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Testing Cell Phone Radiation on Humans

Posted by Zonk on Fri Mar 03, 2006 11:09 AM
from the my-precious-brains-are-already-scrambled dept.
Communications Science
Palm Addict writes "News.com reports that Finland's radiation watchdog is to study the effects of mobile phones on human proteins by direct tests on people's skin. From the article: 'A pilot study, to be conducted next week, will expose a small area of skin on volunteers' arms to cell phone radiation for the duration of a long phone call, or for one hour, research professor Dariusz Leszczynski said on Friday.'"
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Testing Cell Phone Radiation on Humans 50 Comments More /

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  • Radiation sauna (Score:3, Funny)

    by liangzai (837960) on Friday March 03 2006, @11:12AM (#14842900) Homepage
    The Finns should be disqualified for this study, they have hardened their tissues by life-long use of saunas.

  • Sounds good, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SlashThat (859697) on Friday March 03 2006, @11:13AM (#14842921)
    Why not test it on living human cells separated from living humans? That way no one would catch cancer as a result of this research, and it may even be easier to study (at least some of) the effects.
    • Why not test it on living human cells separated from living humans?

      RTFA.

      In previous tests, Leszczynski's group found evidence of mobile phone radiation causing cell-level changes such as shrinkage, but he said it was still impossible to say if that had significant health effects.

      "Cells function in a different way when they are in the body than in laboratory surroundings. Now we want to confirm whether radiation causes cell level changes in humans as well," he said.

    • RTA, cells separate from humans = cell cultures.

      and the mutant spawn that resulted wrote the new test protocol ;)

  • This reminds me of mobile cooking (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Remember this?
    "Many students, and other young people, have little in the way of cooking skills but can usually get their hands on a couple of mobile phones. So, this week, we show you how to use two mobile phones to cook an egg which will make a change from phoning out for a pizza. Please note that this will not work with cordless phones."n

    http://www.wymsey.co.uk/wymchron/cooking.htm [wymsey.co.uk]

    I suppose cooking a human face is similar enough.

  • What they'll find (Score:3, Interesting)

    by john83 (923470) on Friday March 03 2006, @11:14AM (#14842927) Homepage
    They'll discover that the phones have a small heating effect, 1 C, as required by a)basic phystics and b)regulations. They will conclude whatever they have already assumed, i.e. that this is dangerous/not dangerous, without any actual experimentation having been done on that particular question.

  • Radiation levels (Score:5, Informative)

    by digitaldc (879047) * on Friday March 03 2006, @11:15AM (#14842939)
    CNET has another article showing the radiation levels [cnet.com] of certain cell phones.

    Within the US models listed, Motorola has the highest with its Motorola V120c, and the lowest goes to the Audiovox PPC66001.
    Maybe people will want to check this chart before buying a new cell phone? Maybe not.
    • First, if you try to measure RF field levels you get hit by a terrifying array of hard-to-control variables. Everything on your lab bench is either reflecting or absorbing the output of the phone. Each reflection will either add to or subtract from the signal at your field strength meter.

      Second, if phones still do automatic power control, then all the field strength tells you is whether the base station told that particular phone "speak up!" at that particular time.
      • And how well does your phone transmit/receive? Do you drop calls often/go out of range easily? Lower radiation=lower transmition power=shorter range. Sure, it might not cook your brain so much, but there's always a trade off. The only reason it wouldnt is if this EMF radiation were not from the primary source: antenna, but rather output from the internals not related to transmission.

        tm

      • And you will also have no service when I with my V710 will :) Thanks, but I'll keep my V710 and just use the wired headset or speakerphone.

  • Why arm skin? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Friday March 03 2006, @11:16AM (#14842944) Homepage Journal
    Testing arm skin isn't all that practical, who keeps a cell phone there?

    They should find out how the radiation affects the two bodily areas my phone is usually found, which coincidentally are the two areas I'm most worried about irradiating.

    • Re:Why arm skin? (Score:5, Funny)

      by suwain_2 (260792) on Friday March 03 2006, @11:17AM (#14842959) Journal
      That's an awfully interesting place for a phone. I usually keep mine in my pocket.
    • If you were one of the test subjects, would you want them taking tissue samples from your brain or family jewels for further study?
    • Testing arm skin isn't all that practical, who keeps a cell phone there?

      Testing arm skin is very practical. The fact that no one uses a cell phone there doesn't mean that it's harder to extract tissue from the arm than the regular places or that it's harder to create a device to generate the radiation that doesn't burden the test subjects for an hour; all you do is strap an active cell phone on the arm.

      The arm and the back are among the most popular places for taking tissue samples due to ease of access an

  • effects on proteins on the skin? (Score:3, Informative)

    by donutz (195717) on Friday March 03 2006, @11:17AM (#14842961) Homepage Journal
    I thought the whole concern over radiation from cell phones was that it would cause some kind of internal cancer, notably in your brain (or maybe your hip if that's where you keep your phone?). Is a skin-surface test going to be indicative of the kinds of sub-surface damage we're really concerned about?

    At any rate, it will be good to have another study on this subject, to add weight either that the radiation is mostly harmless, or that we need to start wearing a layer of tin foil...

  • This is silly (Score:4, Insightful)

    by radiumhahn (631215) on Friday March 03 2006, @11:19AM (#14842970)
    It's non-ionizing radiation.... people have been putting these things by their heads for hours on a daily basis... show me one potential case of burn via cell signal.
    • Thank God somebody said it. Every time I see one of these studies, I remind myself that they're being performed by the same idiot pre-meds who were struggling through basic physics and chemistry courses. Even that's when they didn't get special dumbed-down "premed" versions of those classes. Somehow, this is not surprising. Not saying all doctors are dumb, just most of them.

      Who needs an actual mechanism, as long as I repeat the experiment enough times to get the right confidence level from the stat tab

    • It's non-ionizing radiation.... people have been putting these things by their heads for hours on a daily basis... show me one potential case of burn via cell signal.

      Alternating magnetic fields aren't generally considered ionizing radiation either, but rat studies [ehponline.org] have shown that they can cause an iron-mediated peroxide reaction that causes DNA strand breakage in rat neurons.

      Just because radio waves cannot directly break carbon bonds like UV radiation and higher doesn't necessarily mean that they're harmles
      • Are there any differences? If there are, then we can start to try to find reasons

        That's not how you do good science. You don't go around looking for correlations, then try to come up with some post hoc explanations to fit your data. You start with a theoretical causal relationship. Then you test it, isolating all but the tested causality.

  • More interesting than the test itself (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Weaselmancer (533834) on Friday March 03 2006, @11:21AM (#14842986)

    ...would be the reaction of the world if these things really do cause cancer. Would we just deal with the risk? Rebuild all the towers to use frequencies that don't penetrate human skin? Give up cell phones altogether? Would insurance companies hike your rates if you use a cellphone?

      • But I do have this one comment: don't drink diet soda folks, I know it does more than they say it does. Hell my mom used to get migraines from drinking it, stopped drinking it, migraines gone. You are exposing yourself to all kinds of risks you have no idea about. Because the media and the FDA were bought and sold a long time ago.

        Couldn't agree more. If you'd like to see an example of just how bought-out the FDA is, check out the story about a sweetener alternative called stevia. Here's a good link [stevia.net] to

      • Hell my mom used to get migraines from drinking it, stopped drinking it, migraines gone.

        Two words: Psycho. Somatic.

      • But I do have this one comment: don't drink diet soda folks, I know it does more than they say it does. Hell my mom used to get migraines from drinking it, stopped drinking it, migraines gone.

        I assume you are talking about aspartame-sweetened diet soda. There are also other sweeteners, like sucralose. Sucralose also scares people, it's sucrose with methyl groups replaced with chlorine atoms, which doesn't sound too scary to me. Aspartame, however, is a big complex bundle of amino acids that we don't r

      • Re:More interesting than the test itself (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Expert Determination (950523) on Friday March 03 2006, @12:54PM (#14843707)
        I know it does more than they say it does. Hell my mom used to get migraines from drinking it, stopped drinking it, migraines gone.
        And I know people who get horribly sick from eating wheat products. Does that mean wheat is dangerous? Generalising from a sample size of one is far more dangerous that drinking diet soda.
      • It's just like all other things, we'll play it off no matter what the study says. But I do have this one comment: don't drink diet soda folks, I know it does more than they say it does. Hell my mom used to get migraines from drinking it, stopped drinking it, migraines gone.

        Does she still drink any caffenated in varying does? I used to get migranes due to caffeine withdrawal. No more irregular doses of caffeine; no more problem.

        I'm suspicious of the aspartame controversy. I haven't seen a single credible
      • It's just like all other things, we'll play it off no matter what the study says. But I do have this one comment: don't drink diet soda folks, I know it does more than they say it does. Hell my mom used to get migraines from drinking it, stopped drinking it, migraines gone. You are exposing yourself to all kinds of risks you have no idea about. Because the media and the FDA were bought and sold a long time ago.

        Well, you could believe the well-documented report [eu.int] prepared by the EU's Scientific Committee on fo
  • Considering the findings recently that soft drinks in the UK contain cancer causing Benzene [timesonline.co.uk] - I haven't heard of the drinks being pulled off of the shelves yet.

    What if cell phones are lnked to cancer? Are they going to expose the cells to triple the duration? Too much of anything can be dangerous. The electromagnetic fields that we live in daily are possibly harmful - will they stop microwave communications?

    ...the scary part is, if they do cause ill effects...we're giving mobile communications devices
    • Thus the obligatory "OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN" post.

      >..the scary part is, if they do cause ill effects...we're giving mobile communications devices to children younger and younger.

      Automobiles cause ill effects when they get into accidents yet we put children in there. In child seats. Don't assume everyone is a this irresponsible ass strawman. If cell phones were linked to harming anyone (elderaly, children, etc) then there would be real efforts to mitigate these dangers. Most states in the US, if not

      • Automobiles cause ill effects when they get into accidents yet we put children in there. In child seats.

        Because we have to.

        Little 11-year old girls don't have to spend three hours a day with their cellphones stuck to their faces yakking away. If we find that doing so raises the risk of cancer too greatly it's a simple matter to more heavily moderate this completely unnecessary behaviour.

      • Magnesium sulfate and potassium chloride only have those effects in extremely large doses. "Salt" when used by itself in a food label pretty much always means sodium chloride.

        These salts are added to the purified water to prevent it from tasting bad and from doing damage to your body like distilled water will. You need a salt balance to prevent omosis from slurping up the water in your body into your cells until they rupture. Drinking too pure water is unhealthy and has all kinds of side effects. This i
  • I hope this research isn't used to regulate or litigate cell phones out of existence. Life is risky and it should be up to individuals to make their own informed decisions about how they live their lives. People should be able to make personal trade-offs regarding safety, productivity, life-activity, and life-span.

    Of course if "second-hand cell radiation" gets cell phones banned from public places, then I could see more demand for regulation just to force people to shut-up.
  • just using the word "radiation" presents bias -- people assume this equals the same kind of radiation they've been told to fear from nuc plants and atom bombs. Nothing could be further from the truth unless it came from the U.S. Government.

    Still, using the word (which has as little meaning by itself as the word Server does) presents a set of expectations which are inaccurate for most people.

  • This is dumb (Score:3, Funny)

    by liliafan (454080) on Friday March 03 2006, @12:10PM (#14843355) Homepage
    I have been using cellphones for years and never had any kind of a problem, I find them most useful, for example the third eye above my right ear helps get a better view when driving and the second head sprouting off my hip gives me someone to talk to. Heh radiation altering cells what a load of rubbish and my talking second head agrees.
  • I want to be the first person to sue the phone companies for giving me cancer. It was so annoying to be born a few years too late to get on the "Sue the Tobacco Industry" bandwagon

  • Anyone else? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mr. Bad Example (31092) on Friday March 03 2006, @12:53PM (#14843701) Homepage
    Is anyone else picturing the Verizon guy in a lab coat standing over test subjects and repeating "Do you have cancer now? Good!"?

  • AHHHHHHHHH! (Score:3, Informative)

    by agentcdog (885108) on Friday March 03 2006, @01:02PM (#14843782)
    OK so I did an experiment using a scintillation counter in my physics lab. When you turn the machine on you got lots of hits (dozens per second) from background radiation. Then I stuck my phone up against it... nothing happened. The radiation from a phone is too weak to register. So if you are even remotely worried by cell phones, you should find yourself a big dirt hole way underground then line it with aluminum foil.
    Seriously though, this is a reply that I made the the last rediculous artlice about cell-phone cancer:
    *Rolling Eyes* The people who study these things I think just make up dumb studies so that they can get grant money. There are three ways in which EM radiation (what cell phones use) can be dangerous, in order of severity: 1. Radiation that has the resonant frequency of molecular bonds can give a LOT of energy to the molecules that make us up. That's how a microwave oven works. The EM waves have the same frequency as the resonant frequency for water molecules.
    2. Radiation can kick off electrons (beta particles) or protons (alpha particles). If an element loses an electron it becomes more volatile. If an element in our DNA loses a proton it can change the DNA. That's why strong radiation can cause cancer.
    3. Radiation can generally heat us up.
    Cell phone radiation is not even strong enough to kick off an electron unless it is VERY loosely bound. It has no chance of kicking off a proton.
    Bottom line: Unless you feel your brain start cooking (the sun is WAY more likely to cook your brain), don't worry.
    • Your list is full of errors. Is that physics lab of yours in high school? Don't believe that you know everything about physics just because you passed your high school exam.

      1. Radiation that has the resonant frequency of molecular bonds can give a LOT of energy to the molecules that make us up. That's how a microwave oven works. The EM waves have the same frequency as the resonant frequency for water molecules.

      No, vibrational resonances in molecular bonds are in the range 30--100 THz (that is a factor 2

  • cell phones can now cook eggs....... No - Realy [wymsey.co.uk]
    • Yah, I have a lot of experience with radio, and had always thouht the levels were so low as to have neglible effects on human tissue. Then I had to have a tumor dug out of the side of my head, right next to where the antenna on my cell phone was. I agree, this is anecdotal at best...but now I'm not quite as ready to write off the potential for cell phone radiation causing damage as I was before.

    • Not sure if you were joking, but the rationale for having smoking/non-smoking sections in restaurants is because second-hand smoke kills. The odds that second-hand cellphone radiation is harmful to you are basically zero due to the inverse square law - the radiation intensity levels drop off in inverse proportion to the square of the distance. Meaning, if you aren't extremely close to the source, you're getting practically nothing. The only reason there may be some concern with cellphones is that you hold t

    • 2.4 Ghz of energy

      What the hell is "2.4 GHz of energy"? That makes no sense. 2.4 GHz is merely the frequency, not the intensity. The unit you're looking for is "watts". Your crappy little bluetooth transmitter is very low wattage, but your cellphone transmits at a much higher wattage because it has to talk to towers that are friggin kilometers away.

      Cellphones transmit in the microwave band, which is known to definitely heat biological tissue. It is known and not disputed that using a cellphone causes a mi

      • Just to give you an idea though of the relative weakness of intensity of a cellphone transmission, a cellphone typically transmits at no greater than 2 watts (typically around 1) ... my microwave oven on the other hand is 900 watts. A typical bluetooth headset with 10m range transmits at only 2.5 mW (milli-watts).

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