The Story Behind Cell Phone Radiation Research

XopherMV writes "A study by Lai and Singh, published in a 1995 issue of Bioelectromagnetics, found an increase in damaged DNA in the brain cells of rats after a single two-hour exposure to microwave radiation at levels considered "safe" by government standards. The idea behind that study was relatively simple: expose rats to microwave radiation similar to that emitted by cell phones, then examine their brain cells to see if any DNA damage resulted. The news was apparently unwelcome in some quarters. According to internal documents that later came to light, Motorola started working behind the scenes to minimize any damage Lai's research might cause even before the study was released. In a memo and a draft position paper dated Dec. 13, 1994, officials talked about how they had "war-gamed the Lai-Singh issue" and were in the process of lining up experts who would be willing to point out weaknesses in Lai's study and reassure the public. To this day, the cell phone industry continues to dispute Lai and Singh's findings although half of about 200 studies say there is a biological effect from cell phone radiation. Read more in UW Columns."

Trivial solution ...

Use a headset. Leave the phone in your pocket or on your desk. You also get the benefit of having your hands free (for typing, or other activities)

Re:Trivial solution ...

Oh great. Leave the phone in your pocket where it will damage the DNA you pass on to your children.

Bravo - great idea!

Re:Trivial solution ...

Have you any numbers of the power levels ? Bluetooth uses lower levels AFAIK. Still not optimal, but probably better. More insights on this topic are very welcome.

Re:Trivial solution ...

A bluetooth headset needs to have anough power to reach you phone 10 meters away.

A cellphone need to reach the next antenna which may be 5 kilometers away.

There is a radical difference in signal strength here.

Original paper author has moved on

For those of you that make it to the 4th page of the UW Columns article, Lai has left the research field (moved to Colorado) and doesn't use a cell phone, plus requires his family members to use headsets - maybe he's on to something?

P.S. I see this study was done at my alma-matter, the University of Washington. I wonder if my old roommate Jim Oliver might have been affected, since he did handstands from our 7th floor balcony railing [komar.org] - maybe he should have been wearing a tin-foil hat? ;-)

Re:Original paper author has moved on

For those of you that make it to the 4th page of the UW Columns article, Lai has left the research field (moved to Colorado) and doesn't use a cell phone, plus requires his family members to use headsets - maybe he's on to something?

Questions:

• Why aren't cancer rates much higher in nations with significantly more cell phones/coverage- say, Japan for example?
• Why hasn't brain cancer increased in the last 20 years as cell phone usage has gone from near zero to a major percentage of the population? I also don't hear much about "cancer of the hip"...
• Why haven't cancer rates jumped for people living near cell phone towers?
• Why is it that the same people who sue cell phone companies over a tower near their house go home each night and pop dinner in a 1200W microwave emitter?
• Why is it that hundreds of millions microwaves are in use today? Why is it that dozens of words tossed around in tin foil articles articles are made-up, like "d-Nitrosodienthanolamines"? Google that, and notice that the only place google can find it is in the same sentence: "d-Nitrosodienthanolamines, a well known carcinogen". If it's so well known, how come you can only find references to it in Tin Foil Hat articles?

Answer: because cell phone radiation doesn't cause cancer at any rate appreciable from statistical noise, IF AT ALL.

Do you realize the gasolene vapor and diesel fumes are far more likely to give you cancer, that they're both known, proven, undisputed carcinogens?

Bugger.

Turns out it was the phone itself, and not the bills that were trying to kill me.

I wonder.

This is almost tinfoil hat territory, but this sounds remarkably similar to the way tobacco companies once behaved. I wonder if any cellular companies have undergone their own private tests, and if so, I wonder what they have found.

Re:I wonder.

This is almost tinfoil hat territory...

Ironically, your tinfoil hat may actually help in this instance! 8)

Re:I wonder.

That's not tinfoil talk at all. It happens constantly.

Sugar company lobbyists basically tried to label the WHO as idiots and liars when they published reports that recommended decreased sugar consumption as means of increasing cardiovascular health and reducing obesity.
I'm not even going to get in on the fast-food industry.

This is just yet another example of the corporations exerting their stranglehold on US policy to up profits, damn the consequences.

It's really amazing the kind of short-sightedness they exhibit, considering that consumers, and by extension, healthy consumers, are their prime income creating resource.

SAR Testing

FCC requires Specific Absorption Rate [metlabs.com] (SAR) [ce-mag.com] Testing [conformity.com].

This site [sarshield.com] has a list of SAR ratings. For a phone to pass FCC certification, the phone's maximum SAR level must be less than 1.6W/kg (watts per kilogram). The SAR levels shown in the linked chart represent the maximum SAR level with the phone next to the ear.

Biological effects on chick embryo

: Radiats Biol Radioecol. 2003 Sep-Oct;43(5):541-3. Biological effects of mobile phone electromagnetic field on chick embryo (risk assessment using the mortality rate) [Article in Russian] Grigor'ev IuG. State Research Center-Institute of Biophysics, Ministry of Health of Russian Federation, Moscow, 123182 Rissua. [e-mail] Chicken embryos were exposed to EMF from GSM mobile phone during the embryonic development (21 days). As a result the embryo mortality rate in the incubation period increased to 75% (versus 16% in control group). PMID: 14658287 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE

Brown and Williamson

Reminds me of the internal cigarette documents that came to light in the tobacco trials. I wonder if there will be enough people injured to have massive class action suits.

Althoguh from what I understand the new digital cells are nothing like analog phones for the amount of energy they put out. I know when I'm in an analog only area my phone goes flat in less than a day, compared to 3-4 days when I have digital service. So anecdotally I'm seeing maybe 1/3 to 1/4 of the power output with digital.

Half of studies...?

The poster implies we should all worry because half of the studies say it's a health risk...

But by that same logic none of us should worry because half of the studies say there is no damage.

I'm a minimalist w/ my cellphone for reasons other than radiation... but seems to me we need something better than "50% of studies say it's an issue."

Ah hell, who am I kidding, this is slashdot. I'm going to go burn my T610 now. That Bluetooth probably already killed my sperm anyway.

kids

I also remember see graphics that showed that the rad / cell phone leakage goes further into a teenagers (or small childs) brain then that of an adult for the obvious reason that a child's head is smaller...

and guess who is the phone company's biggest new target over the last 3 years....? yep. teeenagers....

but who buys these phones for their kids? Adults...

Of course its for "safety" you know that .0001 of the time they really need it as opposed to the 99.999% of the time they are on the phone with their friends yapping worthlessly...

If i had a kid i would not let use one... yet parents don't even spend time to think of the health effects on their kids...

yet another sad statement on society...

this calls for a double-blind study

Let's issue standard cel phones to one group, placebo cel phones to another and see if there's any difference in cancer rates.

Russian Microwave emission standards

Russia has long had LOWER emission requirements than Western countries. Russian scientists are not stupid. See: http://www.gallawa.com/microtech/Ch3.html Quote from this site: "Rather than concentrating on the effects of high-intensity levels, 'Soviet scientists were focusing their efforts on the lesser-known effects of prolonged or repeated exposure to low levels of microwaves. Their research, which began quite some time before that of their Western counterparts, has yielded some rather unsettling reports. Soviet studies show that long-term exposure to low levels of microwave energy could result in unpleasant effects that are not attributable to over-heating (or thermal effect) alone. These effects could be seen at exposure levels at and below 10mw/cm2, which is the occupational safety standard in the U.S. The USSR, and other European countries, has thus set their own strict guidelines for microwave safety, concluding that Western safety standards are simply not safe. For example, Russian workers are required to wear protective goggles any time they are temporarily exposed to a microwave radiation level of 1mw/cm2, a level routinely allowed to leak (although in recent years, rarely does) from U.S. microwave ovens." Personally I think the Russians know a lot we don't....

Risks of nearby cell towers?

A cell tower was recently installed very near our home. A level-head and concerned neighbor went around with a petition, not to force the removal of the tower, but, restrainedly, just to demand that the community be involved in any such future decisions that may impact health and well being, him noting his concerns about the health impact of the tower. We signed the petition. Is there any research showing negative health effects of nearby cell towers, especially on children?

Just like radium watches and flouroscopes.

I look at this as the thing that we will be laughed at by people in 100 years. Think 100 years ago, people used to wear radioactive radium watches, and 60 years ago, people exposed themselves to harmful amounts of radiation to make sure their shoes [mtn.org] fit properly. Hell, Marie Curie, the father (mother) of modern radioactive theory kept a beaker full of radium next to her bed because it made a swell nightlight. Now, nobody is going to accuse her of being stupid, seeing as how she developed the initial scientific theory leading to most of what we know about physics today. It's just that they didn't know any better. Nowadays, we say "She did WHAT?!?"

I think in 100 years they will be saying "They did WHAT?!? They put microwave transmitters RIGHT NEXT TO THEIR BRAINS! What morons!" The cell phone industry can fight it all they want, but the cigarette industry didn't acknowledge that cigarettes were addivtive until the 1990's.

I don't buy it

The energy per photon is just too low to break covalent bonds, so there is no way microwave energy could break DNA directly, unless you pump in enough energy to cook it.

So you really have to resort to some fancy hypotheses to rationalize this. Well maybe, just maybe, there is some kind of a resonance of the current through an ion channel (although I'm not entirely sure that this is even plausible), which somehow alters its coupling to some intracellular kinase or other second messenger system, which activates an enzyme that happens to produce free radicals, and those break DNA. But I'd have to see some definitive evidence before I take that kind of hypothesis seriously.

The point is that "microwaves damage DNA" is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. "Some studies support it and some do not" simply doesn't qualify.

I'm skeptical of "DNA break" assays, anyway. There is a long history of people finding DNA damage by this and that, and others failing to reproduce the result. It's easy to break DNA--you can even break it by rough handling.

Hard to know

Fifty years from now our grandkids could be laughing at us for holding such dangerous devices up to our heads.

That's why I keep my mobile in my front trousers-pocket. There's no chance I'll be laughed at by grandkids.

Re:Well

We'll all find out later in life when we're 40 and slobbering all over ourselves and mumbling incoherent nothings.


You're new around here aren't you?

Re:So ?

Is there more radiation emanating from my cellphone or from the rest of the city ?

I know it sounds weird, but when I was at University of Missouri-Rolla, I did some work at the nuclear reactor on campus. There is far less radiation inside the reactor building (not inside the reactor core itself) than there is outside on the hockey puck (a big concrete circle in the middle of campus). So, if you are worried about radiation, just move into a nuclear reactor building.

Re:The research is a troll

I think its a valid starting point though. The question is "does the electromagnetic frequency used for cellphones have the ability to interfere with biomechanical processes?" and the answer would be 'yes'.

The next step would be to test on higher-evolved species and mammals (e.g. guinea pigs, cats, eventually primates) to iron out the concerns you've identified. Most likely by the time it reaches humans this will not be a relevant matter... but at least there is some preliminary evidence that would suggest further testing is required.

Re:Half of 200?

Umm - why did you decide to exclude the rest of the information?

From TFA:


Lai says there have been about 200 studies on the biological effects of cell-phone-related radiation. If you put all the ones that say there is a biological effect on one side and those that say there is no effect on the other, you'd have two piles roughly equal in size. The research splits about 50-50.

"That, in and of itself, is alarming," Lai says. But it's not the whole story. If you divide up the same 200 studies by who sponsored the research, the numbers change.

"When you look at the non-industry sponsored research, it's about three to one--three out of every four papers shows an effect," Lai says. "Then, if you look at the industry-funded research, it's almost opposite--only one out of every four papers shows an effect."