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Cell Phone Companies To Release Radiation Data 322

Posted by emmett from the geiger-counter dept.
digitalfrustration writes: "The U.S. cellular telephone industry will start publishing information on the amount of radiation that enters users' heads when they use various wireless phones." Story by CNN. By the way, on the off-chance that the data says the equivalent of 'For The Love Of God, Stop Using This Device, We're Surprised You're Not Dead Yet,' does anyone think that people would stop using them?
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Cell Phone Companies to Release Radiation Data More

Cell Phone Companies to Release Radiation Data

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  • I know people who have been smoking for twice that long who haven't died from cancer.

    Oh yeah, science-boy. Have you ever read the transcripts of the tobacco liti cases? If you had, you'd know that the evidence on those eeeeevvvilllll cigarettes causing cancer is much less strong than you think. Let me put it this way:

    • The one, genuinely, actually proven cause of cancer, is stress
    • The one genuine, foolproof cure for stress, is nicotine.
    • Therefore, one would expect to see a correlation (not causation!) between cigarette smoking and cancer. People who have stress get cancer, and people who have stress tend to smoke.
    Everybody knows that "statistical" studies can only show correlation, not causation. The correlation here is bogus; you might as well argue that wearing big pants gives you a fat ass.

    If you read the transcripts (including the sidebars and expert witnesses), you'll see that this is actually the state of scientific opinion. The fact is, however, that if the real cause of cancer (stress) were to be recognised, then all the big capitalist industries which work their employees to within an inch of their life would be in the firing line. Instead, capital decided to throw the (largely agricultural, poor) tobacco growers to the wolves.

  • Do you have Vibe turned on your phone when it rings (mine does by default), the EMF from the Vibe motor is more likely the cause of the shaking than the phone radiation...
  • Have you ever been here before?

    I have been reading this page for about 2-3 months, although I just created this account a few days ago. Still, the idea is that people can discuss news and post their opinions and share them, not that the most common opinion be repeated and glorified while legitimate arguments to the contrary are censored. It doesn't happen that way all the time, but I'm idealistic enough to think that it can work.

    Umm, I think the insults were based on the fact that your opinions were stupid, and you spelled things wrongly. Of course thats just speculation on my part.

    Stupid is in the eye of beholder. Nothing can objectively be stupid, although maybe your definition of stupid means "something that contradicts your opinion." And a post shouldnt be marked down because I'm not the best speller. Even the writers here cant spell. Negative moderation is for spam, offtopic posts, or obscene posts, not posts you disagree with.

    Hmm, thats rather a strong statement to make, Since you know so much about us all, whats my real name? Which country do I live in? What did I do last Friday?

    It was an insult in response to an insult against me. I know that it is just as illogical and rude as saying someones opinion is stupid because you disagree with it and then providing no means to support yourself.

    So what if you feel that? Others might disagree with you. Have you taken a driving test, or did you just decide that you know how to drive well enough?

    Uh yes I took a test, thats how I got my license, smart guy! I'm not saying that I am the best driver, but I did get near perfect on the driving test, all my friends and my brother and sister and my parents say I'm one of the safest drivers they know, and unlike all of my friends I haven't been in any accidents, even minor ones. Of course I had my license for only a year or so, but for now I am a good driver and that is what counts.

    Tell that to someone you crash into.

    I haven't had one, and I don't plan on getting in one :P
  • I predict the media will have a field day,
    Well yes, the media *always* has a field day. never let the facts get in the way of a circulation-boosting story :+)

    a couple of groups of "concerned citizens" will call for a ban
    Sounds good - not for health reasons, but because they are *irritating* in cinemas, churches, anywhere really....
    What I would *like* to see happen is that phone companies are forced to give free "hands free" sets with their phones; they aren't that expensive, and the number of idiots that currently would be driving at ($SPEEDLIMIT+5) with one hand attached to an ear and a piece of plastic might reduce (well, I *suppose* they are reducing now, but autodarwination doesn't really count)

    and mobile phone companies will have a new number to differentiate their products with.
    Saves them making something up. in any case, we will end up with some figure that is meaningless but has a very low value (like Peak Music Power but in reverse)

    The funniest thing will be seeing whether lower radiation phones give poorer reception.
    They will probably work around it - whenever there is a technical constraint, engineers find a way to make it work anyhow.

    In a few years the media will have a new bogie man and no-one will care less.
    Well, the "quality sunday broadsheets" will probably drag it back out every few years when things are slow, with a "still nothing has been done about it" piece.
    --

  • Until they do finite element simulations down to a much finer level as they have done up till now how can anyone say with total confidence that hot spot's intense enough to cause physical effects do not form? (for instance in regions the size of a cell, or the size of a gene...) SAR is nice and all, but what I care about is the distribution of the energy inside the brain not the amount.
  • Hey, you know, maybe you're right. I've been thinking for a while Slashdot needs a new moderation category. "-1: Stupid"...
  • From article in Nokia's paper:
    ObMandyRiceDavies:-
    They would say that, wouldn't they...

  • Why would I want to carry around a device which would allow anyone in the world to call and bug me at any time?

    I was thinking like that as well before my employer provided me with a cell phone and I got used to using it. The point is that a cell phone provides you more freedom: you can be easily reached by phone, but you can also screen what calls (caller id) to take and when to take them.

    You see, if you don't want to be disturbed, switch the damn thing to silent mode or off. When you feel like it, switch the phone back to normal mode again.

    Then of course there are all these young dumbass punks who have them because they think it is "cool" and who think they're impressing people when they're talking on them.

    This phase is fortunately already over in Europe where it looks like everybody from kids to grandparents have cell phones. Claiming that people try to impress other people by carrying a cell phone is rather ridiculous in this situation. It's almost like saying that people who own a PC are just trying to impress their friends.

  • You have to recognise, however, that this imploiteness makes sure that nothing on Slashdot is ever taken seriously, and genuinely insightful and knowledgable posters (when was the last time you heard Alan Cox call someone a "cocksucking WASP bitch"?) tend to stay away.

    Malda, Bates et al. really ought to do more to try to encourage useful, polite discourse. A simple profanity filter would probably be easy to circumvent, but it would send a message.

    --streetlawyer

  • Surprisingly, few people so far have mentioned that what we know today indicates that cell phones aren't dangerous.

    To date there is no evidence that cell phones have any serious adverse health effects (beyond being distracting while driving). There have been studies, most recently by Hardell et al this spring, which have shown a trend towards an increased risk, in that case of brain tumor, but the study had some weaknesses which would have made that fairly weak evidence, even had it been statistically significant.

    The case which is often made by anti-cell-phone debaters is that "the industry" should somehow be responsible for "proving" that cell phones are "safe". Anyone who's worked with statistics or epidemiology knows that that's not what statistics do. The studies done so far haven't shown any statistically significant increased health risks, so in the statistical sense of the word, they've helped "prove" cell-phones are "safe".

    The technically inclined know that the proposed biological ground for the danger of cell phones is shaky at best. RF "radiation", aka microwaves, is not ionizing, and so won't cause cancer by the mechanism that, for example, X-rays and atom bombs will. Cell phones do output a few watts of energy through the antenna, and some of this will be absorbed by the person holding the phone, causing their scalp to warm up one or two degrees. That regional temperature differences in the scalp or even brain could cause cancer is a claim that has yet gone unproved.

    Some good reading for those of you genuinely curious about the phones, radiation, and power lines:

    Linet et al, Residential Exposure to Magnetic Fields and Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in Children; NEJM 1997, 337.1

    Hardell et al, Case control study...risk factors for brain tumour; Medscape Gen Med, May 4, 2000. http://www.medscape.com/Medscape/GeneralMedicine/j ournal/2000/v02.n03/mgm0504.hard/mgm0504 .hard.html requires login

    Hardell et al, Use of cellular phones and the risk of brain tumours, a case-control study; Int J Oncol, 1999. Jul 15.

    But go ahead and check out PubMed for more articles, there's been quite a lot of research done.

  • Care to explain how exactly I am stupid using evidence? Oh, is it just because I disagree with you? I see :P

    Moderate this post -1: Arrogant Chauvinist Pig
  • i also work for a power company, and one of the field technicians who measures radiation emitted from power lines/power plants, said he was at his kids school play, and while he was there in the school auditorium he wipped out his meter and what did he find? the radiation levels were higher in the school auditorium that they were under the 700+KV lines (those big towers that look like giant robots).

    now thats scary!!

    "The importance of using technology in the right way has never been more clear." [microsoft.com]
  • This is absolutely impossible for me to stop using cell phones right now, mostly because I don't use any any way anyway.

    More seriously, if their is a problem with radiation they will say that their was a problem with the precedent generation but the new generation is safe and when the next generation comes we will know that the old generation was indeed dangerous (I never trusted Kirk ;)).

  • Besides the real reasons for me not wanting a mobile phone -I don't need it and I don't want people to be able to contact me whenever they want- I have been concerned about this problem since it started to be known.
    It's like smoking, anyway. I don't smoke, but I'm forced to smoke by people surrounding me. I don't use mobile phones, but people around me do all the time. So, you want it or not, we're all getting the crappy radiations in our brains and the stupid smoke in my (ill) lungs.
  • > how exactly I am stupid
    Uh, I thought "Risking your life and that of others for no particularly good reason" was a fairly good indicator, actually.

    > -1: Arrogant Chauvinist Pig
    Have you ever noticed how that phrase is only ever used by women who are generalising about those evil nasty males? Funny, that.
  • Spoken by someone who uses her account to troll all the time. :P ("Lita Juarez" is supposed to
    sound like "leet Warez").

    You have to admit, that (original) post did look like a troll. It was full of strong opinions that weren't backed up by any facts, and then that "I can drive safely while using a cell phone" hook was thrown in at the end.
  • does anyone think that people would stop using them?

    hey, i still smoke cigarettes.
  • I hate cars and consider them to be evil tools of the prince of lies!!

    Why would I want to travel more than 15 km from home, when there's everything I want less than 10km from home!!! Cars are diabolical because they cause you to spend time and money traveling to nowhere.

    Then of course there are those dumbass punks who have them because they think it's "cool". Yeah, you're impressing me with your stupidity by paying lots of money when you have a perfectly good pair of feet. Get a bicycle if you want to move around.

    (The above poster forgot to mention radiation risks with cellphones, but here's the matching paragraph anyway...) And of course using a car increase your risk of dying due to severe body trauma. Doesn't anybody realize this? Sure, the car companies try to conceal the effects, but <conspiracy>I've seen</conspiracy> what a car can do to you, and you'll never catch me in one.



    [mods: this is ironic, not fbait, mod accordingly]

  • People smoke, don't they? (Score:4)

    by Cardinal ( 311 ) on Monday July 17, 2000 @09:05PM (#925780)
    Right, as if health risk ever stopped a person from doing something. Please. Cel phones have permeated societies across the world, and their use will not stop just because they may have some silly little fatality issue.

    And they certainly won't stop using them while driving.
  • According to the FDA: "the risk (for one type of brain cancer) actually decrease[s] with cumulative hours of mobile phone use" and human lab subjects "were able to make choices more quickly in one visual test when they were exposed to simulated mobile phone signals."

    See FDA Consumer Update on Mobile Phones [fda.gov] (October 1999).
    San Jose Mercury News has a story [sjmercury.com]

    My personal observation is that mobile-phone-dependent people tend to have a very short attention span. I don't know which causes which, though. Maybe the FDA will test that in lab.

  • I don't think people will stop using them for anything, they make people money, and that's certainly more important then health

    I can just see it now... "That's not a tumor growing out of my head. It's a genetically enhanced cellular phone holder!".

  • The world is full of people that are will take risks. It is like smoking, drinking and eating junk food since it has very little instant effect it will be ignored by the masses.

  • Suckers... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 17, 2000 @09:06PM (#925786)

    And they laughed at my tinfoil hat! Let's see whose brain the cell-phones take over now!

  • A scene: (Score:3)

    by Antipop ( 180137 ) on Monday July 17, 2000 @09:09PM (#925790) Homepage
    A woman with a cigerette is standing on a corner waiting for a bus. Another woman walks up. Her cell phone rings. Cigerette woman exclaims, "Don't answer that! Don't you know you can get cancer from the radiation!?".

    -Antipop
  • If cell phone manufacturers have been cowed into releasing radiation data, then how long before the computer industry does as well since my monitor and PC are both giving off radiation (and I'd bet a significant amount more than my cell phone is). Remember all the radiation scares re: computers in the 1980s? Same thing all over again with cell phones.
  • Actually, I specifically stay away from electric blankets, it may be superstitious and not grounded in scientific fact but it just seems like asking for trouble to be wrapping yourself in a cosy EM field at such close distance (no help from the inverse square law there! ;) ... I'm just never that cold that an extra traditional style blanket or a notch on the thermostat won't do the trick.

    My operating philosophy is that people should balance the need to stay away from EM fields and environmental toxins with the convenience of products which expose them to these things. With cell phones the balance is easy, just use a headset! With electric blankets the balance is just don't bother because they are frivolous. With TV's, it only makes sense for the population to move towards LCD. With powerlines, provably harmful or not, why choose to live near them if you have a choice?
  • For those interested, a very level-headed, well researched FAQ on "Cellular Phone Antennas and Human Health" can be found at http://www.mcw.edu/gcrc/ cop/cell-phone-health-FAQ/toc.html [mcw.edu]. It is very good reading for anyone concerned about this topic.

  • Not that I intend to drag myself into the gender debate, but the way Patricia and Lita being treated is quite uncalled for. It's also sad that any woman with intelligence who is not passive is considered a feminist.

    Grow up majority-of-men, this is not the 1950s. It's time you stop feeling threatened by intelligent women. You can handle being beat by a man, but can you handle being beat for by a woman? The mentality in play here is quite sad.

    Regards,
    Matt Heckaman

    PS: I'm not a troll, though I'm sure I'll be moderated down for my non-conformist view.
  • I have to admit, when I first read the post, I thought she was joking.

    By posting here I'm losing my ability to moderate in this discussion, so don't blame me for the "Troll" on the post at the top of the thread, it's not me.

    In all honesty I find it hard to believe that you think it sensible to drive and speak on the phone at the same time. Admittedly there are a lot of people that do it, there are also many cases of car accidents caused by people driving and talking on the phone at the same time. A number of studies have been carried out and they indicate that even if you have a hands free kit, the attention you have to pay to the conversation you're having has a very detrimental effect on your reaction times.

    So without wanting to use words like "Stupid", I still have to say that I find your point of view irresponsible - but that's just an opinion too.

    Finally - being able to install Linux hardly makes you a rocket scientist, after all, even I managed to do it.

  • I'm just saying that in my opinion, some things just aren't worth risking.

    Ah, but do get into cars? Your risk of injury from an auto accident is tremendous compared to the chance of cancer from a cell phone.

    The fact is that people are scared of technology because they don't understand it and they don't feel like they have control. And there's no consistency here, either. Other people have mentioned electric blankets. Electric razors for men have got to be just shooting radiation right at a very important set of glands, but no one is whining on the evening news about them.

    So, there are two options: actually learn enough science to make an informed decision on your very own, or keep running around like Chicken Little. Personally, I'll take the science.

    -jon

  • At least he didn't start giving you a hard time for exposing him to "secondhand radiation," thereby exposing him to an unacceptible health risk.

    If the data can be manipulated and interpreted in such a way as to find the tiniest glimmer of a possibility of a health hazard resulting from cell-phone use, then this is the argument that will be used by the scaremongers to legislate their demise.

  • Not Magic! (Score:3)

    by ka9dgx ( 72702 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @03:18AM (#925816) Homepage Journal
    This is amusing... the low frequency components (~ 60 Hz) are wimpy little magnetic fields, probably from the speaker, which have nothing to do with the radio frequencies that are allegedly harmful. The scam potential is enormous, you can shield against magnetic fields fairly easily, just wrap the cellphone in mu-metal. A different speaker design would also be far more effective in reducing magnetic leakage. I could think of all sorts of ways to tweak that field strength... and do nothing about the actual safety.

    Scam idea: Charge $100+ for a "modification" which "reduces radiation exposure by 99%"... and just swap out the speaker. Use the above mentioned "monitor shake" test as your proof

    It's amazing to me how much power people give away because they don't understand science. I think Arthur C. Clark was right when he said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". [infowar.com] It's not magic... but I could certainly treat it as such, and get quite a few people to believe me. (In this case, at least)

    --Mike--

  • .
    Well, I can't speak authoritatively on this, of course, but I used to work at the George Washington University Medical Center's Animal Research Lab (and before anyone jumps on my case, it was a very humane lab, and it was a work study position. I don't want to hear it.)

    Well, I will jump on it.

    Actually, this is the kind of thing that animal research should do. I'd much rather have some dogs, monkeys or mice die than watch my son or mother slowly die of cancer. (Look at the word humane versus inhumane, and pick - a pig dying in a clean lab, or a loved one dying in a hospital unable to help).

    Realistically, there is no way I can glean any information from the slip of paper that comes with my new cell phone that tells me that I'm going to get 1500 bogorads of radiation across these nine spectra.

    If, however, I hear that every mouse exposed to a PCS phone developed a three-ton tumor on their nads after two months, I think I might look at getting a different phone.

    Oh, and didn't the research already occur in europe regarding this issue? (Good Science requires checking the study elsewhere, so it's not a useless study). I seem to remember reading about it, but a minute of browsing didn't find it. (Although there are some good scare pages on Anglefire about radiation).

    --
    Evan

  • True people do smoke. People also drive pollution belching cars, eat food that will kill you over the course of a life-time (McDonalds, Coke, KFC, ...) sit in front of the great glass teat (both of 'em) and any number of other idiotic pleasures.

    Cigarettes were initially the target of a small but noisy group of people who didn't like them. It's true that the things kill you, but so do a myriad of other products that people use. Once that weirdo surgeon general Dr. Everett Kook got onto the anti-smoking bandwagon and conviced Ronnie Raygun to do the same the level of Government supported FUD exploded (along with the inherent hypocrasy of supporting the habit by way of benefitting from the taxation of the product.) Doesn't this situation strike anyone as being completely assbackwards? Shouldn't the government be funding anti-smoking campaigns with their tobacco derived revenues to try to prevent having to treat the goddamn associated disease in the first place?

    So what's this got to do with the price of tea in china? Well, consider that it took nearly 100 years of the cigarette industry to be villified for their product. Christ, the American (and every other country) used to send smokes to the boys overseas in the first and second world wars. Perhaps that should make them culpable for the pain and suffering of the soldiers who became addicted and ended up dying from the effects of lung cancer, some as old as 90 years old!! (not to mention the effect of having their legs blown off).

    Now imagine, since society is equally addicted to the use of cell phones (which I detest BTW), that they do in fact cause some minor cellular damage but only over the course of a lifetime so that the cancer of the skin or brain or hair or whatever of the user does not show up until they've used the product for 25 or 30 years. Sound familiar? Sure, but we have to wait 25 or 30 years to find out whether they really are "killers" and by then everyone will be so used to wearing one on their head that it will take another 25 or 30 or 50 years to convice civilization that maybe they shouldn't be doing this anymore.

    Oh fuck I don't know. Time for a smoke maybe.

    Pfttt, ahhhhhh.

  • You should all be ashamed. (Score:4)

    by Lita Juarez ( 201217 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @01:34AM (#925840)
    I know this is going to be an unpopular viewpoint, but I think the way in which Patricia has been treated on (what seems to be) her first post to Slashdot is disgraceful. She's been moderated down as a "Troll" and also received a deluge of patronising, sexist comments from male posters. The double standards exhibited on Slashdot amaze me - the majority of Slashdot readers post large and well-reasoned rants about how discrimination on any grounds (race, disability, age etc.) is wrong and evil, yet they feel quite happy to hurl sexist abuse at this poor girl.

    I haven't posted to Slashdot for a while because I was getting sick of this kind of sexist abuse. I tried to share my insight with Slashdot (and I was mostly successful - I achieved a +1 bonus within a couple of weeks), and yet I was still greeted with ignorant comments like "You're just a girl, what do you know?". Some people obviously found it too challenging to see past my sex and read what I was actually saying. I'm a big girl and at first I didn't take much notice of this sort of small-minded abuse, but after a while I decided it was no longer worth the hassle to post to Slashdot. Does Slashdot really want to drive insightful posters away?

    The way that Patricia has been treated today is disgusting, and I hope you're all ashamed of yourselves. She implies that she's 16, so of course she's going to make a few naive comments. But this is hardly an excuse for the sort of hostility she has received. Maybe people should have politely corrected her, rather than resorting to flames. We should be trying to nurture and encourage young female geeks, rather than treating them so badly.

    Patricia: keep posting to Slashdot, and try your best to ignore the comments of some of these cavemen. The majority of Slashdot readers and moderators are decent people, but there are a few sexist neanderthals who try to spoil it for everyone.

  • More head protection (Score:3)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @06:39AM (#925845) Homepage
    right here [zapatopi.net] - the Al Foil Deflector Beenie, altho targeted at deflecting psychotronic mind control carriers, it may also help with your cell phone problems.
  • I hope someone posted this earlier.

    The reason cell phone companies are releasing this data is to try and convince us all to get head sets for our phones. This isn't about health, there is, as has been pointed out, a very low risk from cancer from these things. This is about selling accessories.

  • You can purchase one of these and put it on your phone, but it is most effective if you have your copper bracelet on your left wrist while your magnet bracelet is on your right wrist. Also, don't forget to take your anti-radiation homeopathic pills.

    Some people would scoff at a product like that then go out and put magnets in their shoes to relieve pain. It is like that joke saying: "My numerologist told me that only fools believe in astrology."

  • The manual for the handheld GSM Nokia 2110e states, (loosely quoted) "Do not operate phone near head"! No joke. PS. I've read many places that only ionising radiation could cause cancer? Who's research can we believe?

  • Australia (Score:3)

    by Robert S Gormley ( 24559 ) <robert@seabreeze.asn.au> on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @01:53AM (#925855) Homepage
    Do you realise in this state, talking on your mobile phone is enough to earn you a $2,000 fine? This from a state which fines you maybe $165 for speeding quite excessively.

    Why? Because it's DANGEROUS. You're concentrating on who someone was seen with at someone's party? While you're in control of a 1 ton vehicle doing 55 miles an hour?

    Oh, and in case anyone says "ooh, Australia. Backwards. Censorship. Evil. Nasty" - Australia has the third highest uptake in the world of mobile phones, second only to two Scandinavian countries.

  • The title kinda says it all, who wants to find a pay phone these days? Thou it might spur a comeback of bag-type car phones, remote antenna plugins, things in general to keep delicate human brain tissue away from rads. I know my dad is worried enough about that kinda thing that he uses a crappy sounding speakerphone adaptor, making his PCS phone sound perfectly analog.

    Summary of rambelings:
    It'll cause changes, but cell phones are here to stay. But who doesn't know that?

    bash: ispell: command not found
  • First, if you're trolling, congratulations, you got me, and in grand style.

    If not:

    What's the difference between talking on the phone and talking to someone sitting next to you?

    First, if you don't have a hands-free set, you've got your hand by your ear the whole time. You're obstructing your vision and giving yourself one fewer hand to keep control with.

    If you do have a hands free set, your attention is diverted from your immediate surroundings. Someone else in the car is responding to the same visual cues as you are, and you are free to break off any moment with no explanation. You can also do this on the cellphone, of course, but there's pressure not to.

    These are small factors that don't matter most of the time, but are crucial if you need fast reactions.

    Also, I hope you don't check directions on the map on a busy freeway at 60mph or check your blind spot every 10 seconds for the duration of a typical phone call (or when the road's not safe for at least a fraction of a second into the foreseeable future). You have far less control over the timing of a phone conversation than most things you do in the car. People can call you, and people hate being ignored or hung up on. It would be nice if the social pressure against that didn't exist, but it's not going away anytime soon.

    Check http://www.onhea lth.com/conditions/in-depth/item/item,2350_1_1.asp [onhealth.com]. Note the part about cellphones increasing the risk of an accident fourfold. Also note the bit about a hands-free phone providing no significant advantage. Even though that comes with a disclaimer (study may have been too small), you can bet that it's still around the same increase.

    It's government, trying to protect it's citizens from anything potentially harmful; and this is wrong!

    They ban drunk driving, too. What's your point? They may be different quantitatively (I'm not sure), but you're making a qualitative point here.

    What's the next step? Legislation requiring homes to be one level only, so no one can hurt themselves by falling down stairs? Federally mandated safety-scissors? Restricted, liquid-only diet to reduce risk of choking?

    Yeah, where do they get off requiring drivers to get licensed? Or not letting you drive without insurance?

    I note your point, but then again, when you're driving, you can hurt a lot of people besides yourself very, VERY easily.

    Banning a single technology or behaviour is sheer ignorance.

    That's an awfully ignorant statement. Everything in moderation.

    This cellphone ban may be the wrong idea, but it may not be. Is it considerably more or less dangerous than drunk driving? Than checking a map? Than talking to your friend? And then the decision needs to be made on those grounds.
  • I'm not too worried about the radiation but with the amount of heat this thing is giving off I think I have just fried a few gazillion sperm.

    No joke -- the ideal temperature for sperm is actually several degrees cooler then the 98.6 F that most of the body runs at. That's why the testicles are swinging in the breeze, instead of tucked inside the body for protection.

    I've heard it told of a primitive tribe in Africa that employed a method of birth control where the males would soak their testicles in hot water for several minutes before engaging in sexual intercourse. No word on how well it worked.

    I wonder if the heat effects on balls are more than just temporary.

    As long as you're not actually burning yourself (and if you keep something that hot on your balls, you don't deserve to reproduce ;), it should be. The testicles nominally keep producing sperm for as long as you're sexually capable. Only the female of the species has a limited number of genetic carriers. Fortunately, ovaries are better protected.
  • apologies for a lame attempt at a first post.

    It sounds like a real trade-off:
    signal strength vs. possible health effects.

    Filters, or filterless? Chooose yer poison.

    My guess is this: adaptations will be made.
    Take for instance the earpiece/microphone attachments. These put the base unit in your pocket. Those components could be made wireless, only having to transmit a strong enough signal to be picked up by the base unit and amplified to hit a tower/satellite.

    I'll bet that the 1st generation of TVs would cook a TV dinner in under an hour ...
  • The funny thing is, the same people who are concerned about power lines and mobile phones have no qualms about sitting in front of a TV or computer for hours each day being bombarded with X-rays

    Attention! A Warning from the Surgeon General:
    Excessive use of Slashdot may cause dizziness, eyestrain, headaches, hypertension, reduced brain function, loss of memory, brain tumours, cancer, spontaneous combustion, and the urge to GPL any and all code.

  • I heard on the radio the other day about a poll they did for people 95 years-old+. They were asked what they would have done differently if they started over. And the guy on the radio said that they ALL said that they would have taken more risks. just interesting to think about...

  • Amusing products advertised on Discovery (Score:5)

    by Cardinal ( 311 ) on Monday July 17, 2000 @09:14PM (#925880)
    So I was watching Discovery Wings a few weeks ago, and started seeing advertisements for little oval-shaped "filters" that you put over the earpiece of your cellular phone to block the radiation. I just about fell out of my chair.

    These people are serious! They actually think a patch the size of an elongated quarter placed over the earpiece of a cel phone will save you. They had it all. Everything from a generic American mother saying, in a deadpan face and a concerned voice "I'd never let my teenager use an unprotected celluar phone!" to a really scientific test where they held a cel phone up to a monitor and showed how it made the monitor shake. Then they put one of their magical filters on the phone, and showed how the monitor didn't shake anymore. Riiiiiiight. They must have that special Gauss-model phone that wasn't available when I went shopping for my PCS phone (Which doesn't, for the record, make my monitor shake)

    I certainly hope nobody is taking that product seriously. As if the only radiation in a phone comes directly out the earpiece in a unidirectional fashion. They even suggested you can use their filters on standard wireless phones.
    I suppose they're just feeding on the classic fear (And in many cases, paranoia) of the unknown that seems to be an all-too-constant aspect of humanity. Even if cel phones are harmful, these filter-making folks definitely don't have the solution.
  • Well, the power line EM field studies have shown to be blatantly flawed, so I don't see why this would be dangerous at all....
    But, on the off chance that it is, there are a number of viable alternatives. You could keep the antenna on a belt unit the size of a pager, and have an IR, wire, or weak radio connecting it to a corresponding handset. Of course, I still think subdermal microphones and earphones are the best idea, with a wire running under the skin to flat antennas implanted on the shoulder blades.
  • This reminds me of anti-radiation cases that I was in a news article. Apparantly they where withdrawn because all they did was cause the phone to boost it's signal because the covers partially blocked it.
  • Why would I want to carry around a device which would allow anyone in the world to call and bug me at any time?

    In my case, it's because my employer pays me to.

    Would I do so otherwise? Unlikely. Nobody I know needs to get in touch with me that badly. I've got an answering machine.

    I did carry an unactivated cell phone in my glove compartment before I got this job, though. (You can still use an unactivated phone to make emergency calls).
  • Dead serious, I was standing outside with a coworker one day who was taking a smoke break, I answered a cel phone call, and the smoking coworker told me how those cel phones will kill me someday.

    He realized, of course, of the pot and the kettle situation. But still, it happened. :)
  • Theatres should just make and annoucement for the audience to silence there cell phones and pagers. The main reason the occasional phone rings is that people forget to turn them off not because they are aspholes.

    They do make announcements. Those silly little fake-trailers you watch before the movie always say "Enjoy our popcorn - please silence pagers and phones."

    As for I need to get a call, well, don't go to a movie then. It's that simple.

    By far the most annoying place for mobile phones is the restaurant though. I find it incredibly rude to sit at a table and eat while someone else at the table yaks on the phone. At least get up and go outside, damnit.
  • I've heard it as, "I'm a Capricorn, and Capricorns don't really buy into superstition."
    --
  • We've now got the evidence that smoking causes lung cancer... but it's still a multi-billion dollar industry. ;-( So no, even if they do publish that the mobiles are generating dangerous levels of radiation, I seriously doubt that people will stop using them.
  • Sounds good - not for health reasons, but because they are *irritating* in cinemas, churches, anywhere really....

    I wish more places would install Cellular Firewalls [netline.co.il] like this one. I think every theatre should have one - if you want to make a call, go outside dammit.

  • Re:Not Magic! (Score:3)

    by jovlinger ( 55075 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @04:43AM (#925908) Homepage
    Actually, the low frequency components you are referring to are probably the packets (to the tune of 40 a second on PCS) the phone sends out. Since the transmission time of such a packet is significantly less than 25ms, a monitor (or speaker or radio) would pick it up as a 40 hz buzz.

    Your theory of it being the speaker is further contradicted by the fact that these emmissions are strongest before the phone rings on an incomming call. You've seen this yourself, likely. You know how you can always tell a second before the phone rings 'cause your car radio (if you keep your phone in the unused ash-tray like I tend to) starts acting up.

    So I suspect you are seeing many high-frequency packets. Mind you, we'll see more of this if the spread-spectrum pulse technology comes around.

  • People Are Funny (Score:5)

    by Alpha State ( 89105 ) on Monday July 17, 2000 @09:23PM (#925911) Homepage

    I work for an electricity distributor, and we used to have a lot of complaints from people about the "radiation" from power lines. This was, of course, due to media attention and it seemed no amount of scientific facts can appease them once it's been mentioned on the nightly news. However, as the most recent such report was a few years ago most people don't actually bring it up anymore.

    The funny thing is, the same people who are concerned about power lines and mobile phones have no qualms about sitting in front of a TV or computer for hours each day being bombarded with X-rays, or being subjected to large EM fields by electric blankets, hair dryers, etc. They just saw some reporter claiming an small, unsupported study found an extremely weak link between power lines and some disease.

    Unlike power lines, mobile phones may actually damage cells due to the high frequencies used, but I doubt it will be significant. I predict the media will have a field day, a couple of groups of "concerned citizens" will call for a ban and mobile phone companies will have a new number to differentiate their products with. The funniest thing will be seeing whether lower radiation phones give poorer reception. In a few years the media will have a new bogie man and no-one will care less.

    If any harmful effects do exists, they will only show up as statistical deviations in cancer rates many years hence. This will be explained by the medical community as "possibly due to mobile phone usage, but could have many other causes."

    It's a cruel world.

  • I remember they did a study about this, and they found that people who live near high voltage power lines get cancer, at about the same rate as everyone else. I'm not going to give up my cell phone, its to damn usefull.

    On the other hand I do wish they would put up devices in movies etc so that they would block cell phones (Mine gets turned off) as its just annoying when you are in the middle of a film and someone's phone goes off

    The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.

  • Now that's really interesting. It seems that real (ie, transmission by compressive waves in a nitrogen/oxygen mixture) hands-free is the only safe way to go.

    Bummer.
  • .. I can just see it, mandatory labels on cellphones.. "Using this phone will kill you"

    Hell, using the cell can be just as rude as smoking cigarettes, and cellphone use is higher in Europe than the US (by roughly the same percentages even? ;)..

    Your Working Boy,
  • If the data supports the claims that have been made over the years about cell phone radiation causing increased risk of cancer--and I'm not saying it *does* in fact do so, just that many people have claimed it--then the question will become how long have they known and have they been hiding it.

    Well, I can't speak authoritatively on this, of course, but I used to work at the George Washington University Medical Center's Animal Research Lab (and before anyone jumps on my case, it was a very humane lab, and it was a work study position. I don't want to hear it.) doing administrative computer stuff that included a bit of data entry for a study on the effects of cell phone radiation on mice. IIRC, this was one of the larger such stdies, and it was a multi-year project.

    Since I was working there in '95 and '96, that probably would have put the project completion around '98. Give another year for chewing on the data, internal meetings and such, and you'll prolly find that they only really completed things last year. However, I also remember that the study results, to that point, were mostly inconclusive. There really wasn't a higher incidence of tumors, malignant or otherwise, in the test groups as compared to the control groups.

    -Todd

    ---
  • What sort of advertising campaign could convince people that inhaling smoke is actually good for you? Where's the common sense?

    Oh, wait... This is America after all, and people get an extra large burger, and a Diet Coke to go with it! This is where people eat exorbitant amounts of beef and chicken fat, because they know that they can always have it violently vacuumed (liposuctioned) out of their ass by a surgeon. And if they're too poor for that, they can use a drug to reduce their cholesterol - hell, we can transplant a new liver for you after the drugs fry the original. This is where people buy a Ford Excursion (14MPG) to go to the grocery store; and drive the beast at 90MPH in the right lane. This is where people will buy sour-cream labelled as 'lite' to counter-act the burger (since the Coke didn't do it); and where the marketter can label a product as 'lite' because it's brighter in colour than the "leading national brand". This is where people move to the 'big city' for the higher paying job, and spend twice as much as they should for rent; where they ride a stationary bike (that doesn't go anywhere), so they can look good while baking in the sun.

    Convenience-lemmings will, of course, keep on using cell-phones; even if the price is a guaranteed brain tumour by the age of 80... After all, most will die of emphysema, skin cancer, colon cancer, car accident or heart attack long before that.

    And the remaining rich have good insurance.

    This is a disposable society, using disposable goods, disposable resources and disposable organs. There are disposable people living in the streets. Disposable kids, the products of disposable marriages, let themselves into their empty disposable homes after school and get baby-sat by an idiot-box whose only purpose is to reinforce this mentality. They hope that, their disposable dad doesn't get disposed of by his employer and doesn't dispose of their step-mom whose disposable T&A are starting to sag again.

    But hey, it's all good.
  • Everyone is wondering about the radiation from a device used as frequently as a cell phone.

    What about putting a laptop right on top of the family jewells?!

    A laptop is certainly using more power than a cell phone (unless it's using transmeta, hehehe) and while it does offer more shielding, it usually sits there for a lot longer I would guess.

    Also, I hope they show comparisons to normal 900MHz/2.4GHz phones.
  • If the data supports the claims that have been made over the years about cell phone radiation causing increased risk of cancer--and I'm not saying it *does* in fact do so, just that many people have claimed it--then the question will become how long have they known and have they been hiding it. That's what got the tobacco companies: that their product causes increased risk of cancer isn't very actionable in and of itself--the fact that they knew it caused cancer, and did nothing to stop it, and denied any knowledge of the risks, is what made the tobacco lawsuits so profitable. I myself smoke cigars, but have no sympathy for a cigarette industry which has lied and cheated and in effect caused more people to die than might have if they'd come clean years ago. Anyone remember those cheesy 50s and 60s cigarrette commercials which touted the "health benefits" of smoking?

    But seriously, I doubt that cell phones cause cancer any more than everything else around us does these days. Face it: life causes cancer. Most modern tech increases health risks. Six inches away from a small 15" CRT that I am, I am undoubtedly increasing my risks for cancer somewhat. Sitting a couple feet from a 19" CRT probably contributes just as much. Running your computer caseless probably contributes a tiny little bit to cancer risks, as probably does using cellphones, preservatives, cultured cheese products, soy products (recent studies suggest soy is a carcinogen in mice), diet soda, and just about anything useful. Personally, I'm fed-up with the overly-health-consciousness which causes us to put so many constraints on life that it isn't as fun as it should be. Plus, most of it is bullshit--fat and cholesterol are supposedly bad for you, yet the French practically have IVs of pure butter hooked into their veins and yet they're healthier than and live longer than Americans. To hell with no drinking, no smoking, no eating greasy pork products, and no enjoying buttery sugary eggy confections. It's time we just started enjoying life and not being so concerned with radiation, dietary intake, and how many hormones are in milk: who cares if we live to a hundred carefully if we could just have sixty five really fun years? Just my opinion.

  • Shaking monitors / FCC Rules (Score:3)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @07:40AM (#925928) Journal
    Yes, my cell makes the monitor shake as well - I certainly believe it's the speaker. It also causes huge and very annoying interference to my telephone headset. It's a Nokia 6162.

    It would be interesting to get its radiation signature, if for no other reason than to understand and compensate for these annoying "features."

    But I wonder: What happened to the FCC rule that said that an item "must not cause interference, and must accept interference from other items"? Last time I checked, all electronic equipment had to be tested to meet this rule. What changed?

    sulli

  • Possible positive outcome (Score:3)

    by webmaven ( 27463 ) <webmaven AT cox DOT net> on Monday July 17, 2000 @09:29PM (#925929) Homepage
    If this lead to standard use of headsets in conjunction with cellphones, we might see two birds killed with one stone:

    - lower radiation exposure (which lowers a persons IQ without actually imposing a true evolutionary penalty through hereditary defects).

    and

    - Lower fatalities resulting from cell-phone use while driving.

    Here's to hoping for the best!
    --
  • Today, cell phone manufacturers compete on:
    • size
    • weight
    • battery life
    • features
    A lot of people say that releasing this information won't deter cell phone usage. That's not the point. What WILL happen is that manufacturers will try to develop cell phones that emit less radiation than their competitors. The above list will then become:
    • size
    • weight
    • battery life
    • features
    • radiation level

    --
  • Magnetic bracelets to get rid of arthritis, magnetic insoles (even Dr. Scholes (sp) actually sells these) to get rid of whatever affects feet, magnetic sheets to place between your mattress and box-spring to cure insomnia...

    EnerX, an 'all natural' alternative to Viagra, which is most likely just a 'secret' blend of Ginseng, Ginko and St. John's Wort; sold at 10x the price of the ingredients.

    Viagra, and the whole slew of 'lifestyle' drugs - while there are valid medical reasons for a few individuals, people are popping these things like M&M's. Just wait until we get to see the long-term effects of that one... Ritalin, given to every child who doesn't pay attention in class (like any of us did, right?) is the new Valium...

    I suspect that mothers who took Valium while pregnant, brought forth kids who now NEED Ritalin. These same mothers are much more likely to cure their kids' problems with pills than with proper upbringing... And these are the same mothers who defer parental responsibility to the TV set and school system.
  • I realize I should wait for the report.. but..
    What 'radiation' do people think comes out of cellular phones?

    I mean, are they worried about the 800Mhz -> 5 Ghz range?

    The thing is, when Joe American (or any other Joe..) thinks Radiation, he thinks like 'nuclear bomb' and 'radioactive isotope'.)

    Are we talking alpha, beta, gamma. or.. ????

    No.. we aren't. We're talking about a couple of watts of 900Mhz (or perhaps 2.4Ghz or somewhere in there). It's *NOT* ionizing radiation. As far as we know, it can't break down molecular bonds.
    2.4Ghz is used in microwave ovens, to shake polarized molecules (chiefly water) , but that takes a reflecting cavity to keep the microwaves in, and a 600 watt microwave emitter! And that's just to heat food up! (really.. if you stuck your hand in a microwave oven for like 3 seconds, it probably wouldn't do any permanent damage to you. Might hurt though...)

    I'm not denying that cellular phones may pose some kind of health risk to do the RF.... but if they do, this wouldn't be just about cellular phones, it would be a study into the effects of RF from *all* sources. Something we keep using more and more of, and still consider harmless.

  • I've Already Stopped Using Mine (Score:3)

    by ObligatoryUserName ( 126027 ) on Monday July 17, 2000 @09:34PM (#925939) Journal
    About a year ago, when a wireless phone industry funded study said "we're kinda not sure... there's an outside chance that cell phones might cause cancer" I stopped using mine cold. Personally, I thought the study would show they were harmless. Even more, jaded by years of tobacco industry hoo-haw, I had expected a complete whitewash if things were bad. When the industry-funded study was ambivilant, I decided not to take chances.

    When people ask you if there's a cell phone number you can be reached at, you just say "nope" and they'll give you a quizzical look- like you just fell off the turnip truck- but nothing really bad has ever happened to be because I didn't have one.

    There's a chance that I'm hamstrining my career by not making myself availible like that, but I bet that career advancement looks pretty short-sighted when you're sitting on the terminal end of a brain tumor.

    I hope that didn't sound like a flame. Those are just the honest reasons why I stopped. And no, I'm not saying that I think these phones necessarily cause cancer, I'm just saying that in my opinion, some things just aren't worth risking.

  • Different types of risk (Score:3)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @05:05AM (#925940)
    I see many post along the lines of "Everything causes cancer so who cares!" I realize that's the expected viewpoint from students, but there are different types of risk. Monitor and house wiring EMF has been an on and off issue; studies aren't clear one way or the other. Other so-called risks, like peanut butter causing cancer, are also peculiar, because how much peanut butter does one really eat in a lifetime? Occasionally, though, something really bad gets out into the mainstream. For a long time it was standard medical practice to X-ray pregnant mothers to check on the state of the fetus (this was before sonograms). This went on for ten or more years before anyone questioned it. Now we're horrified. How could we have done that?

    There is a possibility that the risk of cell phones is more than just background noise. We should wait and see. We we shouldn't just ignore it if the results are bad.

  • They just saw some reporter claiming an small, unsupported study found an extremely weak link between power lines and some disease.

    I think you should take a look at the most recent issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine [ieee.org]. The "Speakout" section for July 2000 [ieee.org] contains an article on exactly this subject.

    Unfortunately, the online version is restricted to IEEE members, but here's a quick synopsis:

    • Microwave researcher (J. R. Ashley) sees 1979 and 1988 Denver, CO and 1991 LA county studies linking HV power-distribution-induced magnetic fields with childhood leukemia. Thinks researchers are full of crap since there's essentially no correlation between wire distance/geometry ("wire codes") and magnetic fields.
    • Said researcher then sees 1992 Swedish study that shows 5x leukemia risk for kids living within 50 meters of HV power lines. This study apparently has a high number of cases and controls, and good statistical confidence.
    • Said researcher asks self, <emeril>"Self! Why this link between childhood leukemia and HV wire codes?"</emeril> Realizes that prior studies never looked at peak electric fields near study areas.
    • Said researcher goes to Denver, and measures peak E and H fields. Finds no correlation between distance and H field, but "fair" correlation between distance and E field. He then calculates peak current density on various regions on the body due to E and H fields, and finds that "current density induced in the ankles by the electric field is 2-10 times greater than the current density induced in the skin of the torso by the magnetic field, depending on distance from the supply substation."

    So this guy recommends looking at peak E fields outside homes near HV power lines, and also looking at areas near lower-voltage (66kV to 230kV) lines that interconnect US substations. He also recommends trying to recreate E-field data from the Denver and LA studies using power company records.

    Interesting stuff, and certainly not to be brushed off without a modicum of thought.

    (BTW, you'll note that nowhere above do I say that HV lines cause cancer, merely that there's an interesting statistical link. Ashley is careful to do the same in his article, pointing out simply that we really don't know what, if any, causative process is going on -- we just don't have enough knowledge to answer the question yet.)

  • Mice were doing admin work? Geez, I hope not; there's already enough competition in this field. Of course, that might explain a few things (wonder when we'll start getting troll posts that just repeat "GIVE US CHEESE OR PERISH"...)

    ----

  • Several states in the US have passed the same law. It's a good idea. Studies have shown that a person chatting on a cell phone is just as likely to get into an accident as a drunk driver.
  • I firmly believe that if they were truly unsafe, the big companies would not have released cell phones to the market.

    Well, this kind of thinking worries me. Why?

    There are plenty of products out on the open market that are unsafe. You see, companies work to create the highest profits. If a company can save a few dollars, or even a few cents, per product, that translates to millions of dollars if they sell enough product. And if they determine that by excluding x safety feature from y product saves them a amount of money, if a amount of money is more than it takes to deal with b amount of isolated lawsuits, guess what -- the safety feature will be left out. It's happened time and time again.

    Doesn't that just give you the warm fuzzies?

  • I truely wonder how dangerious cell phones actually are. It seems to me that if you look hard enough you can find a report or study that claims that any [RANDOM ACTIVITY OF CHOICE] is potentially harmful to your health. More scientific proof, less hype. Anyone have a link to actual radiation numbers for existing cell phones?
  • Same... hands free and in car kits are perfectly okay. Strangely, though, CB's are still legal to use...
  • This regiester article [theregister.co.uk] tells how someone was killed by a mobile phone.
  • Ever since my parents bought me a sweet cel phone for my 16th birthday, it has become a HUGE factor in my life. I use it for talking to friends, finding out about parties, contacting my boyfriend when I'm away, and ordering pizza. I mean it's just way too convenient for me to give up. I guess you could use pay phones at times, but you still have to find one first, and even then I can't be bothered to carry odd amounts of coins in my purse. It's just easier to have my cel on hand.

    I don't see why everyone here is so uptight about cel phones. I read the article, and looks to me like it's just trying to stir up controversy about cel phones. I firmly believe that if they were truly unsafe, the big companies would not have released cel phones to the market.

    You know, I've been using my cel all the time for almost a year, and guess what? I haven't died of radiation poisoning, ok! Besides, why worry yourselves with this POTENTIAL radiation damage and POSSIBLE side effects? You're forgetting how advanced and quickly moving our technology is anyway. And even if some minor radiation issue is discovered, I am fully confident that businesses will honestly address it and that medical science will immedietally find a cure for any illnesses or symptoms caused by cel phone usage.

    And one more thing I want to know is why do people make such a big deal about using cel phones while driving? I never saw any huge complaints about carphones before, but when they come with cel phones it's all "OH MY GOD YOUR GOING TO CRASH IF YOU USE A CEL PHONE." Well I've been only driving for less than a year, and I can handle driving my Chevy Tahoe while talking on the cel phone quite well. If a 16 year old girl can handle it, I think the people in general are intelligent enough to be able to drive while on the phone. I know a few rare accidents occur because people drive while talking on cel phones, but I'd rather take that risk than risk missing an important call from one of my girlfriends.

    I really wonder why the slashdot community has it in for cel phone users and why they're falling for all this muckracking press. Maybe some of you guys just need a life so you can see how important a cel phone actually is :)
  • Ah, the good ol' days.

    I think the real question here is, will my kids be able to control the weather by mind control or shoot laser beams out from their eyes if I continue to use a cell phone? And will society fear them?

  • Attack of the Killer Phones (Score:3)

    by Alpha State ( 89105 ) on Monday July 17, 2000 @09:48PM (#925980) Homepage
    By the way, on the off-chance that the data says the equivalent of 'For The Love Of God, Stop Using This Device, We're Surprised You're Not Dead Yet,' does anyone think that people would stop using them?

    Actually, this won't happen because these numbers won't mean shit to people.

    "Buy our phone, it only has an SAR of 11.53, the competitor's phone is at 12.92 - it'll give you cancer 14% faster!"

    We won't know whether the phones are actually killing us until the following has happened:

    1. The media reports that the SAR numbers mean that mobile phones "could be harmful".
    2. The phone companies produce research from the 1950s showing that the levels of radiation are "not significant", and says they comply with regulations.
    3. A group called "Citizens Rejecting Annoying Phones" is formed which protests outside Motorola's headquaters and lobbies for the banning of anything which looks like a mobile phone.
    4. A researcher in Belgium produces research which shows an 3.4% increase in Leukemia among mobile phone users. CRAP immediately claim this is ground for banning mobile phones.
    5. The mobile phone companies claim the results of the Belgian study are inconclusive and fund their own study which shows that mobile phone users are healthier and more virile on average. this study is ridiculed by the media.
    6. The US government spends a huge amount of money on a study of millions of mobile phone users over 25 years, covering all cultural and socio-economic groups. this study is totally inconclusive.
    7. 25 years later, the brain tumor rate has risen to 10 times its previous rate. No-one is able to prove any link to mobile phones because there are now 300 wireless devices for evey person on the planet.
  • Not that I'm particularly worried about cell-phone radiation, but headsets don't necessarily help. Aside from the potential for increased risk of hip-cancer :-), a lot of phones don't properly isolate the headset from the transmission components of the phone, so the headset just acts as an antenna. I think I even remember reading that some headsets increase the amount of radiation your head gets. Of course, it is non-ionizing radiation, and is probably far less harmful than the constant onslaught of muons, gamma rays, and other high-energy radiation we're constantly bombarded with from above...

    There's soon going to be a big outcry about second-hand cell phone radiation from people who wouldn't understand the inverse-square law if it bit them in the ass. This is the problem with having a general public that doesn't understand anything more complex than a channel changer (I'm probably giving too much credit--I'd bet the majority of people don't know how to use their VCR remote to get rid of the flashing 12:00). These are the people I'm going to chase down the street with my cell phone :-)
  • Would be some serious, relatively objective, relatively trustable data on how much cell phone usage while driving increases the chance of an automobile accident. A possible >60mph crash seems to be a hell of a lot more of a vital concern than a 5% increased chance of cancer in the next 30 years, no matter how statistically or scientifically likely either one is.

    there was some study or other in canada a few years ago that wound up with data suggesting that the increase in probability of accident caused by using a cell phone was equal to the increase in probability of accident caused by being drunk. I don't remember who held this survey, so i can't testify as to its validity, but if it's real that's pretty damn scary. We were handed a copy of a summary in drivers ed, and it's buried somewhere in the piles of paper in my room. During drivers ed we spent several days doing nothing but watching videos talking about how if we are caught drinking while driving, our liscences are taken away forever and we have trouble getting jobs. That piece of paper was the only thing they gave us telling us not to talk on cell phones while driving, and i was given no indication that the law would be particularly harsh on me were i to cause an accident through careless driving because i was busy with a cell phone, or that the law was taking any steps whatsoever to prevent cell phone usage from causing accidents.

    I believe some federal agency recently held a study of cell phone accident statistics that indicated cell phones or other driver-distracting electronics were a factor in 25% of all automobile accidents, or some such horrifying number. I would like to request that anyone who has some actual real information on this post it.

    [insert unfocused, offtopic rant here about how last time i checked Houston had the highest auto accident death rate in america, and how the bit of the 610 loop between I-10 and I-59 is pure hell and i have to drive it every day and i'm constantly having my life put in danger by people talking on cell phones who fail to notice even the most basic of things about the very dangerous environment they are in blah blah blah]

    The major difference between this kind of thing and cancer from cell phone overuse is that with cell phone cancer, you the user are the only person likely to die as a result..

    Anyone with any kind of further information more real than my vague recollections of statistics, please reply.
  • Disclaimer: I am sitting here with by laptop cooking my balls as I type this.

    No that you mention this there are some problems here. I'm not too worried about the radiation but with the amount of heat this thing is giving off I think I have just fried a few gazillion sperm.

    I wonder if the heat effects on balls are more than just temporary.
  • From article in Nokia's paper:
    MYTH: Mobile phones are so powerful they literally fry your brain. FACT: Mobile phone safety standards are set to minimize heating in the brain to fractions of a degree - less than that which results from normal physical exercise. MYTH: The incidence of brain tumors is rising because of mobile phone usage. FACT: World recognized authorities have not found any link between mobile phone usage and health risks. MYTH: Using a mobile phone gives the user headaches. FACT: The causes of headaches are numerous. There's no evidence of a direct link between mobile phone usage and headaches. MYTH: Nobody is really investigating the possible health dangers associated with mobile phone usage. FACT: In excess of USD 50 million has been spent on EMF research. In addition to the research program through Wireless Technology Research (WTR) in the U.S., the WHO runs an EMF project. The European Commission is also planning funding of EMF research under its 5th framework program.
    and to sum ot up:
    According to highly-renowned international bodies like the World Health Organization (WHO): "Current scientific evidence indicates that exposure to low levels of RF (Radio Freaquency) fields, including those emitted by mobile phones and their base stations, is unlikely to induce or promote cancers." (Source WHO Fact Sheet 193 May 1998.)
    And a few words about microwave oven analogy - the oven consumes ~700-1k watt while the phone signal strength is barely 1watt (unless you wrap an antenna from an old analog car phone around your heada, which will provide you with 10 - 15W). The heating effect is just a fraction of a degree, as mentioned earlier.

    Regardless, everyone can use a headset.

    Here's a good summary (with more links) on mobile phone safety [nokia.com]

    __________________________________________

  • *sigh* this isn't my week, thank you for the insight into the blindingly obvious :)

  • Re:You should all be ashamed. (Score:3)

    by mwalker ( 66677 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @09:43AM (#926014) Homepage
    yet they feel quite happy to hurl sexist abuse at this poor girl.

    Lita, no one is being sexist towards Patricia. Rather they have figured out that patricia, whose initals are PMS, is someone's idea of a joke. She is not a 16 year old girl driving a pickup truck and talking on her cellphone, who in her spare time installs debian linux. "She" is someone who messes with linux, reads slashdot a lot, and has decided to come up with a character to annoy people with. No, I am not a sexist who thinks that girls can't hack. Rather there are some (painfully obvious) clues in "her" argument. Take the following quote by "her":

    Besides, why worry yourselves with this POTENTIAL radiation damage and POSSIBLE side effects? You're forgetting how advanced and quickly moving our technology is anyway.

    No one actually thinks this way, it is a charicature of what we'd like to think the average "stupid american" thinks.

    And even if some minor radiation issue is discovered, I am fully confident that businesses will honestly address it and that medical science will immedietally find a cure for any illnesses or symptoms caused by cel phone usage.

    This mix of intelligent word use, perfect sentence structure, and totally unbelieveable faith in corporate america to find a cure for cancer is an attempt to create a stereotype character to piss people off. Whoever is writing for patricia is extremely intelligent and has probably fooled a lot of people, including yourself. If patricia really didn't care about potential radiation and side affects, she wouldn't go to so much detail to spell out the threat and then find a stupid way to ignore it. She'd just say "who cares about all that stuff anyway".

    Don't feel bad - but be careful being self-righteous.

    Patricia- hats off, and keep up the good work. slashdot needs more people with your sense of scale.
  • These products are not as amusing as you think.
    There ARE effective radation deflection devices sold:

    http://www.goaegis.com/

    The question is whether the radiation they're deflecting is actually harmful or not.

  • a portable handsfree kit that's actually COMFORTABLE. Most of the ones I've tried so far are horrible. A cordless BlueTooth handsfree kit will be even better. No, I am not worried about the BlueTooth RF - it's several orders of magnitude weaker than the signal the cellular phone is transmitting.

    ----
  • Power outputs of cell phones:
    old mobile bricks, 3 W max @ 900MHz
    little phones 0.6 W max @ 900 MHz and 1.9GHz

    Both types use lower power levels when near a tower (to conserve batteries). I might be wrong about the power levels for the new pcs phones. They're almost certainly under 1 W to conserve batts.

    Ryan
  • So, they are saying for the new cell phones, companies need to release the data of radiation of each particular phone.

    What about the old cell phones? What about pagers? What about those new Palm VII (which ever one buildin a phone)? What about those 900 MHz home use cordless phone?

    Here are some links to related materials found on the web...
    Cellular Phone Antennas and Human Health [mcw.edu] by Medical Collage of Wisconsin [mcw.edu]
    How a Cell Phone Works [howstuffworks.com] by How Stuff Works [howstuffworks.com].
    How a Digital Cell Phone Works [howstuffworks.com] by How Stuff Works [howstuffworks.com].
    Is your cell phone killing you? [zdnet.com] from ZDNet [zdnet.com] November 30, 1999.
    Cell Phone Antennas & Health FAQs [cs.ruu.nl] from Institute of Information and Computing Sciences [cs.ruu.nl].

  • Face it: life causes cancer.

    That to me seems the key - it's kind of a Uncertainty Principle of life. You can't live without being affected by the world. If you are affected by the world, your chances of getting cancer increase, because there is some probabiliy, however slight, that just about anything can disrupt a little genetic code here or there.

    The real question is, what ARE the probabilities, and who's lying to who about it?

  • We're all going to die of cancer anyway, AARGH! (Score:4)

    by mcolin ( 14379 ) on Monday July 17, 2000 @10:58PM (#926049)
    I don't really care what that study says. Actually I want my cell phone implanted in my head. And I want a targeting cross in my vision. And a Nerf Gun inside my right arm, so I can Nerf-shoot my lusers, when they did something stupid again. And I want a holographic projection unit to let me appear as Tyrael with a vengeance, when they were really stupid (see DiabloII Act 3 intro movie). Gosh, I'm born too early.
  • I was just as skeptic as most of the posters here about how a tiny oval patch could possibly act as a shield against radiation. So I looked a little more deeply into it I am not so sure it's a total scam, there might actually be something there.

    First of all, they don't claim to block radiation. It would be impossible for a one inch patch to block a signal with a wavelength of about 1ft. What this device claims to do is generate low frequency magnetic fields that somehow reduce the damage to biological systems. They have some research done on chicken embryos to back this up.

    Proceedings of first World Congress on the Bioeffects of Electricity and Magnetism. [demon.co.uk] (note that it's sponsored by Tecno-AO)

    Tecno-AO "science" [ecolabs.co.uk]

    See also here [tecnosphere.co.uk] and here. [tecnosphere.co.uk]

    ----
  • Here I am sitting on the couch reading slashdot and I find out that my laptop could be a health hazard. I'll give my cellphone before my laptop. That is until I can read slashdot from my cell.
    Kate

  • > Hell, without my cel, no one would ever be able to get a hold of me.

    Some of us like it that way. I'll get a mobile phone when they cram one in my cold, dead fingers.

    --
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Free copies (Score:3)

    by Kryptonomic ( 161792 ) on Monday July 17, 2000 @11:13PM (#926069) Homepage
    And you think everybody gives their dissertations away for free?

    Well, yes, if they want to be seen as a professional scientist and not a greedy bastard.

    I mail free copies of my publications to anyone who asks (and people ask) and wouldn't even consider charging anything for it. A few times I've also asked for a copy and every time people have been happy to oblige.

    Personally, I'd consider charging money for a copy of your article extremely rude and unprofessional.

  • Bagh. Back in my day, cell phones had TONS of radiation, we put lead paint chips in our soup, AND we wore sweaters made out of asbestos.

    Nowadays, everyone is so worried about these fancy schmancy cell phones causing a little problem in their head when they should be thankful that cell phones are so damn small and efficient.

    When I was younger, cell phones were huge, heavy, and lasted about 5 minutes before the batteries needed charging. Each month the phone company didn't need to keep track of our minutes, they just measured how much the tumor on the side of our head grew since the previous month. My friend Eddy 'Lumpy' talked on his cell phone so much that he didn't need a pillow at night, he just slept on the side with his tumor. His tumor was huge and squishy, all the pillow that anyone needs.

  • Not wanting to be _too_ imflammatory, but:
    You are talking utter crap.

    If you check out the following link: Olive Oil and the Mediterranean Diet [chd-taskforce.de] at the International Taskforce for Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease, then you might learn something. Consensus of opinion is now

    "that there is strong evidence that a Mediterranean-style diet, in which olive oil is the principal source of fat, contributes to the prevention of cardio-vascular risk factors"

    Try doing some googling before spouting off.

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