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Well, those radio signals are going to go somewhere and if you have it in your pocket, well it doesn't matter if you're a bloke or a girl, you're going to hit your respective reproductive organs!

Take it with a pinch of salt. I mean, you do know that there is radiation all around us, right, not just from sources like phones that we carry on us?

Yea..kinda... but I mean bussiness and the world revovles around cell phones in this technology age we have... Cell phones keeps us working and stuff. I mean everything is now cell phones. When your driving home probbly like 9 out of 10 ppl are talking on the there cell phones.... Esp. in LA!!! and LA TRAFFIC!! all those Carbon Monxide... LOL we live in a DEADLY world..!
 
I would like to hear your expert comments on the above study.

The use of RF signals over an extended period of time 'heat up' the tissue and allegedly cause cancerous tumors, the study finds.


I'm not sure what part of the OP's quote is from the actual study or not, but a couple comments on that:

RF can (and only) cause heating. I refer to some posts in the thread I linked for explanations of power and propagation.

"allegedly" is not even close to a scientific theory.

The iPhone is one of the only phones that utilizes three (3) different types of radio frequencies, cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This puts iPhone users at a higher risk of exposure to the factors mentioned in the study.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth both use the same frequency band.


For the study itself - From what I can find, which is just a summary of the study, it was a study of patients with diagnosed malignant tumors. These patients already had the tumors, so it looks like it was a survey of cell phone use by those who already had tumors. It's also a very small sample (905 cases).

I'm not a physician, but it seems like the study would need (at a minimum) to include group that was healthy and used cell phones. I believe the VAST amount of scientific studies of the effects of various frequencies and power levels on tissue show no effect, which agrees with the physics of the interaction of EM at radio frequencies and cell structures.
 
The iPhone hasn't been out anywhere near the amount of time needed to conduct a test such as this. The Bluetooth and WiFi waves don't pose a threat. Although there has been much commotion over the "harmful" waves given off by cellular devices, they still haven't given much proof of it. The iPhone is like any other phone in this way.
 
RF only produces heat; no other strange phenomenon, and the transmitters are usually shielded so RF stays enclosed.

When I was radio-ham I operated an HF station with one kilowatt of RF power. That's 1000 watts!! A typical cellphone only has 6 milliwatts (6/1000s of a watt) it's nothing; it's like getting lung cancer because a guy that lives a block away from you smokes.

The typical handy-talkie that security ppl use have about 5 or 6 full watts and a VHF base station that some have in their houses/boats /trucks have 100 watts
 
I believe it's this study:

Lennart Hardell, Kjell Hansson Mild and Michael Carlberg. Pooled analyses of two case-control studies on use of cellular and cordless telephones and the risk for malignant brain tumours diagnosed in 1997-2003. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, 2006, DOI 10.1007/s00420-006-0088-5.

Here is is some more information: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1621063


I wouldn't be so quick on my feet dismissing studies immediately just because YOU can't find them immediately online. Search 'Lennart Hardell' and/or "cellular telephone" in PubMed and you'll find quite a bit.

That paper is from 2006 and if you look at my previous response, I noted that what I could find seemed to be from that year.

What I was commenting on was that today (or yesterday and today) this was on several "news" sites. If you look at them, there are no links to the original papers, only a general discussion of what may be a year old paper.

Why on earth would it be all over the blogosphere today?

I couldn't find any information on what is so important in this study that it had to be reported on today.
 
Sickening. This is worse than the "aluminum causes alzheimers" myth.

I bet some of you will say, "Wait, I thought aluminum does cause alzheimers?"

No. Improperly recycled Chinese metals melted down and cut with recycled hub caps made into cookware....that is linked to alheizmers.

Try getting cancer from virgin aluminum from the mountains in western europe.
 
Regardless of whether you believe this stuff or not, we are the guinea pig generation. Wi-fi, TV, mobile phones, overhead power lines, cellphone towers, iPods, artificial sweeteners, food colourings, flavour enhancers etc. If these things are truly dangerous, it is us who will suffer. But we won't really know for another 20-30 years. And by then it will be too late.

And besides, it is generally those individuals who have a genetic vulnerability to cancer who get affected anyway. It takes a heck of a lot more to make someone, who comes from a cancer-free background, get cancer.
 
Regardless of whether you believe this stuff ........

That's the nice thing about laws of physics and the reproducible experimental results supporting them - they don't care whether you believe in them or not. They just are.

edit: But, I'll have to agree we have been guinea-pigs for at least some of the things you mention (chemicals, foods and the like - stuff that can actually affect cells.)
 
Regardless of whether you believe this stuff or not, we are the guinea pig generation. Wi-fi, TV, mobile phones, overhead power lines, cellphone towers, iPods, artificial sweeteners, food colourings, flavour enhancers etc. If these things are truly dangerous, it is us who will suffer. But we won't really know for another 20-30 years. And by then it will be too late.

And besides, it is generally those individuals who have a genetic vulnerability to cancer who get affected anyway. It takes a heck of a lot more to make someone, who comes from a cancer-free background, get cancer.

True... But still... I dono..i dnt want cacner! :(
 
Regardless of whether you believe this stuff or not, we are the guinea pig generation. Wi-fi, TV, mobile phones, overhead power lines, cellphone towers, iPods, artificial sweeteners, food colourings, flavour enhancers etc. If these things are truly dangerous, it is us who will suffer. But we won't really know for another 20-30 years. And by then it will be too late.

And besides, it is generally those individuals who have a genetic vulnerability to cancer who get affected anyway. It takes a heck of a lot more to make someone, who comes from a cancer-free background, get cancer.

well I guess all that must add up or something because the death rate on humans is 100%:p
 
Tomorrow, you could get cancer from your iPhone. Tomorrow, you could get eaten alive by a shark in your bathtub. What should we do? I think the only rational thing to do is to take all our money out of the bank today and spend it on prostitues. Live like there is no tomorrow.

...

...
 
not being able to find the data published in a peer reviewed journal is all I need to consider it bad science.

I don't consider that bad science... I just don't consider it science, period.

I agree that if it's not in a peer-reviewed science journal then the claims are tenuous at best... i.e. I don't consider it substantiated until it's in a peer-reviewed journal, e.g. NEJM, Science, Am. J. Phyisol., etc. By the way, I was a member of AAAS for several years.

That being said, I have seen studies on this published in peer reviewed journals but the studies do not all agree as consistently as they do on, say, global warming.

As for finding them... it's rather hard to find ANY peer reviewed study on the internet because peer-reviewed journals are not in widespread circulation and the net is rife instead with popular media bullcrap. You have to be quite specific... e.g. if you search "Fruit fly evolution" you'll get a ton of layman articles in the popular press. However, if you search "Pax-6 homolog in Drosophila melanogaster" you'll get specific peer-reviewed studies.

Did you try searching the archives at medline or science.org? Both require memberships. I still receive "Science" so I'll see if I still have access to the science.org archives.

I just don't think the jury is yet decided one way or the other on the potential for microwave irradiation on humans from cellular phone exposure, and I err on the side of doubt in regard to the actual conclusion... but i err on the side of caution in practice because if more research finds there to be a significant risk, there's absolutely no harm whatsoever in having taken precautions... but there can be harm in not having done so. I don't run a cellular company, do you? Neither of us should stand to lose huge sums of money if we take some precautions... so what is the serious harm in erring on the side of caution? So far nobody has been able to answer this question... which I posed in a previous post.

Mind you, I'm not advocating full-blown agoraphobia... that's an absurd response and one has to live their life. All sorts of things can kill you... I'm not sure that looking at a fruit fly the wrong way will get you in trouble, but stranger things have happened. But I would be curious to look at the funding and see if there's a strong correlation between studies funded by the cell phone industry and no findings of significant cancer risk. It's not out of the question when you consider how tobacco executives were skewered by Jeff Wigand (a former tobacco exec and the subject of the film "The Insider") when it came out that they suppressed numerous studies directly linking cigarettes to cancer.

I'm just saying that's one thing to think about.
 
Tomorrow, you could get cancer from your iPhone. Tomorrow, you could get eaten alive by a shark in your bathtub. What should we do? I think the only rational thing to do is to take all our money out of the bank today and spend it on prostitues. Live like there is no tomorrow.

...

...

I think that getting eaten alive by a shark in your bathtub is much less likely than getting cancer from your iphone, no?
 
I think that getting eaten alive by a shark in your bathtub is much less likely than getting cancer from your iphone, no?

It happened to me once, which is one time mroe than the number of times I have gotten cancer from my iPhone.

:D
 
And besides, it is generally those individuals who have a genetic vulnerability to cancer who get affected anyway. It takes a heck of a lot more to make someone, who comes from a cancer-free background, get cancer.

Every would get cancer eventually - it's only the fact that some people die before they get the chance that prevents that.

If people didn't die of old age or accidents, they'd get cancer sooner or later - whether they're in their 30s, 40s, 80s, or 100s.

Obviously, people with a genetic vulnerability would be the ones to get it earlier, but in certain ways, cancer is unavoidable.
 
Every would get cancer eventually - it's only the fact that some people die before they get the chance that prevents that.

If people didn't die of old age or accidents, they'd get cancer sooner or later - whether they're in their 30s, 40s, 80s, or 100s.

Obviously, people with a genetic vulnerability would be the ones to get it earlier, but in certain ways, cancer is unavoidable.

That's not true Not every human being gets cancer...!
 
Here's a nice blog post on the subject.

So what does all this science stuff say about cell phone use. The biological studies hare largely been negative, although some studies have shown changes in cells or their genes after prolonged exposure to cell phone radiation. However, the exposures were greater than what would occur with even frequent cell phone use, so the utility of these studies are questions.

The epidemiological evidence can best be described as “mixed.” In other words, there is no strong signal, no strong correlation between cell phones and brain tumors. Neither, however, has any correlation been adequately ruled out. We are still in that pesky “we need more data” phase. Here is the FDA summary of the evidence so far.

A recent meta-analysis suggested that there may be a small increase in risk for certain kinds of tumors only in those with exposure for greater than 10 years. I do not put a great deal of faith in meta-analyses. They have their own problems. I prefer systematic reviews. But sometimes they give a snap shot of the current literature on a specific question.

This meta-analysis also, however, was published before an even more recent, and very large, UK study that found no association between cell phones and tumors. That’s reassuring, but the literature is likely to go back and forth like this for a while. Eventually, all of the criticisms and short comings of prior studies will be used to design a few very large and fairly definitive studies, and then a firmer consensus will likely emerge.

For now, we remain hopeful but cautious. For those who want to err on the side of caution, there are some reasonable recommendations (these come from multiple organizations, so they seem to represent a consensus, or at least plagiarism).

- Limit your cell phone use (duh.)

- Do not allow small children to begin using cell phones.

- Use a head set to increase the distance from the antenna to your head.

This guy knows what he's talking about:

Dr. Novella is an academic clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine. He is the president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society. He is also the host and producer of the popular weekly science podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe.
 
To me, this is like saying the sky is blue... think about it. Of course radio waves cause cancer. You can cook a hotdog in the microwave, but when you hold a GSM device to your head, right next to your brain, and it's communicating with a tower several miles away, that HAS to be bad for your health
We can also put light in the same category as microwaves and GSM signals. They're all electromagnetic waves. So does light cause cancer?

That reminds me. Some anti-WiFi website was saying that having a wireless router in your house is like living inside a microwave oven :rolleyes:
 
We can also put light in the same category as microwaves and GSM signals. They're all electromagnetic waves. So does light cause cancer?

Depends on the spectrum, right, but I think the answer to your question is yes, light can cause cancer.
 
Depends on the spectrum, right, but I think the answer to your question is yes, light can cause cancer.

I'm assuming you mean ultraviolet light, which is outside the visible spectrum.


Voidness: UV is about a million times shorter wavelength than the radio used in cell phones. Shorter wavelength = higher energies = ability to interact with molecular structures.
 
So what does all this science stuff say about cell phone use. The biological studies hare largely been negative, although some studies have shown changes in cells or their genes after prolonged exposure to cell phone radiation. However, the exposures were greater than what would occur with even frequent cell phone use, so the utility of these studies are questions.

The epidemiological evidence can best be described as “mixed.” In other words, there is no strong signal, no strong correlation between cell phones and brain tumors. Neither, however, has any correlation been adequately ruled out. We are still in that pesky “we need more data” phase. Here is the FDA summary of the evidence so far.

A recent meta-analysis suggested that there may be a small increase in risk for certain kinds of tumors only in those with exposure for greater than 10 years. I do not put a great deal of faith in meta-analyses. They have their own problems. I prefer systematic reviews. But sometimes they give a snap shot of the current literature on a specific question.

This meta-analysis also, however, was published before an even more recent, and very large, UK study that found no association between cell phones and tumors. That’s reassuring, but the literature is likely to go back and forth like this for a while. Eventually, all of the criticisms and short comings of prior studies will be used to design a few very large and fairly definitive studies, and then a firmer consensus will likely emerge.

For now, we remain hopeful but cautious. For those who want to err on the side of caution, there are some reasonable recommendations (these come from multiple organizations, so they seem to represent a consensus, or at least plagiarism).

- Limit your cell phone use (duh.)

- Do not allow small children to begin using cell phones.

- Use a head set to increase the distance from the antenna to your head.

That pretty much Sums it up!
 
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