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Major Cell Phone Radiation Study Reignites Cancer Questions

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday May 28 2016, @04:46AM   
from the back-to-a-bag-phone dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Federal scientists released partial findings Friday from a $25 million animal study that tested the possibility of links between cancer and chronic exposure to the type of radiation emitted from cell phones and wireless devices. The findings, which chronicle an unprecedented number of rodents subjected to a lifetime of electromagnetic radiation, present some of the strongest evidence to date that such exposure is associated with the formation of rare cancers in at least two cell types in the brains and hearts of rats.

There are some major caveats, though. The results were only observed in male rats; there weren't any significant effects seen in female rats. Exposure in utero didn't seem to affect cancer risk. And in male rats, the incidence of those two cancers was quite low. But even a small increase in the incidence of those cancers could have a major public health impact given how many people in the world regularly use cell phones.

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Original Submission

• Yeah. Field density and exposure time (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2016, @10:24PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 28 2016, @10:24PM (#352065)

  When I first saw a headline about this, I wondered if it was like the cyclamate study that said if you drink 10 gallons of kool-aid a day for 120 years, you would likely develop cancer.

  Cellphone radiation study raises concerns despite low risk [ap.org]
  The National Institutes of Health study bombarded rats with cellphone radiation from the womb through the first two years of life for nine hours a day.
  [...]
  "If cellphones cause cancer, they don't cause a lot of cancer", [said Dr. Otis Brawley, the American Cancer Society's chief medical officer]. "It's not as carcinogenic as beef."

  Another page I saw said the "scientists" didn't want to "confuse" the results with the effects of -heating-, so they established what that power level was and backed off just a dab.

  "Science". Heh.
  As an AC down in the (meta)thread notes, there are over a billion human subjects using cellphones in that decade-long-and-more experiment.
  No statistical significance noted yet.
  If there was a correlation found between increased cancers (particularly on the side of the head where the thing was held i.e. where the field strength is the greatest), that would have been splattered all over the news.

  -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  Parent