NYC Subway Cell Service, No Cell-Related Cancer

Luke PiWalker wrote to mention a CNN article discussing a bid process for offering cell phone service to NYC subway stations. The contract is only to wire up stations; moving trains will not have service. Those New Yorkers will also be safe from their phones, as the BBC reports on a study indicating cell phones don't cause cancer. From that article, submitted to us by Dan Hope: "She acknowledged that there appeared to be an increased risk among brain cancer sufferers on the side of the head where they held the phone. The team, however, did not put this down to a causal link, because almost exactly the same decreased risk was seen on the other side of the head, leaving no overall increase risk of tumours for mobile phone users. Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on."

The Other Way Around?

Maybe the reaearchers have this whole brain tumor thing backwards.

Instead of:
"Cell phones cause brain tumors," they could look into "Brain tumors cause cell phones."

Maybe people who already have a tumor in the side of their head are naturally attracted to using that side to hold their phone.

RE Cells

I still would rather have my cell to my ear, than sitting in my lap while I am using a headset, for obvious male reasons.
The Metro in DC has had Cell service for quite sometime. As much as the NYC subway is nice because it is free from Cell yell, I can'y imagine not being able to use my wireless services while commuting.

Above ground

It's worth noting that a good 40% or so of what we call The Subway is actually above ground, on elevated and surface lines, and you can blab on your cell all you want while riding.

Re:Above ground

True, but the 40% of the NYC subway system which is above-ground also tends to be in more outlying areas of the system, and therefore less-traveled and sometimes less-populated areas.

A train's time spent above ground may also be quite brief, as is the case

Re:Above ground

Yeah but most idiots that move to New York from out-of-town think that Manhattan is the only borough of New York and they are afraid to go to Brooklyn or Queens or The Bronx for fear of getting lost.

Most life-long Manhattan dwellers think the same way

moving trains will not have service

Well, It's a good beginning, but in downtown Montreal we have cell services even in the Métro (subway) train !

While I don't relish...

While I don't relish the thought of hearing people chattering away on their phones while waiting for a train, the idea of being able to reach people I'm trying to meet up with sounds good. Especially when going outside to get service means being out in the rain.

Choose your hemisphere wisely

So, now that you can choose which side of your brain is more likely to get a tumor, decide which hemisphere you need more and use the other ear for your cellphone.
Logical. Artistic. Logical? Artistic? Logical! Artistic!
Choices, choices.

Good news.

She acknowledged that there appeared to be an increased risk among brain cancer sufferers on the side of the head where they held the phone...Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on.

I hold my phone on the outside of my head. Does that mean I have a reduced risk of getting brain cancer inside of my head? This is good news for people who use my cellphone usage technique.

Studies. What do they know?

Why should we listen to studies? Shouldn't we believe that cell phones cause cancer if that belief meets our emotional needs?

After all, all studies are funded by someone. So we can decide they're biased based on what we wish their conclusions were. And then we can continue to believe what we want.

C'mon. Everyone's doing it.

If it isn't the cellphone that kills, its the AIR

According [acs.org] to Swedish scientists, people should be more worried about the subway air they breathe, than their cell phone use.

Powerwatch is a company, not a nonprofit.

If you have a look at the powerwatch [powerwatch.co.uk] website, you'll notice two sections that are rather interesting: catalog [powerwatch.org.uk] and price list [powerwatch.org.uk].

They sell worthless junk along the same lines as aluminum foil hats, and magic-crystal healing devices. They aren't protecting people from EMF, they are getting rich of scaring people into believing that it's going to destroy them and their families.

They completely disregard the fact that we have been, and continue to be bombarded by radiation from natural sources such as the sun, celestial events, and the Earth's magnetic core. Making our homes into faraday cages just means that we won't be bombarded by EMF in our houses, but wait! Every single electronic device emits some amount of EMF, from your toaster, to your microwave, to your vibrator, it's all going to emit some amount of EMF and you really can't escape it without becoming a Luddite and living in a sealed hovel in some remote location.

It's also important to note that there are different kinds of radiation, at its purest definition, it's the transmission of energy via waves. In that case, sound is radiation, ripples in water, also radiation. What most people confuse, however, is electromagnetic radiation versus particle radiation. Electromagnetic radiation is the oscillation of magnetic fields, particle radiation is caused by nuclear decay and the two are quite different. Electrons moving around is a lot less invasive than a red hot proton ripping through the nuclei of your cells which leads us to how cancer is caused by radiation. Particle radiation, caused by nuclear decay, shoots off ions at high velocities which actually shoot through your body and kill cells. Sometimes, in the process of doing this, they will damage the nucleus of a cell but not so much that the cell dies, just enough to mangle its DNA. This can cause faulty reproduction of this cell which can, in turn, cause tumors, or even cancerous growths. This kind of radiation is fundamentally different from the kind of radiation that makes your microwave and even oven (yes, heat is radiation!) work.

It's this lexical confusion that throws a lot of people off, yes it's radiation, no it's not dangerous unless at very high energy levels. And even then, it just cooks you like so much hot dogs. You don't grow tumors, you don't get cancer, you don't turn into a hideous fly-man, you just pop like a big water-ballon.

Re:How hard would it be?

The Metro in DC has cell service in Trains. I am not sure how they do it, but that would be a good place to research to see how it is done.

read about it here (pdf)

You can read how they wire tunnels for cell phones here:
PDF file warning!
http://www.adc.com/Library/Literature/100557.pdf? r efer=promotion&c=digivance [adc.com]

Re:How hard would it be?

They'd have to setup mini-cell towers at intervals along almost the entire length of the system. It would be prohibitively expensive to try and shoehorn this is after the fact.

Like many things, it's invariably cheaper and easier to implement 'features' whi

Re:How hard would it be?

Actually, servicing a subway train would not require antenna's all along the tunnels.

You put a cell-receiver in the train, and run communication signals from the train through radio signals out the tracks, the same as you can control model trains on a DCC setup railway, or do IP over powerlines.

Leaky Coax

Leaky Coax would likely be a cheap way to handle it. You would still need "towers" at regular intervals, but then you run a copper line along the train line for each antena. This is a pretty common trick in large buildings. You let the carrier install antenas on your roof line and drop leaky coax off one of them so that the signal inside the building is just as strong as the signal outside. The expencive part would be getting the pipe to support the volume. I road the DC blue line a few times during rush hour, there are ALOT of people in a very small area. Running that many people on one antena might not work so well, expecially when they are all getting handed off every 45 seconds. You might need some type of redundant line of antenas to handle the call volume, hand offs, and load balancing. And then likely a fiber line to carry the data from the antenas back to the junction. -Rick -Rick

Re:cooking the numbers

C. Cell phones don't cause cancer.

Re:non-users adds bias

What you have left is simple: does the cancer happen on one side more than the other? Well, yes it does. That's enough to say that cell phones are almost certainly affecting the cancer.

But you are missing the entire point of the study. They found that there was a corresponding drop in cancer on the side of the head where the cancer wasn't, in comparison to a control group of one-side cancers who don't use cell phones. In other words, cell phones aren't causing elevated levels of one-side brain cancer, cell phone users with one-side brain cancer are (intentionally or unintentionally) erroneously claiming the cancer side is the side where they used their cell phone most.

Re:Cell Phone Triggered Bombs

Since a good number of bombs are triggered by clocks, maybe we should forbid private clocks.

Re:Increase terrorism this way?

The whole point in using a cell is as a remote detonator.

If you can see the subway from far enough away to not be caught in the blast, and hence it's outside and the cell works, or you can't see it, and hence don't know when to detonate it, or you are wil

Re:Increase terrorism this way?

Crawl back into the hole you came from, moron.

I live in Madrid, and used the same line where the train blew up to go to class every day. One of my friends was even there when it blew up, but fortunately wasn't hurt.

However, I happen to be sane enough to re

I Don't Care

I want to use my cell phone on the subway. I don't care if a terrorist might use it to blow me up. I don't see that terrorism is a significant threat to my person.

However, terrorism will become a threat to my way of life if the fear of it prevents me from

Re:Oh hell.

When they get obnoxious, I just participate in their conversation.

Obnoxious Cell Phone User: "Dude did you hear about Heather and Mack?"

Me, over his shoulder: "Is Mack banging Heather?"

OCPU: "Excuse me?"

Me: "Oh, sorry, your voice was so loud I thought you were talking to me."

OCPU: "...so, anyway, Heather and Mack...(talks a while and then he gets loud again)...yeah, man, they were in the hot tub for two hours."

Me: "I hear that Mack's member was shriveled up like a prune from the hot water."

OCPU: "Dude, I'm not talking to you!"

Me: "Then stop shouting how Mack is sodomizing Heather in the jacuzzi."

Re:WTF?

No, the problem is that it proves nothing except a possible reporting bias.

Someone with a brain tumor knows it's on the left side of his head. When asked which side he holds his cell phone on, he reports that he holds it on the left side of his head.

For those that report that they hold the cell phone on the left side of their head--if cell phones caused an increased risk of brain tumors--you would see an increased risk of left-side tumors and a STANDARD risk of right-side tumors. But what the study actually found was that there was an "increased" risk of left-side tumors and a "decreased" risk of right-side tumors with left-side cell phone holders.

What that indicates is that the reporting of which side of their head they have historically held the cell phone on may have become biased due to them knowing that there's a tumor in the left side of their head. They might have been right-side holders, but "recall" that they were left-side holders because, of course, everybody knows that holding the cell phone on one side of the head causes brain tumors. It's an indication of a possible self-reporting bias, rather than an actual connection.

So, basically, what the study said was that people with left-side tumors reported that they held the cell phone on the left side, while people with right-side tumors reported that they held the cell phone on the right side, WHETHER OR NOT it was reality. The decreased risk of other-side tumors indicates that it may not be reality--that the public assocation between brain tumors and cell phones causes a person to report that they held the cell phone on the side of their head with the tumor even if they did not.