cell phone increase cancer risk

[dragon]

Well at least according to WHO

It's in the same "hazard" category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform
Until now, WHO has said no adverse health effects have been established
The cell phone industry maintains that there is no conclusive evidence of danger
(CNN) -- Radiation from cell phones can possibly cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization. The agency now lists mobile phone use in the same "carcinogenic hazard" category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform.

Before its announcement Tuesday, WHO had assured consumers that no adverse health effects had been established.

A team of 31 scientists from 14 countries, including the United States, made the decision after reviewing peer-reviewed studies on cell phone safety. The team found enough evidence to categorize personal exposure as "possibly carcinogenic to humans."

What that means is that right now there haven't been enough long-term studies conducted to make a clear conclusion if radiation from cell phones are safe, but there is enough data showing a possible connection that consumers should be alerted.


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"The biggest problem we have is that we know most environmental factors take several decades of exposure before we really see the consequences," said Dr. Keith Black, chairman of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

The type of radiation coming out of a cell phone is called non-ionizing. It is not like an X-ray, but more like a very low-powered microwave oven.

"What microwave radiation does in most simplistic terms is similar to what happens to food in microwaves, essentially cooking the brain. So in addition to leading to a development of cancer and tumors, there could be a whole host of other effects like cognitive memory function, since the memory temporal lobes are where we hold our cell phones."

The voices urging caution to consumers have gotten louder in recent years.

The European Environmental Agency has pushed for more studies, saying cell phones could be as big a public health risk as smoking, asbestos and leaded gasoline. The head of a prominent cancer-research institute at the University of Pittsburgh sent a memo to all employees urging them to limit cell phone use because of a possible risk of cancer.

"When you look at cancer development -- particularly brain cancer -- it takes a long time to develop. I think it is a good idea to give the public some sort of warning that long-term exposure to radiation from your cell phone could possibly cause cancer," said Dr. Henry Lai, research professor in bioengineering at University of Washington who has studied radiation for over 30 years.

Results from the largest international study on cell phones and cancer was released in 2010. It showed participants in the study who used a cell phones for 10 years or more had doubled the rate of brain glioma, a type of tumor. To date, there have been no long-term studies on the effects of cell phone usage among children.

"Childrens' skulls and scalps are thinner. So the radiation can penetrate deeper into the brain of children and young adults. Their cells are dividing faster rate, so the impact of radiation can be much larger." said Black of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Manufacturers of many popular cell phones already warn consumers to keep their device away from their body.

The Apple iPhone 4 safety manual says for users' radiation exposure to not exceed FCC guidelines, "When using iPhone near your body for voice calls or for wireless data transmission over a cellular network, keep iPhone at least 15 mm (5/8 inch) away from the body."

Blackberry Bold advises users to, "keep the BlackBerry device at least 0.98 in. (25 mm) from your body when the BlackBerry device is transmitting."

link

[Akhlut]

Results from the largest international study on cell phones and cancer was released in 2010. It showed participants in the study who used a cell phones for 10 years or more had doubled the rate of brain glioma, a type of tumor. To date, there have been no long-term studies on the effects of cell phone usage among children.

I find statements like this to be very irritating; while this doubling is probably statistically significant, is it actually significant? Going from 2 per 1,000 to 4 per 1,000 is worrying, while 1 per 100,000 to 2 per 100,000 is a little less worrisome.

Also, I wonder what cellphone manufacturers can do to lessen the risk aside from "hold the phone an inch away from your head". Would an older style antenna for transmitting and receiving be superior from that standpoint?

I will say that I have changed my behavior a bit since I first heard about this; I now carry my cell phone in my pocket so my wallet is between the phone and my thigh. Generally, I'm not on the phone long enough for it to be a real risk, otherwise.

[Serafina]

If these findings are correct, this is actually easily solvable by using a headset and not holding your cellphone next to your brain.

[Akhlut]

If these findings are correct, this is actually easily solvable by using a headset and not holding your cellphone next to your brain.

True, but that's a bit inconvenient when just picking up the phone; though, getting brain cancer is a lot more inconvenient than using a headset.

[dragon]

If these findings are correct, this is actually easily solvable by using a headset and not holding your cellphone next to your brain.

well unless it's a bluetooth headset.

[Alan Bolte]

Bluetooth headsets generally have a much lower Specific Absorption Rate than a cell phone. Link.

[dragon]

Bluetooth headsets generally have a much lower Specific Absorption Rate than a cell phone. Link.

I'm surprised they haven't said wireless routers cause cancer, or did they and I just missed everyone ignoring them.

[Simon_Jester]

Wireless routers don't use all that much more power than a cell phone transmitter, and you don't hold the damn thing next to your head while using it. If cell phones are a low-order cancer risk (one that's hard to distinguish from background effects), wireless routers would be utterly negligible, unless I'm missing something important.

[Soldier of Entropy]

Wireless routers don't use all that much more power than a cell phone transmitter, and you don't hold the damn thing next to your head while using it. If cell phones are a low-order cancer risk (one that's hard to distinguish from background effects), wireless routers would be utterly negligible, unless I'm missing something important.

What about the other end, the part in a laptop? Would it then be a bad idea to, say, use a laptop connected to the internet with it sitting in your lap?

[Broomstick]

Judging by the yahoos around here, people are probably in greater danger of being hit by a car while yakking on their cellphones in a state totally oblivious to their surroundings than getting cancer from them.

I can't stand headsets. On the other hand, my cellphone use is very functional, maybe 30-60 seconds a call, two to three minutes tops, and not even every day. Oh, and there is speaker phone.

At a certain point I stopped worrying about miniscule cancer risks. Sure, don't be stupid about risks, but honestly, I deal with far greater hazards every day.

[Simon_Jester]

Wireless routers don't use all that much more power than a cell phone transmitter, and you don't hold the damn thing next to your head while using it. If cell phones are a low-order cancer risk (one that's hard to distinguish from background effects), wireless routers would be utterly negligible, unless I'm missing something important.

What about the other end, the part in a laptop? Would it then be a bad idea to, say, use a laptop connected to the internet with it sitting in your lap?

Conversely, a laptop transmitter doesn't need to broadcast with enough power to be picked up by an antenna a mile or two away- this reduces the power output too, and thus the cancer risk (which almost has to drop off proportionate to the intensity, or faster than that).

The real answer for me is "I don't know," but I'm not worrying about it that much.

Of course, when I use a laptop I use it at a desk.

[Sea Skimmer]

Laptops should be much less dangerous because they are further away from the head (though who knows what other cancer might be caused) and the antennas tend to be distributed and at least slightly shielded by the case.

The reality is though, if the radiation from a cell phone can in fact cause cancer, then its not a long stretch to suggest that the broad band radiation that any computer or other high power electrical device puts out is probably also hazardous. Lets keep in mind that unless you have a military TEMPEST shielded computer, someone can pick up the radiation from it with enough clarity to record key strokes and the screen image in real time from 100 plus meters away. This isn’t even considering the long running but still basically unsubstantiated fears that emissions from power lines may be hazardous. People who use cell phones very heavily are also (gut feeling) likely heavy users of other electronic technology.

The obvious solution is tinfoil hats... or failing that just don't make really long calls on your cell phone if you can avoid it. Hands free is not a bad idea. Clearly any effect is slight and should be reducible without totally abandoning cell phones. I however remain highly skeptical that under 2 watt transmissions cause cancer. Someone should be studying all radar operator personal in the world on this; getting in front of some of those beams at close range things should be near certain cancer if cell phone use can do it at all.

[Starglider]

Lets keep in mind that unless you have a military TEMPEST shielded computer, someone can pick up the radiation from it with enough clarity to record key strokes and the screen image in real time from 100 plus meters away.

I thought that trick only worked on CRTs? Modern digital video cables are shielded for noise reasons and operate at gigahertz frequencies, so whatever signal does leak will attenuate pretty rapidly.

[PainRack]

Laptops should be much less dangerous because they are further away from the head (though who knows what other cancer might be caused) and the antennas tend to be distributed and at least slightly shielded by the case.

The reality is though, if the radiation from a cell phone can in fact cause cancer, then its not a long stretch to suggest that the broad band radiation that any computer or other high power electrical device puts out is probably also hazardous. Lets keep in mind that unless you have a military TEMPEST shielded computer, someone can pick up the radiation from it with enough clarity to record key strokes and the screen image in real time from 100 plus meters away. This isn’t even considering the long running but still basically unsubstantiated fears that emissions from power lines may be hazardous. People who use cell phones very heavily are also (gut feeling) likely heavy users of other electronic technology.

The obvious solution is tinfoil hats... or failing that just don't make really long calls on your cell phone if you can avoid it. Hands free is not a bad idea. Clearly any effect is slight and should be reducible without totally abandoning cell phones. I however remain highly skeptical that under 2 watt transmissions cause cancer. Someone should be studying all radar operator personal in the world on this; getting in front of some of those beams at close range things should be near certain cancer if cell phone use can do it at all.

The power lines may cause cancer bit is virtually disproven by now. The huge number of studies, costing the US over 1 billion dollars has found no evidence to link childhood leukemias to power lines.
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRel ... s/emf.html


Also, possibly carcinogenic is an actual technical term, in which some studies indicate that it may cause cancer but it is far from conclusive.
Group 2B so as to speak, as opposed to Group 2A. Its actually one of the WEAKEST form of correlation/causation, only superior to "this cannot be classified as being carcinogenic or non carcinogenic".

Comparing it to lead and chlorofoam itself is a clue into how "weak" the link is. Chlorofoam is linked to cancer because when exposed in large, continous dose to lab animals, it cause liver cancer. Lead has no definite links due to the ubiquity of its presence, so, apart from cell tissue exposure.........


So, this is a "this is interesting, we need more money to study this" question. Not a cancer hazard warning.

[PainRack]

Results from the largest international study on cell phones and cancer was released in 2010. It showed participants in the study who used a cell phones for 10 years or more had doubled the rate of brain glioma, a type of tumor. To date, there have been no long-term studies on the effects of cell phone usage among children.

I find statements like this to be very irritating; while this doubling is probably statistically significant, is it actually significant? Going from 2 per 1,000 to 4 per 1,000 is worrying, while 1 per 100,000 to 2 per 100,000 is a little less worrisome.

Also, I wonder what cellphone manufacturers can do to lessen the risk aside from "hold the phone an inch away from your head". Would an older style antenna for transmitting and receiving be superior from that standpoint?

I will say that I have changed my behavior a bit since I first heard about this; I now carry my cell phone in my pocket so my wallet is between the phone and my thigh. Generally, I'm not on the phone long enough for it to be a real risk, otherwise.

The incidence rate is approximately 15–20 cases per 100000 people for the States.

The risk factor is actually for Glioma and maybe one or two other types, granted, something that's more prevalent in old people but that still takes off a bunch of other incidents.

[Sea Skimmer]

I thought that trick only worked on CRTs? Modern digital video cables are shielded for noise reasons and operate at gigahertz frequencies, so whatever signal does leak will attenuate pretty rapidly.

It has nothing to do with the cables specifically though that may also be interceptable depending on the variables; its radiation that comes out of the actual display and it works with plasma screens and at least some other modern display types. May not be all of them. You can also reverse this and jam digital devices, but that will only work at very close range or else stupidly high power levels, like a truck mounted jammer with a ten foot antenna.

The highest military standards basically result in a faraday cage around the entire monitor including a cover on the screen, plus of course all the rest of the computer. It also works to simply physically bury the most classified computers inside secure facilities which have TEMPEST shielding built into the walls ect… so every single device inside doesn’t need its own protection. This is different then EMP shielding BTW as you need total electrical isolation rather then high conductivity to the ground. Makes life fun when a facility needs both.

They set different standards for individual device protection based on how much standoff distance exists between the device and unsecured areas in which someone could have intercept equipment.

The power lines may cause cancer bit is virtually disproven by now. The huge number of studies, costing the US over 1 billion dollars has found no evidence to link childhood leukemias to power lines.
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRel ... s/emf.html

Don’t get me wrong, I know almost nothing at all ever supported it, but all the studies started after we’d already had electrical power in the vast majority of homes for a long time so we can’t really know. You can study people in poor third world countries of course, but then they have a whole difference range of factors involved. The energy levels leaking off high tension lines are quite a bit higher then the energy coming out of a cell phone too. Thus that nifty trick by which you can use the leakage to light a fluorescent tube. In any case I am far more concerned about all the new industrial chemicals we kept inventing.

[Starglider]

It has nothing to do with the cables specifically though that may also be interceptable depending on the variables;

What I meant was 'CRTs have huge high power drive coils pumping out radiation, LCDs don't have any of that so I assume you're thinking of intercepting cable emmisions, which doesn't sound practical'. I hadn't considered plasma, but who uses those for real work instead of just games/movies/advertisting?

[Surlethe]

Hey, you guys know what else causes cancer? By the same standard used here to declare cell phones carcinogenic? (Wiki) Coffee. Carpentry. Dry cleaning.

Apparently only two of the twenty-three studies surveyed by the WHO pegged a statistically significant result. Do you know what the probability (at significance p = 0.05) of 0, 1, or 2 false positives among 23 studies of a zero-effect phenomenon is? 90%. (Model it as a Bernoulli trial with success = 0.95 and failure = 0.05.)

[Simon_Jester]

Yep. Classic illustration of this effect at work:

http://www.xkcd.com/882/

What's really frightening is the studies done with p > 0.001... there are no doubt thousands of them, and so it's not a question of if some of those p > 0.001 results are wrong, but of which ones.

[Surlethe]

Here is a graphic of the studies: http://cancerresearchuk.files.wordpress ... phones.jpg
Here is a blog post explaining: http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org ... nd-cancer/

I very much recommend examining the image; it shows quite clearly how weak any evidence for a connection is.

[Simon_Jester]

It would help if I knew what the vertical axis on the graphs in the first link meant, Surlethe. Can you help me out here?

[Surlethe]

The post describing the pictures cites this paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19593153 . I do not see a pdf download. I have been inferring that "OR" is a measure of risk, probably a regression coefficient. The blog post describing the pictures seems trustworthy, so I'm trusting it that the graphs are meaningful.

[Sea Skimmer]

What I meant was 'CRTs have huge high power drive coils pumping out radiation, LCDs don't have any of that so I assume you're thinking of intercepting cable emmisions, which doesn't sound practical'. I hadn't considered plasma, but who uses those for real work instead of just games/movies/advertisting?

It doesn't take that high power. LCDs make up for lower power emissions by emitting emissions which are cleaner and easier for intercept gear to interpret into a useable image. Funny how technology can work against itself like that.

TEMPEST isn’t unlimited in what it can do, you need information on what you are trying to intercept to tune into with any reliability or reasonable time expenditure, and the nature of the intercept display depends on the technology in use. Its possible to devise computer fonts for example which create emission waveforms which carry less information that’s possible to extract. That’s part of what the protection standards do besides physical hardening. But that aside pretty much anything that isn’t well shielded or else fiber optics or similar technology can be intercepted at some level.

This is to the point that people, mainly the US but likely others too are working on smart bombs which would actually remotely introduce signals and even computer code into enemy systems to completely FUBAR them or even seize control as well as just eavesdropping.

[PainRack]

It would help if I knew what the vertical axis on the graphs in the first link meant, Surlethe. Can you help me out here?

IIRC, Its talking about the significance of the correlation.

The height of the line suggest how variant the estimate is, and the 95% is talking about the p value. Sort of saying the possibility of this thing happening is 97%, with a range of 10% error.

[Eris]

It would help if I knew what the vertical axis on the graphs in the first link meant, Surlethe. Can you help me out here?

IIRC, Its talking about the significance of the correlation.

The height of the line suggest how variant the estimate is, and the 95% is talking about the p value. Sort of saying the possibility of this thing happening is 97%, with a range of 10% error.

That's... slightly confused. The graph is not clearly labeled if you're not familiar with statistical jargon. The 95% is not at all talking about the p value, not directly at least, although it's a related concept. The axis of the graph is the odds ratio (OR) at the 95% confidence interval, using a dot and whiskers to show off the point estimates and confidence interval for each study.

A brief aside on confidence intervals. It's confusing to throw out statements like range of 10% error, since error is also well-defined, and not really used in that way. A confidence interval is an estimate of a population parameter, which is weird and kinda subtle. Given a 95% significance level and arbitrary repeated sampling, you would expect 95% of all 95% confidence intervals to contain the true mean of a population within them. This is not to say, for mathematical reasons I won't get into here, that there is a 95% probability of the true mean showing up in a given confidence interval. But it is in general a measure of how certain we are that a given point estimate is close to the true mean of a population. Basically, the tighter the lines are, the more likely you'd see the collection of CIs clustered around a given set of values, and so it's a big hint, but not a guarantee, that they're closer to the true mean.

Hopefully that brief summary hasn't just confused people more.

Back to that graph. So it shows the OR point estimates (the dots), and their associated CIs at the 95% level. You'd expect the true mean to be somewhere covered by, on average, 95% of those of those overlapping whiskers. There is such a place! It's at 1. An OR of 1 means no effect, so when your CI overlaps 1, it means you don't have a statistically significant effect, since there's a good chance that your true mean actually is 1.

So the sad thing here is that the WHO has cherrypicked a few studies that fall into the range of significance, when the fact is that if any trained statistician looks at the whole lot of them together, they'd immediately say that frankly those look like false positives. And seriously, when you look at the various studies summed up, the point estimate is almost exactly 1, and the error bars are tiny. This is a classic example of studies just falling on both sides of the line, and a few getting turned up weird, as you'd expect 1 time in 20 from unbiased samplings of a no-effect population.

It makes me very sad that the WHO statisticians are apparently more professionally and/or ethically questionable than a Master's level student in the field.