Brain Cancer Worries? Look Up Your Phone's SAR 165
CWmike writes "With recent news of a possible link between cell phone radiation and risk of brain cancer, you may have a new-found interest in knowing how much radiation your mobile handset is giving off — or, more importantly, how much your body might be absorbing. The FCC's legal limit for mobile phones is 1.6 Watts of radiofrequency energy per kilogram, using a measure called Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). The Environmental Working Group, which tracks SAR data for more than 1,300 cell phone and smartphone models, notes that several factors besides your handset affect your actual level of exposure. Look up your phone's SAR; or see a full chart of phones." And relax — have a coffee.
only brain cancer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:only brain cancer? (Score:5, Insightful)
It also isn't continuously transmitting at full power while hugging your balls. There's a reason that phones start affecting everything around them when you actually get a call or an SMS. The power output shoots through the roof when it is actually in use.
I'm sorry about your cancer, but I highly doubt the phone had anything to do with it.
Causing cancer (Score:2, Insightful)
Stop reporting it as a finding that "may cause" (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop giving so much weight to this idea that they have concluded that cell phones may cause cancer. It's listed with a ton of other things under the "maybe" level. It's only based on repost that they've read. There was no independent study involved. They read a bunch of reports and based on those, concluded that it falls under the "may cause cancer" classification. As in, they can't state that it does or that it doesn't. Prior to this, they hadn't even gotten around to classifying it. This is a non-news story, except by twats trying to sensationalize it.
Re:Have a Coffee? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stop reporting it as a finding that "may cause" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cell phones cannot cause cancer. Here's WHY. (Score:5, Insightful)
Link them. I just checked the top Google results and there is a whole ONE paper with a group of 25 men which shows a correlation. There is another which covers most of the US forces in Korea and specifically looked at radar technicians which found no correlation (in fact for several categories they had lower cancer rates). All the others are mixed which screams to me "random cancer cluster" not "non-ionising radiation causes cancer".
The thing you are missing is that early radar equipment used exciters that emitted large amounts of IONISING radiation. The stuff that come out of the antenna was non-ionising, but it wouldn't have been healthy sitting next to the actual transmitter.
And those power levels of orders of magnitudes higher then from a cell phone. So the claim is that not only does non-ionising radiation cause cancer in a way that hasn't been identified in over a century of research, but that repeated small exposures are worse then single large exposures of the same overall magnitude. The opposite of how ionising radiation works.
Re:Cell phones cannot cause cancer. Here's WHY. (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason is that the frequencies cell phones use are below the spectrum of ultraviolet light. It is near the spectrum of ultraviolet light where the first ionizing radiation occurs, which is required to be able to cause cancer. Ionizing means that the energy level of the individual photons of the transmission have enough energy to disturb the molecular structure of live cells. Microwave "radiation" (which has absolutely nothing to do with nuclear radiation) is far within the level of the non-ionizing radiation spectrum, so there is no possibility of it having the energy required to cause cancer.
This is total bullshit. There are a lot of studies show the link between EM radiation at longer wavelengths than the UV causing an increase in cancer rates. I'm not even going to bother providing a references to one of the thousand papers on this subject. Just look at some studies performed in England and Belgian on the incidence of cancer for radar operators in WW2. We are speaking of other magnitudes of energy levels, but it still invalids your opening statement. Maybe you also overlooked non-ionizing biological effects?
No; as I said, the non-ionizing effects are microwave heating... and there aren't any ionizing effects. And I quoted both U.S. and international studies and standards that cover over 60 years of scientific research on the subject.
The only thing you're correct about in your comment is that there are papers as well as books that claim a link between microwaves and cancer; it's a very popular myth, and has been for over a decade. I'm saying it's a myth, and I've told you why I'm personally sure it's a myth, and I've given you some of my research on the subject. ...and you've given me your opinion.
And then... the eyes... Again a falsehood. The eyes are very actively cooled, and that with a very high blood flow, to cool them down from the incoming and concentrated (through the eye optics) radiation. On a very sunny day, where you have over 1 kW/m^2 of irradiance, without a good cooling, they would simply burn/cook.
I wonder how one can present such a thought out post, with calculations and everything, but with such blatantly falls information at the same time.
I never said the eyes weren't actively cooled; I said that they're the most sensitive part of the body because they don't have much blood flow due to only having capillaries in them. They're also the most sensitive because with a sufficient increase in temperature, cataracts will result. On other places on the body, an increase in temperature would mostly cause temporary damage or a burn that would heal later -- but not with the eyes.
Re:only brain cancer? (Score:4, Insightful)
a) It's not "recent news"
b) There's no possible link. Not even "maybe".
To quote Bob Parks:
Here's the conversation I have several times a day with total strangers:
Caller: do you use a wired earphone? BP: No. Caller: would it be too much
trouble? BP: No. Caller: Wouldn’t you be safer? BP: No. Caller: How do
you know? BP: Quantum physics; all cancers are caused by mutant strands of
DNA. Electromagnetic radiation can't create mutant strands of DNA unless
the frequency is at or higher than the blue limit of the visible spectrum –
the near-ultraviolet. The frequency of cell phone radiation is about 1
million times too low. Caller: Wow! When did this news break? BP: Albert
Einstein let it out in 1905. Robert Millikan, considered to be the world's
top physics experimentalist, spent a decade constructing an experiment to
test it. It confirmed Einstein's theory perfectly. Caller: I'm shocked!
Are you sure this is right? BP: Virtually the entire modern world rests on
it. Caller: Why am I just hearing about this? BP: Because Sanjay didn't
tell you.
Re:Cell phones cannot cause cancer. Here's WHY. (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason is that the frequencies cell phones use are below the spectrum of ultraviolet light. It is near the spectrum of ultraviolet light where the first ionizing radiation occurs, which is required to be able to cause cancer.
99% of all carcinogenic substances do not emit ionizing radiations. On the other hand it is known that microwaves alter the physiology of the brain:
http://www.nature.com/jcbfm/journal/v29/n5/full/jcbfm200914a.html [nature.com]
http://www.nature.com/jcbfm/journal/v26/n7/full/9600279a.html [nature.com]
There are a lot of scientific articles pointing out that low-power microwaves can damage brain cells or alter their physiology. Since that's the primary effect of a ionizing radiation (cancer is a secondary effect of the induced damage), none can exclude that microwaves can cause cancer because "ionizing radiations are required to be able to cause cancer". They're not.