Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer?

[snopes]

A large new study is the latest to find no link between rising cellphone use and rates of brain cancer.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireles...l-phones_N.htm

[snopes]

A Maine legislator wants to make the state the first to require cell phones to carry warnings that they can cause brain cancer, although there is no consensus among scientists that they do and industry leaders dispute the claim.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091221/...phone_warnings

[rlobinske]

A good review at Science Based Medicine

A good review of the relevant physics from Skeptical Inquirer

[snopes]

Experts who studied almost 13,000 cell phone users over 10 years, hoping to find out whether the mobile devices cause brain tumors, say their research gave no clear answer.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64F1MV20100516

[jimmy101_again]

Originally Posted by snopes

...say their research gave no clear answer.

Translation to common english "if there is an affect it is vanishingly small". Furthermore, an affect, if it exists, may be detrimental or beneficial.

[crocoduck_hunter]

Originally Posted by jimmy101_again

Translation to common english "if there is an affect it is vanishingly small" but we don't actually want to say that because we promote fearmongering

Fixed that for you.

[Steve Eisenberg]

Wild said part of the problem with this study, which was launched in 2000, was that rates of mobile phone usage in the period it covered were relatively low compared with today.

Yes, but people are more and more using them to look at rather than to put them up against their head. From the New York Times three days ago:

Cellphones Now Used More for Data Than for Calls

Mr. Frechette said part of the reason he rarely talked on his phone was that he had an iPhone, with its notoriously spotty phone reception in certain locales. But also, he said, most of his day was spent swapping short messages through services like Gmail, Facebook and Twitter. That way, he said, “you can respond when it’s convenient, rather than impose your schedule on someone else.”

Others say talking on the phone is intrusive and time-consuming, while others seem to have no patience for talking to just one person at a time.

[snopes]

WARNING: Holding a cellphone against your ear may be hazardous to your health. So may stuffing it in a pocket against your body.

I’m paraphrasing here. But the legal departments of cellphone manufacturers slip a warning about holding the phone against your head or body into the fine print of the little slip that you toss aside when unpacking your phone.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/business/14digi.html

[DaftRoses]

Originally Posted by snopes

The potential link between mobile telephones and brain cancer could be similar to the link between lung cancer and smoking -- something tobacco companies took 50 years to recognize, according to US scientists' warning.

But were scientists doing the kind of empirical studies using scientific methods that they're doing now with cellphone use? I suspect they weren't and that would explain why it took so long to discover, though I could be wrong.

[diddy]

Originally Posted by DaftRoses

But were scientists doing the kind of empirical studies using scientific methods that they're doing now with cellphone use? I suspect they weren't and that would explain why it took so long to discover, though I could be wrong.

Not to mention, as it was pointed out to me, people have known for years that cigarette smoking was deadly long before science confirmed the links to specific health conditions like Lung Cancer. (I also think that the tobacco companies spent lots of time and dough to lobby against findings like these. Cell phone companies actually stress to the organizations testing health effects to report their findings honestly and not what they want to hear.)

Contrast this will cell phones which people have been using for years (some countries far more than than the US) and science hasn’t been able to determine what could cause these health problems. People make claims that they cause brain cancer, but they never can come up with a conclusive mechanism for it to happen under. Heat? No, they don’t get hot enough. EM radiation - microwaves are far more powerful and they never have been linked to cancer. What is supposed to be the Mechanism?

Recently Phil Plait posted a 5 part video series done by a scientist who studies these things and he (the professor, not Phil) outlines that the chances that cell phones causing cancer is very remote.

My conclusion - we have been studying this stuff for years. The cell phone industry (really the FCC) tests every model of phone that gets released to market. We haven’t seen any conclusive evidence that links cell phones to cancer. If there was a link, we would have seen hard evidence by now. We haven’t.

If you read the Skeptical Inquirer acticle previously referenced, it makes a pretty clear argument for how there simply isn't enough energy emitted from cell phones to be damaging to human tissue.

[snopes]

A 50-minute cell phone call causes temporary changes in the brain, researchers say, sparking new concerns about the way our beloved devices affect our health.

http://health.usnews.com/health-news...tivity-changes

Originally Posted by Troberg

Nope, it uses electromagnetic fields, sometimes mistakenly refered to as radiation, but a completely different thing.

Wow. You are obviously not a physicist. Without even getting into particle/wave duality, please just look up the word at Dictionary.com:

–noun
1. Physics .
a. the process in which energy is emitted as particles or waves.
b. the complete process in which energy is emitted by one body, transmitted through an intervening medium or space, and absorbed by another body.
c. the energy transferred by these processes.
2. the act or process of radiating.
3. something that is radiated.

What a radio (a cell phone is a radio) puts out is called "electromagnetic radiation." That's also what a light bulb or an x-ray machine puts out--just a different frequency. In general, the lower the frequency, the less likely something is to cause ionization of our precious DNA. Radio waves are a much lower frequency than visible light. Infrared and microwaves are in between. Going the other way (higher frequency and higher energy) are ultraviolet (bad for the skin!), X-rays (very bad!), and gamma rays (super-duper bad!). Please read up about it at Wikipedia.

[Mr. Billion]

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/737860

There's the JAMA article (registration required) referred to in the USA Today article.

"We do not know what the clinical significance of this finding is, both with respect to potential therapeutic effect of this type of technology but also potential negative consequences from cell phone exposure," said lead study author Nora D. Volkow, MD, from the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Maryland, during a teleconference.

While the Skeptical Enquirer article is pretty convincing that radio waves from cell phones are not strong enough to cause cancer, I think it's possible that repeated 50-minute exposures (and the accompanying small change in brain metabolism) might have some negative effect on brain health.

But common conditions like obesity or abuse, which are both tragically common, probably have a much larger negative effect on the brain.

[snopes]

In a culture where people cradle their cellphones next to their heads with the same constancy and affection that toddlers hold their security blankets, it was unsettling when a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association indicated that doing so could alter brain activity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/te.../31basics.html

[Troberg]

On the other hand, has it been tested if constant jabbering with a person in the same room could alter brain activity? I think the activity is more likely to alter the way we think than a theoretically possible miniscule heating from extremely weak radio waves.

[snopes]

Reynard v. NEC — the first tort suit in the United States to claim a link between phone radiation and brain cancer — illustrated one of the most complex conceptual problems in cancer epidemiology.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/ma...lphones-t.html

[snopes]

An international panel of experts says cellphones are possibly carcinogenic to humans after reviewing details from dozens of published studies.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...3ef53f844086fa

[Em]

"Possibly carcinogenic" is the same category as coffee and pickled onions. I'm not too worried.

[Don Enrico]

Originally Posted by article linked by snopes

"Anything is a possible carcinogen," said Donald Berry, a professor of biostatistics at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas. He was not involved in the WHO cancer group's assessment. "This is not something I worry about and it will not in any way change how I use my cellphone," he said — speaking from his cellphone.

Well said!

The same cancer research agency lists alcoholic drinks as a known carcinogen and night shift work as a probable carcinogen.

So let's first off all stop the sale of alcoholic bevereages and outlaw night shifts!

Last year, results of a large study found no clear link between cellphones and cancer. But some advocacy groups contend the study raised serious concerns because it showed a hint of a possible connection between very heavy phone use and glioma, a rare but often deadly form of brain tumor. (...) The study was controversial because it began with people who already had cancer and asked them to recall how often they used their cellphones more than a decade ago.

...their cell phones from a decade ago, that probably were different in radiation exposure to the ones we use today. At the very least, cell phone towers are more and less far between now, meaning the cell phone device doesn't need as strong a wave to reach the next one.

Some experts recommended people use a headset or earpiece if they are worried about the possible health dangers of cellphones.

If you do this because you are worried about cancer risks, make sure not to carry the actual phone in a pocket or belt pouch near your crotch area.