Does Carrying a Cell Phone on Your Hip Cause Bone Loss?

[russ_watters]

That's just it - though there are some studies that show a potential statistical link, the only possible mechanism I've heard is an overproduction of a heat activated enzyme. But that's kinda silly considering just how little wattage a cell phone has and how little heating actually takes place.

 

[Moonbear]

So the news articles are wrong then.

The news articles seem to have latched onto and misrepresented one statistic in the paper. When they split up their already small group of people with tumors and heavy cell phone use into urban and rural populations...which starts to look like fishing as they were finding no effect...they found some association in rural populations only. This really doesn't support any effect of the cell phones themselves if you don't have consistent effects in different populations, but rather indicates some other difference between rural and urban populations of people, or that if you keep sampling smaller and smaller subsets of a group hunting for an effect, you'll eventually find one by chance, not because it really exists (this is why scientists need to understand what Type I and Type II errors in statistics mean).

So, yes, that actually also applies to the follow-up smoking study. If you keep taking the same group and keep searching for differences, you could find them by chance, not because a real effect exists. This is why it is important that in the paper describing that study, they reported that it was the same population used for another study. That way, people doing any follow-up studies in different populations know how to interpret the findings if they get different results.

Another way to think about it...if you have 6 studies on small populations, 2 of them identify a statistically significant increase, 2 a significant decrease, and 2 no effect, overall, there's probably no effect. Or, someone could have done one large study on all those populations together, and overall found the same thing, no effect. This is why one should not dismiss a whole series of studies showing no effect when presented with one that does, especially if the effect is small. This is why science involves replication of findings in different populations before one is fully convinced a real effect exists. Also, if an effect in one population is very large, but is not observed in other populations, then it is not a simple matter of accepting or rejecting an hypothesis, but rather looking at why that one population is different from the others to determine if there is another factor influencing the outcome that is associated with the one being tested. For example (made up example...this was not tested) if the heavy cell phone users in a rural population who developed parotid tumors were also the ones in frequent contact with some type of pesticide and when talking on the phone while on the job, were transferring it from the hand holding the phone to their face where it was absorbed through the skin into the parotid gland, the actual cause is not the cell phone use but an association of more frequently getting pesticides onto the skin. Another hypothetical example, if the rural cell phone users are also more often using chewing tobacco rather than cigarettes (perhaps due to fire hazards keeping them from smoking), and usually tuck it on the same side of their mouth as is their dominant hand.

 

[baywax]

Here is a study out of

Cancer cell study revives cellphone safety fears
10:57 24 October 2002
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

The safety of cellphones has been brought into question once again by research that suggests radio waves from the devices could promote the growth of tumours. Paradoxically, the study suggests that the radiation makes tumours grow more aggressively by initially killing off cancer cells.

Cell biologist Fiorenzo Marinelli and his team at the National Research Council in Bologna, Italy, decided to investigate whether radio waves had any effect on leukaemia cells after previous studies indicated that the disease might be more common among mobile phone users. The life cycle of leukaemia cells is well understood, making it relatively easy to spot changes in behaviour.

The team exposed leukaemia cells in the lab to 900-megahertz radio waves at a power level of 1 milliwatt, and then looked at the activity of a gene that triggers cell suicide. Many European mobile networks operate at 900 megahertz, and maximum power outputs are typically 2 watts, although they regularly use only one-tenth of this power.

After 24 hours of continuous exposure to the radio waves, the suicide genes were turned on in far more leukaemia cells than in a control population that had not been exposed. What is more, 20 per cent more exposed cells had died than in the controls.

But after 48 hours exposure, the apparently lethal effect of the radiation went into reverse. Rather than more cells dying, Marinelli found that a survival mechanism kicked in. Three genes that trigger cells to multiply were turned on in a high proportion of the surviving cells, making them replicate ferociously. The cancer, although briefly beaten back, had become more aggressive.

As far as I know, when a layer of tissue is killed off by any adverse condition, the next layer that grows in has a higher chance of producing a cell with the mutation that manifests a cancer cell.

If radio frequency or microwave frequency radiation presents an adverse condition for cells in the brain tissue or other tissues, after prolonged use, then this will cause the die-off of cells and regeneration of new cells thus, introducing the risk of the appearance of a mutated cell(s). After 7 cycles of regeneration, the risk of cancer goes up many fold.

From the same study:

DNA damage?

Marinelli presented his results this month at the International Workshop on Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields on the Greek island of Rhodes. While the results do not show a direct health threat from mobile phones, they provide fresh evidence that radiation from such devices could play an important role in activating genes that might help cancer cells thrive.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2959

 

[elkface]

That's just it - though there are some studies that show a potential statistical link, the only possible mechanism I've heard is an overproduction of a heat activated enzyme. But that's kinda silly considering just how little wattage a cell phone has and how little heating actually takes place.

I also read somewhere that a study linking ELF and RF exposure (long-term, low-intensity, like cell phones) to leukaemia in children was proposed to be caused by the attraction of aerosols by power lines - though I'm sure this (if the aerosol theory is true) has very little if not nothing to do with the carcinogenic aspect of cell phone radiation.

Though I have not read through the whole thing yet, http://www.bioinitiative.org/" seems like a refutable source of info regarding what HAS been seen (as opposed to what has not been seen) regarding the links between cell phones and cancer.

 

[turbo]

Bump!

There is a new paper out, and the authors tear apart the methodology and structure of industry-financed studies that actually managed to find fewer health problems in cell-phone users. The critique is pretty convincing.

http://www.radiationresearch.org/pdfs/reasons_us.pdf

 

[elkface]

Wow, thanks for the straightforward and informative article!

 

[Tempus Fugit]

As far as I know, when a layer of tissue is killed off by any adverse condition, the next layer that grows in has a higher chance of producing a cell with the mutation that manifests a cancer cell.

1. Aren't we regenerating cells all the time? Why would the circumstances of the death of a cell have any impact on the one replacing it?

2. I thought the radiation in question was absorbed (and thus converting into thermal energy) in just the very outer layers of skin. Am I wrong?

 

[Jasongreat]

Kind of a related note on cell phones, a recent turkish study of 150 men found that carrying your cell phone on your hip seems to cause losses in bone density. Article at medicinenet click http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=106931"

Journal of Craniofacial Surgery 20(5):1556-1560 september 2009.

 

[Moonbear]

Kind of a related note on cell phones, a recent turkish study of 150 men found that carrying your cell phone on your hip seems to cause losses in bone density. Article at medicinenet click http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=106931"

Journal of Craniofacial Surgery 20(5):1556-1560 september 2009.

From your cited article:

The difference wasn't statistically significant...

Which means they should have stopped there. It does not cause losses in bone density if it is not a statistically significant result.