almost completely safe, even on an old high power phone, but a couple of long conversations greatly increase the risks that if something else tries to give you cancer during that time it will succeed.

This would probably be pretty hard to conduct a study on.

xevb3k• 8 years ago

detect and repair damage to DNA finds the damage by looking for places along the DNA where there are unexpected changes in electrical conductivity such as due to broken bonds.

Could you link to the research because this makes very little sense to me. DNA doesn’t conduct electricity in any meaningful way (base resistance >= Teraohms).

Maybe charge distribution or something?

tzs2• 8 years ago

I was using "electrical conductivity" where much of the research actually says "charge transport". An example [1].

[1] https://www.its.caltech.edu/~jkbgrp/Research.htm

Cieplak• 8 years ago

Microwave effects on plasmid DNA (1987)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/3575652/

Probably not significant if you have a good immune system, which is constantly cleaning out mutated cells. Sunlight, which is good for you, absolutely does cause cancer, but you don’t see conspiratorial articles about UV radiation.

The part about 5G was interesting though. I wonder if it could be weaponised, say by compromising a base station and beam forming a signal at full power (plus harmonics) at a target in possession of a cellphone.

rjplatte• 8 years ago

I don't know where the article is off the top of my head, but there was a competent-looking study showing that certain non-ionizing radiation can open the blood-brain barrier, which may be relevant to these results.

pera• 8 years ago

The most interesting part in my opinion is the linked meta-study from 2006 which had the following conclusion:

Forty (68%) studies reported one or more statistically significant results (p < 0.05) indicating an effect of the exposure (Table 2). Studies funded exclusively by industry reported on the largest number of outcomes but were less likely to report statistically significant results [...]
Our findings add to the existing evidence that single-source sponsorship is associated with outcomes that favor the sponsors’ products

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1797826/

This may be a fact that scientist are well aware of, but I would say it's not something that the general population knows; for most people there is this fantasy where the "scientific community" reaches consensus almost spontaneously and that's the end of the story, we got a new universal law.

If only the media said "some new analysis indicates that there could be a relation between this and that" instead of the usual "Science says"...

dvfjsdhgfv4• 8 years ago

That's interesting and sad at the same time.

gus_massa• 8 years ago

The problem with a fixed criteria of p < 0.05 for statistically significant results is that it is only useful if each experiment measures only one thing and all the studies are published.

I remember an study of a few year ago where they had

* rats and mice -> x2 * male/female/both -> x2 (or x3) * three level of radiation -> x3 * two or three types of cancer -> x2 (or x3)

So the report has at least 2x2x3x2=24 results. There is a high probability that by chance one of them gets a p<0.05.

Also, studies with a positive result have a higher chance of been published, because the researchers are not interested in publishing boring studies without a positive result so they don't write it, and the journals are not interested in publishing boring studies without a positive result so they don't approve it. (And I'm ignoring intentional fraud and p hacking ...)

Anyway, perhaps the researchers sponsored by the telephone companies/manufacters just publish all their studies and the independent researches publish only the interesting studies. This is why in certain areas it is mandatory to register the experiments before they start, to ensure (reduce) there is no publication bias.

In particle physics it's too easy to do experiments, filtering and analysis, so they use a criteria of 5 sigmas to call it a discovery. This is roughly p<0.0000003, because if they use p<0.05 you would get every month a announcement of a new particle and a few month later the retraction.

For experiments with mice/rats it's impossible to ask for p<0.0000003 because you will need trillions of rats, but remember that p<0.05 is just an arbitrary threshold.

binarynate• 8 years ago

I was diagnosed with testicular cancer earlier this year and am curious about whether keeping my cell phone in my front pocket on that side contributed to it. I was originally dismissive about this possibility, however I found it odd that my urology center said they've seen a significant increase in the number of young patients with testicular cancer over the past seven months. It's likely that they're just starting to receive more patients overall, but I'm curious if there could be another factor, like late-model cell phone use (and specifically, perhaps, the iPhone X). I'm curious if anyone else is in a similar situation or has heard of anything like this.

mmaunder• 8 years ago

"NTP scientists had exposed thousands of rats and mice (whose biological similarities to humans make them useful indicators of human health risks) to doses of radiation equivalent to an average mobile user’s lifetime exposure."

Assuming we're discussing RF "radiation", how did they do this? By cranking up the RF output power? I'm sure if someone exposed me to a few thousand watts of 1ghz RF pointed directly at me, the tissue heating effect alone would cause a huge range of issues. That is how a microwave heats food.

Seems a bit like saying that baths are deadly because scalding hot water will kill you.

godelski• 8 years ago

If this is the study that I'm remembering, then yes that's what they did. And this study keeps popping up. They are acting like there's some conspiracy to hide this study when it's really just junk"science"

zamfi2• 8 years ago

I like the sunlight analogy myself.

“We exposed broiler chickens (whose biological properties make them useful treatments of human hunger) to doses of heat and infrared radiation equivalent to an average human’s lifetime exposure.”

“They turned out crispy and delicious.”

mtgx2• 8 years ago

Remember when the industry used to say smoking was healthy, and even quoting doctors saying so?

I wonder if in 30 years we'll all be suing the industry over this (when it's too late for many of us).

craftyguy• 8 years ago

You know what can provide several watts/m^2 of MUCH higher frequency radiation (both ionizing and not), and kills far more people per year? THE SUN.

csuld2012223• 8 years ago

Even when smoking is conclusively proved to cause cancer and grotesque pictures of what your lungs will look like are displayed on the pack, people still ignore it and just smoke anyway. I think this effect is partly why people ignore or try and dismiss any possible evidence that this technology could indeed be causing harm. The NTP study has taken a lot of flak in the name of 'discerning' science,but as far as I can see none of it is deserved. (Original authors have responded thoroughly - so much so that they have done video presentation- on youtube)

sireat• 8 years ago

Have there been any studies on 1980s cell phone use ('the brick phone') which had much higher power output?

Anecdotally you heard of 1980s stock brokers getting brain cancer but were there any statistically valid studies done on this?

Cancer and mobile phones

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