*UPDATED* POLL: Your belief of health impact of growing reliance on wireless

[Red Squirrel]

I am mildly concerned. I don't think it does have an impact, but I also am open to the possibility that it may. Why is it that more people are getting cancer now, then say, 100 years ago? Could all these waves in the air be causing certain people to be receptive (no pun intended) in a way that makes them get cancer? Or is it something else that's causing this rise in cancer? Air pollution, certain chemicals we come in contact with every day that we did not before, certain foods/ingredients?

When they do tests to see if waves are safe, they only test one device. So when they make a study on cell phones they'll have a bunch of cell phones. When they do a study on wifi, they'll have a bunch of wifi APs etc

But what effect is Radio, TV, wifi, CDMA, HSPA, CB, high voltage lines, etc etc combined having on us?

If a microwave oven can cook food, then perhaps all these waves in the air (some of which are at similar frequencies) are very slowly cooking us?

I personally trust the experts that all these wireless waves are safe though, but I do sometimes ask myself if perhaps these waves ARE bad for us.

It's like when back in the day they used lead for lot of stuff, back then everyone said it was safe and they made studies etc... then turns out it was not safe.

 

[epidemis]

I fail to see how you could possibly have posted this, having read and applied your undoubtedly awesome skills of reading comprehension to what I wrote

I'm glad we went there, from being civil to being outrageously condescending

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanoma
Not really.
.

I said hardened - not impervious. Something about glasshouses and stones.



Pray tell, if it's so impossible, why are WHO taking the claims seriously and have established research projects based on investigating the phenoma?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

I'm glad we went there, from being civil to being outrageously condescending

No problem. Now would you mind trying to respond with something intelligent?

I said hardened - not impervious. Something about glasshouses and stones.

Then why did you say that radiation doesn't penetrate the skin? Why didn't you say something more tentative?

Pray tell, if it's so impossible, why are WHO taking the claims seriously and have established research projects based on investigating the phenoma?

c.f. NCCAM.

 

[DrPizza]

I am mildly concerned. I don't think it does have an impact, but I also am open to the possibility that it may. Why is it that more people are getting cancer now, then say, 100 years ago? Could all these waves in the air be causing certain people to be receptive (no pun intended) in a way that makes them get cancer? Or is it something else that's causing this rise in cancer? Air pollution, certain chemicals we come in contact with every day that we did not before, certain foods/ingredients?

Could it be that people are living about 3 decades longer than they did 100 years ago, and that cancer is primarily a disease that affects older people? i.e. smoking generally doesn't cause cancer 3 weeks later; it takes years before the cancer develops. Decades in many cases. That's not to ignore that we aren't exposed to more carcinogenic substances; then again, with more and more research and reforms, we're steadily working on decreasing many of the underlying causes of cancer. e.g. decreased smoking rates. Then again, more and more people are drawn to tanning beds - and of course, there's a corresponding increase in the rates of melanoma.

When they do tests to see if waves are safe, they only test one device. So when they make a study on cell phones they'll have a bunch of cell phones. When they do a study on wifi, they'll have a bunch of wifi APs etc

But what effect is Radio, TV, wifi, CDMA, HSPA, CB, high voltage lines, etc etc combined having on us?

Whether waves are safe or not depends on their frequency, not necessarily their intensity. Certainly, intensity matters, if you're simply trying to transfer enough energy to heat something. But, most of the posters in these forums have sufficient blood flow to their brains that it regulates temperature well enough that even combined, these waves have no effect. It pretty much just boils (no pun intended) down to mathematics. With chemicals, you'll have interactions that can possibly be harmful, and it would be difficult to determine without testing. But, it can be mathematically determined if the interactions of these electromagnetic waves would be harmful. They're not.

If a microwave oven can cook food, then perhaps all these waves in the air (some of which are at similar frequencies) are very slowly cooking us?

Yes. And your blood flow, and other natural cooling devices are so effective that they wouldn't even notice this additional energy.

I personally trust the experts that all these wireless waves are safe though, but I do sometimes ask myself if perhaps these waves ARE bad for us.

Sadly, it has become a money making industry to create distrust of science, and experts in general in the US. I cringed this year when a student asked me if I really believed we had been on the moon. It's as if someone wants us all to become juggalos and celebrate ignorance. You have kids dying because they haven't received their vaccinations out of an unfounded fear of getting autism (person who faked his data has long since been discredited, but there are still people who believe it's a pharma conspiracy. To a degree, it's almost as if the cottage industry is thriving off of making people paranoid. In fact, to a greater or lesser degree, even big business is now profiting off this.

It's like when back in the day they used lead for lot of stuff, back then everyone said it was safe and they made studies etc... then turns out it was not safe.

Care to link to a study that shows lead was safe? Statements like this annoy me the same way people make statements like "scientists used to believe that the Earth was flat." Really? When "scientists" had already calculated the circumference of the Earth a few hundred years B.C.? Many cultures took for granted that the Earth was flat; but it was not a concept developed by scientific methods.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

no concern, but i can see how simple minds may have a hard time accepting this.

 

[Doppel]

Care to link to a study that shows lead was safe?

You're being disingenuous. Its effects were not known on the scale they are now, but I don't know why you chose that as an example over the other ones (asbestos, multitude of FDA-approved meds). That's how science works. As we learn more we change our viewpoints. There are undoubtedly things we use now that will ultimately be considered unsafe in the future and limited or banned.

I find it strange how so many people get hurt at the question, like it offends their faith in something, especially since they consider themselves scientific. I dare say most are not nearly as competent scientists as the dozens who have considered the wireless health question a significant enough one that they have conducted and continue to conduct studies looking into it.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

On 0-10 scale I'd put my concerns at a 1.5. Edit: To clarify my mild concerns are related to near field exposure like having a cell phone on your ear. I'm not at all worried about the cell tower down the block.

 

[Doppel]

Anyway, the WHO has classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless phone use..

http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf

Perhaps their idiot scientists should peruse Anandtech more often for nuggets of wisdom such as "Here I thought this was a place of technology and thinkers, instead I see fucking morons worried about radio waves. Our society is regressing into a self imposed dark age."

Remember this doesn't have to be perfectly safe or perfectly deadly. Almost everything in life is somewhere in the middle of that huge scale.

 

[silverpig]

Anyway, the WHO has classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless phone use..

http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf

Perhaps their idiot scientists should peruse Anandtech more often for nuggets of wisdom such as "Here I thought this was a place of technology and thinkers, instead I see fucking morons worried about radio waves. Our society is regressing into a self imposed dark age."

Remember this doesn't have to be perfectly safe or perfectly deadly. Almost everything in life is somewhere in the middle of that huge scale.

If you read the paper with the test, they said they couldn't conclusively rule out them causing cancer, but there was no indication that they did cause it either. The guy who was in charge of the study was on the radio a while back. He said if you put things on a scale of 1-10 for the certainty they can cause cancer, and have 1 be something like plain water "does not cause it at all" and 10 is chronic heavy smoking, they put cell phones at about 1.5.

The result of the study was that the probability that cell phones caused cancer was less than 0% (ie, the results showed they prevented cancer), but they didn't have enough certainty to discount a positive relationship ie: the range of probabilities was something like -2% to +1%. Because of that +1% they had to put it on the "may cause cancer" list.

This is the same classification that pickles get.


This is all from memory of a radio interview from a few months ago.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah lead was just an example. Asbestos is another. There's plenty of things that back in the day were considered safe, that now we would not even think of using. They did not actually say it was safe, they just did not consider it unsafe.

Though now it seems we are much more conscious about what is safe/unsafe before it goes to market, and we've learned from the past. So personally I'm not too concerned about the radio waves.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Personally I have 0 concern. But, perhaps science will some day offer evidence that there should be concern, if at some point that were to happen, then it's possible I may reevaluate my opinion.

 

[Jeff7]

Personally I have 0 concern. But, perhaps science will some day offer evidence that there should be concern, if at some point that were to happen, then it's possible I may reevaluate my opinion.

This.

Yes, my body is capable of absorbing 900MHz-2.4GHz EM radiation.
It's also capable of absorbing visible light, which is up in the hundreds of terahertz range, and has more energetic photons. Visible light has yet to turn me into a giant sentient tumor.