El Reg reports
University of Manchester researchers reckon they've eliminated one of the mechanisms that might have linked mobile phones to cancer. The research is also bad news for those who think power lines are cancer-carriers.
Dr Alex Jones in the University's School of Chemistry led a team examining whether weak magnetic fields affected flavoproteins. Since this protein class handles DNA repair, among other things, it was a favourite candidate for those who believed that the weak magnetic fields associated with phones and power lines are dangerous to health.
The research, to appear in the Royal Society journal Interface, was unable to observe any reaction involving flavoproteins that would occur in the human body.
[...]one of the roles of flavoproteins is to transfer electrons from one place to another. These are referred to as electron transfer flavoproteins, and their activities assist in processes like oxidation.
The electron transfer process involves the creation of chemicals called radical pairs and these had been put forward as a mechanism by which weak magnetic fields might interact with cells--but [...] the research "suggests the correct conditions for biochemical effects of WMFs are likely to be rare in the human body".
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 16 2014, @03:33PM
closer to PCB contamination in soil.
We have a winner! My dad was an electrical lineman, and that damned transformer oil (PCBs) caused everyone he worked with to die of liver cancer before they were 70. Dad died in May from that disease; he was a few weeks shy of his 84th birthday (good genes).
Nobody knew it was dangerous; they oiled their tools with the stuff!
Thankfully, they've transitioned away from PCBs and are now using vegetable-based oils in transformers.
I'd like to know where the idiotic "cell phones linked to cancer" came from? where are all the new brain and genital cancers one would expect?
Leave it to that fine publication, The Register.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org