Hardly a week goes by without another rumour that some scientist, or in some cases complete nut case, claiming that mobile phone radiation is killing us, lowering sperm count or causing some kind of genetic mutation. Sometimes the case put by the media sounds pretty damning and makes you wonder if we really shouldn’t just abandon the mobile experiment and go back to the way God intended - if he’d meant us to have these kinds of powers, surely He’d have made us telepathic???
So I was interested to hear Brian Dunning’s recent Skeptoid Podcast tackle this very subject.
Each episode, Brian examines popular beliefs, pseudoscience or urban myth and takes a critical and scientifically based look at the evidence. Subjects range from recent religious ‘miracles’, homeopathy, Big Foot and whether the Large Hadron Collider really will make us disappear into a Black Hole. It’s a very interesting Podcast, albeit a little unnerving sometimes to hear subjects that I had assumed were pretty much proven torn to shreds for lack of real evidence.
The bottom line in his analysis about mobile radiation is that there’s no evidence to date that it’s harmful. To paraphrase Brian, he also points out that it doesn’t mean that such evidence won’t emerge in the future, just as it might be discovered that traveling at more that 40 miles an hour might be discovered to be dangerous at some point - and it’s probably as likely to emerge as that too.
So, go back to your mobile with a little more confidence and add Skeptoid to your iTunes feeds.
I would Suggest you and Brian both read the Bio-Initiative Report 610 pages http://www.bioinitiative.com which was not funded by the cell phone industry.the REPORT by 20 international scientists & EMR experts CONCLUDED UNEQUIVOCALLY that there is sound evidence of harmful long term biological effects which can damage the body’s immune system and lower resistance to illness
Thanks Derick, I’ll check it out. If others want to too, I think the url should be http://www.bioinitiative.org/
Russell
Right here is my problem with reports as quoted above is right here:
>it is not unreasonable to question the safety of RF at any level.
Try running a meter around your office, bedroom, car, etc. The semi-proposed safe levels in the study mean to me a total loss of all electrical devices. Transmission lines, distribution lines (in walls) transformers (in chargers and most electronic devices) motors, etc. all emit some RF. At levels often higher (at my head) than the current generation of mobile telephony.
Don’t forget this meta-analysis made by swedish researchers: Hardell L, Carlberg M, Söderqvist F, Hansson Mild K.
Meta-analysis of long-term mobile phone use and the association with brain tumours.
Int J Oncol. 2008 May;32(5):1097-103.
“We conclude that this meta-analysis gave a consistent pattern of an association between mobile phone use and ipsilateral glioma and acoustic neuroma using > or =10-years latency period”.
http://tinyurl.com/3ls9zq
On Derick Lattime’s comment, if it’s really real, it’s really alarming since most mobile users are the young ones, who will be living their lives for the next 50 more years or so.
[...] cell phone users’ involvement and addiction of mobile phones might be the reason behind different studies being conducted by experts regarding possible hazardous effects of too much usage of mobile [...]