Any thoughts on mobile phone radiation and its dangers to people? The mobile industry is quite active in drowning out unfavorable opinions about mobile phone radiation. Anyone know of any real scientific research, as opposed to scientific research that can be bought?

When I asked my mother's neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital about the possible correlation between brain cancer and cell phones, he was fast to respond that he keeps his cell phone far from his head and far from his reproductive organ. This was after he told me that he is seeing a noticeable increase in the number of patients with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a particularly nasty form of terminal brain cancer.

Here's a link for an interesting article: http://www.radiationresearch.org/pdfs/reasons_us.pdf

After watching my mother die from GBM in October, my family is keeping our cell phones as far from our heads as possible just in case there is a connection. I haven't checked, but it seems that some manuals for cell phones advise users to keep the phone 1 1/2 inches from the body. I wonder why?

Apparently using a handsfree set makes it worse, as the extra wire acts as an aerial.

Just to be on the safe side, here are 8 tips to reduce exposure to cell phone radiation from the article that I mentioned above:


1. When on a call, use a wired headset (not a wireless headset such as a Bluetooth), or use in speaker-phone mode, or send text messages.

Did your mother use her mobile phone a lot?

My mother didn't use her cell phone as frequently as many people, but we did talk for long periods at a time. I'm not sure if her cell phone played a role in her getting brain cancer or not, but her neurosurgeon's response to my question about cell phones caught my attention and makes me want to be more careful in the future.

I'm sorry about your mom. I've heard a lot about the dangers, but don't know what to make of it. I do know it emits a pretty powerful signal. Before LED monitors, my phone would scramble my CRT monitor whenever it rings. And it scrambles my car radio when driving by certain places.

I think a lot of people are familiar with that. I've even heard the signal sampled by some punk bands.

What is bothersome is that I don't know of any credible and adequate research. I've heard of some statistics, but actual science on what is does to the body. One study I read said that it has the effect of clumping up red bloods cells during and immediately after use. But I don't know how scientific the study was.

Thanks for the advise. I will try to put it into practice.

Actually, bluetooth is nearly totally harmless. A bluetooth headset emit next to no radiation, a wired headset is almost an extension of the phone and so is almost as harmful.

Unfortunately cell phones have been masively used only in the last 15 years, been in the market longer though. Cancer being a long latency disease (takes it years to actually develop) is a difficult outcome to study. Unfortunately I said because we will need mroe years, and more studies to come up with a definite answer. Ill check on the epid of GBM, not my area of expertise but then Ill post something more decent...
BTW sorry about your mother

It can be a bit over the top but there's a site that has a lot of info if you search on it for EMF. www.mercola.com

Ok, I stick my head out and tell you that I used to work at one of the main manufacturer of mobile phone equipment.

To answer you question: There are plenty of studies out there, half saying no and half saying yes. I personally believe that non of them is completely unbiased. I am neither a doctor, not a good researcher, but I am fairly sure that cancer is usually a result of some long term factors. Since mobile phones have been around for only two to three decades in the current form, any prediction has a lot of speculation in it.

Facts as far as I am concerned:
- Radiation is in general not very healthy.
- Mobile phone radiation is in the micro wave lenght spectrum, which is really not very healthy.
- The same technology is used to cook meals or even for defense technology
- A microwave oven has some hundred watts while a phone has less than a Milliwatt. It would take more than 1,5 Million mobile phones to deliver the same radiation my microwave oven does. This is very little radiation.
- Many of the tips I read on the Internet are complete rubbish. For example the one above on not using bluetooth headsets: The bluetooth headset connects to a phone which is a meter away. The phone connects to a base station which is maybe 400 Meter away. Guess which one emits more radiation... so while I leave it open if the phone is really unhealthy, a wireless headset would surely lower the risk.

One of the most interesting points I know about: The question is actually not only how strong the radiation is, but the direction. A microwave oven focusses many rays on one spot to heat it. The "stick" antennas old mobiles had send out the rays nearly parallel. This should in theory have very little effect. The phones with build-in antennas will always radiate in a less parallel fashion, but consumers seemed to have preferred the designs.

I personally believe that the danger is very very small. I am probably exposed to other things that have a worse effect than my mobile phone, from the various things added in food to chemicals in clothes or cars or furniture or wall paint.

While it may not be enough to turn our head into a roast, doesn't it take only a small quantity of cells for cancer to develop?

Yes, but I think it is so little that it really might not have an impact at all. Just to compare:
Above was mentioned, that some studies suggest that x-raying babies does have a negative impact. I had a look at average medical x-ray machines: The ones from today are far stronger than my microwave oven, so they translate into an exposure of radiation of several Million mobile phones at once. That does not sound healthy. And I am pretty sure that the 1960s x-ray machines that were in use when the researched people were in fact babies were not more healthy than the ones from today.
So this would mean to me: If x-rays are obviously so much stronger, I would expect everyone who has been x-rayed before to get cancer long before the first hardcore mobile users are affected. But that is just me.

There are no (properly scientific) studies showing a statistically significant link between mobile phone usage and an increase in brain cancer. The biggest study of this to date was published back in October this year. It's a longitudinal study of nigh on 60,000 cancer sufferers, i.e. it looks at how incidences of brain cancer have changed over time and compares this to mobile phone usage to determine if there is an statistically significant increase in cancer rates as mobile phone usage has increased. There isn't one. Here's the abstract of the report: http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/c...tract/djp415v1

This being the real world, it is important to note that it is impossible to categorically prove 100% that there is no causal link between two things (the authors point out that their results mean that "the induction period relating mobile phone use to brain tumors exceeds 5–10 years, the increased risk in this population is too small to be observed, the increased risk is restricted to subgroups of brain tumors or mobile phone users, or there is no increased risk") which always leaves space for the conspiracy theorists, but basically it's completely safe to carry on using your phone (except when driving ;-))!

Oh, and the reason why most of these studies are carried out in Scandanavia is that they have a longer history of common mobile phone use than anywhere else, so you can have a bigger sample group in your study and produce more reliable results.

I think you already did the research, thanks! Ill check Pubmed tomorrow anyways to see what I fin, now I am curious. Thanks!!!

The type of radiation that everybody agrees causes damage and therefore cancer is ionizing radiation, and X-rays can be a type of ionizing radiation depending on intensity and frequency. However the microwave radiation that mobile phones is not ionizing, hence mobile devices are theoretically safe.

This is the first time in human history that people are regularly and habitually exposing themselves to low level microwave radiation. As such this situation is unprecedented. No one knows what if any damage is caused by mobile phone use.

Sure everybody's heard stories about a mate of a mates girlfriends brothers baby sitter getting a brain tumor, and about how she was always chatting on the mobile phone, and yeah, that must have caused it. But the fact is that there are magnitudes more people who have the phone stuck to their ear all day long that don't go on to develop cancer.

As I stated in my previous post I believe we are a long way from knowing what if any long term effects there are from using mobile phones.

I'm sitting on the fence with this one, one side of me says the level of radiation emitted is so small that it cannot possibly be harmful, but the other side of me says we just don't know at the moment, hence I try to limit my use of my mobile - within reason.

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...allegedly.

yeah, what he said

Totally agree with Slaphead here.

I spent years of my life in front of actual microwave sources (1+kW sources, so around 1000 cellphones at once). I'm still alive. I've probably had more exposure than Paris Hilton will ever have in her vapid, cellphone driven life.

Truly the most dangerous use of cellphones is while driving. That scares me more than anything else.

Edit: These sources were actual magnetrons, if anyone is feeling picky. Not just microwave ovens.