Everyone's still confused about whether there's a link between cellphone use and cancer. In other news, everyone's still worried there may be a link between cellphone use and cancer. Safer either way, perhaps: use corded earbuds to reduce RF exposure?
Cellphones and Cancer: OMG + FUD + WTF
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Yes, and everyone is also still confused as to whether HIV causes AIDS, or whether the dark side of the moon houses a reptillian brain bank. Both sides of the story are always valid. Always. Better to be safe than sorry.
although i can tell you're making fun of people i'm not actually certain which way the bb doctrine falls on this issue.
are you making fun of the people who think there is or isn't a cancer link? or perhaps those who are confused?
this is probably why i tire of sarcasm quickly.
there is no such thing as bb doctrine. and this is not sarcasm. i am among many who have concern over this issue, and do not know whether the phone i use 24/7 may be causing risks to my health.
i'm an epidemiologst, and while i have great faith that all kinds of technical transformations of our world produce adverse health effects, i have to be highly skeptical of the evidence linking cell phone use to brain cancer. leaving aside what mechanism might explain such effects, the case-control nature of the studies which are highly susceptible to recall bias (especially over the long term required for the development and progression of brain cancers) make this body of evidence very poor in my opinion.
perhaps a decent prospective study will establish a positive risk between cell phone use and brain cancers--say, from a country like sweden, which has such good surveillance linked with its health care system--but as of today, from what i have seen, we do not have a credible body of evidence linking the two.
Even if EM radiation from mobiles is associated with an increased incidence of glioma, then it's a pretty small increase in absolute risk. Once you've cut your calorie intake and increased your daily exercise to maintain a healthier bodyweight, given up alcohol and tobacco, protected yourself from solar or sunbed UV, had your pap smear and your five-yearly colonoscopy, and had your Gadarsil jabs, then, well yes, then worry about your mobile use. Though maybe we should be more worried about this... http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0006446
Corded earbuds may be worse for you, by focusing the radiation into your ears, where there's less bone to absorb the radiation.
The cell phone/brain cancer "link" is just like the MMR/autism "link" and for the same reasons. Some people need something to blame for bad luck. Math isn't as convincing as a good story.
"Safer either way, perhaps: use corded earbuds to reduce RF exposure?"
Some researchers are concerned that the earbud cable can be more effective at radiating energy into your body than the phone alone. A UK consumer testing group advised against "hands-free" use in 2000 because of this, but may have modified their opinion since.
Anyway, if the energy is a concern to you, use a ferrite bead on the cord of your hands-free earpiece, close to the phone itself, and keep the phone away from your body.
(note I'm not endorsing any link between phone use and cancer, just advising against amelioration strategies that would actually enhance the problem.)
>use a ferrite bead on the cord of your hands-free earpiece
in a nice range of designs and colors, etsy, some blog coverage, and you've got yourself a hefty profit. nice.
EM waves causing cancer at certain power levels and after enough exposure is a poven fact, but a cellphone is a completely different beast: think about irregular use of a thing that radiates in different directions using complex pulsating signals at different power levels. I'm not saying cellphones are safe but be prepared to lots of contradictory results, and of course a strong pressure from carriers, manufacturers, ill informed environmentalists and politicians trying to build a career on them.
What's certain is that, once you take into account power and distance, a cellphone in your hand radiates much more power in your direction than a nearby tower (inverse square law), therefore all those people who think they're rightfully concerned about that tower in front of their house should stop immediately using cellphones because their brain is certainly getting much more waves from their phone than from the tower.
Using corded earbuds is no different than using bluetooth ones in that context: bluetooth phones use a very low amount of power (up to a few milliwatts) which makes them very safe for wearing. There are of course class 1 dongles capable of transmitting at about 100mW, but usually you don't wear them, so they're pretty safe.
Or use bluetooth. The reason cellphones cause problems is because it uses a VERY powerfull signal to communicate. Bluetooth uses a MUCH weaker signal, at a completely different frequency.
The stress of being connected 24/7 may be a significant factor in any adverse health effects. Also infernal auto-mobiles will scare the cows in the fields and make them produce nothing but buttermilk.
So is the possible risk made worse if one sleeps with the cell phone by the bed every night? I know many people who use the phone's alarm to wake up every morning... Is the risk present at all times, or only while making a call?
This is about a meta-study of 23 studies. Taken together, the 23 studies didn't find any significant link between cell phone use and cancer.
Then somebody decided to only take the 8 studies that *do* show some correlation, calling them "stronger" and discarded the rest of the data. That's some incredibly bad science. You can prove anything if you discard the data that disagrees with your premise.
See this post on depletedcranium.com:
http://depletedcranium.com/worst-cherry-picking-and-math-ever/