Mobile phones and kids
Discussion
I apologise if this is being discussed elsewhere, and ask the mods to kill the thread if it is.
Right. Some 'scientist' type (and I apologise for the offence caused to real scientists here) has spouted forth some drivel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4163003.stm
And I quote;
The latest study by Sir William Stewart will remind people while there is still no proof mobile phones are unsafe, precautionary steps should be taken.
WHAT?
You've spent chunks of time and money in research, cannot find any proof of a problem but 'advise' people not to do it anyway.
FFS. I'm really dumbfounded.
"There's no proof that drinking rola cola turns people into axe wielding killers, but we advise you don't do it anyway. Just in case. In fact, stay at home under the stairs wrapped in that amusing bubble sheet material if at all possible."
Media friendly content free garbage. And of course, the headline is "Kids killed by phones" with the "actually there's no evidence" in pt6 type on page 32.
I give up.
Right. Some 'scientist' type (and I apologise for the offence caused to real scientists here) has spouted forth some drivel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4163003.stm
And I quote;
The latest study by Sir William Stewart will remind people while there is still no proof mobile phones are unsafe, precautionary steps should be taken.
WHAT?
You've spent chunks of time and money in research, cannot find any proof of a problem but 'advise' people not to do it anyway.
FFS. I'm really dumbfounded.
"There's no proof that drinking rola cola turns people into axe wielding killers, but we advise you don't do it anyway. Just in case. In fact, stay at home under the stairs wrapped in that amusing bubble sheet material if at all possible."
Media friendly content free garbage. And of course, the headline is "Kids killed by phones" with the "actually there's no evidence" in pt6 type on page 32.
I give up.
The research is ongoing, its going to take a few years to work out if children who use mobile phones at a young age are affected later in life (like 10 years from now i guess...) and even then it won't be definitely attributable to use of mobiles.
However, as i occasionally get warm ears, slight headaches etc after long periods of mobile phone use (despite being long out of the habit for clenching it to my ear), i can well see some of link occurring.
I read an article based on the same newsfeed yesterday and thought it was generally ok. I think its right to be cautious at this stage.
However, as i occasionally get warm ears, slight headaches etc after long periods of mobile phone use (despite being long out of the habit for clenching it to my ear), i can well see some of link occurring.
I read an article based on the same newsfeed yesterday and thought it was generally ok. I think its right to be cautious at this stage.
Buffalo said:
The research is ongoing, its going to take a few years to work out if children who use mobile phones at a young age are affected later in life (like 10 years from now i guess...) and even then it won't be definitely attributable to use of mobiles.
Agreed.
We've had GSM in the general population for around 5-8 years now (depends what you call "general population") and so surely some sort of trend would emerge.
Yes but its only in the last couple of yeas that very young children seem to be getting hold of them. My parents live near a junior school (5-9 yrs) and an upper school (13-18) and even the junior school kids are seen with phones now! 
I also see kids in buggies play-talking into mummies phone when out shopping etc... Its more likely that sort of thing that "may" cause damage and it always takes time and usually heightened exposure to work out exactly what causes it...
Que loads of lab-rats running up phone bills...!
I also see kids in buggies play-talking into mummies phone when out shopping etc... Its more likely that sort of thing that "may" cause damage and it always takes time and usually heightened exposure to work out exactly what causes it...
Que loads of lab-rats running up phone bills...!
The first mobile phone call in the UK was made this week, 20 years ago. So for 15 years (Allowing for the handsets to become light enough to be truly mobile) we've had the things pinned to our ears, right next to the brain, and in the same period the percentage of people developing brain tumours etc has not changed. Exactly as stated before, just because people think it "MIGHT" be dangerous, dousn't mean that it is. All the data so far suggests that there is no long term harm.
li'l pugs said:
The first mobile phone call in the UK was made this week, 20 years ago. So for 15 years (Allowing for the handsets to become light enough to be truly mobile) we've had the things pinned to our ears, right next to the brain, and in the same period the percentage of people developing brain tumours etc has not changed. Exactly as stated before, just because people think it "MIGHT" be dangerous, dousn't mean that it is. All the data so far suggests that there is no long term harm.
Ah, but we didn't switch to 2G (GSM) until about 8 years ago....... I forget the exact dates.
Point taken though.
A former Sales Director of mine who spent 5 to 6 hours a day on his mobile in the car used to place the phone between his legs and use a wire type hands free kit. He is a fairly fit 40 something, plays football every weekend, eats healthily, drinks in moderation, gave up smoking at 30 and has now got testicular cancer.
Is there a link? Not sure but seems a bit suspicious to me.
Is there a link? Not sure but seems a bit suspicious to me.
As an expert with radiations and molecules, I thought I might wang my thoughts in, allthough I have done no testing, I have sound knowledge of the principles.
Mobile phones communicate via microwaves.
Microwaves interact with molecules (not atoms) and cause parts of them to spin. This is a reversible process, if this spinning is sudden and parts of a large molecule are constrained, it can cause the molecule to snap. This can happen with DNA, although the DNA is in a glass dish (rats blood).
I can also tell you that radiation only is terminated when it interacts with a substance where it interacts in the appropriate mode. Radio waves do not interact with buildings and neither do mobile phones, which is why your radio can detect them, or your phone for that matter.
So, it follows that mobile phone microwaves are likely to pass through a human skull. I imagine that if you could get your phone inside a human skull (blocking up the eyeholes, etc) you would probably get a signal.
So, assuming that the human skull is not some sort of magic radiation shield, I will continue. The order of the amount of radiation is quite small (see dim light) but the individual "photon" energies are the same. There is less of the same stuff.
So, it follows that the microwaves, even though they won't instantly cook a jacket spud, are still energetic enough to cause molecules to spin and certain molecules to snap.
Since the childs skull is thinner and it's cells are dividing more quickly, any DNA damage caused by these microwaves are of an increased order of severity. So, microwaves of all kinds (including those from mobile phones) are potentially tumour causing.
So, what is the actual risk?
The actual risk of a microwave "photon" (the smalles amount of a microwave you can get) is a threat to a DNA molecule, if the DNA molecule can function in a damaged form is a tumour hazard. There are huge statistical improbabilities against this, but it only takes one photon.
A parallel is with smoking fags, the smoke contains aromatic compounds (amongst others) which work in the same way, body breaks them down into a very reactive chemical which then can damage DNA, again the damaged DNA can cause tumours. We all know that smoking causes lung cancer right? So, it follows that statistically there should be an increase of brain tumour patients directly due to mobile phone use. There is some sort of threat without a doubt and research needs to be done to correlate DNA damage with the intensity of mobile phone radiation present and the amount of a threat that actually poses.
I personally think that politically MOBILE PHONE COMPANIES ARE THE SAVIOUR OF OUR ECONOMY, so we had better shut up until the results actually prove the connection.
There will be a connection, but of what order and how hushed up it will be, who knows.
I don't use a mobile phone for this reason among others, and that is an educated opinion.
Mobile phones communicate via microwaves.
Microwaves interact with molecules (not atoms) and cause parts of them to spin. This is a reversible process, if this spinning is sudden and parts of a large molecule are constrained, it can cause the molecule to snap. This can happen with DNA, although the DNA is in a glass dish (rats blood).
I can also tell you that radiation only is terminated when it interacts with a substance where it interacts in the appropriate mode. Radio waves do not interact with buildings and neither do mobile phones, which is why your radio can detect them, or your phone for that matter.
So, it follows that mobile phone microwaves are likely to pass through a human skull. I imagine that if you could get your phone inside a human skull (blocking up the eyeholes, etc) you would probably get a signal.
So, assuming that the human skull is not some sort of magic radiation shield, I will continue. The order of the amount of radiation is quite small (see dim light) but the individual "photon" energies are the same. There is less of the same stuff.
So, it follows that the microwaves, even though they won't instantly cook a jacket spud, are still energetic enough to cause molecules to spin and certain molecules to snap.
Since the childs skull is thinner and it's cells are dividing more quickly, any DNA damage caused by these microwaves are of an increased order of severity. So, microwaves of all kinds (including those from mobile phones) are potentially tumour causing.
So, what is the actual risk?
The actual risk of a microwave "photon" (the smalles amount of a microwave you can get) is a threat to a DNA molecule, if the DNA molecule can function in a damaged form is a tumour hazard. There are huge statistical improbabilities against this, but it only takes one photon.
A parallel is with smoking fags, the smoke contains aromatic compounds (amongst others) which work in the same way, body breaks them down into a very reactive chemical which then can damage DNA, again the damaged DNA can cause tumours. We all know that smoking causes lung cancer right? So, it follows that statistically there should be an increase of brain tumour patients directly due to mobile phone use. There is some sort of threat without a doubt and research needs to be done to correlate DNA damage with the intensity of mobile phone radiation present and the amount of a threat that actually poses.
I personally think that politically MOBILE PHONE COMPANIES ARE THE SAVIOUR OF OUR ECONOMY, so we had better shut up until the results actually prove the connection.
There will be a connection, but of what order and how hushed up it will be, who knows.
I don't use a mobile phone for this reason among others, and that is an educated opinion.
shirley temple said:
A former Sales Director of mine who spent 5 to 6 hours a day on his mobile in the car used to place the phone between his legs and use a wire type hands free kit. He is a fairly fit 40 something, plays football every weekend, eats healthily, drinks in moderation, gave up smoking at 30 and has now got testicular cancer.
Is there a link? Not sure but seems a bit suspicious to me.
I used to keep my phone in the leg pocket of my jeans. After a while a perfect square of leg hair fell out and that thigh felt a bit numb. Was an old phone though. Got a new one and I never keep it in a pocket adjacent to my body - always on the nearest table or in my jacket.
It would be interesting to see if more men than women have phone-related problems, as every woman I know keeps her phone in her handbag.
How's this for a thought? (before I go for a pint)
I don't know how far your phone will work away from a mobile phone mast, but I gather it is quite a long distance.
I am getting on thin ice now as I'm not a communications engineer, but, I expect that phone calls run along the same principle as normal radio. As in you have the waves (carrier frequency) which the digitised conversation is encoded. The waves are not massive big long oscillations of energy, straight from the phone to the reciever, allthough seeing them like that is a nice mental model, they take the form of countless zillions of microwave photons (smallest "wavey bits" you can get) which follow the overall behaviour from the phone to the mast and vice versa.
So, you have to have a significant amount of microwave photons to actually get the signal to the mast and vice versa.
Consider the inverse square law (now I'm getting on really thin ice, A level Physics was a while ago). As you move away from something emitting radiation, the intensity drops proportional to the inverse of the square of the intensity as you move out in equal steps.
So, Distance 0 intensity = 1
Distance 2 intensity =1/4
Distance 4 intensity =1/16
Distance 8 intensity =1/64
From that, it follows that you need shit loads of photons to get a coherent signal to a mast and vice versa. That equates to a vast number of photons, even if they are low energy ones.
An important consideration is the stuff it has to go through, like a microwave, the atmosphere has got moisture in it, so it is important that the particular sort of microwaves don't interact with that. So they are likely to be of a wildly different frequency (range). But as a knowledge of Biochemistry dictates, there are some gigantic complicated structures which COULD be disturbed by microwave radiation.
But they are keeping rather quiet about it. I have heard about a few tumour cases and statistically, it was looking conclusive that ridiculously high use was correlated with A FEW (and only a few) examples of people getting brain tumours (near their chosen ear). Since that was the case, you might expect the radiation to interact strongly with the medium (brain) as it was very close to the outside of the skull.
Having a think about the relative orders of size of exposure, you can see that close use is a bad thing and the risk is similarly multiplied by the time the phone is used. If a young skull/brain are particularly vunerable, it follows that if the order of exposure (time) is not taken into consideration (average use) it is a load of propaganda fear bollocks as the actual hazard of a tumour would be more dependent on time exposure, rather than vunerable DNA (but I'm not a biologist).
Since people have not been dropping in their hundreds of brain tumours, I can only assume that mobiles are relatively safe, BUT I use the word RELATIVELY not totally.
You can bet the research has been done and it is being hushed up. Remember the days of fags being good for you?
I don't know how far your phone will work away from a mobile phone mast, but I gather it is quite a long distance.
I am getting on thin ice now as I'm not a communications engineer, but, I expect that phone calls run along the same principle as normal radio. As in you have the waves (carrier frequency) which the digitised conversation is encoded. The waves are not massive big long oscillations of energy, straight from the phone to the reciever, allthough seeing them like that is a nice mental model, they take the form of countless zillions of microwave photons (smallest "wavey bits" you can get) which follow the overall behaviour from the phone to the mast and vice versa.
So, you have to have a significant amount of microwave photons to actually get the signal to the mast and vice versa.
Consider the inverse square law (now I'm getting on really thin ice, A level Physics was a while ago). As you move away from something emitting radiation, the intensity drops proportional to the inverse of the square of the intensity as you move out in equal steps.
So, Distance 0 intensity = 1
Distance 2 intensity =1/4
Distance 4 intensity =1/16
Distance 8 intensity =1/64
From that, it follows that you need shit loads of photons to get a coherent signal to a mast and vice versa. That equates to a vast number of photons, even if they are low energy ones.
An important consideration is the stuff it has to go through, like a microwave, the atmosphere has got moisture in it, so it is important that the particular sort of microwaves don't interact with that. So they are likely to be of a wildly different frequency (range). But as a knowledge of Biochemistry dictates, there are some gigantic complicated structures which COULD be disturbed by microwave radiation.
But they are keeping rather quiet about it. I have heard about a few tumour cases and statistically, it was looking conclusive that ridiculously high use was correlated with A FEW (and only a few) examples of people getting brain tumours (near their chosen ear). Since that was the case, you might expect the radiation to interact strongly with the medium (brain) as it was very close to the outside of the skull.
Having a think about the relative orders of size of exposure, you can see that close use is a bad thing and the risk is similarly multiplied by the time the phone is used. If a young skull/brain are particularly vunerable, it follows that if the order of exposure (time) is not taken into consideration (average use) it is a load of propaganda fear bollocks as the actual hazard of a tumour would be more dependent on time exposure, rather than vunerable DNA (but I'm not a biologist).
Since people have not been dropping in their hundreds of brain tumours, I can only assume that mobiles are relatively safe, BUT I use the word RELATIVELY not totally.
You can bet the research has been done and it is being hushed up. Remember the days of fags being good for you?
shirley temple said:Or it could just be that the light on the screen warms the phone up and thereby your ear and that headphones also keep your ears warm
I noticed when on the phone for long periods the side of my head and ear got hot, the same happens when wearing headphones, are the electical properties the same?
Mr E said:
Probably. Transmission requires power, so the battery will get warm.....
Ah but my ear gets hot after extended periods on the phone, even though i no longer squish it to my ear when talking. Could it be tiny microwaves reacting with the micro-cells in the body and agitating them, causing micro hot-spots..?
As with BSE, luekemia near nuclear powerstations etc, one can imagine a plausible chains of events starting with shoving a mobile phone antenna next to your ear that leads to a serious health problems. The threat is real insofar as the chain of events could happen. Similarly it is possible that the neighbours might accidently drop their fridge on my head.
What you have to assess is the likelihood of the chain of events actually happening. And as we've seen with BSE, that can be extremely hard to estimate; and the inability to come up with a reliable estimate may simply be the nature of the beast, not a "failure" of science. In those circumstances we are pretty much forced to suck it and see. With BSE we can now see that the risk must have been pretty low as the hospitals are not packed out with victims. Similarly there hasn't been an explosion in brain or ear tumours since mobile phones came into use. The lack of victims gives us something fairly concrete on which to start estimating an upper limit for the risk. It is not suicidally dangerous to clamp a phone to your ear. But is it absolutely safe? Probably not; very little is absolutely safe. Is it worth worrying about? Not when compared to smoking, binge drinking, failing to exercise, crossing the road when pissed, and many other risks we knowingly take (some of which are tantamount to suicidal).
What you have to assess is the likelihood of the chain of events actually happening. And as we've seen with BSE, that can be extremely hard to estimate; and the inability to come up with a reliable estimate may simply be the nature of the beast, not a "failure" of science. In those circumstances we are pretty much forced to suck it and see. With BSE we can now see that the risk must have been pretty low as the hospitals are not packed out with victims. Similarly there hasn't been an explosion in brain or ear tumours since mobile phones came into use. The lack of victims gives us something fairly concrete on which to start estimating an upper limit for the risk. It is not suicidally dangerous to clamp a phone to your ear. But is it absolutely safe? Probably not; very little is absolutely safe. Is it worth worrying about? Not when compared to smoking, binge drinking, failing to exercise, crossing the road when pissed, and many other risks we knowingly take (some of which are tantamount to suicidal).
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