[nuvious]

We had a physics teacher who thought cell phones may cause brain damage and my immediate thought was to ask him about the electron well discussion we had had previously when discussing ionizing radiation and how the mechanism for damage from cell phone waves was basically impossible. He still stuck to his concern but didn't offer up a proposed mechanism for harm.

The radio waves used for cell phones are between about 800 and 2000 Mhz. Visible light which we all know is not a concern is 490 to 790...terahertz. You don't get to ionizing radiation until you get to roughly 2400 terahertz which is roughly 10 eV.

Was very frustrating learning all that physics just for dumbasses to claim your brain was getting fried so they could sell you a sticker with a metal screen for $40 that does nothing.

[forum_ghost]

1 watt laser can burn through your eyeball. 1 watt regular LED is a fun Christmas decoration.

Details matter.

There are theories that radio waves can activate small nerve fibres that are located closely to the edge of your skin, where EMF can penetrate, even if only couple millimetres deep.

Those nerve fibres are often located near the mast cells, which form part of your innantr immune system, and have a two-way communication with your CNS via these fibers.

Constant inflammation driven by mast cells is a proven cause of autoimmune disease and increased risks of cancer, osteoporosis, many other chronic illness.

It’s not just ionisation that can do that. That’s only one mechanism. Induce enough inflammation and you could have risks of cancer go up, and not only locally, like skin cancer, but systemically as well, because the immune cells release mediators into the systemic circulation, and in rare cases even causes anaphylaxis, like with solar urticaria: https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/what-is-s...

[nuvious]

> There are theories that radio waves can activate small nerve fibres that are located closely to the edge of your skin, where EMF can penetrate, even if only couple millimetres deep.

Great. Can you provide a reference to this premise at all? There are theories doesn't mean there are verifiable observations to support them. You based your entire argument on this, and eventually connected to a WebMD reference to a condition caused by exposure to solar energy...

...which is orders and orders of more magnitude greater energy than microwave transmitters used in cell phone...

...also a cell phone transmitter maxes out at 1 watt to the antenna and solar energy at the earth's surface is 1000 watts per meter...

...oh yeah, and SOLAR FLUX UNCLUDES UV RADIATION WHICH IS IONIZING RADIATION!

Provide a peer reviewed reference to your proposed mechanism that actually connects it to damage in DNA that leads to cancer in the context of cell phones please.

[forum_ghost]

Solar urticaria has nothing to do with ionizing radiation. as per the CDC, UVA is not ionizing. You can review this on cdc.gov, and maybe inform them they are wrong? A discovery that ionizing radiation is the causative factor of anaphylaxis in solar urticaria would probably get you quite a few awards. Looking forward to your contributions to health sciences.

It also doesn't matter, as the same occurs with infrared: google "heat urticaria". def not ionizing? You can use this link www.google.com to confirm, and also this one maybe: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

maybe also google "cold urticaria"? is negative (inverse?) infrared ionizing? Pressure urticaria is also cool, no radiation required at all.

Given the subject matter at hand is quite involved and requires fairly up to date expertise in neurology, allergy and immunology, oncology and dermatology to be able to evaluate mechanisms at hand, I have prepared for you a decent list of peer reviewed materials to begin your preparation:

  a) ISBN: 0-87893-106-6
  b) ISBN: 9780123851574 
  c) ISBN: 9780199558322
  d) ISBN: 978-1-62618-166-3
  e) ISBN: 978-92-4-157238-5 
  f) ISBN: 3034808372
  g) ISBN: 9783034808378
  h) ISBN: 978-92-76-29839-7

Once you have covered the basics in the above peer reviewed literature, most of which is even approved for training, you will then have no difficulty at all accepting the following:

  1) Mast cells are located at the junction point of the host and external environment.
  2) EMF penetrates into the skin tissue by several millimiters.
  3) There is voluminous clinical evidence of mast cell degranulation by non-ionizing radiation
  4) Mast cells produce inflammation, both local AND systemic.
  5) Chronic inflammation causes DNA damage and increases risks of cancer and many other diseases.

Clinical implications of the interplay between EMF and mast cells is an ongoing area of research. There is like less than 90 papers published on this specific topic, which is miniscule. However, you should not review those papers until after you completed with basics.

Looking forward to your contributions.

[nuvious]

The sun emits more than just UVA and high energy UV light is ionizing. Further my point was that you chained together a mechanism and tried to prove it with something completely unrelated vice trying to address the broader observational evidence in the OP. If your proposed mechanism was real it should've resulted in a significant spike in brain tumors which had not happened. Citing solar urticaria is a complete non sequitur to the point the OP is making with their direct observation that show a lack of increased cancer rates.

I'm also aware of the number of papers out there proposing harm but in the broader picture they don't pan out as reproducible or actually demonstrating sufficient evidence to show harm. That's what the OP is talking about. Despite all the hypothetical mechanisms brain cancers did not increase between the time we had no cell phones to when they became ubiquitous in society.

Here's the contribution I've been responding with all over this thread:

"Overall, the epidemiological studies on RF EMF exposure do not show an increased risk of brain tumours. Furthermore, they do not indicate an increased risk for other cancers of the head and neck region."

https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/emerging/d...

The EU routinely surveys the literature to review the research on RFR and EMF exposure and time and time again does not turn up any statistically significant proof of harm. It covers way more than 90 studies; the citation section alone is 55 pages of the 288 in this systematic review.

This is why I get so frustrated about people asserting a cause without providing real data the effects are real or insisting effects exist as a response to data like the OP that suggest there's no interaction.

Provide this thread some explanation regard why the OP is is wrong and cancer cells are going up and then connect that to your assertion of a mechanism similar to solar uticara. If you can't do the first part of that and discredit the observational data your mechanism is just a data-less hypothesis and is just sewing fear uncertainty and doubt for no reason.

[forum_ghost]

I never said it must be cancer.

My comment stated the mechanism can be chronic inflammation, which among MANY OTHER THINGS, can also lead to DNA damage.

MANY. OTHER. THINGS.

There is a study in this thread where rats irradiated with 835 mhz (commonly used in Wi-Fi, cellular, wireless phone etc), at SAR 4 (iPhone is at 2) produced demyelination in rats.

Is multiple sclerosis better than cancer?

Finding the link of the study is an exercise left to reader. It’s somewhere here in one of my comments.

Evaluating these studies would require at least the ISBNs I’ve linked, which can take over a decade.

Looking forward to updates from you in 2032.

[SigmundA]

Cellphone transmitters are not coherent, they are like LED christmas decorations except lower power.

[forum_ghost]

>Cellphone transmitters are not coherent, they are like LED christmas decorations except lower power.

The point is neither one produces ionizing radiation.

There are other mechanisms by which non-ionizing radiation can induce cancers, such as the one I've described.

[SigmundA]

>There are other mechanisms by which non-ionizing radiation can induce cancers, such as the one I've described.

Link please, there are no proven mechanisms such as you describe I am aware of. Your only link points to sun exposure and UVB rays which are near ionizing and cause cancer through DNA damage based on photon energy.

Your example of a laser vs led is on point because its purely based on inverse-square, watt per kg and and thermal heating of tissue which is the only known mechanism which cellphone RF frequencies can cause tissue damage and only at orders of magnitude more power levels.

[forum_ghost]

It's too long of a reasoning chain, maybe that's why it's not obvious? it is also an underfunded area of ongoing research with not enough publications, one paper mentioned only 90 papers are published on this specific issue, which is a tiny number, but seems about right.

So anyway, the mechanism:

  "emf does penetrate skin few mm deep" > "that's deep enough to hit mast cells and small nerve fibers" > "we have plenty of evidence non-ionizing radiation can cause mast cell degranulation"/"we have evidence EMF can produce current in nerves" > "mast cells drive inflammation" > "inflammation causes DNA damage and increase risks of cancer."

Any of these steps seem controversial to you? you can verify them independently easily.

  Maybe claim #3. Plenty of papers on that: 
  https://scielo.conicyt.cl/pdf/ijmorphol/v37n2/0717-9502-ijmorphol-37-02-00719.pdf
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0891061816300576

the only real question that remains is how big of an effect this will have on humans. Cars kill over a million EVERY year. Every 5 years we kill as many people as this pandemic. Nobody seems to particularly care.

Maybe it will be a small effect, maybe it will kill millions per year, but it seems everyone has made up their minds either way, and unless people start dropping dead in the streets nobody will change their mind.

[SigmundA]

Light also penetrates the skin few mm or more (hold a flashlight to you finger) why aren't we studying similar effects with artificial lights which have much more radiative power?

>Maybe claim #3. Plenty of papers on that

I can find one paper, mast cell degranulation has lots of causes, maybe just from thermal heating? Always worth looking into I wouldn't call it conclusive by any stretch.

I don't think anyone has made up their mind, only that jumping to conclusions isn't warranted base don our understanding of physics, sure we should keep studying but as yet there are no proven non-thermal effects or direct correlation or causation between low power microwave and cancer.

[ncmncm]

False. Again.

[SigmundA]

Really so cellphones are actually microwave lasers, cool!

[alexvoda]

We do actually have microwave lasers, which IIRC predate lasers, called masers.

Of course, there is no cellphone equipped with such a thing.

[nuvious]

Masers are cool. My dad worked in an optics lab that used Masers in college and they used Styrofoam for lenses because it's transparent in the microwave spectrum and induces refraction well.

[amelius]

It's a bit bold to only consider ionization as a possible cause of damage.

Molecular chemistry where e.g. protein clusters copy DNA, is very intricate, and introducing electromagnetic resonances in such processes could be potentially disruptive. It's not just your receiver that picks up energy from radio waves, molecules can too (even without losing electrons).

In fact, someone cannot prove mobile phones are safe once and for all unless they tested the entire set of frequencies used in future phone models too.

[rndphs]

At the molecular level, basically all photon modes associated with the thermal energy (or lower) will be already thermally occupied. E = hf = k_bT/2. This frequency at room temperature is about 30THz. So on the microscopic level, any frequencies under 30THz are constantly irradiated by thermal fields anyway.

Edit: Furthermore, the Gibb's free energy of any molecular process determines the reversibility of the process at a given temperature. Any molecular process with Gibb's free energy that is lower than the thermal mean energy is going to be essentially a reversible equilibrium process, and stimulating it with radiation will only shift the equilibrium very slightly I believe. I think it's for this reason that we don't see radio catalysed reactions in chemistry, unlike photocatalysed reactions.

[amelius]

I'm not talking about noise. I'm talking about a spike in the frequency spectrum.

If you can build a protein that can tune to e.g. 3GHz (or whatever frequency a phone uses), thus behave differently at that frequency, then basically that proves that radio waves can theoretically alter the reactions in the molecular soup that is a cell. All I'm saying is that I'm not so sure that this can't be done.

[rndphs]

I think though that any biological process using these sorts of energies on the molecular level will be swamped with noise and therefore wouldn't be a useful mechanism. 3GHz is like 0.00001eV. A process with Gibb's free energy change of 10ueV has an equilibrium constant of essentially 1 at room temperature, and so is almost completely reversible.

The reason why we can make things interact with radio waves at all is essentially because electrical conductors provide coherent modes for low energy photons to couple to. Without conductors and their free electron cloud we would have a very hard time building anything to receive or transmit radio in any way that isn't thermal.

It is true that there is some degree of conductivity in cells but without a non-thermal way of coupling between current and molecular processes I don't see how radio waves could affect cells in a non-thermal manner

Edit: I guess nerves have a non-thermal coupling mechanism from low frequency currents to molecular mechanisms, so it must be possible. But the machinery for that has been highly evolved for that specific task, I'm not sure if it follows that such machinery would appear commonly in cell processes.

[Gnarl]

Are single-photon models even useful here? What about aggregate photon effects? The sheer amount of photons hitting you from a cell-tower is enormous. Perhaps an "optical tweezer" type effect could happen?

And for the non-thermal effect discussion, have you considered voltage-gated ion-channels in cell-membranes?

[nuvious]

You're gish galloping. Rather than continue to propose arguments without evidence of actual risk, find a citation that has a salient hypothesis that's tested that shows risk.

We aren't your Google-scholar and you're just promoting FUD by asking into the ether "but couldn't X cause Y". Me typing this message COULD cause a butterfly effect that leads to an earthquake. In any "does X cause Y" scenario you have two answer what the probability is that X causes Y and what's the impact of X does cause Y.

In RFR exposure terms it's what is the probability that RF below ionizing levels cause damage to DNA to promote cancer. The vast majority of the research says no and theoretical mechanisms for harm of RF below ionizing levels has never been proven to anything close to a statistical significance or in ways that are reproducible. Even if you did you'd have to assume impact. The OP study is basically assuming there's some impact and studying the population broadly and observed none.

Low probably, low impact, low or no risk.

Please present evidence that presents a high risk argument that is backed by some research showing an increase of the probability and/or impact or rfr exposure to DNA damage.

Until you do that, you're gish galloping. Please respond to our arguments (or consider if we're right) instead of declaring new ones with no references.

[jlokier]

Last time I had an MRI scan, I had strong sensations throughout my body where exposed to the MRI's radio emissions. I rather enjoyed the sensation, it felt like a massage and I would have enjoyed it for longer.

I was surprised, as they didn't mention this before the scan. After, I asked about it, and they told me most people don't feel anything, but some do like me, and for a few it's so painful they have to stop the scan.

They told me it was my peripheral nervous system interacting with the radio emissions, not a physical (non-signal) effect as it felt like. From that conversation I learned there was about 10kW transmitted through my body during the scan.

MRIs have been studied for dangerous effects, of course, and all the evidence shows them to be extremely safe... provided there is no metal in the body which can heat up or be displaced by the field, and not counting risks from the contrast agents which are sometimes injected, which some people are more susceptible to than others.

I was never convinced by dismissive arguments that non-ionising radiation "can't" have any biological effect other than localised heating, or that the thermal background spectrum means infrared and below can't have an effect. (I know the physics pretty well; it's not lack of understanding.)

But after those sensations caused directly by the emissions, I'd experienced a biological, non-thermal effect from radio in the microwave-or-below frequency range directly and clearly. That was really interesting.

The body clearly does a lot of things based on countless subtle signalling pathways. Pretty much anything any pathway can sense could have an effect, even if it's not a conventional chemical reaction. One of the more interesting technological ideas around this is the use of high coherence terahertz signals that resonate with DNA molecular dynamics.

[rndphs]

Oh yeah I don't doubt it. I think though that there is many orders of magnitude difference in the field strengths between cell phone radiation and MRI, and this makes all the difference.

THz radiation is a different story too as it has about enough energy such that it could influence irreversible processes.

[ncmncm]

I.e., at random: thus not inducing any coherent electric current, so irrelevant to the discussion.

The only other subjects that induce such confident statements of fact from the profoundly ignorant are economics and politics.

[rndphs]

But the only electric current on the molecular level is coherent current...? Chemical reactions are not macroscale phenomena, and so it shouldn't really matter if the energy comes from a random distribution or not. Also please don't insinuate that I'm "profoundly ignorant", that certainly isn't relevant to the discussion.

[ncmncm]

Profound ignorance is insistence of certainty in the entire absence of knowledge of a subject.

Microwaves absorbed in tissue induce electrical currents carried by ions in solution. Just about everything that happens in your body involves ions moving in solution, one way or another. Details matter.

[rndphs]

But the movement of ions in solution is almost completely dominated by thermal motion. Your signal doesn't matter if the signal to noise ratio is essentially zero.

[ncmncm]

And, indeed, all the modulations. Exposure to unvarying microwaves at various frequencies and low exposure has fairly often shown no obvious effect, but modulations completely change the picture as regards induced electric currents.

[nuvious]

Cell phones are not likely to go anywhere close to the ionizing range of frequencies because things like walls become opaque at those frequencies. Fun fact, if you could see in the microwave spectrum you could see through many plastics which is why Styrofoam and similar materials are used in microwave safe containers and in the lenses for microwave lasers. The higher the energy the waves, the higher the frequency and the greater the absorbption by walls and even just water vapor in the air.

5+ Ghz frequencies are often used in precision radar and I worked with people who worked on them in the Navy. A few had stories of getting "zapped" by them if they were left on against safety guidelines. The feeling is like having popcorn pop under your skin because the waves are quickly absorbed by the water in the dead layer of your skin. No one in the entirety of military radar had ever got cancer from one of these radars but sometimes they get a fun wake up call to get back down the radar mast to slap whoever left the dish spinning.

There is NO mechanism you're actually providing because you are saying molecules can be "damaged" without actually describing what that even means. DNA is ionic bonds only so enlighten me how they are ever "damaged" because we're aren't in the territory of covenant or hydrogen bonds that can be affected by stuff like heat.

You can KILL cells with high frequency RF but cancer doesn't come about when a cell dies but when the DNA is DAMAGED through and IONIZING event.

"they can't prove its safe... unless they test the entire set of frequencies used in future phone models too"

Your premise is bad. We can't prove anything is 100% safe ever. We instead try to assess risk which is probability of the adverse event multiplied by its impact and reduced by mitigations if available.

And we've done that TIME AND TIME AGAIN for the tin-foil-hat crowd that doesn't understand basic physics:

"Overall, the epidemiological studies on RF EMF exposure do not show an increased risk of brain tumours. Furthermore, they do not indicate an increased risk for other cancers of the head and neck region."

http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/emerging/do...

Please at least Google for the research before declaring it doesn't exist. You're using the same logic as anti-vax/anti-gmo/anti-science in general; just declare no/not enough research had been done and gish gallop arguments to promote fear, uncertainty and doubt when in reality scientists HAVE been at work making sure the risks are low and you're just denying their efforts.