
Don’t keep cell phones next to your body, California Health Department warns - gdeglin
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/dont-keep-cell-phones-next-to-your-body-california-health-department-warns/
======
ahh
If you discovered a mechanism by which it was possible for a cell phone to
cause cancer, you'd win a Nobel Prize in physics.

Not "you discovered that they did, in fact, cause cancer"; just discovering a
way that it is physically possible for them to do so.

This dates back to Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect: it's
easy to show (and the only thing consistent with all of 20th century physics!)
that light can only cause molecular damage if individual photons carry enough
energy, which in turn only happens if the radiation is of sufficiently high
frequency (like UV light, X-Rays, or gamma radiation.) Any radio signal from a
cell phone isn't. End of discussion.

Unless you are being actually cooked by a microwave, your cell phone does not
and cannot cause cancer.

"Radiation" is a scary word for non experts, but the California Health
Department should know better.

~~~
gatmne
>End of discussion.

Science is not a static. Believing absolutely in a specific scientific result
and refusing to accept that it may be wrong is as harmful to our advancement
as those who refused to acknowledge that the earth isn't flat (they also used
their limited understanding to justify their position).

To reuse your opening statement, you'd also win a Nobel Prize if you could
conclusively prove that "your cell phone cannot cause cancer" and "any radio
signal from a cell phone [doesn't]."

~~~
dwaltrip
> Believing absolutely in a specific scientific result and refusing to accept
> that it may be wrong is as harmful

You are missing the primary thrust of the argument. They are saying: "This
goes against known science -- proving otherwise would be a massive scientific
discovery which would require reconceptualizing a century of work. This is
highly unlikely".

Assuming the commenter is operating with robust scientific understanding [1],
then there isn't any dogmatic belief here.

[1] I haven't researched this cellphone cancer thing personally so I can't
strongly argue that point one way or another. However, my cursory
understanding is that there isn't strong evidence for it.

~~~
manmal
I looked up „Dogma“: Prescribed doctrine proclaimed as unquestionably true by
a particular group.

Seems to be exactly what a lot of folks here are trying to do - „non-ionizing
radiation cannot cause cancer, period.“

~~~
dwaltrip
It's called "strong opinions weakly held".

There are good scientific reasons to think cellphones don't cause cancer.
However, if enough compelling evidence was found otherwise, then it would be
important to update our understanding accordingly.

~~~
shintakezou
The wording “X causes Y” is slippery. Saying “X increases the probability of
Y”, is another thing. Thinking about smoke, with “smoke causes cancer” I
expect every smoker to have cancer. It isn't so. If the effect of X on the
probability that Y occurs is too much small, maybe it's just that we haven't
enough statistical data (yet) to see it. Then, even if the effect could be
statistically seen, telco companies could always say that it's safer than
driving a car… Or a new business for body-cellphones shields could be made…
Or, more likely, some people will pay more attention at to where they put
their cellphones.

------
sporkologist
I was hoping this article published new findings from a medical study, or at
least some evidence. Nope. I think their lawyers are just freaking out
preemptively just in case anyone finds an effect and a cause.

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ASalazarMX
“The cellphone manufacturers want you to keep a minimum distance away from
your body and you should find out what that distance is,”

Couldn't be more vague, what a useless recommendation.

~~~
theandrewbailey
> ...you should find out what that distance is

And just how are we supposed to do that? Do double blind testing with
ourselves in every group? Wait until we have a tumor?

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mrigor
Joel Moskowitz is a psychology professor.

NIH has a whole page dedicated to this [https://www.cancer.gov/about-
cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r...](https://www.cancer.gov/about-
cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet)

~~~
linkmotif
Really don’t understand how or why people trust the government. It’s one thing
not to buy into FUD. It’s another thing to say the government having a page on
the Internet is some conclusive thing.

~~~
stephengillie
The government is made from people, just like businesses are. Who do you
trust, Verisign?

And who makes money from our worrying about cell phone cancer?

~~~
linkmotif
The government is paid to say things by lobbyists and currently denies global
warming. A year ago global warming was a national security threat.

I don’t trust Verisign. But I rely on companies that have their profits at
stake when they conduct business. Which is not the case for government, which
gets its revenue by coercion and spends it haphazardly, spasmodically with
abandon.

Trusting entities that aren’t your closest relatives and friends is naive and
careless.

> And who makes money from our worrying about cell phone cancer?

Every news outlet that got clicks on the subject. The Worry Industry, broadly.
Why do you think people took the time to report on it? Altruism? Boredom? You
think techcrunch.com is a hobby? Every day these people go to work and
identify click bait so they can keep their jobs. Many people make money from
this.

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ashark
What about wifi-only mode? Is Bluetooth fine? Those'd also affect tablets,
laptops, and maybe eink readers, among other things. Gaming handhelds.

Been kicking around going wifi-only anyway, with a crappy burner on a prepaid
plan in the car for emergencies.

~~~
ASalazarMX
Also, don't keep smartwatches next to your body!

~~~
manmal
Yeah I'm wondering about that one. I guess the Apple watch with LTE has a
lower power chip than usual such that it is ok to wear.

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Cyberdog
Okay, so we've had maybe a good ten or fifteen years or so of a significant
portion of the American population carrying cell phones very close to their
bodies for several hours a day. If this were a significant cause of cancer,
wouldn't we have more concrete evidence of it by this point? If not now, then
when?

~~~
nashashmi
Any tinfoil hat expert can claim the recent trends of increase in (fill in
illness here) is a direct result of cell phone use.

The problem is no direct correlation can be found that proves this because we
live in a world of so many rapid changes and the effects get lost by a host of
other factors.

So is there proof of damage? Sure.

Can we isolate it to be from cell phone use? No.

Can we be sure that it is not? No.

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yincrash
Will they also recommend to opt out of millimeter wave scanners? If we're
going to talk about risks of one type of nonionizing radiation, why not that
one too?

~~~
lend000
This one seems far more relevant, being higher frequency than cell phones. Not
a big fan of government-imposed radiation.

------
Toast_25
Well this is vague...

"Keep cellphones away form body, but we won't tell you how far away or what
the consequences might be"

~~~
greglindahl
That's because there are none, other than a little heating.

It's not ionizing radiation, so it can't give you cancer. See Einstein's
Nobel-prize winning paper from 1905.

~~~
dekhn
Hi, I'm a scientist. I have a PhD in Biophysics, and I've studied a lot of
biology and radiation.

The statement that non-ionizing radiation can't give you cancer is effectively
false. It is based on applying the mechanisms by which ionizing radiation
causes cancer. While non-ionizing radiation does not cause double strand
breaks and other mutations that can lead to cancer, you cannot use that
assertion to claim that non-ionizing radiation does not cause cancer. It could
certainly cause cancer by other means- for example, through induction of heat
shock proteins as a response to cellular heating. To my knowledge, nobody has
demonstrated this convincingly, although, given the fact that heat shock
protein activation can lead to cancer (or cause existing pre-tumors to start
growing faster), you can see that we immediately have plausible mechanisms to
study, if there is indication that cancer is occurring.

Another way of putting this: if people found strong epidemiological evidence
that cell phones caused brain cancer in humans (they haven't, yet), the nature
of that mechanism would be subjected to intense scrutiny.

Everything I've stated above is completely mainstream science; nothing I said
is controversial. Your mention of the Einstein paper is really a canard- it
bears no direct relationship to the biology of the situation.

~~~
greglindahl
Hi, I'm a physicist. Our community doesn't agree with your community on this
issue.

Oh, and you did notice that I mentioned heating, I hope. As you know, the
standard for cellphone radiation is already calibrated to prevent significant
heating.

~~~
makmanalp
Here's some evidence re: non-ionizing radiation and tumors:

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/major-cell-
phone-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/major-cell-phone-
radiation-study-reignites-cancer-questions/)

> The fact that scientists were able to expose animals to nonionizing
> radiation (like that emitted by cell phones) and those animals went on to
> develop tumors but that exposure did not significantly raise the animals'
> body temperatures was “important” to release, Bucher says.

Actual site:
[https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/](https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/results/areas/cellphones/)

~~~
dekhn
My one comment as a biologist is that the biology community calls the rats
they used in that study (Sprague Dawley) should be called "cancer rats",
because they seem predisposed to getting cancer no matter what you give them.
It's not clear to me whether this is humor, or not.

------
LeoPanthera
> The CDHP recommends not keeping your phone in your pocket

Good luck with that!

~~~
Toast_25
A faraday bag might be a decent solution, they're expensive to buy, but cheap
to DIY.

~~~
meitham
Keep your phone in a Faraday's pocket/bag? How do you receive calls then?

~~~
floren
You don't, that's the beauty of it. But you can make a call when you need it.

~~~
meitham
Why can't we replace airplane mode with farady mode?

~~~
floren
Actually that's a good point, you don't really need a Faraday bag because
airplane mode should have the same effect.

I say should, because I keep hearing about how phones don't really turn the
radios off when you put them in airplane mode. But at least you don't get
phone calls in airplane mode.

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beloch
When people try to convince me my cellphone is giving me cancer, I ask them to
prove to me that using a cellphone for fifteen minutes is worse than going
outside in the sun for fifteen minutes (sunlight is objectively more likely to
give you cancer).

Cellphones communicate via microwaves, which is just electromagnetic radiation
(EMR) of a lower-energy (per photon) wavelength than visible light. Yes, the
UV component of sunlight can give you cancer because it's just barely high
enough energy to be ionizing. Visible light won't do that, and microwaves are
safer still.

Oh, thermal burns can cause cancer too you say, and we use microwave ovens to
cook things! Yes. My phone has never cooked me though. A 3.7V, 3700mAh cell
phone battery contains about 10 Wh of energy. A typical microwave oven uses
around 1000W, so it would drain a cell-phone battery completely in around 36
seconds. Try putting a kilogram of something that's mostly water in a
microwave oven for just 36 seconds. It's barely going to warm up. I wouldn't
be worried about my cellphone cooking me even if it lasted just 36 seconds on
a charge, but mine lasts for many _hours_.

Can I prove that your phone isn't giving you cancer? No. That's not how
science works. I can't prove the theories of gravity or relativity either.
When I admit this, some people pounce on that as if this lack of proof is
something that _must_ be acted upon. Well, I can't prove a meteor won't crash
through your roof and kill you tonight, or that a mega-eruption won't end
civilization tomorrow, or that a parasite from some half-cooked beef you ate
last week won't spontaneously mutate into a chest-burster like in "Alien".
What are you going to do about those smart guy?

------
Clanan
Is this the same department that requires the carcinogen label on every
product under the sun? I'm probably being pithy, but that alone pushes me to
ignore their recommendations. Never mind the dodgy physics...

------
ilaksh
Has anyone here looked at these studies? In what way are cell phones supposed
to be dangerous? Do the studies say that they raised mice with smart phones in
their cage and they got cancer or something?

~~~
MikeTV
This one suggests so:
[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055...](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf)

Released as a partial report last year; a quick search didn't find if it had
been completed yet or not.

~~~
valuearb
There are a lot of bad studies with meaningless conclusions.

------
mcknz
Selfie stick.

------
TylerH
California also requires bottles of water to say that they cause cancer, so...
yawn.

~~~
Nadya
Practically everything has a Prop 65 warning to the point where it's
meaningless and everyone I know ignores it.

[0] [https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/general-
info/proposition...](https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/general-
info/proposition-65-plain-language)

------
colordrops
So does non-ionizing radiation cause health issues or not? I get called a
conspiracy nut for worrying about ELF radiation even though there are studies
showing some correlation with health issues.

~~~
mullen
Non-ionizing radiation does not cause health issues.

The definition of non-ionizing radiation is:

Non-ionizing (or non-ionising) radiation refers to any type of electromagnetic
radiation that does not carry enough energy per quantum (photon energy) to
ionize atoms or molecules—that is, to completely remove an electron from an
atom or molecule.[1] Instead of producing charged ions when passing through
matter, the electromagnetic radiation has sufficient energy only for
excitation, the movement of an electron to a higher energy state.

~~~
manmal
How can you be so sure if e.g. everything we eat both prevents and causes
cancer [1]? Do we have proof that exciting electrons won't do anything on a
higher level like enzyme production, or one of the many metabolic pathways?

1: [https://www.sciencealert.com/everything-we-eat-both-
causes-a...](https://www.sciencealert.com/everything-we-eat-both-causes-and-
prevents-cancer)

------
leeoniya
reminds me of [http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/28/cancer-warning-
labe...](http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/28/cancer-warning-labels-on-
products-a-cause-for-concern/comment-page-1/)

i purchased an OBDII reader and it had a "this cable contains PVC and may
cause cancer" warning label on it. i thought wtf? after some research the
cause was clear: California.

------
styfle
What about if I don't have a cell phone but I'm standing between a cell tower
and someone talking on their phone?

~~~
manmal
Radiation intensity declines so quickly with distance to the source that it's
a no-brainer if you are 1-2m from a normally functioning phone.

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fsohrabiii
[https://www.sitesazan.net/](https://www.sitesazan.net/)

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omarforgotpwd
Well, I guess humans are going extinct then.

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georgewsinger
What about bluetooth headphones?

~~~
garganzol
Bluetooth radiation is considerably less powerful than cell network or WiFi
signals. Most headphones belong to Bluetooth Class 2 which limits the maximum
output power to 2,5 mW (4 dBm). 2.5 mW is pretty safe even in a close contact
with the body.

Saying that, I would still recommend to minimize the exposure. The less 2-10
GHz radiation you get, the better your health is.

~~~
GeorgeTirebiter
Look at the graph in
[http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/hbkrf...](http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/hbkrf.pdf)

You can see that the worst frequency range is 30 to 300 MHz meaning that range
has the lowest acceptable power levels that are considered safe.

The entire short article is quite good.

~~~
Johnythree
But the article explains that is only for Thermal effects, and that there is
no correlation with cancer risk.

And that any power level below 7 Watt (eg any mobile phone) is completely
exempt.

------
dugluak
what about apple watch? people wear that on the wrist all day long.

