Public Health: The Hidden Menace of Mobile Phones

[BonnieJW]

Public Health: The Hidden Menace of Mobile Phones
By Geoffrey Lean
The Independent UK

Sunday 07 October 2007

Research into the link between regular handset use and disease reveals the risks rise significantly after 10 years, despite official assurances that they are safe.
Using a mobile phone for more than 10 years increases the risk of getting brain cancer, according to the most comprehensive study of the risks yet published.

The study - which contradicts official pronouncements that there is no danger of getting the disease - found that people who have had the phones for a decade or more are twice as likely to get a malignant tumour on the side of the brain where they hold the handset.

The scientists who conducted the research say using a mobile for just an hour every working day during that period is enough to increase the risk - and that the international standard used to protect users from the radiation emitted is "not safe" and "needs to be revised".

They conclude that "caution is needed in the use of mobile phones" and believe children, who are especially vulnerable, should be discouraged from using them at all.

The study, published in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed journal Occupational Environmental Medicine, is important because it pulls together research on people who have used the phones for long enough to contract the disease.

Cancers take at least 10 years - and normally much longer - to develop but, as mobile phones have spread so recently and rapidly, relatively few people have been using them that long.

Official assurances that the phones are safe have been based on research that has, at best, included only a few people who have been exposed to the radiation for long enough to get the disease, and are therefore of little or no value in assessing the real risk.

more

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/printer_100807HA.shtml

[BrklynLib at work]

1. I believe that there were rumblings of this years ago..but the phone companies have successfully

been keeping the news from the public....
There is going to be some epidemic in a decade or so...

[flashl]

2. IIRC there was a physican in Baltimore, MD who successfully sued

for brain tumor several years ago citing extensive mobile phone usage and hot mobile phone against head as cause.

[still_one]

3. There should have already been an epidemic.

The level on cell phones was even worse twenty years ago.

I have no doubt that changes in the biological cellular level do occur with cell phone usage. I am just saying that there are obviously other factors involved or there would have been a far greater increase in effects.

[Donnachaidh]

5. And how long have the Borgian BlueTooth devices been in use?

No one really knows how bad it will get. The explosion of cell phone use is going to be a goldmine for oncologists in the future.

[Hissyspit]

9. How many people were using them 20, even 10 years ago?

Now pretty much EVERYONE uses them.

[still_one]

11. Here is an interesting study:

http://www.livescience.com/health/061212_bad_phones.html

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6602_7-6258775-11.html?tag=nav

[BrklynLib at work]

16. The study in the OP is more recent... and seems more extensive..

The scientists pulled together the results of the 11 studies that have so far investigated the occurrence of tumours in people who have used phones for more than a decade, drawing on research in Sweden, Denmark Finland, Japan, Germany, the United States and Britain. They found almost all had discovered an increased risk, especially on the side of the head where people listened to their handsets.

[cosmik debris]

4. from the article:

But its chairman, Professor Lawrie Challis, admitted that only a small proportion of the research had covered people who had used the phones for more than a decade. He warned: "We cannot rule out the possibility at this stage that cancer could appear in a few years' time."

He said the investigation had discovered "a very slight hint" of increased numbers of brain tumours among those exposed for more than 10 years, and called for more research.

[BrklynLib at work]

8. Exactly what an apologist for the industry could be expected to say...

[Warpy]

6. The real public health issue is the behavioral issue

in that the use seems to be a process that increases over time rendering the user a clod and an idiot.

By the way, guys, those flashing Borg implants on your ears don't make you look important. They make you look stupid.



Yeah, I'm a Luddite.

[BrklynLib at work]

7. I could not agree with you more......

Cell phone ARE making people stupider and stupider.
It is probably part of the plot..;)

[Hissyspit]

10. I'm not a Luddite.

and I think the flashing Bluetooth cyborg ear extensions look stupid, too.

[Raejeanowl]

12. Not Just Stupid

Doesn't it give you the creeps to pass people having an animated conversation with....no visible companion?

[BrklynLib at work]

13. You cannot tell the crazies from the non-crazies.....IF there is a difference...

Used to be pretty definite that if someone was having a conversation and no one was standing with them, they were a little off center...Nowadays, there is no telling them apart.

[seafan]

14. Re: Cell Phones and Public Health: Serious issues shielded from public knowledge

Public Health: The Hidden Menace of Mobile Phones

By Geoffrey Lean
The Independent UK

Sunday 07 October 2007

Using a mobile phone for more than 10 years increases the risk of getting brain cancer, according to the most comprehensive study of the risks yet published.
The study - which contradicts official pronouncements that there is no danger of getting the disease - found that people who have had the phones for a decade or more are twice as likely to get a malignant tumour on the side of the brain where they hold the handset.

The scientists who conducted the research say using a mobile for just an hour every working day during that period is enough to increase the risk - and that the international standard used to protect users from the radiation emitted is "not safe" and "needs to be revised".
They conclude that "caution is needed in the use of mobile phones" and believe children, who are especially vulnerable, should be discouraged from using them at all.

The study, published in the latest issue of the peer-reviewed journal Occupational Environmental Medicine, is important because it pulls together research on people who have used the phones for long enough to contract the disease.
Cancers take at least 10 years - and normally much longer - to develop but, as mobile phones have spread so recently and rapidly, relatively few people have been using them that long.

.....

Professor Mild told The Independent on Sunday: "I find it quite strange to see so many official presentations saying that there is no risk. There are strong indications that something happens after 10 years." He stressed that brain cancers are rare: they account for less than 2 per cent of primary tumours in Britain, though they are disproportionately deadly, causing 7 per cent of the years of life lost to the disease. "Every cancer is one too many," he said.
He said he uses a mobile phone as little as possible, and urges others to use hands-free equipment and make only short calls, reserving longer ones for landlines. He also said that mobiles should not be given to children, whose thinner skulls and developing nervous systems make them particularly vulnerable.

The danger may be even greater than the new study suggests for, as Professor Mild says, 10 years is the "minimum" period needed by cancers to develop. As they normally take much longer, very many more would be likely to strike long-term users after 15, 20 or 30 years - which leads some to fear that an epidemic of the disease could develop in the coming decades, particularly among today's young people.

.....

Both sides agree that there is need for more research. Professor Mild said a possible link between mobile phones and Alzheimer's disease should also be examined, since "we have indications that it might be a problem" as well as a possible link with Parkinson's disease, "which can't be ruled out".
In the meantime, the scientists want a revision of the emission standard for mobiles and other sources of radiation, which they describe as "inappropriate" and "not safe". The international standard is designed merely to prevent harmful heating of living tissue or induced electrical currents in the body - and does not take the risk of getting cancer into account.

Professors Hansen and Mild serve on the international BioInitiative Working Group of leading scientists and public health experts, which this summer produced a report warning that the standard was "thousands of times too lenient".
The BioInitiative report added: "It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that some adverse health effects occur at far lower levels of exposure ... some at several thousand times below the existing safety limits." It also warned that unless this is corrected there could be "public health problems of a global nature".

.....

Exposure to radiation, shown as Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) levels, varies widely in different models. Manufacturers and the Government have ignored the Stewart report that urges they be clearly marked on phones and boxes. They are thus hard to find, though the Carphone Warehouse catalogue includes them. An easily accessible list of phones and radiation exposures is published in Germany, where low-radiation models, defined as having SAR of 0.6 or under, are encouraged.

Phone users kept in dark over radiation

The Independent
by Geoffrey Lean Environment Editor

Sunday, Jun 27, 2004

Ministers and mobile phone companies are failing to publicise vital information on the radiation emitted by handsets despite official recommendations, says one of the Government's most senior advisers.
As a result, few people know how much radiation they and their children are receiving from mobile phones and it is difficult to choose handsets giving off the lowest levels.

Professor Lawrie Challis, who chairs the official research programme into the effects of the radiation on health, says ministers and the industry have failed to implement the conclusion of an inquiry led by a former chief scientific adviser, Sir William Stewart, that the information should be made "readily accessible".
The inquiry into the safety of the phones made recommendations four years ago that measurements of the widely varying levels of radiation to the head from different phones should be prominently displayed so that consumers, particularly children, could easily choose the ones with the lowest emissions. The Department of Health tells consumers that they will be provided with the measurements - called Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) - for each phone on sale in Britain. But, in practice, this fails to happen.

Professor Challis says that he himself would want to buy a phone with a low radiation level, but that it was "extremely hard" to get the necessary information.
He told a conference organised by the National Society for Clean Air this month: "The Stewart committee made it very clear that information should be available to all consumers. The Government has failed us and so has the industry."

.....

Inquiries by The Independent on Sunday confirmed it is hard for consumers to get information on radiation,.....

.....

The exception was the Carphone Warehouse, which displays a fuller leaflet of its own, and gives the SAR values in its catalogue. But even this does not provide information on nine of the newer phones on sale.

Radiation from handsets, emitted directly to the head, can be more than 1,000 times higher than those received from the controversial masts used to service the technology. No firm scientific evidence has yet been established that they cause cancer, but another government inquiry said earlier this year it could not rule out users getting the disease after many years of using mobile phones.
And recent research in Sweden has suggested radiation from the phones could damage young people's brains, causing senility in their 50s and 60s.

.....

The Stewart report concluded there was evidence suggesting that radiation might have "biological effects" below the guideline and added it was "not possible at present" to say that radiation at levels below the guidelines "is totally without potential adverse health effects".
It added: "We recommend a precautionary approach to the use of mobile phone technologies until much more detailed and scientifically robust information becomes available." It advised "widespread use" of the phones by children "should be discouraged".

The report specifically recommended information on SAR values "should be readily accessible to consumers", with information carried on the phones themselves and on the boxes, "on a national website, which lists the SAR values of different phone types" and "on leaflets available in stores giving comparative information on different phones and with explanatory information". It would be preferable if the information were seen to come from the Government, the report said.

Asked why none of these recommendations appeared to have been implemented fully, the Department of Trade and Industry last week pointed us to the website - set up by the Mobile Manufacturers Forum - that turned out to have inadequate information. The official National Radiological Protection Board said that The Independent on Sunday's discovery that it did not include many popular phones showed it to be "clearly unsatisfactory".

.....

After a good bit of research, here is some Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) information about specific models of cell phones, from the Mobile Manufacturers Forum web page, (pdf format), which I discovered through the CarPhone Warehouse web site.



There is a very simple reason this information is being hidden from the public. It's bad for business.

[Bake]

15. If I had to guess, you're more likely to die in a car wreck

Because you were dialing/texting/talking on your cell phone.

Bake

[slackmaster]

17. Hidden schmidden - One of those fuckers almost got me in a car crash today

After a 10-minute delay caused by a crash involving two cars full of "youths", I was driving merrily along in the fast lane when a phone-talking oblivious individual pulled onto the freeway and drifted slowly across four lanes, ending up right in front of me.

I flashed my headlights. That got the fool's attention. She pulled over.