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Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#71

Post by graeme »

pbnjay wrote: post #30
dbatten wrote: 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…

Also, in a country that grew by approximately 10 Million people in the same span.

Probably got older too - are brain tumours linked with age?

If this chart is accurate, 3.5 years older: https://www.statista.com/statistics/275394/median-age-of-the...

They really should have looked at rates by a given age.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#72

Post by rossdavidh »

parvenu74 wrote: post #61

I've never been a fan of holding an active transmitter (cell phone) against the side of my head, preferring to use either speakerphone or a corded headset of some type. But I wonder: how much danger does a Bluetooth wireless headset present compared to the phone itself?

I have the impression that, since the era of smartphones, people actually talk on their cellphones less, and text more. If so, and if there were anything to this article's posited link, then we would expect the rate of tumors to drop again in the coming years. Just a speculation.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#74

Post by perl4ever »

emodendroket wrote: post #49
perl4ever wrote: post #43

I wonder how many people hold their heads close to a running microwave while they are watching to see if something is overheating...

They probably don't do that making direct contact between their heads and the machine for an hour at a time. Seems like a bad comparison.

It's not clear to me that it's a bad comparison for several reasons.

(a) I don't think it's typical to make direct contact with a cell phone for an hour at a time. Most calls I make are short and I don't actually hold it touching my ear. That does depend on the noise level though. (b) Microwaves are much higher power. (c) Microwaves may be constructed to looser tolerances regarding shielding.

Yes, microwaves are different, but the differences don't uniformly cut in one direction, so I think it's a little too glib to dismiss the hazard out of hand.

Edit: One could argue that in fact your ear holds your phone away from your head, providing an offset analogous to the distance one is observing a microwave from. But this is really a rhetorical answer to a rhetorical objection, when my point is more that only quantitative analysis could illuminate the accuracy of the comparison.

The prompting for my original post is that I was microwaving water to boiling and watching to make sure it didn't superheat - unlike on the stove, it can form a big bubble of steam suddenly. It seems to me that I do this nearly as often as I make a phone call (as opposed to texting and email).

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#76

Post by FLUX-YOU »

eli wrote: post #67
dbatten wrote: 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…

You also expect the number of identified cases to increase as we improve detection methods and find tumors earlier.

53 million is also not necessarily a population 100% seeking healthcare either, so if more people are getting access healthcare, more tumors will be found.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#77

Post by emodendroket »

perl4ever wrote: post #74
emodendroket wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably don't do that making direct contact between their heads and the machine for an hour at a time. Seems like a bad comparison.

It's not clear to me that it's a bad comparison for several reasons. (a) I don't think it's typical to make direct contact with a cell phone for an hour at a time. Most calls I make are short and I don't actually hold it touching my ear. That does depend on the noise level though. (b) Microwaves are much higher power. (c) Microwaves may be constructed to looser tolerances regarding shielding. Yes, microwaves are diff…

> I don't think it's typical to make direct contact with a cell phone for an hour at a time.

Do you have any family who live more than 30 minutes away?

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#78

Post by consp »

coldtea wrote: post #41
consp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Outliers, not in any way related to the general trend and a bad argument in general. Numbers please.

[1] https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=ht... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3953803/

worst case, average case is more than an order of magnitude lower for cardiac related death:

2/100.000 for cardiac related death by excercise.

1278.9/100.000 normal

1879.4/100.000 obese (combined, so about 1.5 increase)

So yes, outliers. Though the numbers are difficult to compare since the timespan of the research is different and the age groups could be off. But you asked for numbers.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#79

Post by consp »

taneq wrote: post #34
consp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So increase the sample size and check if they are still outliers. Or find the chance distribution (or guess it for that matter) and bootstrap the results and see if it holds.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#80

Post by icebraining »

parvenu74 wrote: post #61

I've never been a fan of holding an active transmitter (cell phone) against the side of my head, preferring to use either speakerphone or a corded headset of some type. But I wonder: how much danger does a Bluetooth wireless headset present compared to the phone itself?

It's probably very hard to tell, specially since cellphones will dynamically adapt their transmission power depending on the conditions - anything from 0.7mW to 4.4mW[1]. By contrast, a bluetooth device of class 2 (most headsets) is limited to 2.5mW[2], but who knows how much they actually use within that limit.

[1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7879218

[2] https://www.sans.edu/cyber-research/security-laboratory/arti...

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