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Study of Cellphone Risks Finds 'Some Evidence' of Link to Cancer, at Least in Male Rats
For decades, health experts have struggled to determine whether or not cellphones can cause cancer. On Thursday, a federal agency released the final results of what experts call the world's largest and most costly experiment to look into the question. The study originated in the Clinton administration, cost $30 million and involved some 3,000 rodents.
The experiment, by the National Toxicology Program, found positive but relatively modest evidence that radio waves from some types of cellphones could raise the risk that male rats develop brain cancer. "We believe that the link between radio-frequency radiation and tumors in male rats is real," John Bucher, a senior scientist at the National Toxicology Program, said in a statement.
But he cautioned that the exposure levels and durations were far greater than what people typically encounter, and thus cannot "be compared directly to the exposure that humans experience." Moreover, the rat study examined the effects of a radio frequency associated with an early generation of cellphone technology, one that fell out of routine use years ago. Any concerns arising from the study thus would seem to apply mainly to early adopters who used those bygone devices, not to users of current models.
[...] The rats were exposed to radiation at a frequency of 900 megahertz — typical of the second generation of cellphones that prevailed in the 1990s, when the study was first conceived. Current cellphones represent a fourth generation, known as 4G, and 5G phones are expected to debut around 2020. They employ much higher frequencies, and these radio waves are far less successful at penetrating the bodies of humans and rats, scientists say.
Previously: Major Cell Phone Radiation Study Reignites Cancer Questions
First Clear Evidence Cell Phone Radiation Can Cause Cancer In Rats
Related: Dim-Bulb Politician Wants Warning on Cell Phones
California Issues Warning Over Cellphones; Study Links Non-Ionizing Radiation to Miscarriage
Mill Valley, California Blocks 5G Over Health Concerns
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @10:54AM (2 children)
Pseudoscience. They trained the rats to express their feelings, which caused the cancer. They also used rats who sexually identified as ferocious lions.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Saturday November 03 2018, @07:27PM
If rats are experimented upon, they will develop cancer. Their feelings, sexual orientation or chosen gender(s) have little to do with the outcome.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Gaaark on Saturday November 03 2018, @10:12PM
Which one got to wear the blue dress?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Saturday November 03 2018, @11:13AM (8 children)
These guys got $30million for microwaving rats?
Is that science? or is it a scam?
Please note the frequencies used by mobile phones are also in the sun's rays, and at broadly similar levels. We know that the sun causes skin cancer, so the only safe thing to do is turn off the phone and go back to your mum's basement.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday November 03 2018, @12:16PM (2 children)
yeah, crazy. Everybody knows microwaved rats taste far worse than grilled ones.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Saturday November 03 2018, @07:28PM (1 child)
Not if you add cheese whiz.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday November 04 2018, @04:54PM
mice with cheese is awfully cruel, it's like cooking humans together with iphones.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:02PM (4 children)
Yes, $30 million for a study they knew was flawed from the start: 'But he cautioned that the exposure levels and durations were far greater than what people typically encounter, and thus cannot "be compared directly to the exposure that humans experience."'
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @05:13PM (3 children)
No it's not a flawed study. Often you need to use a larger dose to get effects. And using a larger dose you will not need millions of subjects. Also had they found no effect, it would have been much more significant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @05:20PM (2 children)
Its flawed because look whats happening, the results are dismissed as irrelevant to what we really want to know anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @12:49PM (1 child)
No it's not a flawed study. Often you need to use a larger dose to get effects. And using a larger dose you will not need millions of subjects. Also had they found no effect, it would have been much more significant.
Wanna go for yet another round?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @01:25PM
In statistical science, a finding of no effect is referred to as a non-signficant result.
Regarding the larger doses, I don't see why anyone would assume a monotonic relationship between dose and effect. We are dealing with a highly non linear system here, so the best thing to do is set up the experiment to be as close to the real world conditions of concern as possible.
It reminds me of all those studies of alcohol on rats where they inject ip a bolus of everclear that leads to a bac higher than anyone ever recorded without building up a tolerance beforehand. Then the news is all about alcohol does this or that!
(Score: 4, Informative) by MostCynical on Saturday November 03 2018, @11:59AM (4 children)
$10,000 per rat
$10,000 per rat
Assuming they went to the most expensive supplier [laboratoryanimalsciencebuyersguide.com], $100 per rat is about as bad as it gets.
They all got nice surgery, and individual cremations, and lovely rat homes while they got zapped.. and still thousands per rat left over.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bobs on Saturday November 03 2018, @01:25PM
Not cheap, but care and feeding of 3,000 rats over 2 years, 3,000 dissections, tracking and analysis of results. Lab space for 3k rates, cages, probably air conditioning, lab assistants to feed, clean monitor and measure rodents over 3 years, scientists to design study, apply for grants, assess and analyze the results, then fight with industry to publish results. University overhead.
Don’t have specific details on this but large, multi-year, scientifically valid studies with lots of people involved ain’t cheap.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:08PM
Gov facilities charge $3 per day per cage. For two rats per cage thats about $500 per year just to store one. Now, there is no reason for it to cost so much since universities have similar facilities for half or less that, but thats how your gov rolls.
(Score: 4, Funny) by inertnet on Saturday November 03 2018, @05:50PM
It's so expensive because those rats all needed unlimited plans to stay on the phone all day.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Saturday November 03 2018, @07:32PM
How much does the exterminator charge per rat to get rid of them?
Does he sell them back to laboratories?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Alphatool on Saturday November 03 2018, @12:14PM (10 children)
The scientists at the NTP may think that the cancers in rats were caused by RF exposure, but this is not a universal opinion. In particular there is no obvious reason why male rates would get cancer from RF exposure but mice and female rats don't. It's also odd that the heart is the most sensitive organ without any real reason. There hasn't been much published analysis of the final results yet, but there has been plenty of analysis of the pre-release results and that's pretty damning. A good starting point is https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-a-rat-study-with-marginal-results-does-not-prove-that-cell-phones-cause-cancer-no-matter-what-mother-jones-and-consumer-reports-say/ [sciencebasedmedicine.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 03 2018, @12:49PM (3 children)
Don't worry the SJWs will show up soon and make sure we are getting equal results. Cancer for everyone!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @02:10PM
If it's only white make rats that means trouble for the Republican Party.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @03:04PM (1 child)
#WSJKillsKids [twitter.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 04 2018, @03:19AM
What's this, some spicy YouTube drama?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Saturday November 03 2018, @01:16PM (1 child)
FYI:
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:23PM
One variable here is the amount of tissue between the heart of a person and the heart of a rat.
Though at least the first thing I found suggests that 900 mhz penetrates "deep" into "human skin" -- well, that's not going to be so deep into the body then.
for frequencies of 900, 1800 and 2450MHz.
That would suggest the skin alone protects all parts of a body in rats and humans. It seems at most this should accept blame for skin cancer rates.
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Saturday November 03 2018, @10:02PM (3 children)
Why are you so certain that there can't be sex-specific differences here? We already know there are significant differences in e.g. wound repair between males and females. That might also be true of radiation-induced damage repair mechanisms. It might be due to more effective clearance of damaged cells in female mice by macrophages. (It's immune cell differences between males and females which cause the difference in wound repair.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @11:09PM
Males and females are equal and interchangeable... didn't you get the memo?
(Score: 2) by Alphatool on Sunday November 04 2018, @12:18PM (1 child)
There absolutely are sex specific differences in cancer - they're actually quite common. There are still reasons that this is a problematic result:
Ultimately, the study shows that if RF exposure causes cancer it isn't a very strong carcinogen. The effect that the NTP is claiming is so small that it's very hard to separate from noise, only a handful of changes in either the control group or study group would have eliminated the statistical significance of this finding. Given the design of the experiment I expected that if it was to find something it would be a very clear signal, but this is a borderline result that I highly doubt will be reproducible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @01:34PM
While it may not be a strong carcinogen, it seems to be a stronger one than tobacco smoke, which still gets a huge deal made about it.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S094029930500045X [sciencedirect.com]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday November 03 2018, @12:15PM (1 child)
I find 50hz 220v 10a waves are beneficial for my health (not a 60hz ameribot). YMMV.
Who knows, maybe in 2050, when they retire the last 4g station, someone will make a study about this 4g too.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @02:43AM
By 2060 they will invent 6G which will help you live a longer and more prosperous life.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 03 2018, @12:54PM (39 children)
Lets see - took 30 years for the results to get out and the results are unfavorable to the cell phone industry. Then they say that while their study shows an issue it doesn't relate to the current phones because they are higher frequency. Higher frequency means more energy and more chance to slice up your DNA.
Given the chance to stand near an antenna kicking out 50mhz at 1.5KW or an antenna kicking out 2.8ghz at 1.5kw I'm going for the 50mhz RF. I don't know off the top of my head if they are right or wrong but this seems to be a normal cycle with unfavorable results. I've been watching hide and play down go on for years now.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Saturday November 03 2018, @02:04PM (28 children)
There's a funny thing about electromagnetic radiation: it's a quantum-mechanical phenomenon. More energy means absolutely squat if each individual photon still doesn't have enough energy to ionize the DNA enough to slice it up. A rather smart fellow, what was his name again (Albert something?), won a prize about a century ago for explaining this little fact, which kinda sorta started the field of quantum mechanics. The minimum amount of energy needed to cause a DNA strand break (by breaking apart one of the carbon-nitrogen bonds in DNA) is something like 308 kJ/mol, or about 3.2 eV (in actual practice it's usually far more than that). Get at least 3.2 eV or go home! That corresponds to a photon frequency of 7.7 × 1014 Hz, which is somewhere in the near ultraviolet. If your photon energy is far less than that, then causing a DNA strand break that way is essentially impossible according to the principles of quantum mechanics, no matter how intense your photon source is.* So for modern cellphones we're talking 2.8 GHz, so each photon there has an energy of maybe 1.2×10-5 eV. That's about a three hundred thousandth part of the minimum energy needed for a strand break. Five orders of magnitude below. Go figure whether or not we're wasting our time and money by continuing to do experiments of this sort that keep on coming up with meh results that aren't the kind of extraordinary evidence needed to shatter one of the most well-established physical theories known to science.
___________
* This is not to say that an extremely intense source of low-frequency EM radiation won't have other deleterious effects on life, but we'll probably be talking about intensities more associated with major astrophysical sources of radio waves like neutron stars rather than anything terrestrial.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 03 2018, @03:50PM (6 children)
Thanks for the details - so the claim is that the frequency of 2.8ghz and anything below some threshold that should be calculable by converting from eV to frequency that there is no possibility of damage to DNA. I did not know that was the standing science.
Well, you say "basically impossibly" - how basically is this impossible? Are we talking a gradient of possibilities here? In my laymans understanding of quantum physics its all based on probability. Does basically impossible mean the chances of splitting DNA at 2.8ghz are as good as my chance of walking through solid matter or something like that? Or is there really a switch?
It would not surprise me one bit if we discover it's a gradient and more probable than we want it to be. Combined with inverse square law and that people keep cell phones in their pocket in a proximity to the transmitter we've never seen before with a duty cycle we've never seen before we could have easily put the whole planet in an edge case.
I don't know it's what is going on but it wouldn't surprise me one bit. We've been colossally wrong about toxic materials we thought were benign too after 50 years. It happens.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @05:04PM (5 children)
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 03 2018, @06:39PM (2 children)
Awesome thank you AC - bringing it into quantization is helpful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @03:11AM (1 child)
You should look up the photoelectric effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect [wikipedia.org]
Which is, BTW, what Einstein won the noble prize for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @03:13AM
Nobel prize *
(Score: 4, Insightful) by rleigh on Saturday November 03 2018, @09:30PM (1 child)
Why are you making the assumption that bond-breaking is a significant mode of action here? There are plenty of other interesting effects which can occur without any bond breaking at all. DNA and proteins are huge molecules whose structural stability is very much dependent upon temperature. Structural changes due to localised heating can have profound functional consequences.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @04:57AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:12PM (14 children)
I love when these physics/chem 101 calculations are used to debunk medical claims. Who said ionizing radiation is necessary to lead to dna copy errors? Only you and other pseudoskeptics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:39PM (13 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:44PM (9 children)
In general, just disrupting hydrogen bonds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:57PM (8 children)
Or even van der waals interactions...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @05:32PM (7 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @06:00PM
1) Different frequencies have different effects on different molecules.
2) Who said it isnt happening?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by rleigh on Saturday November 03 2018, @09:49PM (5 children)
High frequency radiation in the UV-visible-IR range is largely non-penetrating. UV can barely penetrate more than a few hundred microns. IR can penetrate a millimetre or so before it rapidly falls off in intensity. Microwaves can penetrate much deeper.
Visible light is dangerous to us. Phototoxicity through free radical generation is a problem. We have evolved elaborate molecular mechanisms to cope with this by mitigating and repairing damage, as well as specialised tissue structures in our skin to cope with constant exposure (squamous epithelium and melanocytes). Our internals have not evolved to deal with it at all.
Microwaves are usually not ionising but they do cause localised heating. And they can penetrate and heat at greater depths (several centimetres).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @03:40PM (4 children)
True
It should also be noted that our bodies are often subject to temperature changes on a regular basis. Our bodies regulate temperature. We wear jackets when we get cold and we take them off when it's hot. Our body temperature still varies slightly from time to time. When we're sick the temperature may rise. If we're outside when it's cold our temperature may fall even though our bodies will counteract the effect to some extent.
"DNA that consists entirely of AT base pairs melts at about 70° and DNA that has only G/C base pairs melts at over 100°."
(Celsius)
https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/12/dna-denaturation-and-renaturation-and.html [blogspot.com]
Body temperature is about 37 degrees Celsius. To what extent can a cell phone cause enough localized heating to break base pairs?
https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/12/dna-denaturation-and-renaturation-and.html [blogspot.com]
I found this interesting though it doesn't directly relate to your comment, I figure I'll post it here.
The temperature at which the DNA strands are half denatured, meaning half double-stranded, half single-stranded, is called the melting temperature(Tm). The amount of strand separation, or melting, is measured by the absorbance of the DNA solution at 260nm. Nucleic acids absorb light at this wavelength because of the electronic structure in their bases, but when two strands of DNA come together, the close proximity of the bases in the two strands quenches some of this absorbance. When the two strands separate, this quenching disappears and the absorbance rises 30%-40%.This is called Hyperchromicity. The Hypochromic effect is the effect of stacked bases in a double helix absorbing less ultra-violet light.
...
While the ratio of G to C and A to T in an organism's DNA is fixed, the GC content (percentage of G +C) can vary considerably from one DNA to another. The percentage of GC content of DNA has a significant effect on its Tm."
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Structural_Biochemistry/Nucleic_Acid/DNA/DNA_Denaturation [wikibooks.org]
I'm not saying that cell phones are harmless. I'm actually overly paranoid about cell phone radiation myself. I just figure I'll bring this up for discussion.
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Sunday November 04 2018, @05:16PM
Yep, this is all true. We paid a lot of attention to melting points and GC content when designing PCR primers. However, when considering these temperatures, do bear in mind that it's the temperature to separate the entire strand with no possibility of random reassociation. It might only require melting 20 bases or so to have a functional effect, and that can take place at a significantly lower temperature. It's happening all the time randomly at the scale of a few base pairs at normal temperatures. It only requires a little push to expand this to a few more base pairs. It would only require a very small heating effect at the scale of a few cubic micrometres or less to do this, and microwaves could I believe do exactly that.
One really cool thing is that organisms which exist at higher temperatures, e.g. hydrothermal vents, have evolved higher GC content to stabilise the DNA under "normal" conditions for them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @05:32PM (2 children)
The point is that in principle all you need is to disrupt some important but weak interaction at a crucial moment (base pairing during dna synthesis, chromosome alignment during mitosis) to get an increase in cancer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @01:32PM (1 child)
and you raise a valid point. Like I said, I myself am paranoid about cell phones and I believe I am overly paranoid.
But the counterargument is that if such slight variations in temperature can have such a profound effect then why aren't we worried about getting cancer every time we stand next to the heater. Or every time we go outside in the sun during summer when it's hot. We might as well invest more to ensure that we are constantly in an isothermal environment because surely standing next to the heater will cause me more temperature fluctuations than using my cell phone. I can probably measure the temperature fluctuations on my body of standing next to the heater with an actual thermometer used to detect fevers. I would need a highly sensitive, expensive thermometer to detect temperature differences to my body by using my cell phone. There are a million environmental factors that affect my body temperature far more than cell phones that I'm exposed to on a daily basis. Every time the wind blows it probably causes me temperature fluctuations more measurable than those caused by using my cell phones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @01:36PM
Maybe your body's epidermis can handle infrared heat and prepare for incoming temperature changes due to infrared, but it can't handle the deep penetration of powerful radio waves that slowly heat up cells from the inside.
That sounded science-y.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @05:19PM
And then there is the whole world of epigenetics. DNA only acts through the proteins that it codes. Epigenetic effects change how and when the DNA sequence is read into proteins. So no need to damage the DNA to cause effects.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rleigh on Saturday November 03 2018, @09:25PM (1 child)
Well, for starters, consider this. DNA is a double-stranded helix, where the paired bases on each helix interact weakly via hydrogen bonds. Two for A-T, three for G-C pairings. It doesn't take much energy to disrupt that pairing and "melt" the strands. Now, the molecules are huge, and the cumulative strength from all the pairs in total results in a very stable structure. However, it's easy to disrupt a small bit and create a single-stranded "bubble". This exposes the bases in that area to the cellular machinery for transcription. That site might be a promoter, enhancer, repressor, or other regulatory sequence and trigger some action such as transcription of a particular gene, or repression of another. Or it might displace some regulatory RNA sequence. Cell signalling is very complex, but this could ultimately affect some key signalling pathway, and potentially promote unregulated division. Note that terahertz radiation has been shown to "unzip" DNA. Microwave radiation can cause localised heating which can then trigger melting.
Protein structures are also subject to delicate thermodynamic equilibria, where temperature increases could potentially change the structure stability, leading to conformational changes and disruption or stabilisation of protein-protein or protein-ligand interactions. Suppose that molecule is a tumour suppressor, and you affect its function.
Note that none of this relies on ionising radiation breaking chemical bonds. It's simply a local shift in the thermodynamic equilibrium. The chances of a single event being disruptive are low. It's all ultimately down to probability, where increased exposure makes it more probable an undesirable event will occur.
(I do have a PhD in biology.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @04:11PM
Thanks. Reading comments above had me frustrated and ready to post this, but I would've been much less concise than you. Appreciate your accuracy and even-headedness.
Whenever someone says "oh it's not ionizing so it's safe" it boggles my mind. There are lots of molecules that are photosensitive, including in humans, and all kinds of chemical and kinetic events can lead to different conditions of DNA,RNA,methylation,etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:58PM (1 child)
Funny, I thought the amount of energy in a wave was measured in Watts, not Hz.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @05:08PM
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 04 2018, @11:00AM (2 children)
Funny? Like the NIF driver laser [wikipedia.org]?
The one that uses IR light in input to break down the Coulomb repulsion between two nuclei and make them undergo nuclear fusion?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @03:12PM (1 child)
From your own link:
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 04 2018, @07:54PM
From my link:
The point is though: based only on the frequency, even photons of X radiation will not have enough energy to cause nuclear reactions - you'd be well into hard gamma spectrum. But where frequency is not enough, the intensity of the radiation starts causing "funny" effects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 04 2018, @11:09AM
but but ... it's sooo tiring to always have to think about the theory, repeating the "deflection spell" every time you use the phone.
FORGETTING to REALIZE that it CANNOT harm you will totally kill the cat in the box : }
(Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Saturday November 03 2018, @03:03PM (9 children)
This study shows that your cancer risk is increased if you:
1. Are a rat
2. Absorb exponentially more of the radiation that any person has or would
Don't get me wrong; I see how semi-literate people with their own agenda can *claim* the results are "unfavorable to the cell phone industry", but looking at the actual results, even discounting condition #1, the result is very, very favorable to the cell phone industry: "People exposed to your products do not have more chance to get cancer. They would have to get much, much higher exposure for it to be an issue."
You, sir, very skillfully live up to your username, and I salute you.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 03 2018, @03:41PM (6 children)
Da fuq? Be more like https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=28400&cid=757283 [soylentnews.org] because that was useful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:20PM (5 children)
What did you find useful about it? Radiation isnt required to be ionizing in order to affect dna replication and repair. Its a total strawman.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:25PM (4 children)
Go on please. I've not heard that non-ionizing RF is a hazard.
What I found useful is that they are trying to contribute knowledge to the discussion instead of just rehash what is obvious as if the problem was other people have the intellect of a 4 year old.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:41PM (3 children)
A microwave works via non-ionizing radiation, why wouldnt it have an effect? All that matters is the hydrogen bonds between dna molecules or the replication/repair machinery and dna, or really anything at all can be affected by the radiation. And its obvious this effect is not going to be huge or it would have been noticed long ago so likely the disruption needs to happen at just the wrong time during the cell cycle or whatever.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:53PM (2 children)
Mostly because RF is made up of a voltage component and a magnetic component and neither of those are known to cause cancer in people in any way. It seems the human body can tolerate magnetic fields to the extent that it rips the metal in you out of you and we tolerate voltage fields just fine as well. We don't tolerate being electrocuted very much that's for sure.
Something changes with this combination or power levels because a microwave introduces RF at levels nature never expected on the surface of the earth.
I agree - we have a proximity and transmitter duty cycle that is vastly different with the use case of a cell phone than any other radio system I can think of. We've never seen anything like this before so I think it's up in the air.
Possibly - I see it as a probability with more cell/RF interaction events leading to high possibility. The proximity and transmitter duty cycle contribute to this.
Well I believe what the microwave does is grab molecules in the material it is interacting with (your lunch) and wiggles them around really fast. They rub against each other and make heat. I bet the wiggling follows the wave itself though that pattern inside that closed box is going to be crazy complicated or perfectly uniform with standing waves and holes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 03 2018, @05:25PM
Microwaves are "tuned" to water molecules, other frequencies will wriggle other molecules.
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Saturday November 03 2018, @09:57PM
I would not be at all surprised if the patch antennae used in mobile phones are producing standing waves, which cause problems when the phone is held in a single position for a time, be it against your head or in your trouser pocket. The field they produce is asymmetric, and 50% is directed inward rather than outward.
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Saturday November 03 2018, @10:12PM (1 child)
The reason why you expose the rats to higher levels than humans would normally experience is because you want to observe a statistically significant effect in a reasonable timeframe with a limited number of rats. This includes both cost and ethical considerations as well as time, which is fundamentally limited by the lifetime of the animal. Animal research (in the UK at least) require minimising the animal numbers by law as part of the animal work licensing. Radiation effects are typically linear, so we should be able to extrapolate from these results.
Drawing the conclusion that you would have to have much higher exposure for it to be an issue is not appropriate. You also need to consider the exposure duration, which is orders of magnitude longer for humans.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday November 04 2018, @01:17PM
The conclusion is absolutely appropriate. Under their methodology, the rats were exposed to continuous high levels of whole-body radiation for years [nih.gov] during the study.
Now, while it's technically true that humans have a period of tens of years to potentially be exposed to radiation due to their increased lifespan, even considering this and extrapolating linearly, the rats still got much higher exposure.
The rats were exposed to 1.5, 3, or 6 watts of continuous full body exposure, while cell phones' average emissions are localized and are in the milliwatt range.
The math doesn't work to claim that milliwatts of intermittent, localized radiation over tens of years is comparable to 6 watts continuously for years.
"1.5, 3, or 6 continuous whole-body watts for years" works out to be much higher levels of radiation than humans get from cellular telephones.
Now, we can conclude that if unusually high levels of radiation increase cancer risk significantly, that it's possible that much lower levels might increase it insignificantly. But it's not linear from 0 to infinity; according to the Paracelsus Principle there is a threshold below which a risk can't be identified, and this study didn't find that threshold, but rather measured things that were above it.
Can much lower levels of 900MHz radiation cause cancer? No one knows conclusively, but it looks improbable, and it's not relevant to cell phones now, because they largely no longer use those frequencies.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by eravnrekaree on Saturday November 03 2018, @01:39PM (2 children)
It is said that the high frequencies cannot penetrate the body well. But that doesnt jibe with the fact that it can somehow still pass through walls. If you can use your cellphone inside your house, it can pass through your body. They also use similar frequencies to a microwave oven, we see how microwaves will excite water molecules. The man danger from these devices is the thermal chemical effect
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 03 2018, @03:57PM
Microwaves can only penetrate something like a body a few millimeters - this is why the core of food heated in a microwave oven stays cold while the outside surfaces get hot. To successfully warm the whole thing you need to warm it outside in because microwaves really don't penetrate that deep.
Now why they said this I don't know - I guess they are suggesting it isn't worth worrying about skin cancer since it would only be a few mm deep anyway?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 03 2018, @10:29PM
I don't know about your walls, but I'm pretty sure that my walls are made of very different material than my body.
And if you want to argue that the material doesn't matter, remember that light (which is high-frequency electromagnetic radiation) passes glass quite well, while it is reliably blocked by stone.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 03 2018, @04:08PM
The other half of your question is addressed by the fact that a nice wet chunk of flesh like a human or a piece of chicken interacts with RF while something like drywall is nearly transparent to RF. That is to say that RF will basically go right through dry wood, walls, glass, atmosphere, clouds, all kinds of stuff.
To stop RF you need to be able to interact with it with like being an animal or a chunk of metal that is also the right shape. Chunks of metal are problematic too though as RF is made of a voltage and magnetic component and the moving magnetic field component interacts with metal to cause it to generate electricity, thus current flow, and RF again. Taadaa RF is fucking magic.
It's going to take a real physicist or radio engineer to go further than this. I'm sure it'll come down to impedance some how. It always does.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday November 03 2018, @10:12PM
I wonder if this could have any implications for some types of medical devices that employ 900 MHz radios for their wireless functionality? One of the reasons they use 900 MHz versus something like 2.4 GHz is specifically because 900 MHz can pass through the human body whereas higher frequencies cannot.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Sunday November 04 2018, @12:50PM
I do not have anything to add to this discussion, sadly.
I do, however, want to say thanks to the SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) who posted to this story!
THIS is why I keep putting time and energy into this site! Discussions that get "into the weeds" of the details, but still keep it at a level that an intelligent person who may not be directly involved in the field can still follow along. This discussion confirmed things that I had pondered, gave me insights into other aspects of DNA, and I just plain came away better educated from reading this.
Thank You!
Wit is intellect, dancing.