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Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

telegraph.co.uk

31–40 of 185 posts

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#31
post #11

Brain tumors take several years to even decades to develop and become apparent. This rise in tumors detected now could have been caused in the days of analog phones with radios that had vastly higher power output. Or, for that matter, analog cordless phones.

GBM tumors are super aggressive and there's no known cause. If you get diagnosed with a GBM your five year survival rate is 10%. Whatever the cause once the tumor gets started you have a months, not years before you know it.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#33
post #2

It is curious. I wonder why non-ionizing radiation causes cancer? Given we are constantly bathing in wifi signals and cellphone signals, I wonder what the effects will be?

Current scientific consensus is that it's unlikely that it does, however it's not completely ruled out. Risk of cancer from microwave radiation is considered to be thermal in nature. Unlike the background signals we are surrounded by, when making a phone call, you hold the phone to your head, meaning roughly half of the transmission energy is directed towards it. Furthermore, your brain is mostly water which absorbs microwaves well. That said, the heat generated by the absorption results in a very minimal increase in temperature, which is carried away by blood flow. Nerves are particularly sensitive to microwave burns, but this it observed at higher intensities.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#34
post #29
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's a bit different; those who developed/didn't lose protective measures in their DNA won't be affected and those that are out of luck will be excised from the gene pool. So statistically cell phones won't cause tumors, because only adaptable would survive. And for cancer it usually is a large mix of factors that starts them, so it's difficult to filter out noise and figure out compound factors from simple hea…

> BTW, exercise kills as well. There are also known cases of heavy smokers/drinkers that made it to 100. Outliers, not in any way related to the general trend and a bad argument in general.

When we're talking about 1-in-17,600 chances to begin with, I think outliers are relevant.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#35
post #11

Brain tumors take several years to even decades to develop and become apparent. This rise in tumors detected now could have been caused in the days of analog phones with radios that had vastly higher power output. Or, for that matter, analog cordless phones.

It doesn't make sense to me that we would find a detectable rise on that basis, because in the days of analog phones with high powered radios, it was a very small proportion of the population using them.

Here is a picture of a DynaTAC analog cell phone circa 1983: https://s.hswstatic.com/gif/cell-phone-old.jpg

I certainly knew what they looked like, before I had my first cell phone, because stockbrokers or lawyers or whatever in movies used them. But I never knew anyone who had one, or saw one in real life. They definitely preceded the current ubiquity of cell phones.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#36
post #2

It is curious. I wonder why non-ionizing radiation causes cancer? Given we are constantly bathing in wifi signals and cellphone signals, I wonder what the effects will be?

The strength of those signals is very, very low. WiFi around -60dBm or lower most of the time and the cellular signal where I go is usually well below -80dBm. For comparison, the power received from Earth's nearest star Alpha Centauri A is on the order of -50dBm. If I'm concerned about WiFi and cellular signals I should be positively freaked out about natural sources of em radiation.

But having a couple watt transmitter pressed against the side of your head might be something to think about. Still, it is non-ionizing radiation and aside from the possibility of localized heating, which you would likely notice (I think?), what's going to cause cancer? Some previously unknown (to me) phenomenon?

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#37

Source: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/aip/7910754/ The provisional pdf is full of Tracked Changes. To clarify, GBM is the only kind of cancer that increased in frequency in the data they have. I'm less inclined to think that these "findings" are accurate and more to think it's a matter of accounting and data quality. (Not to mention the quality of the manuscript itself.)

From that paper:

>Our results highlight an urgent need for funding more research into the initiation and promotion of GBM tumours. This should include the use of CT imaging for diagnosis and also modern lifestyle factors that may affect tumour metabolism.

There is very little mention of cell phones in that paper, they only seem to reference a paper from 2015 regarding data from 2000-2003 (higher antennae output back then?)[0] They mention:

>a 50-minute cell phone exposure produced a statistically significant increase in brain glucose metabolism in the orbitofrontal cortex and temporal pole regions closest to the handset

[0]Hardell and M. Carlberg, “Mobile phone and cordless phone use and the risk for glioma – Analysis of pooled case–control studies in Sweden, 1997–2003 and 2007–2009,” Pathophysiology, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 1–13, 2015. doi:10.1016/j.pathophys.2014.10.001. [Online First 2014 Oct 29]

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#39
post #16

"They analysed 79,241 malignant brain tumours over 21 years, finding that cases of GBM in England have increased from around 1,250 a year in 1995 to just under 3,000." ~2000 new cases per year in a country with 53 million people? I'll take my chances. I'm fascinated how people obsess over the unproven and ultimately minuscule health risks associated with using a cell phone or drinking a glass of wine or eating chocol…

[deleted]

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#40
post #5

Maybe the paper addresses this, but don't most people hold the phone predominantly on one side or the other? Wouldn't the locations of the tumors be more on that side of the brain? And wouldn't that provide some pretty good support for the association?

I can't find the cite right now, but I recall there was a study some years back that found that heavy mobile phone users didn't have any higher rate of brain cancer than the general population, but among those who did get cancer, there was a strong statistical correlation between the side of the head where they most used the phone and the location of the cancer.

I'm calling it now, there's some gene which codes for "sense of direction" and results in some kind of magnetic element embedded in some nerve cells (the way some birds 'see' the Earth's magnetic field), which also makes them vulnerable to excessive EMF radiaton.
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