Not too sure about this one. A 30-year study in Scandinavia showed no correlation:<p><a href="http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/no-tumour-link-to-mobile-phones-says-study-20091204-kaqs.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/no-tumour-link-to...</a><p>"Deltour's team analysed annual incidence rates of two types of brain tumour -- glioma and meningioma -- among adults aged 20 to 79 from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden from 1974 to 2003. These countries all have good cancer registries that keep a tally of known cancer cases.<p>...<p>"It is possible, Deltour's team wrote, that it takes longer than 10 years for tumours caused by mobile phones to turn up, that the tumours are too rare in this group to show a useful trend, or that there are trends but in subgroups too small to be measured in the study.<p>"It is just as possible that mobile phones do not cause brain tumours, they added.
The article explains the physical mechanism - or at least the area in which it applies:<p>At the vanguard of a new field of study that came to be known as bioelectromagnetics, he found what appeared to be grave nonthermal effects from microwave frequencies—the part of the spectrum that belongs not just to radar signals and microwave ovens but also, in the past fifteen years, to cell phones. (The only honest way to think of our cell phones is that they are tiny, low-power microwave ovens, without walls, that we hold against the sides of our heads.) Frey tested microwave radiation on frogs and other lab animals, targeting the eyes, the heart, and the brain, and in each case he found troubling results. In one study, he triggered heart arrhythmias. Then, using the right modulations of the frequency, he even stopped frog hearts with microwaves—stopped the hearts dead.<p>also how modulated microwaves assit in breaching the blood - brain barrier<p>In a study published in 1975 in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Frey reported that microwaves pulsed at certain modulations could induce "leakage" in the barrier between the circulatory system and the brain. Breaching the blood-brain barrier is a serious matter: It means the brain's environment, which needs to be extremely stable for nerve cells to function properly, can be perturbed in all kinds of dangerous ways. Frey's method was rather simple: He injected a fluorescent dye into the circulatory system of white rats, then swept the microwave frequencies across their bodies. In a matter of minutes, the dye had leached into the confines of the rats' brains.
I know that people get tired of me ruining good "think of the children" debates with this question but here goes anyway:<p>What if the worst is true? What if one in every 100,000 people who uses a cellphone extensively during a lifetime is killed horribly by it?<p>Would you stop using yours? If so, why do you still ride in cars? I once saw an activist against the EM fields from power lines smoke 5 cigarettes while pontificating about the illnesses the lines in his yard might cause.<p>It all comes down to statistics and rationality. It seems humanity has chosen a technological path of growth instead of being content with 40 year lives of subsistence farming. We're gonna need those radio whatsits to get off this rock and preserve the species. Hopefully if there is something to weak EM / cancer thing, we'll evolve immunity to it before we get into space and get into the real radiation. (Or perhaps, advance to the "oops, you've got a DNA error, let me fix that for you" stage.)<p>Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not advocating head in the sand denialism of any possible ill effects, I'm just advocating rational, proportional responses to the possible danger verses the more common, knee-jerk "it might cause <i>cancer</i> ban them <i>all</i>!" responses.
There is vastly more radiation from sunlight than from using a cellphone. But in any case, I find that since I started wearing a tinfoil hat I'm much less affected by cellphone radiation.
Worse - they found that the radiation CAN cause DNA damage.<p>The potential complications don't end there. In the mid-1990s, a biophysicist at the University of Washington named Henry Lai began to make profound discoveries about the effects of such frequencies not only on the blood-brain barrier but also on the actual structure of rat DNA. Lai found that modulated EM radiation could cause breaks in DNA strands—breaks that could then lead to genetic damage and mutations that would be passed on for generations. What surprised Lai was that the damage was accomplished in a single two-hour exposure.<p>In essence - even though the energy is not sufficient to ionize it is impacting the function of cells.<p>(this is why I posted the article)
I'll take my chances.<p><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100106-cell-phones-alzheimers-disease-mice.html" rel="nofollow">http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100106-cell-...</a>
The problem with these stories regarding health risks from tech is that we WANT them to not be true. I read it and say "bah" but in the back of my head it really does worry me.<p>The problem is elimination of cell phones & wifi would be such an inconvenience in our lifestyles... I mean I rely on both so extensively that even simply cutting back on cell phone use be a huge problem. Heck I work in a building with no less than 17 different wifi networks.<p>Even if the research is inconvenient on an individual or institutional level I just hope there is more done and more public interest so that at least engineers will focus a little more on developing lifestyle tech that is safer. I mean don't we have enough risks from various environmental pollution already? Wouldn't it make sense to put pressure on changing the things that can be changed? Even if its paranoid would it kill people to care about it a bit more?<p></rant>
Microwave radiation is too low energy to cause DNA mutation, so it can't be a direct cause of cancer. Besides, wouldn't we see ear cancer more than brain cancer ?
Some say no. Some say yes. One found out the reason.
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahinda_Pathegama#Work" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahinda_Pathegama#Work</a><p>Anyway I can't find his research paper.
Non-ionizing radiation does nonetheless affect molecular bonds. It adds energy to them, placing them in more energetic states of vibration, mechanical energy. This is turn influences the chemical reactions they undergo. It could be a catalyst for adverse chemical reactions that lead to pathologies.<p>(Perhaps in combination with other "man-made" agents; does it perhaps help the odd chlorinated, fluourinate, bromated, or other carcinogen "get a grip" on a a strand of DNA?)<p>Specific effects depend upon the bonds and the RF frequencies. And affects accumulate in a statistically described fashion; it may take years to for a member of a population to accumulate a significant probability of experiencing an adverse affect.<p>I haven't had a chemistry class in years (aka I'm no expert). But what I did learn was enough that I don't rule out the possibility of effects induced by non-ionizing radiation. "Non-ionizing" <> no effect whatsoever.
Demonstrate a physical mechanism for this, and there's at least one, probably two Nobel Prizes in your future.<p>As for me and my house, we will follow E = hv.