WHO / Cell Phones

[yabadabapal]

Interesting article by the World Health Organizagion on Glioma and non cancer auditory tumors associated in theory to cell phone radio waves. Not proven and not disproven. 5 billion users world wide. Interesting. Any thoughts?

Here is the link but I can't get it to be live for click it. You will have to copy and paste.

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-who-cell-phones-20110601-1,0,3926296.story

[Selden]

Interesting article by the World Health Organizagion on Glioma and non cancer auditory tumors associated in theory to cell phone radio waves. Not proven and not disproven. 5 billion users world wide. Interesting. Any thoughts?

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-who-cell-phones-20110601-1,0,3926296.story

Too much of anything is bad for you. I've never used up my 1000 minutes/year on a Tracfone, so I'm not planning any changes in behavior. On the other hand, I think that parents who give a cell phone to a 6 year old are not considering the possible risks.

 

But, as Zhou Enlai said, It's too soon to tell.

[Mike]

Here's my thought--Despite the best efforts of professional busybodies, the mortality rate remains 100%.

 

Don't do stupid stuff. Enjoy your life and let the professional handwringers go to an early grave, beset by worry.

[Chris K]

Here's my thought--Despite the best efforts of professional busybodies, the mortality rate remains 100%.

 

Don't do stupid stuff. Enjoy your life and let the professional handwringers go to an early grave, beset by worry.

 

Amen Mike!

[Joe Frickin' Friday]

Any thoughts?

 

Not impressed.

 

Quote from LA Times:

 

Cellphone users may be at increased risk for two types of rare tumors and should try to reduce their exposure to the energy emitted by the phones, according to a panel of 31 international scientists convened by an agency within the World Health Organization.

 

OK, cell phones may put me at increased risk for brain tumors, got it.

 

Studies so far do not show definitively that cellphone use increases that risk, said the authors of the consensus statement issued Tuesday by the WHO.

Wait, so cell phone use doesn't put me at increased risk?

 

But "limited" scientific evidence exists, they said, to suggest that the radiofrequency energy released by cellphones may increase the risk of glioma, a type of brain cancer, and acoustic neuroma, a noncancerous tumor of the nerve that runs from the ear to the brain.

Oh wait, it does put me at increased risk.

 

Looks like they've managed to cover all their bases.

 

FWIW, the increase in risk that they've reported isn't that amazing; my understanding is that there is usually so much statistical noise in these types of studies that epidemiologists don't get concerned unless a careful analysis shows that a factor correlates with a doubling of risk.

 

What's more, after a strong correlation has been determined, a causative link has to be identified - and it seems that no one yet has suggested how radio-frequency photons can cause tumors when they only thing they have been definitely shown to do is heat up your dinner. And I seriously doubt they will identify such a link:

 

 

if radio waves (of an intensity low enough to cause negligible local heating of your flesh) are harmful, then microwaves are even worse, and infrared radiation even worse than that, and visible light must be just about on par with ultraviolet light. One should expect that these studies will eventually show that we should avoid all warm, brightly lit places, lest we be exposed to any photons of any kind.

 

Finally, this latest study wasn't a study at all, it was a meta-study - a review of pre-existing published research - and there are serious shortcomings with that method.

[4wheeldog]

You are much more likely to be killed by someone using a cell phone when they shouldn't be, than by the cell phone itself. In fact, I bet more people are killed daily by improper cell phone use, than die from brain tumors in a year, whether caused by cell phones or not. Worry about lightning, or lottery winnings.

[yabadabapal]

Thanks for the input guys. I swear BMWST is one of the best kept

secret think tanks in the world. Worrying about cell phones is probably more dangerous than using them.

[DiggerJim]

Interesting article by the World Health Organizagion on Glioma and non cancer auditory tumors associated in theory to cell phone radio waves. Not proven and not disproven. 5 billion users world wide. Interesting. Any thoughts?

Considering that one of the other 265 items in the category of possibly carcinogenic is caffeine, why aren't the headlines all about the dangers of that daily cup (or 5) of coffee?

 

And I do like that they're recommending using earphones or BT devices & leaving the phone in your pocket (testicular cancer in the making gentlemen?) or briefcase...what's the impact of having a tiny little BT radio transmitter stuck in your ear for hours at a time vs. the 1/2 hour of talk time they suggested was the crisis point for actually holding the phone to your head while talking?

[leikam]

Any thoughts?

 

Butterflies pollinating buttercups might cause an increase in brain tumors. Available research has neither proved nor disproved a connection and medical experts are at a loss to explain how one might influence the other. Environmentalists dismiss the claims. Conservative pundits blame the President. The media vows to follow up on this important issue.

 

Next up: empty reporting fills dead air.

[DiggerJim]

"There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production...The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only ten years from now...The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it...The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down...they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century...warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences...Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects." - The Cooling World, Newsweek (Science section), April 28, 1975, page 64

 

Science is just so much fun