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Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

wsj.com

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Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#101

Post by p1mrx »

taneq wrote: post #77
joshvm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mother Jones posted this link: http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f... Key points: - The rats were exposed in utero and throughout their lifetimes - They did pilot studies to find what radiation level did not cause a body temperature rise to remove that as a confusing factor - 900MHz CDMA and GSM signals - SAR of 0, 1.5, 3, 6 W/kg. For comparison the FCC limit is 1.2 W/kg in 1 gram of tissue.…

Oh great, now those damn people with CDMA phones are going to be even more smug. :P

Pretty much everyone uses CDMA these days. 3G/UMTS and 4G/LTE are both based on CDMA, which transmits continuously, unlike 2G/GSM/EDGE, which transmits in pulses and makes the dit-dit-dit-bzzz sound in nearby speakers.

Edit: actually LTE uses OFDM, which is mathematically distinct from CDMA, but a naive receiver is unlikely to notice the difference.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#102

Post by andy_ppp »

Johnythree wrote: post #56
1337biz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cellphones or wi-fi today are like cigarettes in the '40s. That is exactly the same question I am always asking. But with most controversial topics this could be true.

When the statistical evidence for Cigarette usage was closely examined it was immediately obvious that there was a link with health. But we have hundreds of detailed studies of Radio and Health, and no reproducible link has ever been found. You can't have it both ways. To conflate the two is simply wrong. The evidence doesn't support your argument.

Agreed, exercise, smoking and alcohol are likely to be hundreds of times more effective at stopping cancer than giving up your mobile phone, wifi and bluetooth devices.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#103

Post by mikekij »

Medical Physicist here. The position isn't "non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer". It's "There is no known mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer." Maybe we'll discover a mechanism one day to explain this. But we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently cancer, and produced.

We should certainly research this area further. But the probability of this study having failed to control for some other variable is higher than the probability of an as of yet unknown process allowing microwaves to produce changes in the chemical bonds holding together DNA.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#104

Post by Twirrim »

taneq wrote: post #77
joshvm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mother Jones posted this link: http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f... Key points: - The rats were exposed in utero and throughout their lifetimes - They did pilot studies to find what radiation level did not cause a body temperature rise to remove that as a confusing factor - 900MHz CDMA and GSM signals - SAR of 0, 1.5, 3, 6 W/kg. For comparison the FCC limit is 1.2 W/kg in 1 gram of tissue.…

Oh great, now those damn people with CDMA phones are going to be even more smug. :P

Why would CDMA and GSM operating in the same frequency result in different outcomes. It doesn't seem like there should be anything biologically significant by way of difference there.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#105

Post by ars »

kome wrote: post #45

Cellphones or Wi-Fi today are like cigarettes in the '50s. A huge lobby pretend they are just fine, people are in denial because they love them and we lack of longitudinal data about their effects on health. But thanks to further research, and time, we are starting to understand better the effects of cellphone radiation on health. The World Health Organization already had a rapport in 2011 about cellphones possible d…

Callphone? Maybe.

Wi-Fi? No way. That is way too low power.

What about TV? Or Radio? No one seems to ever talk about them.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#106

Post by whatisunseen »

MicroBerto wrote: post #62
retrogradeorbit wrote: post #40

It's important to note that according to official dogma, non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer. I've heard my own concerns about non-ionising radiation dismissed (even belittled) so many times that I've lost count. Most often this comes from educated people who think that their education constitutes the whole of all knowledge about the universe and that there is nothing left to be discovered. But one should und…

Be careful when dealing with absolutes. No matter how smart you think you may be, you simply don't know what you don't know, as you allude to later in your comment.

Very true, but the same can be said for scientists. While paying lip-service to what it doesn't know, the hubris of modern science is its vice.

We live in an age of relative technological ignorance. Let's keep a proper perspective. In a few centuries, people will look back at what we know today and laugh. (Infinite examples could be given. Only 100 years ago people said man would never fly, etc. )

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#107

Post by mkehrt »

p1mrx wrote: post #101
taneq wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh great, now those damn people with CDMA phones are going to be even more smug. :P

Pretty much everyone uses CDMA these days. 3G/UMTS and 4G/LTE are both based on CDMA, which transmits continuously, unlike 2G/GSM/EDGE, which transmits in pulses and makes the dit-dit-dit-bzzz sound in nearby speakers. Edit: actually LTE uses OFDM, which is mathematically distinct from CDMA, but a naive receiver is unlikely to notice the difference.

"CDMA" means something different than "code division multiple access" multiplexing when contrasted with GSM.

Instead it refers to the CDMA2000 family of telephony protocols (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDMA2000), which are a series of whole stack (radio modulation all the way up to text encoding schemes) protocols. Calling it "CDMA" is a branding thing than rather than having anything to do with multiplexing.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#108

Post by Angostura »

epistasis wrote: post #99
colordrops wrote: post #96

In a similar vein, don't even think of questioning GMOs. You even just hint that you wanna see more studies on their safety you will be torn limb from limb, even if you admit to trusting them and eating them yourself.

That's because there already have been many many studies, and regulations require that each new food GMO be studied as well. If you don't mention all those, I'm guess the "tearing limb from limb" is actually annoyance at your ignorance.

Absolutely don't mention the tiny, but potential serious problems associated with introducing novel organisms into the environment, either through horizontal gene transfer or escape into the wild. Supporters will spend a lot of time patronisingly explaining that we have been indulging in GM for millennia thanks to selective breeding, while neglecting to mention the degree of novelty and rapidity of introduction that modern techniques allow.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#109

Post by tryitnow »

mikekij wrote: post #103

Medical Physicist here. The position isn't "non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer". It's "There is no known mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer." Maybe we'll discover a mechanism one day to explain this. But we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently cancer, and produced. We should certainly research this area further. But the probability of this study hav…

"But the probability of this study having failed to control for some other variable is higher than the probability of an as of yet unknown process allowing microwaves to produce changes in the chemical bonds holding together DNA."

I really like this sentence. I wish more science commentators would talk about probability like this.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#110

Post by donovanr »

mikekij wrote: post #103

Medical Physicist here. The position isn't "non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer". It's "There is no known mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer." Maybe we'll discover a mechanism one day to explain this. But we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently cancer, and produced. We should certainly research this area further. But the probability of this study hav…

I've always been curious: I understand that h.nu from cell phone radiation isn't big enough to ionize (say) DNA, but since the molecules in our body are in thermal equilibrium, can't h.nu + kT get it done every once in a while?

[edited because using an asterisk to denote multiplication was a bad idea]

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