

Your Phone Is Deadlier Than Pacific Sushi - JumpCrisscross
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-05/your-phone-is-deadlier-than-pacific-sushi.html

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spindritf
> John LaForge, who writes for Nukewatch, correctly notes that there is no
> "safe" level of exposure to radioactivity.

We don't know that. Not only there may be a safe level of exposure, there may
be a _beneficial_ level[1]. Any rigorous experiment would be obviously
unethical so we're just guessing here.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis)

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narfquat
Isn't that how Godzilla and the Incredible Hulk got started?

~~~
whytookay
See? Beneficial...

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beloch
A slightly less wrong (but still wrong) title would be "Sunlight is deadlier
than pacific sushi".

First, this article doesn't even mention cell phone radiation. Second, your
cell phone _isn 't_ deadlier than pacific sushi. Damage to DNA caused by EM
radiation is more a function of frequency than intensity. A small amount of
X-Ray radiation is far more damaging than sitting in front of an infrared lamp
getting toasty warm all day. Sunlight is far likelier to give you cancer than
cell-phone emissions. Eating a banana, or Pacific sushi, is extraordinarily
unlikely to give you cancer, but it does increase the odds more than using
your cell-phone will.

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finkin1
I've always been told that "sunlight causes skin cancer" but after 20 minutes
of looking around the Internet, I can't seem to find an actual scientific
study that confirms the statement to be true.

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tristanj
UV radiation found in sunlight can produce Pyrimidine dimers, which can lead
to genetic mutations. Essentially, the UV radiation causes two DNA bases
(Thymine or Cytosine) to fuse together and make that portion of DNA
unreadable. Fortunately, our cells have mechanisms to repair such DNA damage,
but if damage is acquired faster than the cell is able to repair itself, then
permanent mutation is likely. If a cell acquires too many mutations, the
mechanisms that prevent it from continuously replicating may fail, and the
cell will replicate uncontrollably and spread throughout the body. This
situation is known as cancer, and can occur in many different ways, making it
fairly difficult to treat.

There's a nice summary of the process listed here:
[http://theoncologist.alphamedpress.org/content/6/3/298.full](http://theoncologist.alphamedpress.org/content/6/3/298.full)

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finkin1
Right. This is the exact type of language I found everywhere else. Just
because it "can" mutate which "can" become cancerous does not mean there is a
direct correlation between UV radiation and skin cancer. I'd like to see some
actual studies with controlled variables.

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beloch
Getting cancer is like winning the lottery, and every time you go out in the
sun, use a cleaning product, get an X-Ray, take an intercontinental flight,
eat a banana, etc. you get a varying number of tickets. Unlike a lottery, once
you finally "win" it's virtually impossible to figure out which ticket was
"lucky".

To do a controlled study on humans you'd need those humans to record an
impractical amount of information about their day-to-day actions over their
entire lives. This isn't going to happen anytime soon. To make matters worse,
humans also use sunlight to synthesize Vitamin D, and low levels of Vitamin D
are also correlated with cancer. So... Too much UV gives you cancer and too
little can give you cancer if you don't get enough Vitamin D in your diet,
which might also give you cancer. Okay... So use mice. Do mice respond exactly
the same way to everything as humans? No... Probably not...

Medical science is a bit like trying to figure out how to build the ultimate
F1 car on a budget that only lets you work with Lada's.

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afreak
If humans were truly in danger from eating 'contaminated' fish, then we would
have all died when we started to introduce coal smoke into our atmosphere
(contains Caesium 137 and most plants emit more radiation per year than a
nuclear plant does in its lifetime) and when the Crab Nebula decided to show
its pretty colours (gamma and x-ray radiation) in the daytime centuries ago.

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worldsayshi
Ah. I'd say don't that this fud could be allowed to run its course for a
little while. The tuna could use some time to recover.

~~~
gojomo
Now there's an interesting thought. Environmental-disaster/health-scare
hoaxes, to give certain targeted wild ecosystems a chance to heal. If the
environmental movement ever gets a covert operations agency, maybe that's what
we'll see. (Or are already seeing?)

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Groxx
It's not working very well, if that's the case.

Maybe a new strategy is in order? They could spread documents that reveal that
tuna has been involved in all major internet trolling incidents between 2010
and 2013.

~~~
reginaldjcooper
They should go with "studies have shown that chemical X (found in tuna) can
cause male genitalia to shrink by up to 17%". People don't care about dying 10
years sooner, but they do care about having bigger penises.

~~~
Moto7451
Not sure about that either. When I was in middle school Mountain Dew was said
to do exactly that. I think parents and teachers just wanted kids to stay away
from sugary drinks. My friends kept drinking it anyways.

[http://www.snopes.com/medical/potables/mountaindew.asp](http://www.snopes.com/medical/potables/mountaindew.asp)

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kayoone
> If lowering the cumulative exposure to radiation is the goal, there's
> probably more to be gained by not walking around with a mobile phone glued
> to your ear than skipping a meal of tuna.

Thats the only reference they make to phones in the whole article, i really
wonder who picks those headlines ?

Besides, the Banana theory is total nonsense. Our body needs the potassium
found in bananas to work. The electrical signals that power your heart are
only possible because of potassium and calcium. If your potassium is too
low/high, your heart can get arrhythmias, you might even die. Nothing to worry
about though, as the body manages a constant postassium level in the blood,
but still, without foods containing it we couldnt survive.

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yk
Seriously, I do not get the point of the article. Is a article reporting on
the horrible headlines of other articles nowadays news?

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elchief
The first rule of nuclear accidents is that all interested parties will lie
through their teeth to protect their interests

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Groxx
Unless you count the mercury.

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enscr
I think I got something more harmful than radiation after reading this
article.

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traughber
This is click bait.

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bsullivan01
_``Your Days of Eating Pacific Ocean Fish Are Over at the Very Least, '' reads
the headline of a post accompanied by photos of people suffering from
radiation poisoning, as well as a deformed infant"_

Brilliant campaign for the anti-whaling /anti-fishing crowd actually. The
truth doesn't matter, as long as people believe it.

 _" And the plant operators and government seem to be blundering from one
miscalculation to the next. If the scale of the leak increases, or large
quantities of more persistent radioactive elements such as strontium-90 get
into the food chain, there might be cause for greater concern. So far, that
doesn't seem to have happened."_

The governments also lie ("downplay")
[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2011/jun/...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2011/jun/30/email-
nuclear-uk-government-fukushima) for one reason or another (commerce, not
cause panic etc) so their numbers would mean little to me. Better safe than
sorry, it's not like I can't do without Japanese fish for xxx days.

