Cancer Researcher Warns Cell Phone Users
Jul 24 at 9:09pm by Aileen
In an unprecedented move, the head of a prominent cancer research institute issued a warning to his faculty and staff on July 23, that cell phone use may pose a cancer risk to users.
There is no consensus in science that electromagnetic radiation in radio frequencies – such as is emitted by cellular phones and is absorbed by the user’s head – causes or increases the risks of brain tumors. Yet Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, said he issued the warning because the question is still being researched, and it is better to err on the safe side than to be sorry later on.
Of particular concern to Herberman is the increasing use of cell phones by children, whose brains are still developing. The body of research on the question is ongoing, but so far has demonstrated no firm link between cell phones and cancer. The fact that it takes a relatively long time for cancers from environmental sources to show up in a population leaves risks of cancer from long term exposure to the radiation an unanswered question.
One bit of interesting research on cell phone radiation recently came from Clermont-Ferrand University in France, where it was found that…
…tomatoes, when exposed to the magnetic waves of mobile phones, get stressed within ten minutes. They start secreting a molecule which usually only occurs when they get damaged.
If tomatoes can physiologically go into stress mode when cell phones are present in their vicinity, it’s certainly possible that physiological effects may occur in animals – including humans. I’d like to see some mouse studies. But in the meantime, remote use of the device (so it’s not sitting on your ear) isn’t that bad an idea.
A pretty strong warning can also be made that if you grow tomatoes, don’t take your cell phone when tending them. The world won’t stop turning if you’re out of communications availability for a little while. Honest.
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Your Cell Phone is Stalking You, and So Is the Government
Sep 21 at 8:08pm by Aileen
…should we be feeling safer yet?
The science news this week had some really odd articles that looked a lot like heavy-handed preferential placements by some junior government official trying to scare home-grown dissidents and tech-savvy terrorists writing bomb-making instructions for the internet from a cave in Afghanistan (or maybe Pakistan). My guess is that we’ll have this from time to time in the modern world, as our reliance on science and technology increases and can be used by anyone to promote whatever someone deems it pertinent to promote.
The trick is to figure out what’s real science news, what’s purposely planted disinformation, and what the ‘trial balloons’ being floated are. Then we could try to figure out what in the world the desired effect of such things might be. From the looks of our first story, the wisdom of having hundreds of millions of people “on-call” 24-7 via cell phones isn’t looking quite so desirable all of a sudden…
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