Anyone worried about cellphones?

[msduncan]

So with the report that came out earlier this week about cell phones potentially being worse than smoking and doubling your chance for brain cancer..... is anyone concerned about this or changing their habits?

It's been several years now since the wife and I switched over from regular phones to exclusively cell phones. It made sense at the time, but now I'm not so sure. Neither of us sit on the phone for long periods though -- but I'm wondering if we should go the opposite direction.

[Austin]

So with the report that came out earlier this week about cell phones potentially being worse than smoking and doubling your chance for brain cancer..... is anyone concerned about this or changing their habits?

It's been several years now since the wife and I switched over from regular phones to exclusively cell phones. It made sense at the time, but now I'm not so sure. Neither of us sit on the phone for long periods though -- but I'm wondering if we should go the opposite direction.

Link?

[msduncan]

So with the report that came out earlier this week about cell phones potentially being worse than smoking and doubling your chance for brain cancer..... is anyone concerned about this or changing their habits?

It's been several years now since the wife and I switched over from regular phones to exclusively cell phones. It made sense at the time, but now I'm not so sure. Neither of us sit on the phone for long periods though -- but I'm wondering if we should go the opposite direction.

Link?

Story

[Fretmute]

Meh. Radio waves are going to pass through my body whether I have a cell phone or not.

[Zaxxon]

As I posted in the other thread discussing this, doubling your risk is a move from a 99.98% chance of not getting brain cancer to a 99.96% chance of not getting brain cancer.

I think I'll stick to worrying about things that actually have a significant risk associated with them.

[msduncan]

As I posted in the other thread discussing this, doubling your risk is a move from a 99.98% chance of not getting brain cancer to a 99.96% chance of not getting brain cancer.

I think I'll stick to worrying about things that actually have a significant risk associated with them.

Does this mean I can still get an iphone without guilt?

[Brian]

As I posted in the other thread discussing this, doubling your risk is a move from a 99.98% chance of not getting brain cancer to a 99.96% chance of not getting brain cancer.

I think I'll stick to worrying about things that actually have a significant risk associated with them.

Does this mean I can still get an iphone without guilt?

Without guilt? Yes.

Without buyers remorse? No.

[Sectoid]

...electromagnetic radiation from the cell phone transmissions might increase mutation rates...

Superpowers, here I come!

At any rate, I live in NJ. If I don't die of cancer, I've beaten the odds.

[gameoverman]

Meh, if I was the type to worry about health warnings I'd worry about being told by the local news that the air today was 'unhealthy'. Especially since it is almost always unhealthy.

To say nothing of the food situation.

And don't get me started on the problems with the water.

Then there are the 'this location contains materials known to cause cancer..." signs posted everywhere I go.

So cellphones are at the back of a long line of stuff for me.

[CeeKay]

As I posted in the other thread discussing this, doubling your risk is a move from a 99.98% chance of not getting brain cancer to a 99.96% chance of not getting brain cancer.

I think I'll stick to worrying about things that actually have a significant risk associated with them.

Does this mean I can still get an iphone without guilt?

Without guilt? Yes.

Without buyers remorse? No.

I love my iPhone. no remorse here, except maybe a twinge from mugging that grandma for the 500 bucks.


no wait.. that was just gas.

[tjg_marantz]

I hear Barack has proposed a ban on cell phones. You should vote for him, msd.

[Arkon]

I don't even own a cell phone so it won't be changing anything for me.

[Moliere]

As I posted in the other thread discussing this, doubling your risk is a move from a 99.98% chance of not getting brain cancer to a 99.96% chance of not getting brain cancer.

I think I'll stick to worrying about things that actually have a significant risk associated with them.

Trial lawyers think otherwise.

[Sandpuppy]

This reminds me of one of Letterman's Top Ten entries for TV Shows From the Year 2020, one of which was "Oat Bran: the Silent Killer".

[Smoove_B]

We can only hope they're as dangerous as reported.

We can only hope

[Unagi]

I hear Barack has proposed a ban on cell phones. You should vote for him, msd.

badgering... tsk tsk

[LordMortis]

So with the report that came out earlier this week about cell phones potentially being worse than smoking and doubling your chance for brain cancer..... is anyone concerned about this or changing their habits?

It's been several years now since the wife and I switched over from regular phones to exclusively cell phones. It made sense at the time, but now I'm not so sure. Neither of us sit on the phone for long periods though -- but I'm wondering if we should go the opposite direction.

I've always been more concerned that those waves from the phone itself are designed to be amplified and directed to get better reception. And the phone spends very little time next to my head focusing it's waves. However, I keep it in my front pocket about 16 hours a day. By now I'm afriad to feel my junk. I'm ascared it has cancer.

[ChrisGwinn]

Meh. Radio waves are going to pass through my body whether I have a cell phone or not.

Exactly. One self-published "study" does not counteract physics.

[Zaxxon]

As I posted in the other thread discussing this, doubling your risk is a move from a 99.98% chance of not getting brain cancer to a 99.96% chance of not getting brain cancer.

I think I'll stick to worrying about things that actually have a significant risk associated with them.

Trial lawyers think otherwise.

I'll stick with the scientists rather than the lawyers.

[Kraegor]

I used to not worry bout cancer.... then I thought about where my cell phone spent most of it's time. re: front pants pocket. then I thought bout were i wouldn't want cancer... so despite the astronomically low odds, I no longer carry a cell phone around with me...

sure, there's constant exposure from invisible whatchamajigs... then there's walkin around with a bullseye in yer pocket...

[ChrisGwinn]

I used to not worry bout cancer.... then I thought about where my cell phone spent most of it's time. re: front pants pocket. then I thought bout were i wouldn't want cancer... so despite the astronomically low odds, I no longer carry a cell phone around with me...

sure, there's constant exposure from invisible whatchamajigs... then there's walkin around with a bullseye in yer pocket...

You know, the cell phone antennas aren't actually pointing their radio signal broadcasts towards your phone.

Like Fret pointed out - you're going to get exposed to radio waves regardless of whether you carry a cell phone or not, unless you find somewhere free of television broadcasts, WiFi, GPS, etc.

[LawBeefaroni]

Eventually it won't matter. Natural selection will make cell phones disappear (along with laptops and diapers).

The new study included 364 men being evaluated for infertility between September 2004 and October 2005.

In addition to undergoing tests to determine sperm quantity and quality, the men answered questions about their cell phone habits.

Most of the men had sperm counts that were well above the 20 million sperm per milliliter level that is considered the lower limit of normal. But the more the men in the study used their phones, the lower their sperm count tended to be.

The average sperm count among men who said they did not use cell phones was 86 million per milliliter, compared with 76 million/mL for men who used cell phones less than two hours a day and 71 million/mL for men who used cell phones two to four hours a day.

Men who reported using their cell phones more than four hours a day had the lowest average sperm counts — 66 million/mL.

Significant downward trends were seen when other sperm-quality parameters were measured, such as percentages of sperm swimming well, alive sperm, and normal sperm shape.

[LordMortis]

Like Fret pointed out - you're going to get exposed to radio waves regardless of whether you carry a cell phone or not, unless you find somewhere free of television broadcasts, WiFi, GPS, etc.

Don't cell phones themselves send signals?

Hops on line...

http://www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/coll ... id=2345893

A second important aspect to the cellular concept is that with each base station covering a smaller area, phones need less transmit power to reach any base station. This is a major advantage, since reducing the required transmit power reduces the size of the battery and the weight of the phone.

Still not clear on how much the phone transmits and how powerful that is and what determines the strengh or anything.

[Kraken]

Pressing a radiation emitter next to your skull on a routine basis has always struck me as being of questionable wisdom. Sort of on a par with injecting yourself with botulism toxin.

But yeah, without more evidence I would rank cell phones pretty low in the universe of things that can kill you in horrible ways. On the bright side, we'll have much better data after this experiment runs for another 10-20 years. Meanwhile, using a headset would be a prudent move for the paranoid.

[ChrisGwinn]

Like Fret pointed out - you're going to get exposed to radio waves regardless of whether you carry a cell phone or not, unless you find somewhere free of television broadcasts, WiFi, GPS, etc.

Don't cell phones themselves send signals?

Still not clear on how much the phone transmits and how powerful that is and what determines the strengh or anything.

Sure they do. But they do it with a crappy phone battery - there's just not that much power there. And given the amount of UHF flying around, it seems unlikely that the majority of radio waves you're being exposed to are from your phone, even if you're talking on your phone.

There are people who worry about cell phones who don't bat an eye about cordless phones or having a wifi access point sitting a foot away from them.

And all of that's only relevant if long term exposure to low-power radio waves cause cancer. Which is a theory I've never seen reputable studies support.

[Kraegor]

I don't dispute that waves etc are prolly saturating the air in the ol' big city.
Goin' thru any random number of body parts.

I'm just not giving it a homing beacon to the land of milk and honey...

I "carry" a cell phone, in a satchel, which sits on the desk a couple feet away. Perhaps it makes no difference at all. But in this case the placebo costs me nothing.

[Moliere]

We can only hope they're as dangerous as reported.

We can only hope

Is there a stealth Quinn campaign going on here?

[Jeff Jones]

I don't even own a cell phone so it won't be changing anything for me.

Wow. I had heard there were others besides me.

[Kraken]

I don't even own a cell phone so it won't be changing anything for me.

Wow. I had heard there were others besides me.

Three years ago I needed a business phone number, and the Bride of Ironrod could add me to her cell plan for $10 per month. I use mine strictly for business, talking to my wife, and personal emergencies (it's a bit disturbing that those three things form a category, but there you have it). The phone rarely leaves my desk.

I would like to have the internet in my pocket someday, but I don't want to make phone calls on it.

[Lordnine]

I don't even own a cell phone so it won't be changing anything for me.

Wow. I had heard there were others besides me.

I don’t own a cell phone and I don’t have a landline either. Do I win?

[Moliere]

New Studies Link Cell Phone Radiation with Cancer By Charles Schmidt on March 29, 2018

Still, evidence advanced by the studies shows prolonged exposure to even very low levels of RF radiation, perhaps by mechanisms other than heating that remain unknown, makes rats uniquely prone to a rare tumor called a schwannoma, which affects a type of neuron (or nerve cell) called a Schwann cell.

The studies are notable for their sizes. Researchers at the National Toxicology Program, a federal interagency group under the National Institutes of Health, tested 3,000 rats and mice of both sexes for two years—the largest investigation of RF radiation and cancer in rodents ever undertaken in the U.S. European investigators at the Ramazzini Institute in Italy were similarly ambitious; in their recent study they investigated RF effects in nearly 2,500 rats from the fetal stage until death.

Also noteworthy is that the studies evaluated radiation exposures in different ways. The NTP looked at “near-field” exposures, which approximate how people are dosed while using cell phones. Ramazzini researchers looked at “far-field” exposures, which approximate the wireless RF radiation that bombards us from sources all around us, including wireless devices such as tablet and laptop computers. Yet they generated comparable results: Male rats in both studies (but not mice or female animals) developed schwannomas of the heart at statistically higher rates than control animals that were not exposed.

[Kraken]

So we're fairly confident that rats should not use 2G phones.

[Jeff V]

The excerpt contains no useful information. The claim of "X greater chance of Y" in anything is utterly useless without the context of what X represents to the general population and only serves to generate FUD-inducing headlines which are used to justify funding. In this particular case, if the odds of the rare disease are normally 1 in 3000 and the study found 2 in 3000 then OMG! Double the chance of getting an awful, rare disease that affects only Republican I mean rat hearts!

[Kraken]

The real experiment involves billions of humans. Results will be available in a couple of decades.

[Jeff V]

I'm sure I'll be quite dead by then. And the kids will be using some sort of new technology, the kind which will take decades more to determine lethality.

[El Guapo]

The real experiment involves billions of humans. Results will be available in a couple of decades.

So my admittedly vague understanding is that conceptually cell phones should not be capable of causing cancer, because the type of radiation is not the right (or wrong) kind of radiation to do so.

[Scuzz]

So now when people ask me why I don't carry a cell phone I can tell them it's for health reasons.

[Isgrimnur]

The real experiment involves billions of humans. Results will be available in a couple of decades.

So my admittedly vague understanding is that conceptually cell phones should not be capable of causing cancer, because the type of radiation is not the right (or wrong) kind of radiation to do so.

Ionizing

[Jeff V]

So now when people ask me why I don't carry a cell phone I can tell them it's for health reasons.

Which are you, rat or Republican?

[Isgrimnur]

WaPo

New research in biomechanics suggests that young people are developing hornlike spikes at the back of their skulls — bone spurs caused by the forward tilt of the head, which shifts weight from the spine to the muscles at the back of the head, causing bone growth in the connecting tendons and ligaments. The weight transfer that causes the buildup can be compared to the way the skin thickens into a callus as a response to pressure or abrasion.

The result is a hook or hornlike feature jutting out from the skull, just above the neck.

In academic papers, a pair of researchers at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, argues that the prevalence of the bone growth in younger adults points to shifting body posture brought about by the use of modern technology. They say smartphones and other handheld devices are contorting the human form, requiring users to bend their heads forward to make sense of what’s happening on the miniature screens.

The researchers said their discovery marks the first documentation of a physiological or skeletal adaptation to the penetration of advanced technology into everyday life.

Michael Nitabach, a professor of physiology, genetics and neuroscience at Yale University, was unconvinced by the findings.

“Without knowing about the cell phone use of any of the people whose head X-rays were analyzed, it is impossible to draw conclusions about correlation between cell phone use and skull morphology,” he said.

Health experts warn of “text neck,” and doctors have begun treating “texting thumb,” which is not a clearly defined condition but bears resemblance to carpal tunnel syndrome. But prior research has not linked phone use to bone-deep changes in the body.
...
Part of what was striking about the findings, he said, was the size of the bone spurs, which are thought to be large if they measure 3 or 5 millimeters in length. An outgrowth was only factored into their research if it measured 10 millimeters, or about two-fifths of an inch.

The danger is not the head horn itself, said Mark Sayers, an associate professor of biomechanics at Sunshine Coast who served as Shahar’s supervisor and co-author. Rather, the formation is a “portent of something nasty going on elsewhere, a sign that the head and neck are not in the proper configuration,” he told The Post.