
Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double - vixen99
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/05/02/mobile-phone-cancer-warning-malignant-brain-tumours-double/
======
tonmoy
> cases of GBM in England have increased from around 1,250 a year in 1995 to
> just under 3,000.

Not only the population of UK has increased in this time, it has also gotten
older on average. Moreover is 0.002% of population getting GBM per year even
significant enough to blame mobile phones (that is used by everyone)?

~~~
unit91
Agreed. Also not accounted for is the UK's huge immigration surge (more than
doubling the foreign-born UK populace of the mid-90s). [1]

Different ancestries carry with them different genetic predispositions. It
might be that the GBM rise is due to phenotypes not phones.

[1]
[http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings...](http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-
in-the-uk-an-overview/)

~~~
zhengyi13
My little brother died of a GBM about 3 years ago. The research I did at the
time indicated that there are essentially no known predictors of GBMs; there
appears to be a very slight correlation with being white, male, and ~30-50,
all which matched for him.

~~~
unit91
I'm really sorry to hear about your brother. Thanks for sharing what you
learned though!

------
darkstar999
> “It’s important, though, to understand that this new paper did not examine
> any new data at all about potential causes for the increase.”

How is this about mobile phones? I think this is pure clickbait and should be
removed.

~~~
d0lph
The title is pretty deceptive, it seems to claim the study finds a link
between cellphones and cancer.

Although the group did apparently comment on cellphones as a thing to
investigate.

> Last night the group said the increasing rate of tumours in the frontal
> temporal lobe “raises the suspicion that mobile and cordless phone use may
> be promoting gliomas”.

------
knaik94
"According to Cancer Research UK, it is “unlikely” that mobile phones increase
the risk of brain tumours however “we do not know enough to completely rule
out a risk”.

However, the organisation cautions that because phones are a relatively recent
invention it may take many more years until the data is sufficient to make
more robust conclusions."

This is literally pure speculation. There are many things that should be
studied further to see if something more than a correlation exists. However
those studies haven't been done yet. I am surprised to see such a poor and
clearly clickbait on hackernews.

------
mhb
Maybe the paper addresses this, but don't most people hold the phone
predominantly on one side or the other? Wouldn't the locations of the tumors
be more on that side of the brain? And wouldn't that provide some pretty good
support for the association?

~~~
CommieBobDole
I can't find the cite right now, but I recall there was a study some years
back that found that heavy mobile phone users didn't have any higher rate of
brain cancer than the general population, but among those who did get cancer,
there was a strong statistical correlation between the side of the head where
they most used the phone and the location of the cancer.

~~~
jdironman
Maybe it has something to do with predisposition to their dominant side and
not specifically the use of a mobile device.

~~~
fluidcruft
"Dominant side of the brain" is actually on the opposite side. If you're right
dominant, it's left hemisphere.

------
dghughes
I'd also be interested to see how many more people just text or IM not talk
compared to ten or twenty years ago. If there is a risk from cellphone EM
radiation so it must also depend on phone usage and also modern phones emit
less EM radiation?

For me my main concern is I use my phone as an alarm clock and it's 30cm (1
foot) from my head all night. I also leave it there since it's my main phone
so I keep it close to me. Hopefully the inverse square law is on my side.

I'd be curious to see if any studies showed butt cancer was a thing. I'm sure
many people keep their phones in their pockets and seems it would exposure
people more EM radiation for longer compared to holding the phone and talking
into it.

I'd also be curious if different countries which use different frequencies
would be a factor in the ability of the EM radiation to penetrate deeper into
skin.

I'm not convinced but I'm not anti-science so I'm OK with continual studies as
long as they are conducted in a professional way.

By the way I recall in the late 80s early 90s there was talk about EM
radiation from cordless shavers. Close to the jaw bone, powerful motor in a
small space used daily.

~~~
jstarfish
> For me my main concern is I use my phone as an alarm clock and it's 30cm (1
> foot) from my head all night. I also leave it there since it's my main phone
> so I keep it close to me. Hopefully the inverse square law is on my side.

The danger comes from when you are actively making calls using voice; my
understanding is that transmitting voice data really cranks up the EM
radiation. When making phone calls you are safest using a hands-free headset.
When the phone is idle at night this is all mostly irrelevant unless you're
getting poor signal (for which it cranks up EM to compensate).

So, don't sleep with your phone next to your head if you get poor signal. If
not, there likely isn't much to worry about.

> I'd be curious to see if any studies showed butt cancer was a thing. I'm
> sure many people keep their phones in their pockets and seems it would
> exposure people more EM radiation for longer compared to holding the phone
> and talking into it.

When the phone is idle the EM radiation is relatively low. Plus, if it's
resting against your thigh there isn't anything critical there to irradiate,
compared to having it within two inches of your brain. If anything we might
see more skin cancer in the future from this (and some say EM from pocket
storage may contribute to infertility), but it beats brain cancer.

~~~
sizzle
Thoughts on cordless Bluetooth headphones? I use them for hours a day to
listen to music or calls, which is radiating my ear drum?

------
Numberwang
Is anyone calling anyone these days? Mobile Phones seems to mostly be used for
messaging and surfing these days.

~~~
tluyben2
That is what I thought as well, but on HN of all places I see people fretting
about speech quality of mobile phones and networks and such. When I walk
around in big cities I see people text and, especially in China, people
leaving eachother voice messages via wechat.

~~~
dx034
Most people I see leaving voice messages do that by just holding the
microphone towards them to be able to still use the screen (for Whatsapp you
had to keep pressing the button until recently). That keeps the phone away
from your head. Same goes for Skyping or using headsets.

------
stochastic_monk
Source:
[https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/aip/7910754/](https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/aip/7910754/)

The provisional pdf is full of Tracked Changes.

To clarify, GBM is the only kind of cancer that increased in frequency in the
data they have. I'm less inclined to think that these "findings" are accurate
and more to think it's a matter of accounting and data quality. (Not to
mention the quality of the manuscript itself.)

~~~
tzahola
>To clarify, GBM is the only kind of cancer that increased in frequency in the
data they have.

 _Only_ glioblstoma multiforme, aka the most aggressive and deadly brain
cancer? Phfew, what a relief.

~~~
stochastic_monk
In fairness, GBM is brutal and has a life expectancy measured in _months_ ,
not years, even with treatment.

On the other hand, it's a subset with ~15% proportion of all brain tumors. The
article's title suggests that all brain tumor rates doubled and I am
clarifying.

------
TheAdamist
Nothing in this article shows that mobile phones are the cause. Headphones,
Bike helmets or avocado toast might be just as likely. Only thing for certain
is that a particular type of tumor has increased.

~~~
gnulinux
So did UK's population.

------
jackschultz
Story time, as is often the case when "studies" talk about medical risks.

Couple years ago I started noticing these events, deja vu flashes, tingly
right arm from the shoulder all the way down to my fingers, and then the
inability to comprehend words for a few minutes. Never issues with
coordination, because the first one I remember distinctly was riding a bike.
Eventually was told they could be seizures, got an MRI and EEG and poof,
there's a brain tumor, told was a DNET, in my left temporal lobe.

After issues with anti-seizure meds, which are really annoying with so many
side effects, I went with surgery to get the tumor yanked with the hope of
them snagging the part causing the seizures, which apparently aren't caused by
the tumor itself. A few weeks after the surgery, I was called back and told
the tumor wasn't a DNET as expected, but a low grade glioma. Not the GBM as
talked about in the article, but a regrowth where I'm on the schedule of MRI
every three months to check to see how if it's growing back yet.

I'm left handed, holding the phone to my left ear where the tumor was / is,
which would fit along with what they're trying to show here. I'm 27 now, I
never talked on the phone much, and I'm not going to sit here and try to find
something to blame. Like casually mentioned at the end of the article, I'll go
with saying it could be from "fallout from atomic bomb tests in the
atmosphere", or, you know, bad luck.

~~~
cgb223
Hey so I’m also left handed and have a lot of the same symptoms you’ve
described.

Can you explain the deja vu, tingling, etc symptoms a bit more

This has me a little nervous and I want to be sure it’s something I need to
get concerned about

Did you actually end up having seizures?

How did you know it was serious?

~~~
jackschultz
It would be these events were I'd get the deja vu, the feeling of having a
memory of experiencing something before, then tingling from the right shoulder
down my arm to when it hit my fingers I'd feel a little hit in the head and
lose words. That part is the seizure. I didn't know that was a type at all
before looking it up online.

These episodes grew over time too. That first I remember on a bike, the next
was when reading a book and I was so confused where the words went and why I
could only see symbols. Since it's the temporal lobe, only words. Though I
talk to multiple people, like my mom, she says there were times in the past
where, when talking to her, I'd have to say hold on and sit in silence for 30
seconds before being able to comprehend again. Eventually got to an every
other day frequency before being told that those events could be seizures and
I should get it checked out.

In terms of seriousness, it's hard to say when that happened. I was told it
looked like the benign DNET tumor and baby seizures that stopped with some
drugs and I thought that was pretty funny how that happened to me. But then
side effects from the first drugs kicked in and I had to switch. And then side
effects from that drug kicked in and said screw it and have the surgery to get
ride of the tumor and hopefully the part causing the seizures. Well that
didn't work out, I still have different drugs and problems with those, and
turns out it's a cancer tumor. Quite the turn.

The seizures themselves aren't too serious, because there are drugs to stop
them, but the side effect problems are the big part.

What are the symptoms you've been having?

------
bhouston
It is curious. I wonder why non-ionizing radiation causes cancer? Given we are
constantly bathing in wifi signals and cellphone signals, I wonder what the
effects will be?

~~~
geomark
The strength of those signals is very, very low. WiFi around -60dBm or lower
most of the time and the cellular signal where I go is usually well below
-80dBm. For comparison, the power received from Earth's nearest star Alpha
Centauri A is on the order of -50dBm. If I'm concerned about WiFi and cellular
signals I should be positively freaked out about natural sources of em
radiation.

But having a couple watt transmitter pressed against the side of your head
might be something to think about. Still, it is non-ionizing radiation and
aside from the possibility of localized heating, which you would likely notice
(I think?), what's going to cause cancer? Some previously unknown (to me)
phenomenon?

~~~
jobigoud
Earth's nearest star is the Sun :-) Which incidentally also emits ionizing
photons in the UV zone.

~~~
geomark
Ok smarty. But you can choose to go outside only at night when the Sun isn't
in the sky. But the sky is filled with other stars day and night. So you can
never go outside if you are afraid of em radiation as weak as that emitted by
WiFi hotspots or cellular phone towers.

------
parvenu74
I've never been a fan of holding an active transmitter (cell phone) against
the side of my head, preferring to use either speakerphone or a corded headset
of some type. But I wonder: how much danger does a Bluetooth wireless headset
present compared to the phone itself?

~~~
yaantc
Bluetooth class 3 is 1 mW peak power, class 2 is 2.5 mW peak power. Those are
the most relevant for a headset.

For a cell phone, the peak power for 2G is 2W, while for 4G/LTE it's 200 mW.

Those are peak transmit power. In practice the actual power will be lower for
BT. For cellular it depends very much on the frequency band used. For low band
the phone will mostly be far from the peak. For high bands the device will
mostly be at peak power or close most of the time.

~~~
calebm
Nice analysis. Just thinking of it intuitively, the cell phone transmitter has
to send data several km, whereas the bluetooth only has to transmit a few
meters. Couple that with the inverse square law, and a bluetooth headset
sounds much lower power.

------
everdev
Is it possible to get cancer in your hand or thigh? I'm sure phones are held
in hands or pockets for longer durations than they're held up to heads.

~~~
ItsMe000001
You only get cancer in tissues with active cell division, such as the skin or
epithelial tissue.

For the hand that's the skin. Most cells in the body don't divide after your
initial growth phase (all the way to adulthood). You are "produced" once and
from then on there only is "maintenance", which includes growth of new cells
only in tissues that absolutely require it throughout lifetime. Evolution
turned it off in as many cells of an adult body as possible because cell
division always is risky, especially with increasing (cell/tissue) age.

~~~
gnode
While cancer rates are often higher in cell types with higher division rates,
there are many other risk factors. The increased incidence of skin cancer is
due largely to exposure to mutagenic ionising radiation from the sun, which is
absorbed readily by the skin. Microwave radiation is more deeply penetrating.
Although I believe it is unlikely to cause cancer.

~~~
ItsMe000001
Yes of course. My point was merely binary, about what kinds of tissue _can_
get cancer. I thought that was appropriate for a question starting with "Is it
possible".

------
vibrio
This finding (fully believing it is at best anecdotal and preliminary at this
point) brought TTF "tumor treating fields" therapy to mind. In the last year
or so a medical device was approved by the FDA to treat brain tumors (Optune,
Novocure Inc) in which the patient uses helmet that introduces alternating
electrical field though the area of the tumor ( ie the patient head). It
sounds super crazy, but it seems to have reached statistical significance in a
couple large brain cancer studies. There are some caveats about selection bias
of patients in these studies ( e.g, patients that enrolled/stayed in the study
were motivated/strong enough to carry the heavy backpack and wear an onerous
helmet) but it is being used and has some scientists and clinicians scratching
their heads. Novocure is expanding application to multiple other cancers.

~~~
gus_massa
How much power did the helmet had? If you put your head inside a microwave
oven with a power of 800W for a day it will probably hurt you. You can
probably fry the tumor (and all your brain) with 800W. (IANAMD)

A cell phone has only 2-4W, so it's the power is much smaller and the risk is
not linear.

------
Zigurd
Brain tumors take several years to even decades to develop and become
apparent. This rise in tumors detected now could have been caused in the days
of analog phones with radios that had vastly higher power output. Or, for that
matter, analog cordless phones.

~~~
perl4ever
It doesn't make sense to me that we would find a detectable rise on that
basis, because in the days of analog phones with high powered radios, it was a
very small proportion of the population using them.

Here is a picture of a DynaTAC analog cell phone circa 1983:
[https://s.hswstatic.com/gif/cell-phone-
old.jpg](https://s.hswstatic.com/gif/cell-phone-old.jpg)

I certainly knew what they looked like, before I had my first cell phone,
because stockbrokers or lawyers or whatever in movies used them. But I never
knew anyone who had one, or saw one in real life. They definitely preceded the
current ubiquity of cell phones.

~~~
bhhaskin
I don't think they mean analog cell phones, but analog cordless phones. Which
would be much more in use.

~~~
perl4ever
I would think that such phones did not have as high powered radios as a
cellular phone due to less transmission distance required. I also have the
impression that they weren't overly popular because of the ease of
eavesdropping.

If analog cordless phones captured interference from fluorescent lighting and
automotive ignition systems[1], does that mean there is a vast array of things
that could cause health effects via RF?

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

------
thenaturalist
Relevant reading: [http://nautil.us/issue/59/connections/pick-the-statistic-
you...](http://nautil.us/issue/59/connections/pick-the-statistic-you-want-to-
be)

------
remir
Imagine we have solid evidence that cell phones, Bluetooth headphones, smart
watches, etc are responsible for the rise in tumors.

I'm curious to know how people (and the industry) would react. We made these
powerful communication tools that are connecting the world, that changed how
we communicate and they are causing us harm?

Cigarettes were wonderful until they weren't. Oil was perfect until it became
problematic for environmental reasons. Are cell phones the next thing on the
list?

~~~
Tloewald
"A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain,
dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest
resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless."

King James

Cigarettes were never wonderful. They were addictive.

------
wuschel
Here is a discussion/summary of the _American Cancer Society_ :

[https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-
exposu...](https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-
exposure/cellular-phones.html)

It is certainly not an easy problem to measure and collect strong evidence for
either side.

------
RandomInteger4
Pretty sure this is complete B.S considering the view of talking on the phone
millenials and younger have. Like, there are literal memes about one being
horrified and the sound of a phone ringing, which to me seems like a good
indicator that we're talking less on the phone, so why would brain tumors
increase?

~~~
kalleboo
I tried to find some statistics on Google, the statistics are all over the
place but they all still show far far higher rates of making voice calls than
I would have predicted (numbers look something like: 20% of time on phone
spent talking, 1 hour a day spent talking, average 10 calls per day, even for
teens - for the last stat, teens made more calls than anyone)

------
emodendroket
I'm curious how much time most people spend actually talking on their phones
now compared to pre-smartphones. Also, while I suppose being in an active call
probably changes the amount of radiation at play, I'd expect, if cell phones
are causing cancer, an attendant rise in, say, testicular cancer.

~~~
coldtea
Slightly more...

[https://qz.com/509442/why-are-we-still-calling-them-
phones/](https://qz.com/509442/why-are-we-still-calling-them-phones/)

------
ainiriand
I would like to say just a couple of things thast I'm sure everybody is
already aware of:

\- Correlation does not imply causality.

\- No link to any study is given. So we cannot be sure about what the
metodology is, I would very much like to take a look at the metodology used to
imply such correlation.

~~~
andai
> Correlation does not imply causality

XKCD 925: Cell Phones

[https://xkcd.com/925/](https://xkcd.com/925/)

------
mr_toad
> Responding to the new resaerch, Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of
> Applied Statistics at The Open University, said the significance of the
> trend may be less clear cut than the research group claim.

It’s not unusual for such small proportions to have large variation.

------
ohyes
Even if this were the case, luckily no one really talks on their mobile phones
anymore, it's predominantly FaceTime and candy crush.

I would also be interested to know if the tumors are predominantly on the
right side of the head near the ear...

------
blackrock
I don't really know if anyone uses the phone to talk anymore. It's mostly just
texting now.

And if they do need to talk for long, then they usually just put on some
headsets.

Otherwise, it's probably just a quick phone call.

------
niahmiah
But hardly anyone actually holds the device to their head anymore...

------
gelo
This article like the telegraph is utter bs. The power output of a mobile
phone by standard is a max of 1 watt. And even then the mobile phone does not
use 1 watt constantly. Hell, if it was the case that we were getting damaged
by these ranges of frequency bands we wouldn't be having WIFI all over the
place for the same reason. Now Hypothetically if one was to be stupid enough
to stand next to an active Mobile base-station antenna then yes, you would
start having head-aches because of the emissive power concentration from the
antenna, and also the fact that base stations are at max i think between 30-50
watts.

------
Asgardr
What's the connection between the rise of malignant brain tumours and mobile
phones? It seems like a bit of a jump to conclude that they're connected.

~~~
w0utert
Neither the article nor the research seem to even suggest there is a
connection, so the headline is pure clickbait IMO.

------
perl4ever
I wonder how many people hold their heads close to a running microwave while
they are watching to see if something is overheating...

~~~
emodendroket
They probably don't do that making direct contact between their heads and the
machine for an hour at a time. Seems like a bad comparison.

~~~
perl4ever
It's not clear to me that it's a bad comparison for several reasons.

(a) I don't think it's typical to make direct contact with a cell phone for an
hour at a time. Most calls I make are short and I don't actually hold it
touching my ear. That does depend on the noise level though. (b) Microwaves
are much higher power. (c) Microwaves may be constructed to looser tolerances
regarding shielding.

Yes, microwaves are different, but the differences don't uniformly cut in one
direction, so I think it's a little too glib to dismiss the hazard out of
hand.

Edit: One could argue that in fact your ear holds your phone away from your
head, providing an offset analogous to the distance one is observing a
microwave from. But this is really a rhetorical answer to a rhetorical
objection, when my point is more that only quantitative analysis could
illuminate the accuracy of the comparison.

The prompting for my original post is that I was microwaving water to boiling
and watching to make sure it didn't superheat - unlike on the stove, it can
form a big bubble of steam suddenly. It seems to me that I do this nearly as
often as I make a phone call (as opposed to texting and email).

~~~
icebraining
_Microwaves may be constructed to looser tolerances regarding shielding._

How? A cellphone literally can't shield its radiation, otherwise it wouldn't
really work.

~~~
kalleboo
Cellphones are designed to shield your head from radiation, and instead direct
transmissions outwards away from it. There are legal limits on the radiation
absorbed by a human head while talking on the phone
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_absorption_rate#Mobil...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_absorption_rate#Mobile_phone_SAR_testing)

So basically yes, phones do have shielding (on the head side only)

------
jdhn
Perhaps the ending scene of Thank You For Smoking will start to become a
reality instead of fiction.

------
dbatten
"They analysed 79,241 malignant brain tumours over 21 years, finding that
cases of GBM in England have increased from around 1,250 a year in 1995 to
just under 3,000."

~2000 new cases per year in a country with 53 million people? I'll take my
chances.

I'm fascinated how people obsess over the unproven and ultimately minuscule
health risks associated with using a cell phone or drinking a glass of wine or
eating chocolate or whatever. We know for a fact that smoking, overeating, and
not exercising kill literally tens of millions of people each year, but it
seems like most people can't be bothered to take those health risks
seriously...

~~~
Spooky23
I'm fascinated about casual dismissal of actual problems justified by the fact
that other problems exist.

I'm not panicked by this issue, but I think there's something there. I play
cards with a bunch of neurosurgeons - every one of them has professional
concerns about cellular and bluetooth usage, and 4/6 expressed those concerns
to me individually about my AirPods.

~~~
koboll
Shouldn't smartphones, if they do cause cancer, cause a much larger spike in
the hands or pocket area?

I sure have my phone adjacent to those parts of my body a whole lot more than
my head.

~~~
delinka
It’s not typically adjacent to those body parts while emitting a steady stream
of radio waves. Even if it remains away from your head and near those other
body parys during a call, there’s no a tube (that may channel the radiation)
from the phone leading internally like the ear canal.

------
reneberlin
There has to be an app for that. Wait ...

------
JTbane
These types of articles are fear mongering, pure and simple.

Just like eating a banana every week gives you more of a radiation dose than
living next to a nuclear power plant- the possibility of getting cancer from a
cell phone is almost ridiculous.

