Warning: Your Cell Phone May Be Hazardous to Your Health

[Roland99]

http://www.gq.com/cars-gear/gear-and-gadgets/201002/warning-cell-phone-radiation

Earlier this winter, I met an investment banker who was diagnosed with a brain tumor five years ago. He's a managing director at a top Wall Street firm, and I was put in touch with him through a colleague who knew I was writing a story about the potential dangers of cell-phone radiation. He agreed to talk with me only if his name wasn't used, so I'll call him Jim. He explained that the tumor was located just behind his right ear and was not immediately fatal—the five-year survival rate is about 70 percent. He was 35 years old at the time of his diagnosis and immediately suspected it was the result of his intense cell-phone usage. "Not for nothing," he said, "but in investment banking we've been using cell phones since 1992, back when they were the Gordon-Gekko-on-the-beach kind of phone." When Jim asked his neurosurgeon, who was on the staff of a major medical center in Manhattan, about the possibility of a cell-phone-induced tumor, the doctor responded that in fact he was seeing more and more of such cases—young, relatively healthy businessmen who had long used their phones obsessively. He said he believed the industry had discredited studies showing there is a risk from cell phones. "I got a sense that he was pissed off," Jim told me. A handful of Jim's colleagues had already died from brain cancer; the more reports he encountered of young finance guys developing tumors, the more certain he felt that it wasn't a coincidence. "I knew four or five people just at my firm who got tumors," Jim says. "Each time, people ask the question. I hear it in the hallways."

It's hard to talk about the dangers of cell-phone radiation without sounding like a conspiracy theorist. This is especially true in the United States, where non-industry-funded studies are rare, where legislation protecting the wireless industry from legal challenges has long been in place, and where our lives have been so thoroughly integrated with wireless technology that to suggest it might be a problem—maybe, eventually, a very big public-health problem—is like saying our shoes might be killing us.

...

Perhaps most worrisome, though, are the preliminary results of the multinational Interphone study sponsored by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in Lyon, France. (Scientists from thirteen countries took part in the study, the United States conspicuously not among them.) Interphone researchers reported in 2008 that after a decade of cell-phone use, the chance of getting a brain tumor—specifically on the side of the head where you use the phone—goes up as much as 40 percent for adults. Interphone researchers in Israel have found that cell phones can cause tumors of the parotid gland (the salivary gland in the cheek), and an independent study in Sweden last year concluded that people who started using a cell phone before the age of 20 were five times as likely to develop a brain tumor. Another Interphone study reported a nearly 300 percent increased risk of acoustic neuroma, a tumor of the acoustic nerve.

As more results of the Interphone study trickled out, I called Louis Slesin, who has a doctorate in environmental policy from MIT and in 1980 founded an investigative newsletter called Microwave News. "No one in this country cared!" Slesin said of the findings. "It wasn't news!" He suggested that much of the comfort of our modern lives depends on not caring, on refusing to recognize the dangers of microwave radiation. "We love our cell phones. The paradigm that there's no danger here is part of a worldview that had to be put into place," he said. "Americans are not asking the questions, maybe because they don't want the answers. So what will it take?"

I know I've tried to curtail my cell phone usage and even then I use the speakerphone option as much as possible.

There are also reports that the new DECT 6.0 cordless phones for the home are just as risky as cell phones.

I'm sure there are studies out there, too, on wi-fi/bluetooth options on laptops, too.


RF is not good for the body.

[Orrex]

1. I only use my cellphone to chat about repeatedly debunked claims about electromagnetic radiation.

[Roland99]

9. As we can all see by the copious number of links you provided debunking them.

:eyes:

[Orrex]

12. The repetition of a debunked claim does not require new debunking

It's up to the claimant to provide a "copious number of links" in support of the repeated claim.

:eyes::eyes:

[Roland99]

13. Ah, I see.

yeah, right.

[Orrex]

15. So if I told you that the world is flat, you'd consider my claim as if it were brand new?

Or would you say "that bullshit has been debunked for at least 1500 years" instead?


Kind of the same thing. Only the timeframe is different.

[elocs]

16. So, you are claiming the world isn't flat? Links, links, where are your links????

:shrug:

[Roland99]

21. Nope, completely different. Completely.

[Orrex]

22. You've got to better than twitter-esque subject-line retorts

"Is not! Is not!" doesn't actually qualify as a rebuttal, you know.

[Roland99]

25. I always respond in kind.

Your offering up the earth is flat as an example of why you felt you didn't need to do anything other than offer up your own trite response initially is proof that you're bouncing down the path of hypocrisy.

[Orrex]

26. Well, you broke the 140 character mark that time, I'll give you that much

Still, here's your problem: you're making the claim that cellphones cause (or exacerbate) brain tumors.

That claim has been debunked many times over, and it has never been credibly substantiated.

Therefore, when someone makes that claim again, it's up to the claimant to substantiate it in some compelling way, at which time a new response is called for. However, the claim has not been substantiated, so no new response is in order.


My counter-claim that Earth is flat has likewise been debunked many times over. If I wish to assert my claim credibly, then I need to come up with new, substantiating evidence in support of that claim. Otherwise, my claim is automatically debunked by the refutations that have gone before.

Just like this latest "cellphones cause cancer" flap. It's a repetition of the debunked claim, so it needn't be debunked again.


You can gripe about it, but that doesn't substantiate your claim either.

[Roland99]

28. You're assuming that EVERYONE on earth is intimately aware of this topic. How ignorant of you.

And I guess you just like to simply ignore such things as this:

(from the article)

In a study published in 1975 in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Frey reported that microwaves pulsed at certain modulations could induce "leakage" in the barrier between the circulatory system and the brain. Breaching the blood-brain barrier is a serious matter: It means the brain's environment, which needs to be extremely stable for nerve cells to function properly, can be perturbed in all kinds of dangerous ways. Frey's method was rather simple: He injected a fluorescent dye into the circulatory system of white rats, then swept the ­microwave frequencies across their bodies. In a matter of minutes, the dye had leached into the confines of the rats' brains.

Frey says his work on radar microwaves and the blood-brain barrier soon came under assault from the government. Scientists hired and funded by the Pentagon claimed they'd failed to replicate his findings, yet they also refused to share the data or methodology behind their research ("a most unusual action in science," Frey wrote at the time). For more than fifteen years, Frey had received almost unrestricted funding from the Office of Naval Research. Now he was told to conceal his blood-brain-barrier work or his contract would be canceled.

Since then, no meaningful research into the effect of microwaves on the blood-brain barrier has been pursued in the United States. But a Swedish neurosurgeon, Leif Salford, recently expanded on Frey's work, confirming much of what Frey revealed decades ago. Salford found that microwave exposure killed rodents' brain cells and stimulated neurons associated with Alzheimer's. "A rat's brain is very much the same as a human's," he said in a 2003 interview with the BBC. "They have the same blood-brain barrier and neurons. We have good reason to believe that what happens in rats' brains also happens in humans'. " His research, he said, suggests that "a whole generation of users may suffer negative effects in middle age."

The potential complications don't end there. In the mid-1990s, a biophysicist at the University of Washington named Henry Lai began to make profound discoveries about the effects of such frequencies not only on the blood-brain barrier but also on the actual structure of rat DNA. Lai found that modulated EM radiation could cause breaks in DNA strands—breaks that could then lead to genetic damage and mutations that would be passed on for generations. What surprised Lai was that the damage was accomplished in a single two-hour exposure.

...

The cell-phone industry funds lots of risk studies, and many of them show no effect from cell-phone-related radiation. The industry pointed to those favorable studies when countering Lai's DNA findings. (In 2004, it should be pointed out, a European Union–funded study carried out by twelve research groups in seven countries found evidence of genotoxic effects resulting from cell-phone radiation—the same kind of DNA damage that Henry Lai uncovered in the 1990s.) But when Jerry Phillips, a scientist with the Veterans Administration whose work was funded by Motorola, replicated Lai's findings, the company put him under so much pressure not to publish that Phillips abruptly quit microwave research altogether.

And you have offered NOTHING but your opinion that this has been debunked.

Makes me wonder what your agenda is in this. Perhaps you work for or have a vested interest in cell phone companies?

[Orrex]

29. Ah, yes. My agenda.

Here's a 100% irrefutable fact for you: whenever someone trots out the old "you must work for Industry X" as an ad hominem in place of an argument, it means that the claimant has no argument to speak of and probably doesn't understand the subject as a whole.

However, here are a few tidbits for you:

"Unless one is willing to discard the concept of photons, Planck's law, and the interaction between photons and atoms—and thus the entire body of quantum physics—it is simply not possible for the photons associated with either a power line or a cellphone to cause cancer." (S. T. Lakshmikumar, "Power Line Panic and Mobile Mania." Skeptical Inquirer. September/October. 2009.)

"The photon energy of a cellphone EMF is more than 10 million times weaker than the lowest energy ionizing radiation." (Lorne Trottier, "EMF and health: A Growing Hysteria. Skeptical Inquirer. September/October. 2009.)

All known cancer-inducing agents — including radiation, certain chemicals and a few viruses — act by breaking chemical bonds, producing mutant strands of DNA. Not until the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum is reached, beyond visible light, beyond infrared and far, far beyond microwaves, do photons have sufficient energy to break chemical bonds. Microwave photons heat tissue, but they do not come close to the energy needed to break chemical bonds, no matter how intense the radiation. --(Dr. Robert L. Park of the American Physical Society, New York Times, Oct. 1, 2002.)

And a great overview of the topic can be found here


I await your next petty ad hominem.

[Roland99]

36. You have much to learn. Ad hominem? Hardly

But your condescending and sarcastic tone has been evident from your first post.

I will look through your link but I'm already highly skeptical of some place called skepdic.com. But I will give it the benefit of the doubt for now.

[Orrex]

38. My first post was intended as pure snark, obviously.

The discussion didn't begin until reply #12.

Skepdic.com is, incidentally, a fantastic resource for information regarding bogus pseudoscientific claims, ranging from the allegedly paranormal to the allegedly causative relationship between vaccines and autism.

[Roland99]

51. Seems there is a bias in the reporting studies favoring no effects

It also focuses on disputing some of the more sensational stories or the more "lighter fare" such as Prevention Magazine.

I have found multiple sources exposing the flaws in studies, particularly the Interphone study.

I direct you to this:

http://www.radiationresearch.org/pdfs/reasons_us.pdf


And this:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/New-Study-Cites-Cancer-Risk-tsmf-2971189293.html?x=0&.v=1

Users are going to keep their phones an inch away from their ears? Most people shove them against their ear in order to block out surrounding noise.

Information I've come across show Blackberry and Motorola to have the highest output level...both bumping the 1.6 wpk limit.

[Orrex]

55. Okay, I'm reading through that first one, but there are at least two general problems

1. It doesn't appear to address the problem of insufficiently powerful energy as it pertains to cellphone output vs. breakage of intracellular chemical bonds. This matter is hinted at in two of the quotes I cited--the energy, and specifically the type of energy--put out by cellphones isn't capable of inducing the kind of biological mutation necessary to cause tumors. The reference (on page 10) to "There are thousands of studies showing biological effects from electromagnetic radiation at exposure levels far below where heating occurs" is something of a red herring, because no one disputes that non-thermal electromagnetic radiation has biological effects. As one example, our eyes work via direct stimulation from non-thermal EM radiation! I would have preferred that this 44 page report give a specific citation of the relevant passage from www.bioinitiative.org, rather than urging the reader to follow a basically blind link in search of unspecified data in some unspecified section of a report of some unspecified length--such a blind and indirect citation is, at the very least, unprofessional. Couldn't they have said "check out paragraphs 4 through 8 on page 57" instead of just saying (in essence) "find what we believe to be the relevant passage in this report?"

2. It doesn't appear to address the wide range of other contributing environmental factors. These are, to be sure, tricky to quantify and messy to deal with, but it's entirely plausible that they have a direct and significant effect on the incidence of brain tumors. If a study is attempting to confirm one variable as the proximate cause of tumors, then it's necessary to demonstrate that other simultaneous variables don't have an equal, greater, or contributory impact upon the tumors' frequency. This is, in fact, a major problem with studies claiming to show that "cancer is caused by X," because invariably the reports exclude other factors that--even at a glance--seem significant.


There's also the problem of common sense: there are something like 100,000 trillion cellphones in use in the United States alone (I'm exaggerating that number, of course). Doesn't it seem likely that we'd see a much larger spike in the incidence of brain tumors if there were indeed a causative link? It can be argued that people haven't been using them for enough years, or that people use them with varying frequency, but that's the whole point of the study, isn't it?

Consider this: the initial "cellphones cause cancer" hubbub started when a journalist's wife developed a tumor after just seven months of cellphone use. There was no--and I do mean no--other causative link shown between her phone and her tumor. However, if her phone was the cause after only seven months, then why is it necessary to study a person's use of cellphones for more than ten years, as reasons_us.pdf seems to suggest (on page 14)?


Anyway, that's as far as I've gotten. I'll keep reading and follow up with other thoughts re: the report.

[SidDithers]

33. Right. And an story about an anonymous broker...

published in GQ is your idea of a good supporting link?

Sid

[Roland99]

48. Someone didn't read the entire article apparently

:eyes:

[SpiralHawk]

2. I can feel the brain cells frying when I use a cell phone

So the industry can fund all the 'studies' they want. I trust my own capacities to evaluate what is good and what is bad. Same with the occult (unlabeled) proliferation of genetically mutant food.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

20. I'm sure the person on the other end of the line...

...feels their brain cells frying whenever they talk to you.

[SpiralHawk]

23. You being sure of what you imagine makes not a dimes worth of difference

to what I experience as real and valid, nor to the health decisions I make for myself and my family.

You have every right to keep reading industry studies and to keep holding your cell phone to your head.

And I have every right to honor and trust the validity of my own perceptions, and to follow my own counsel.

[Orrex]

30. Out of curiosity, could anything (hypothetically) convince you otherwise?

That is, can you think of some kind of evidence that would convince that cell phones are not, in fact, frying your brain cells?



I know that the tone of the question is a bit flippant, but I ask sincerely.


Incidentally, here are the results of a 2008 study sponsored by the World Health Organization. I don't know if that qualifies as an "industry study," but it's interesting at the very least.
http://www.iarc.fr/en/research-groups/RAD/Interphone8oct08.pdf

[truedelphi]

32. We (anti) cell phone activists were very pleased when we

Heard back in 2005 that the Head of the WHO was a woman who fully intended to get the real truth about the cellphone situation out there.

Industry could not have a hand in it, not with her doing the oversight.

[jdp349]

49. You have every right to trust the validity of your own perceptions

but you would be foolish to do so.

The cognitive processes of the brain of organizing and interpreting data are in many ways terribly flawed. While they shouldn't be outright discounted it's best to analyze your own thoughts and intuition with extreme skepticism.

[truedelphi]

31. On our wireles phone, I feel a head ache coming on within about four minutes

OF using it. I always try and switch to the wired phone.

George Carlo was given a whopping twelve million bucks back in the early nineties to determine the safety of cell phone type radiation.

The industry considered him the number one expert on this type of radiation.

But when Carlo said that research was showing that the cell phones could possibly lead to brain tumors, the industry shut him down.

By the late nineties the cell phone industry was a multi-billion dollar industry. They were willing to make this expert a pariah, overnight, rather than slow down their booming growth.

Oh and BTW, the spokespeople for the cell phone industry used to casually mention that brain tumors were possible from the antennae that are required to get the signals to the phones. They told activists this repeatedly, though they would often say, "The tumors are usually not cancerous, so they are no big deal."

When enough of the activists in the audience could explain, via their own experience, what it is like to have a brain tumor - the loss of faculties that indicate you have a problem, the surgery that is required, the heart attacks and strokes that routinely occur because of such an operation, spokespeople started keeping quiet about the tumor situation!

[Orrex]

56. Do you have citations for any of that?

I'd be particularly interested to read more about George Carlo and how "the industry shut him down," as well as the claim that "the industry considered him the number one expert on this type of radiation."

For one thing, his conclusions are at odds with those of most other experts in the field. Additionally, he claims there's a causal relationship between the use of wireless devices and autism--which in fact has not be demonstrated at all. At the very least, Carlo's credibility is limited, so he shouldn't be anyone's choice as a primary expert.

Oh and BTW, the spokespeople for the cell phone industry used to casually mention that brain tumors were possible from the antennae that are required to get the signals to the phones. They told activists this repeatedly, though they would often say, "The tumors are usually not cancerous, so they are no big deal."

They're referring to the transmission towers, of course, and not the antennae of the handsets. And even so, if the danger were real as claimed, and if the towers do transmit cancer-causing radiation, then we'd expect to see a greater incidence among people who live near such towers (and we don't) as well as a more varied location of the tumors, instead of occurring "on the side of the head on which the phone is used," as is commonly claimed. Also, such tumors wouldn't be limited to cellphone users, so there would be no value in studying the rate of incidence among cellphone users.

[truedelphi]

60. I am going to make two posts -Pls, if you've got the time, read both of them

First of all, there is a certain mindset that one needs to have to understand the Corporate Based Science that is now consuming our news media, our internet etc. This Corporate based science will be every bit as detrimental to understanding the REAL TRUTH concerning any one issue as the Church controlled science used to be. (IMNSHO, of course.)

Have you read "Toxic Sludge is Good for You" yet? This is an excellent primer on what is going on. It helps a critically thinking individual understand what the citizen who desires to be well informed is up against. it was written over twelve years ago, but really stands the passage of time. (Though the names of the Major Players and Major Organizations have changed over the past decade.)

Also an individual approaching trying to understand science needs to take a small step back. Only three decades ago, in the eighties, researchers and scientists who served as forensic witnesses in major court cases believed that leukemia was merely a virus, and that the presence of a "leukemia cluster" in any neighborhood was essentially meaningless. That view point is now seen as quite negligent, these days. (If you can, get the book "A Civil Action" or see the movie. The point is made in both book and film.)

When I ended up with vitaligo back in 1982, I went to Stanford Hospital. I didn't know why parts of my skin were no longer olive-colored, but albino white. Did this mean heart problems? Organ failure? What?

The excellent team of doctors who saw me there explained it was only a skin problem. And they added, "It is an immune condition."

"Okay." I reply "So please tell me how I might find out anything and everything about the immune system."

Their reply was shocking. "None of the major organizations here in the US or in other industrialized countries have ever really had the money for scientists to study the immune system, So we cannot tell you very much. We simply do not know a lot about immune conditions." (This probably explains how top notch scientists could get away with stating that leukemia was a virus and unrelated to pollutants in the drinking water.)

Of course, within one year of my visit to Stanford Hospital, AIDS had become the focus of scientists everywhere, and because of that, the immune system has finally become a well studied mechanism.

But we still have not connected all of the dots between various mechanisms upon our health. For instance, it was only in 1999 that we had the ULTIMATE proof, for instance, that cigarette smoking was a major cause of lung disease. That was the year that the human genes that encode for cigarette smoke and lung damage were isolated and understood with regards to that one pollutant.

[truedelphi]

61. Here is an excellent and revealing article about Carlo

< radiation <
Cell phone nightmare


By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

From the November 4, 1999 issue of "Focus on the Corporation," a weekly e-mail report by Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, and Robert Weissman, editor of Multinational Monitor. Used with permission. For information about other issues of "Focus on the
Corporation," see the bottom of the page.

Ready for a real scary Halloween story?

Remember the Larry King Live show in 1993 on cell phones?

David Reynard was the guest. He had filed a lawsuit against NEC, a cell phone operator, and other companies, alleging that his late wife's brain tumor was caused in part by her use of a cell phone.

The Reynard's lawsuit was dismissed in 1995, but Reynard's appearance on the show created nationwide concern. At the time, there were 15 million Americans using cell phones.

The day after the Larry King Live show, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) went on the offensive. Industry executives said that there were thousands of studies that proved that wireless phones were safe. In fact, there were no such studies about cell phone safety.

But CTIA understood the basic reality of the situation, and so it decided to spend $27 million over the next six years on health studies. They hired George Carlo, figuring he would be a perfect fit. Carlo is a public health scientist, who had a good track record as an industry researcher. Most of his clients over the years have been industry clients, and few have been disappointed with his work.

In 1994, Carlo began conducting studies to determine whether cell phones pose a health risk to consumers. Four times a year, Carlo would trudge over from his Dupont Circle office in Washington, D.C. to the offices of CTIA to debrief the CEOs of the major telephone and electronics firms that make up the $40 billion a year mobile phone industry. And things went well, until 1995.

In 1995, Carlo found that digital phones were interfering with cardiac pacemakers.

"We then conducted about $2.5 million worth of research to quantify that problem, and as a result, I had somewhat of a falling out with the industry," Carlo told us this week. "They didn't like that finding." The industry cut off Carlo's funding.

But through a process of negotiation, Carlo got back in. The industry would again fund his studies, but only if he agreed not to research the questions of defibrillators and digital phones, and of cell phones and automobile safety, and he could no longer work on a very extensive program to standardize the methodology for testing whether or not cell phones met industry-defined standards.

Carlo said that it took him two months to decide that he needed to continue the work, even under CTIA's conditions, and so he did.

What he found may prove to be the cell phone industry's worst nightmare.

He found that the risk of acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor of the auditory nerve that is well in range of the radiation coming from a phone's antennae, was 50 percent higher in people who reported using cell phones for six years or more. Moreover, that relationship between the amount of cell phone use and this tumor appeared to follow a dose-response curve.

He found that the risk of rare neuro epithelial tumors on the outside of the brain was more than doubled, a statistically significant increase, in cell phone users as compared to people who did not use cell phones.

He found that there appeared to be some correlation between brain tumors occurring on the right side of the head and use of the phone on the right side of the head.

And, most troubling, he found that laboratory studies looking at the ability of radiation from a phone's antenna to cause functional genetic damage were definitely positive, and were following a dose-response curve.

Carlo said that he has repeatedly recommended that the industry take a pro-active, public health approach on the issue, and inform consumers of his findings. He says that he uses a cell phone, but only with a headset.

"Alarmingly, indications are that some segments of the industry have ignored the scientific findings suggesting potential health effects, have repeatedly and falsely claimed that wireless phones are safe for all consumers, including children, and have created an illusion of responsible follow up by calling for and supporting more research," Carlo wrote in a letter to top industry CEOs this month. "The most important measures of consumer protection are missing: complete and honest factual information to allow informed judgment by consumers about assumption of risk, the direct tracking and monitoring of what happens to consumers who use wireless phones, and the monitoring of changes in the technology that could impact health."

Carlo is also troubled by a recent agreement between Elizabeth Jacobson, the person in charge of cell phone regulation at the Food and Drug Administration, and Thomas Wheeler, executive director of the CTIA. Under the agreement, CTIA will fund the FDA to do additional safety studies.

Carlo says that in 1994, Jacobson refused such a cooperative research agreement, because she didn't think she could both collaborate with the industry and regulate it. (Jacobson, through a spokesperson, denies taking this position.)

"This arrangement is wrong, plain and simple," Carlo told us. "The FDA's behavior is appalling to me. The FDA seems to be more than willing to jump in bed with the industry. It is a blatantly arrogant attempt to join in a relationship that is a conflict of interest on its face. The reason it has not been criticized is that people don't know about it. Consumers are being left out to dry."

The FDA's Russell Owen says that the FDA has not regulated cell phones because "we don't have sufficient evidence to determine that there might be adverse health effects from cell phones."

Sorry Mr. Owen, but in this instance, we agree with the industry's guy. (That's a scary thought.)

The authors: Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999; http://www.corporatepredators.org)

© Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Reproduced with permission.
---------------------------------------------------

[truedelphi]

62. Your statement and my reply about transmission towers

When I mentioned that various activists that I had known in the mid nineties were TOLD BY the cell phone industry specialists that the cell phone antennae would cause only Benign brain tumors, you replied:

They're referring to the transmission towers, of course, and not the antennae of the handsets. And even so, if the danger were real as claimed, and if the towers do transmit cancer-causing radiation, then we'd expect to see a greater incidence among people who live near such towers (and we don't) as well as a more varied location of the tumors, instead of occurring "on the side of the head on which the phone is used," as is commonly claimed. Also, such tumors wouldn't be limited to cell phone users, so there would be no value in studying the rate of incidence among
cell phone users.

Okay think about your statement. My friend Ramona, she lived quite near COIT Tower in San Francisco. This installation is unique in that it carries a vast array of different types of electronics antennae, transmitters receivers etc.

It is responsible for the transmission of TV, radio and of course various cell phone antennae.

I believe that there actually were studies that showed that people who lived near COIT had a larger propensity to come down with brain tumors. Like the industry specialists revealed, these were the benign sort of tumors. But as Ramona would explain, benign tumor is till a tumor, and inside the brain it does many awful things, and can affect your speech, your mobility and many other activities. So usually, if the patient who has such a tumor doe undergo the needed operation for removal, and then the patient is at risk for strokes, and in Ramon's case, a major heart attack.

I am glad that you are aware how it is that the studies you mention as being able to unravel how many people near various antennae arrays might have brain tumors, you understand as well that that the issue is quite complex -- the cell phone users might be involved (or not) in the cell phone antennae tower exposure. the revers e of that is true also - when you look at a population like in Norway, where the Microwave phone transmission features have been in existence since at least the late seventies, and thus have been around long enough for the many forms of suspected cancers to occur (or not) as it takes decades to for some cancers to occur, then in putting together a study, one has to determine if the dangers from the cell phone towers with the antennae are causing some of the tumors that the cell phone users are having.


One of the things that used to almost strike me as funny is when some "scientific study" would be announced, that "proved" how people's cell phone usage was not a health risk - and you would look at the data and it would be examining the populace of North Carolina (not the most tech savvy group of people in the early or mid nineties!) and show that in that state, there were relatively few cancers that occurred near a cell phone head piece. But having read thoroughly "Toxic Sludge is Good For YOu!" I knew exactly why the demographics of that study had been chosen. The study was deliberately slanted to come up with as few cancers as possible - if any one in industry wanted to really look into cell phones and the risks associated with such, they should look at industries such as Hollywood film industry, or at the Wall Street brokers - groups that had gravitated to cell phone use long before people in No Carolina had.

And I knew from reading the media release whether I could trust the media source or not - a good media source, free of massive industry dollars (from ads) would add as a post script, "many types of cancer take decades to establish themselves within a person, and it may well be FAR too early to know anything about North Carolina cell phone users."

Sadly as time has worn on, more and more media outlets are willing to simply post whatever nonsensical study some industry group has put together.

[Tesha]

37. So don't use one. (NT)

[PfcHammer]

54. I feels it in my balls too

[ananda]

3. Speakerphone is a good idea.

nt

[cali]

4. I don't have a cell phone. don't want one either.

[Mari333]

8. me either! dont want one, dont need one.

[G_j]

11. I don't have one either

:hi:

[Mari333]

14. the last 3 people in the USA with no cellphone

and here they are on DU!

[G_j]

19. that's what I was thinking

:rofl:

[LibinMo]

5. I'm convinced

I use the speakerphone and have stopped carrying my cell phone in my pocket. I text more than I talk on the phone.

When our wireless router died we replaced it with a wired one. Had to run some cable and drill a hole through the wall behind my TV, but it was worth it. DSL is much faster now. Of course, several of our neighbors have wireless networks, two of them aren't even password protected! Not much we can do about that.

[hobbit709]

34. If the phone is on it is emitting RF.

whether you're talking, texting or doing nothing.

[Tesha]

40. That's not strictly true.

The phone emits RF roughly in proportion to how much data it's transmitting;
when it's idle, there's very little data being transmitted; just enough to keep
the network aware that you're there. When you send an SMS (a "text"), a few
milliseconds of data is transmitted. When you're on a voice call, the transmitter
is active much of the time.

Another interesting bit of data is that the fewer "bars" you have, the higher
the output power from your phone's transmitter because it has to "shout
louder" to reach the cell site's receiver.

Tesha

[NoNothing]

6. The studies have not been statistically significant

And are plagued by two problems in particular:

1. Finding a sizeable control group is almost impossible.
2. Relying on peoples' recollections of their cell phone usage is unreliable.

[gulfcoastliberal]

7. Those arguments remind me of the tobacco companies attitude towards smoking studies.

I think they said the same things. You should read the article linked to above. The cell companies' own studies proved that the emr from the phones caused all sorts of biological problems. So they ordered their researchers not to publish those findings. KI bet their internal docs are just like the tobacco companies internal memos - which proved they knew the dangers of their products.

[Roland99]

10. Matter of time before a new "Jeffrey Wigand" comes forward.

[Tesha]

42. No, it's not nearly that clear.

With tobacco, the mechanisms by which smoking could cause cancer
and other disease were quite well understood, even if the exact
molecular biology wasn't yet understood; one needed only to
look at the gross anatomy of a smoker's lungs and you could
see the way the insults were delivered and we already had long
experience with the hazards of exposure to soot, coal tars, carbon
monoxide, and the like.

The same isn't true for cell phones; there's no mechanism
postulated that can cause the sort of disease that's being
alleged.

Also, by the early sixties, anyone who wasn't a biased industry
spokesman knew the truth about smoking and wasn't shy about
talking about it. There's no similar consensus with cell phones.
If anything, expert opinion seems to lean *AGAINST* the likelihood
of cell phones causing disease.

Personally, I think the jury's still out, so I try to limit the use of
my iPhone against my head. But there's no doubt we're all helping
to collect enough data via our world-side experiment that
even a very subtle truth should be obvious in a few decades.

Tesha

[RoadRage]

17. I'd think it would be fairly easy to do a study..

Get Verizon, AT&T & Sprint to give up the names of their customers with the top 20% of monthly minutes used each month. And then have them give the names of the bottom 20%.

Compare the two groups - what is the incident of brain tumors for group 1 vs. group 2?

When I say "easy" I mean that figuritively.. the privacy laws involved would be almost impossible to get through. But the data is already there.

[Orrex]

59. The proposed experiment would give us just one variable, and there are dozens to consider

Simply running down a list of cellphone users and marking a "C" next to the people with cancer won't give us any meaningful data. In fact, it would likely be harmful because the information would be just about certain to be misconstrued and misused.

[gkhouston]

18. Meh, I wasted my brains in college.

All for a good cause. :beer:

[BlueIris]

24. This is why I do not have a cell phone (no kidding).

And it doesn't impair my ability to lead a normal, productive life.

[L0oniX]

27. There are also studies that indicate that cell phone use reduced Alzheimer's development.

Exposure to radiation from cell phones could help protect against Alzheimer's memory loss: study
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2010/01/07/2010-01-07_exposure_to_radiation_from_cell_phones_could_help_protect_against_alzheimers_mem.html

[havocmom]

53. Well, if ya die from brain cancer in your 50s....

don't gotta worry about no stinking Alzheimer's in yer 70s

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

35. RF radiation DOES cause cancer!

And I have actually been dead for 10 years now due to the massive tumor caused by all of the RF I have been exposed to.

[ddeclue]

39. SNARK..yeah right.. your microwave leaks more power than your cell phone puts out.

:crazy:

[MadHound]

41. I think that this is one of the dirty little secrets of our highly technical society

Namely that all of electrical gizmos and gadgets, all of our microwave, EM and RF emitting devices are hazardous to our health in one form or another. Speculation, along with scientific investigations into these issues is quickly dismissed, if it rises to the level of public consciousness at all (and most of the time the media buries it or ignores it).

There was a big flap a few years ago over high power electric lines causing cancer, and there was some serious evidence to back up the claim, yet it got buried. Now cell phones are being called into question, and those questions are quickly thrust into the background. Yet all these questions persist. And cancer rates, along with other related conditions continue to rise.

I think that this is all being suppressed by various powers because if the true health effects of all this radiation was truly known to the public, our society, our economy would collapse. People would quit using all those gizmos, would demand electrical lines be taken out or buried, etc. Huge lawsuits would result, bankrupting many large corporations. It would be chaos.

So we the people are left to fester and die in an increasing stew of RF, EM, microwave and other radiation. The price we pay for technology.

Me, I'm glad I live out in the country where such radiation is much less prevalent.

[NoNothing]

43. The reason speculation was dismissed

Is because none of the speculators could so much as come up with a plasuible *theory* of how this is physcially possible, let alone prove it in controlled circumstances.

If you are going to make a claim that violates the laws of physics as we know them, you need more than speculation, anecdotes, and conspiracy theory.

[MadHound]

57. Actually much of it was proven in controlled circumstances

I suggest you go educate yourself about high power wires and cancer clusters, oh, and that Swedish study about cell phone usage, especially using one far from a tower.

[TrogL]

44. My sister got a tumour in the same spot decades before cell phones

[malaise]

45. I personally know four young men - all under 40

who died of brain tumors in the past two years. Everyone of them was always on their cell phone. One actually worked with one of the cell phone companies.

I have two phones - my favorite - a pre-paid for emergencies only and my ornament - a blackberry gift I received. Hubby calls it my ornament because I rarely use it.

[Orrex]

58. I'm sorry to hear about those young men, but their sad cases don't confirm a cellphone/cancer link

Off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen other possible contributing factors, so unless we can exclude these or at least account for them, we can't draw any conclusions about a causative link between cellphones and cancer.


I know five guys who've had prostate cancer, and all of them tended to wear pants. Does that imply a causal connection between the wearing of pants and prostate cancer?

[Obamanaut]

46. A tale with so many non-names is always good. An anonymous source

named 'Jim' who works at 'top Wall Street firm' who was put in touch with the author by 'colleague', and 'Jim' was treated by his unnamed neurosugeon who is on the staff of a 'major medical center in Manhatten.'

I'll put away my phone based on the above information.

[whistler162]

47. WARNING DIRE CONSEQUENCES.....

LIVING WILL KILL YOU EVENTUALLY SO STOP IT!

[Libertas1776]

50. I don't need no cell phone...

I just carry around this puppy...

with a little extra cord...

and I'm golden.


But seriously, I do my utmost to limit my cell phone use. I do not trust the little buggers.

[truedelphi]

63. just where does one get one of those ulra modern gizmos!

ANd just how is itused?

Seriously, your graphics cracked me up.

[havocmom]

52. Cars have been killing us for decades & we spend a lot to enable their use

so it comes as no surprise we ignore the dangers of cell phones. We love our toys and hate eating our vegetables. Pogo had a point.

[NYC_SKP]

64. Using my cellphone gives me an...

...but then just about anything does that.

Unless I'm really grouchy, or have a headache.