10 yrs of cellular use = brain tumor?

[Dr Mordrid]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-rxcell14oct14,0,5506529.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

I for one am getting tired of the back & forth on this....

Dr. Mordrid

[Tjalfe]

well my dad had one just a few years ago, on the side of his head which normally would be towards the antenna on the RF system he was working on, so I believe there is a connection somehow

[cjolley]

Just do what I did here at work.
Back when I was putting in 500 hours of OT per year they wanted to give me a cell phone.
I figured they had enough of my time.
So I told them I would quit first
It's never been brought up since and I still don't have one.
Chuck

[VJ]

The article on BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3742120.stm

mentions 'ear tumor'.

Weird thought that they state that less than 10 years of use has no impact...


Jörg

[PAugustin]

That's why I always try to use an earphone with my cell-phone. Though I like to use my bluetooth headset too

[Brian Ellis]

1) There is NO, absolutely NONE, reliable epidemiological evidence of cellphone cause/tumour effect. This does not mean there isn't cause/effect, but it cannot be proved or disproved at our current state of knowledge. Of course, it is much easier to prove a relationship than to disprove one.

2) Of course, there are many cases of cellphone users who have developed tumours, but they are not statistically more numerous than those who have never used a cellphone in their lives.

3) Cellphones emit electromagnetic radiation at very low power levels. As a general rule, radiation induced tumours are a result of ionisation within the tissue. The power level and frequency of mobiles are such that ionisation or dissociation of the electric charges of the molecules are quasi-impossible. Sniff the antenna: do you smell ozone? This is a sign of ionisation occurring. I grant you that dissociation of water can occur at a lower level than oxygen, but it still requires much more energy than the level of a cellular.

4) Radio transmissions have been on the go for over a century now. I and thousands of others have worked with and on transmitters with powers up to 100 kW, ie typically >100,000 times greater than a mobile, without any ill-effects and without any specific precautions, often with the doors open and the safety interlocks disabled for fine tuning.

5) Using an earphone would certainly give you little or no added protection, because the radiation would be picked up by the wire and re-radiated.

6) Has anyone noticed that tumours happen close to where cellphones are carried on the person? Every so often, each cellphone transmits a signal to tell the ground stations which cell it is in.The duty ratio of these transmissions is roughly 1:1000, so that if your phone is in your pocket more than 1000 times the length of time it is glued to your lug, then the organs close to that pocket are receiving more EM radiation than your brain will.

7) If you really believe that cellphones are harmful, wear some aluminium foil over your head!
8) Remember EM radiation is NOT the same as particle (i.e., radioactive) radiation. Light and radiated heat are exactly the same EM radiation as comes off your mobile antenna. Diathermy is where radio frequencies are deliberately applied to the body at quite significant powers: the resultant fields cause agitation of the water molecules by the Debye-Falkenhagen effect, creating a rise in temperature. Diathermy has never, to the best of my knowledge, been blamed for tumourification (over-exposure does cause tissue damage from overheating, but that's another story as anyone who has suffered at the hands of a zealous or ignorant practitioner can testify )

My conclusion: it is unlikely that there is any direct cause/effect relationship between mobile phones and tumours, although the jury is still out.

[Marshmallowman]

isn't the frequency range for mobiles in the microwave region?

And I though radar stations using similar frquecnies been proven to cause biological damage...certain molecular bonds are effected by radiation in this range certinly do resonate, and at high level may break
(The incidence springing to my mind were the people guarding radar stations used to stand in front of them to keep warm...their incidence lukemia or was it tumors was high)

Of course the radiation levels are so low in a modern mobile the incidence is going to be VERY low, I quite happily use my mobile, but I do not keep it in my pocket

[Fluff]

Which band is worse? GSM1800(MHZ), or 900(MHZ)

[Dr Mordrid]

What's causing a lot of confusion with this is the presumption by many researchers that it would take ionizing radiation (alpha, beta, gamma or other charged particles) to cause a change that could trigger problems.

OTOH many studies in Sweden and other places show changes in protein synthesis when cultures are exposed to low intensity microwaves.

If something changes how protein synthesis works then it may as well have caused a DNA mutation since the effect can be the same: faulty proteins.

This doesn't even take into account studies showing microwaves affecting calcium balance. This can affect oncogene activation and increase oxidative stress.

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

Sorry, you cannot compare radar with cellphones.

Radar emits very high power pulses with a relatively modest average power and usually at a frequency 5 - 10 times higher than most mobile phones. The typical power of a radar pulse is often in the tens of kW but lasting only for a microsecond. Furthermore, all that power is concentrated by the antenna design into a very narrow beam, whereas the radiation from a cellular is, by definition, omnidirectional and therefore diffuse. Yes, radar pulses can become ionising in suitable media.

A microwave oven would be a much closer analogy to a radar than a phone would be.

Actually, the term 'microwave' is not defined. GSM 1 phone bands are around 940 MHz. This is plonk in the middle of the L band (up to 1.5 GHz) or ultra-high frequencies. Most low-definition radar is in the X band (up to 10 GHz and high-definition radar in the K band (up to 36 GHz), as designated by the ITU.

Let me cite an analogy to illustrate why I have grave doubts as to whether cellphones are likely to trigger tumour growth. To do so, they do not only have to ionise the cell nucleus, but that ionisation has to damage the DNA structure. Most damaged DNA, which happens all the time from a million and one causes, causes the cell to be rejected by the body and no harm is done. Occasionally, one damaged-DNA cell may be able to reproduce without the immune system kicking in and this can trigger tumour growth, provided that it can find nutrients. However, it requires a given threshold of energy at the cellular level before the DNA can become damaged. If it exceeds that threshold for even a very short time, then tumourification may eventually occur, but it can stay for ever below that threshold and no DNA damage will occur (from that radiation). My analogy is in peaches. All peaches contain cyanides, notably hydrogen cyanide or prussic acid, which is a deadly poison. You can eat peaches till the cows come home and you will suffer no damage (except perhaps a bout of diarrhoea ). Eat a gram of sodium cyanide and you can order a wooden box while you are suffocating to death, very painfully. Why? Because the amount of cyanide in peaches is below the threshold which triggers the body's reaction to the poison, while the gram of cyanide is above the threshold.

Back to cellphones: I feel that if the radiation were sufficient to cause DNA damage, then there would be a pandemic of brain tumours, especially amongst walkie-talkie users which have typical radiation powers, also in the UHF band, 5 - 10 times higher than mobiles. This has simply not been observed.

[Dr Mordrid]

Cell phones have only been around for a relatively short time. As with many things that are carcinogenic at low levels it might well take 20-30 years for the problems to show up.

Dr. Mordrid

[Mehen]

From what I've heard from the cell-phone cancer people is that it is only analog cell phones that cause tumors, and now that everything is going digital it'll be fine.

[Brian Ellis]

A rose is a rose is a rose. RF radiation is RF radiation is, well... RF radiation, no matter how it's modulated.

Doc: powerful hand-held walkie talkies in the UHF band have been around for c. 40 years.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yes, but not enough people have used them to provide a decent epidemiological sample. Things are different when you have 50-75 million cell users.

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

I think that may not be so. A cohort group of about 1,000 over 20 years use will start showing distinct tendencies, enough for whistle-blowing, especially as they are ~5x more powerful than cellular phones. Judging from the numbers I see round airports, there must be at least tens of thousands of employees who have been using them for many years, not to mention in industry, in ports, in the military, police, fire prevention etc. And I would suggest that 50-75 million is an under-estimate, even in the USA, let alone globally. I think you would be nearer the mark with at least a billion. Dammit, in this country, which is not the richest, one-third of the population, man woman and child, has one (and 90% of the motorists who risk a CYP 50 ($90) fine by using them when driving.)

In any case, who believes epidemiological studies? I've been closely involved in the carcinogenicity of chlorinated solvents and there is overwhelming evidence that some of them are not carcinogenic with studies involving cohorts of tens of thousands over periods of 40 years in industry with follow-ups of 20 further years, There isn't a shred of evidence of an increase of any kind of about 30 types of cancer, in either sex, yet the German and few other misguided governments class them as "known to cause cancer in humans". I've also known dangerous products which are classed as safe to use, so you can't win. The authorities just simply ignore what the scientists say, because it suits their respective agenda. The same as the tree-hugger NGOs will say that anything is bad, for no real reason.