NIH Study Links Cellphone Radiation To Cancer In Male Rats (techcrunch.com) 130
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: New studies from the National Institutes of Health -- specifically the National Toxicology Program -- find that cell phone radiation is potentially linked with certain forms of cancer, but they're far from conclusive. The results are complex and the studies have yet to be peer-reviewed, but some of the findings are clearly important enough to warrant public discussion. An early, partial version of this study teasing these effects appeared in 2016, but these are the full (draft) reports complete with data. Both papers note that "studies published to date have not demonstrated consistently increased incidences of tumors at any site associate with exposure to cell phone RFR [radio frequency radiation] in rats or mice." But the researchers felt that "based on the designs of the existing studies, it is difficult to definitively conclude that these negative results clearly indicate that cell phone RFR is not carcinogenic."
The studies exposed mice and rats to both 900 MHz and 1900 Mhz wavelength radio waves (each frequency being its own experiment) for about 9 hours per day, at various strengths ranging from 1 to 10 watts per kilogram. For comparison, the general limit the FCC imposes for exposure is 0.08 W/kg; the absolute maximum allowed, for the extremities of people with occupational exposures, is 20 W/kg for no longer than 6 minutes. So they were really blasting these mice. The rodents were examined for various health effects after various durations, from 28 days to 2 years. At 1900 MHz: Equivocal evidence of carcinogenicity in lung, liver and other organ tissues in both male and female mice.
The studies exposed mice and rats to both 900 MHz and 1900 Mhz wavelength radio waves (each frequency being its own experiment) for about 9 hours per day, at various strengths ranging from 1 to 10 watts per kilogram. For comparison, the general limit the FCC imposes for exposure is 0.08 W/kg; the absolute maximum allowed, for the extremities of people with occupational exposures, is 20 W/kg for no longer than 6 minutes. So they were really blasting these mice. The rodents were examined for various health effects after various durations, from 28 days to 2 years. At 1900 MHz: Equivocal evidence of carcinogenicity in lung, liver and other organ tissues in both male and female mice.
What kind of nonsense is this? (Score:5, Insightful)
"based on the designs of the existing studies, it is difficult to definitively conclude that these negative results clearly indicate that cell phone RFR is not carcinogenic."
This is how a priest justifies the existence of a religion, not how a scientist describes a fact.
Come back to us when you actually have positive results, not some phony belief.
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As an undergraduate wrapping my head around this "science doublespeak" was one of the hardest parts of doing research.
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I had the opposite reaction. Faced with irrefutable proof that all scientists are doublespeaking assholes, I declared my undying hatred of all scientists and outright refused to participate in the corrupt circlejerk that they dare to claim resembles scientific research.
Fuck Scientists.
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Either way its redundant now, people rarely spend any amount of time holding phones up to the side of their heads anymore.
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This is how a scientist describes uncertainty.
It's like saying UV radiation isn't carcinogenic because you went out in the sun. The level of exposure, duration, etc. contribute to the likelihood of developing melanoma. Without testing where those boundaries are or even if there are such boundaries, you can't know what reasonably safe levels of exposure there are.
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But this level of exposure was huge.
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Yes, and they aren't trying to hide that fact. They aren't making the claim that any exposure level is carcinogenic. What they've done though is *possibly* shown that it has the potential to be carcinogenic in large enough exposure levels. Further research will need to be done, first to replicate their results, then to see if any sort of pattern in terms of exposure length vs exposure amount vs frequency of exposure, etc. can be determined for safe exposure levels.
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Yep. This is definitely somebody with a conclusion desperately trying to find evidence, ie. religion.
Fact: 900MHz is very far below the THz range where ionization starts.
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"Fact: 900MHz is very far below the THz range where ionization starts."
Fact: I can fuck your eyesight with non-ionizing radiation, and it doesn't have to be in a laser form. a couple of high-power 460nm blue LEDs is all I need to trigger macular degeneration and destroy your eyesight with as little as a half day of exposure.
Just because it isn't ionizing doesn't mean it can't damage you some way or another. Give me a few thousand watts of visible-range light (with no IR or UV) and I can simply cook your ass
Re: What kind of nonsense is this? (Score:2)
It may trigger MD, but not cancer. The only disease that matters is cancer. Heart disease, although more common, more deadly, and more preventabe, requires lifestyle change to prevent plus it's boring, so we don't talk about it. If it's not cancer, who cares? /s
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Ummm... weren't we talking about cancer?
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Yes, and they aren't trying to hide that fact. They aren't making the claim that any exposure level is carcinogenic. What they've done though is *possibly* shown that it has the potential to be carcinogenic in large enough exposure levels. Further research will need to be done, first to replicate their results, then to see if any sort of pattern in terms of exposure length vs exposure amount vs frequency of exposure, etc. can be determined for safe exposure levels.
Exactly. There's nothing wrong with the science and method behind this study. The problem lies in the headlines people decide to use to cover it, and the words chosen in articles that cover it.
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I like my rats well done, need to up it to 20 W/kg!
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The weight of your average rat is about 1/4kg which would mean 0.25 watts @ 1watt/kg and 2.5 watts @ 10watts/kg involved in the study. The 20 watts/kg is the FCC limit, not the exposure levels used in the study.
Triple negative (Score:5, Insightful)
"based on the designs of the existing studies, it is difficult to definitively conclude that these negative results clearly indicate that cell phone RFR is not carcinogenic."
Yow, It is very hard to interpret things when they're phrased as a triple negative. What this seems to say is "the results were negative (that is, not showing RF to be carcinogenic), but not showing that it is carcinogenic does not allow us to conclude that it is not carcinogenic.
These RF intensities are so high, however, that it sounds pretty conclusive to me.
Correction [Re:Triple negative] (Score:5, Interesting)
Oops, small correction. The sentence "it is difficult to definitively conclude that these negative results clearly indicate that cell phone RFR is not carcinogenic" referred to the results of previous studies, not this study. That was the justification for doing this study-- the fact that previous studies were not conclusive.
...the fact that the RF irradiated rodents survived significantly longer than the control non-irradiated rodents-- and that this was true for both rats and mice-- might have been emphasized more. (https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/02/nih-study-links-cell-phone-radiation-to-cancer-in-male-rats/)
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Let me translate: "CNN Breaking News: Cell Phones can kill you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
It's hard to prove a negative (Score:2)
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This is how a priest justifies the existence of a religion, not how a scientist describes a fact.
Come back to us when you actually have positive results, not some phony belief.
A persistent problem with cancer related studies is what they fundamentally by construction are incapable of ruling out.
Keep in mind largest x causes cancer study ever conducted from something well known to cause cancer the atomic bombing of Japan resulted in at best a 3% increase of cancer incidents from background.
Something may well in fact be causing thousands of deaths / year yet there is no way from studies anyone can practically afford to detect a statistically viable signal unless the suspected cance
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Often the issue is in reporting (especially in some news outlets), rather than the science or scientists. This is why there is increasing interest in research bodies (universities and others) managing the message a little better, by engaging with news outlets and essentially giving them copy in a variety of lengths to fit the available number of column inches. One of the dangers is that if a press release is made in a long form, then if space is tight words will be removed, and sentences rewritten to be sli
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I like the pun in 'phony'
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No. No, no, no, no, no, no. NO. You're sciencing wrong. Studies which are inconclusive and complex definitely do *not* warrant public discussion until they've been peer reviewed. Let the fellow scientists look over the data and
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Which ones?
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Mall rats (Score:2)
I swear to god I thought that said "mall rats". TS and Brodie on chemo!
Is it quantifiable? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just to be clear: Can you measure the risk in relative to a banana equivalent dose?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's a real, if slightly funny-sounding measurement of a deadly risk (usually, for radiation). You see, a banana contains potassium, and a fraction of that potassium is slightly radiactive. A human living on earth, without being exposed to direct sunlight would get around 100 banana-equivalents worth of radiation just randomly across a day from the environment.
If you think it's likely a risk - quantify that risk, and compare it to something we can at least relate to in every day life.
Ryan Fenton
You know that article (Score:2)
Hell, I'm not sure we have _anything_ we can compare to the constant low level radio waves we've been generating for the last 100 or so year
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You still have continuous exposure the the potassium your body stores to use for not-dying. Also all the carbon 14 in your body. But that's not really a fair comparison anyway, since that's ionizing radiation, and radio waves are non-ionizing.
You get hit by a *lot* more radiation at higher energy (but still non-ionizing) parts of the spectrum 24/7, just from black body radiation you absorb from living on a habitably warm planet. If there's some undiscovered mechanism by which radio waves are affecting matte
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"CNN Breaking News: Cell phones can make you live longer!!!!!'
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Just to be clear: Can you measure the risk in relative to a banana equivalent dose?
No you can't. Why? Because cell phone radiation is non-ionizing, and there's no way to compare the two. If there were some mechanism for cell phone radiation to cause cancer, it's almost certainly different than ionizing radiation.
I understand what you're doing, but it's at best incorrect, and at worst dishonest.
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This study concerns non-ionizing radiation. Bananas relate to ionizing. So its comparing apples to oranges and would be a bad comparison. Non-ionizing != safe. There are thermal effects of it. An example is UV radiation from the sun.
The REAL interesting data wasn't the cancer - (Score:5, Interesting)
FTA: "An interesting side note is that the radiation-exposed rodents of both types lived significantly longer than their control peers: 28 percent of the original control group survived the full 2 years, while about twice that amount (48-68 percent) survived in the exposed group."
I fully expect this article headline to be linked by many sellers and promoters of anti-radiation stickers/trinkets/money-drainers, but the prolonged lifespan of the exposed rats would be the sort of thing you'd be more interested in as a scientist, but likely that isn't part of the budget.
Headline should have been more like "Radiation exposed rats live longer than control group", and we should see the resurgence of selling Radon water.
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I would expect that in calculating risks, they looked at risk within the standard lifespan. Whether they looked at the cancer risks only for those that died at a standard lifespan, I don't know. Arguably, though, if the lifespan was overall increases then looking at those that died at the standard lifespan might be a case of looking at the subset of the irradiated cohort that were least healthy otherwise, and would have had a shortened lifespan if not irradiated.
I haven't read the paper, but I am also presu
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Re:The REAL interesting data wasn't the cancer - (Score:5, Funny)
Did they live longer or were their undead bodies simply animated for longer? :-)
What are inmates ... (Score:2)
... doing with cell phones?
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So YouPorn cause cancer ...
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And how did they get them? ....... oh.
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It's OK.
They are in cells, anyway.
One Statistic (Score:5, Insightful)
You only need one statistic.
Cell phone usage has increased by over an order of magnitude between 1992 and 2014 in the US.
The rate of brain cancer diagnoses has slightly decreased in the same time span.
Some studies take 'liberties' with the statistics and say that there is an increase, but they are usually separating out categories of cancers, which get shuffled around from time to time, to say that one category has increased without mentioning that another has decreased or has been eliminated entirely.
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You get annoyed at studies "taking liberties" with statistics and then directly imply that correlation implies causation? Really?
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Correlation may not imply causation. But a complete lack of correlation refutes causation.
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Correlation may not imply causation. But a complete lack of correlation refutes causation.
And you can be absolutely sure that all other factors that might cause brain cancer have remained absolutely the same over the time period? The answer is you can't, so sometimes the lack of apparent correlation in non-controlled situations is just that, an apparent lack of correlation, but if you control for other factors, as most epidemiological studies try to, you may quickly find a correlation.
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But then you still don't necessarily have causation, remember? So at the very least the first thing you need is a correlation, controlling for other factors or not.
Are you saying that it is reasonable to assume two things with no apparent correlation have a causal link given no other information? I doubt you are.
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But then you still don't necessarily have causation, remember? So at the very least the first thing you need is a correlation, controlling for other factors or not.
No, you need a correlation after controlling for confounding factors, otherwise a valid correlation may be hidden in the noise.
Are you saying that it is reasonable to assume two things with no apparent correlation have a causal link given no other information? I doubt you are.
The issue is the word apparent. The correlation may be there, but not apparent, due to noisy data. If you control for other factors, then the actual correlation may be revealed. The issue I have is whether the correlation is apparent or not. I am saying absolutely nothing about causation at all.
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So you're one of the dopes who think texting and driving doesn't cause fatal accidents, because fatal accidents have mostly gone down?
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Fatal accidents have gone down because cars are safer, I'm not sure that accidents themselves have gone down...?
Re:One Statistic (Score:5, Interesting)
You only need one statistic.
Cell phone usage has increased by over an order of magnitude between 1992 and 2014 in the US.
The rate of brain cancer diagnoses has slightly decreased in the same time span.
You forgot one critical statistic. Cell phones in 1992 were all analog, with some producing up to 3W continuous (though 600 mW was more common) while in use. Maximum output from an LTE radio is typically 200 mW, and unless you're in fringe territory, it is even lower than that, with typical output peaking at ~125 mW, and potentially being orders of magnitude lower if you're close enough to a tower. So as cell tower density has increased, the amount of RFR you're exposed to by cell phones has decreased pretty dramatically.
So the rate of brain cancer going down tells us that either there's no correlation OR that the decrease in power, coupled with increased use of hands-free devices, headphones, and speakerphone modes has roughly balanced out the increase in usage. Determining which will likely require actual studies beyond what can be done with correlation alone, such as the one described here.
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The rats who got cancer when exposed to RFR happened to have an epigenetic feature (not tested for or bred out by lab rat breeders) whose specific shape taps into the morphic field, causing volcano ghosts to corrupt your data. This is why you need AGTCCleaner to optimize your genetic registry of all its unnecessary bits left over, slowing down and ruining your biological system. Or cover yourself in tin foil, that also works.
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So the rate of brain cancer going down tells us that either there's no correlation OR that the decrease in power, coupled with increased use of hands-free devices, headphones, and speakerphone modes has roughly balanced out the increase in usage.
Excellent point. Another confounding factor is, as far as cancers go, brain cancer is pretty rare. I think it's something like 6 or 7 per 100,000, as opposed to 120 in 100,000 for breast and prostate cancers. So small increases or decreases in the rate are nearly indistinguishable from "noise," statistically speaking.
The main take-away is, even if you assume all brain cancer is cell phone related, if you are concerned with a 0.006% chance of getting cancer from a cell phone, you probably don't want to step
Phone Next To Head (Score:2)
Further, I'd say cell phones are used less for voice calls than before, and many voice calls even involve a Bluetooth headset with the phone away from the head.
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Well, there you go. The study said radiated rats lived longer, so the lower power of modern phones has contributed to mortality. We need to jack up the power.
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1 to 10 watts per kilogram. (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is far in excess of a mobile phone will provide - making this a useless study that tells us nothing at all.
Re: I prefer about 8.85 kiloWatts per kilogram! :) (Score:1)
Every day I heat frozen mystery meat with 2.4 GHz radiation at about 8850 W / kg for for 2 - 3 minutes. Then I let it cool off for another 2 minutes before taking it out of the microwave.
Mmmm. Mystery meat. X^D
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Yes, and after that 8850 W/kg exposure, it is most certainly dead.
Utility (Score:2)
It's not a useless study, you're simply mistaking its purpose. The question is whether non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer at any level. The answer appears to be a qualified, "maybe".
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Yep, that's pretty much chucking a bowl of them into a microwave oven on low power for a bit.
Unanswered questions (Score:2)
Where do these rodents carry their cell phones? Heck, how are they paying for them?
Are they on unlimited plans, or do they usually go prepaid?
And no one's calling for gender equity? (Score:2)
We must close the cellphone radiation cancer gender gap!
Nobody's getting out alive so... (Score:2)
You can pry my cell phone from my cold and radiated, dead hands.
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You're right! *lights a cigarette* I should be really worried about this!
Not Really Blasting (Score:2, Interesting)
Cellphones tend to sit in the same pocket pressed up against the same spot of flesh throughout the waking day. W/kg is a really misleading measurement because even at 0.01W, that spot immediately beside the phone is going to receive a Hell of a lot more than 20W/kg. For studies like this to have any merit they need to start duct-taping the mice to the cellphones or sticking the RF/microwave emitters on robotic arms which track a spot on the mouse and spray it down with a constant dosage of radiation at th
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My phone lives in a jacket pocket. I carry it for the thirty minutes to get to work. Then it comes out of my pocket and goes on my desk at work, unless I am leaving the office. I rarely have it on my person at weekends, or sometimes even know where it is... I am slightly baffled by those that have it in a pocket continually.
I do have it in my hands at various points for 30 to 40 minutes a day, probably. I should try to get that time down because it sucks time, not due to radiation concerns.
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Then you should provide a legal notice to any and all rats in your pocket that their lives may be in danger
and get them to sign a disclaimer!
Read the source (Score:2)
Clickbait title. From the source:
“The levels and duration of exposure to RFR were much greater than what people experience with even the highest level of cell phone use, and exposed the rodents’ whole bodies. So, these findings should not be directly extrapolated to human cell phone usage”
I know the original title is just as clickbait-y, but do not spread this shit. It's just fodder for the ignorant paranoid people. No cellphone user ever gets exposed to as much radiation as these studies
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Compare the original report versus the "reporting" (Score:5, Interesting)
About 15 years ago, a technology came on the market called Provant, developed and managed by Regenesis Biomedical in Scottsdale, AZ. It was a radiofrequency generator that delivered energy to tissues via an external antenna applied to the skin. It was meant to augment or accelerate wound healing. Like the many other stimulatory or pro-proliferative wound healing technologies, it worked well for some patients, not at all for others, sometimes contrary effects, and everything in between. Overall, it was not sufficiently effective to generate much buzz, and the company eventually began to market it for post-operative pain and swelling. You can read about it at links such as:
https://www.regenesisbio.com/ [regenesisbio.com]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
While I had no direct involvement with the company, I did have opportunity to use it, and to visit the company and look through the labs. The device uses RF at about 12MHz. I cannot recall power or power densities delivered to the tissues. The effects under the microscope were dramatic. Fibroblasts in cell culture had a profound increase in motility and mitosis, exactly what is needed, in principle, in healing wounds, and of course, what goes awry when cells transform to cancer.
Circa 1900, biological sciences become so deeply entrenched in biochemistry and the metabolic processes in the body that chemistry and pharmacology became the defining sciences and therapeutics of most medical research and care. Physical modalities and energy interactions in the body became bastard children. Other than the effects of ionizing higher energies (ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma), the roles of heat, light, radio, stress-strain, acoustics, and similar energies have never received the same legitimacy as the chemical studies. Thus, "physical modalities" and the study of anything along those lines often gets dismissed as trivial, irrelevant, illegitimate, or second class or non-professional.
Furthermore, when such subjects come up via large public grants or national studies or in the popular media, they are often in conjunction with pervasive popular technologies that people are not so ready to give up, like cell phones. Thus, these studies engender debate and resistance.
The point is that RF has effects in the body. Good, bad, or indifferent all depends on many things. The Provant system was used for therapeutic effects. The studies that are the basis for this Slashdot post hint at possible negative effects. It is worth looking at the actual study publications, They are voluminous, at:
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/abou... [nih.gov]
https://tools.niehs.nih.gov/ce... [nih.gov]
They show that tumor occurrence tended to increase with greater exposures, but for almost all tumors, incidence was very low. Even if hypothetically all tumor occurring subjects were to have died (which is nowhere near the case), the great majority of RF exposed subjects not only survived but had a distinct and significant increase in longevity. So, is it good or bad? Like many therapies, good things have their side effects, which if kept to low incidence are considered acceptable.
So, is this report good or bad? It depends on your point of view. If you see it as interesting science, good. If you see it as an insight to further studies about disease or longevity, good. If it you see it as a threat to your Second City Amendment rights to carry a cell phone, then you might get incensed about totalitarian conspiracies to take them away.
Studies such as this might or might not have applicability to human medicine and public safety, but they provide useful information to be considered in the overall analysis. Read the actual original source materials. They are rather mat
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Saccharin (Score:2)
So RFR is the new saccharin? Blast mice 10,000 times as much as cell phones and in some cases it can't be ruled out that they might get cancer maybe?
worldwide regulations vary widely, more action now (Score:3)
Well the "jury is out" but there is a lot more data around! Here is a 2013 peer reviewed paper, "Electromagnetic fields act via activation of voltage-gated calcium channels to produce beneficial or adverse effects" by Martin L Pall* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
You can see a list of his other papers here; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
2016 by same, "Microwave frequency electromagnetic fields (EMFs) produce widespread neuropsychiatric effects including depression." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] "Non-thermal microwave/lower frequency electromagnetic fields (EMFs) act via voltage-gated calcium channel (VGCC) activation. " So much for the 'thermal is everything' approach at least on this band.
Hourlong video with Pall https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And here is another one with that devious hippie Mercola; https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
A whole bunch of bills in Massachusetts https://sites.google.com/site/... [google.com]
Maryland did a whole thing on wifi and kids https://phpa.health.maryland.g... [maryland.gov]
The site Undark went a ways into the topic https://undark.org/article/cel... [undark.org]
0.08 W/kg they say from FCC. Per here a lot of other health bodies demand or advise far far lower RF exposure. https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/7... [fcc.gov]
Regulatory FCC/ANSI– USA– 900MHzrange 610,000 nW/cm2
Regulatory Italy,Poland,Hungary,Bulgaria,China,Russia 10,000nW/cm2
Regulatory Switzerland 4,500nW/cm2
Recommendation– EcologInstitute (2000) 300nW/cm2
Recommendation– SalzburgResolution(2000) 100nW/cm2
Recommendation– BioInitiativeReport(2008) https://www.newlook.dteenergy....
big texas report (everything bigger in texas) http://www.puc.texas.gov/indus... [texas.gov]
Anyways I suggest you dig around, there is all sorts of interesting stuff coming up on this topic.
Good! (Score:2)
Another way to kill rats is always welcome.
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Yeah, but it's not cost-effective. Not even with low-end Android phones.
NO! NO NO NO NO NO (Score:2)
but some of the findings are clearly important enough to warrant public discussion
That's not how science works. Not on a non-peer reviewed study. All manner of quackery would be "important enough to warrant public discussion" if you set your bar low enough that anytime someone writes something on a piece of paper it is accepted as fact.
AFTER peer review it may warrant public discussion.
More importantly (Score:2)
Who are these male rats calling?
Don't they know how to have a secondary cell phone to be discrete about things?
Looks pretty clear to me. (Score:2)
Translation of the summary: (Score:2)