A few months ago, a law requiring cell phones sold in San Fransisco to carry a warning label failed to pass the city council. Now it seems they are trying again. It may sound a bit odd that a city would require this – things like product safety are usually legislated on the national level. This is, however, San Fransisco, and so they’re a lot better than everyone else and want us to all know that they’re much more progressive and special, and also, their farts don’t smell. (that was sarcasm, in case you didn’t catch that)

This time the law is likely to pass, because everyone supports it, since if they don’t, it proves that they are just a shill for the evil big corporations that want to eat your children.

Via PC Magazine:

San Francisco Gives Cell-Phone Radiation Law Another Try

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has approved a bill that would require a warning at stores that sell cell phones about the possible hazards of cell-phone radiation.

Last June, the City of San Francisco tentatively approved a bill that would have required merchants who sold cell phones within the city of San Francisco to display the “Specific Absorption Rate,” an FCC-mandated specification of radiation, next to the phones. Failure to comply would result in fines of between $100 to $300.

The bill approved this week would amend that bill with new provisions. Interim Mayor Ed Lee must still sign it into law.

In July 2010, however, the CTIA filed suit against the city, arguing that officials had no right to hand down regulations on an issue already addressed by the Federal Communications Commission.

There has been no definitive link that scientists have found linking the radiation emitted by cell phones to cancer. In late May, the World Health Organization classified mobile phones as a possible risk for a specific type of cancer in humans.

….

The new bill would mitigate the 2010 bill by proposing instead that customers would be notified of the dangers of cell-phone radiation, which would represent a strengthening of the law, as it includes an educational component, said Supervisor John Avalos.

“We are amending this ordinance…that would instead of having a rating per make and model of cell phone at point of sale, we would have a sign that merchants would provide in the stores close to the cell phones,” Avalos said. “I would say that cell phone emit radio frequencies and that they would also have to provide at the point of sale — they would have to provide at the point of sale a document sharing — to share with buyers on how to protect themselves from radiofrequency emissions.

“Those measures you can take to protect yourself, include using a headset instead of having the phone next to your ear, or keeping the cell phone in a casing that is less conductive of radiofrequency and there are other measures as well,” Avalos said.

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Lets get something straight:  I don’t like the TSA.   They’re not very good at keeping air travel secure and their searches are invasive, annoying and time consuming.   They make air travel miserable.   I don’t like their “body scanners” either.   They’re very expensive, of limited value in actually protecting the traveling public and they can be a very unpleasant experience for those forced to use them or have a full body pat-down.

But they are not giving TSA Agents or anyone else cancer, as it has been alleged recently.

Via Time Magazine:

Did Airport Scanners Give Boston TSA Agents Cancer?

Could radiation from full-body scanners be responsible for a “cancer cluster” among airport security workers? That’s what Transportation Security Administration union representatives in Boston have claimed.

Now, the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has obtained documents from the Department of Homeland Security, which EPIC says provide evidence that the government failed to properly test the safety of full-body scanners at airports, and dismissed concerns from airport agents about excessive exposure to the machines’ radiation.

The documents, which include emails, radiation test results and radiation studies, were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by EPIC. The advocacy group says they indicate that Homeland Security “publicly mischaracterized” safety findings by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), by suggesting that NIST had “affirmed the safety” of full body scanners.

But in an email obtained by EPIC, a NIST official stated that the agency had not tested the scanners for safety and does not in fact do product testing. Rather NIST had merely measured the radiation dose from a single machine against the standard of what is considered an acceptable. It had not done the rigorous product testing required to determine safety over time.
…

In the case of the Boston “cluster,” however, too little is yet known to suggest a link: neither EPIC nor the union reps have indicated what types of cancers the security agents in Boston have been diagnosed with. The scanners’ radiation, which typically targets the skin and the muscles right beneath it, would most logically be tied to a common type of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma.

The actual amount of radiation produced by backscatter x-ray systems is very low. While there has been some dispute about the accuracy of the measurements, since they were not independently verified for each and every machine under all possible conditions, even by the most liberal estimates, the maximum dose that a person might get from working near such a machine is on par with that one receives from flying in a commercial airliner. The radiation is also very low energy or “soft” so it does not have much penetrating power at all. It is barely able to penetrate the skin and would not result in much exposure to internal organs.

Even if the dose were ten times higher than the worst case estimates, it would not result in any noticeable increase in cancer in a small group, such as the TSA employees at one airport.

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Cell Phones don’t cause cancer. RF radiation does not cause cancer. Those statements I am willing to stand behind. If you don’t believe me, please use the search function on this site. I can assure you I have plenty of posts with citations of both the theoretical reasons why non-ionizing radiation does not cause cancer and the studies that have shown no link.

There’s a lot of pressure to say that they do, however. Claiming cell phones cause cancer sells books and magazines. Some dishonest people have made a whole career out of telling these lies. They become media darlings because everyone loves to hate the “big companies” and to talk about how some poor little guy is being kept down by those evil powers that be. Groups make a lot of money too. Especially when the emotion-charged issue of children is dragged into the mix, dishonest charities can grab headlines and donations. Groups that contribute nothing useful to the world are treated as charities while paying their top executives hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or more.

Oh, and by the way, I’m not afraid to name names when it comes to these dishonest people and groups: Lennart Hardell, George Carlo, Devra Davis, The Environmental Health Trust, Bioinitiative, EMF-Health, Microwave News. (there, so sue me. I’d love to see you in court about this)

Thankfully the WHO has been one organization that has been steadfast about the fact that there is no evidence to indicate a relationship between RF radiation and cancer. There are lots of claims, a few very poorly controlled experiments but no evidence, and this is despite some enormous studies and decades of trying.

Unfortunately, however, the WHO has recently made some more ambiguous statements on the issue. Bowing to pressure from those with a financial stake and those stupid enough to believe them, the WHO has now stated that mobile phone radiation is “possibly carcinogenic” – in other words, there’s no absolutely certain empirical evidence that shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that there’s no remote possibility that maybe somehow by some unknown mechanism, radio waves might have once in the history of the universe caused a cell to become cancerous. (They also claim to base this in part on largely discredited studies linking glioma, a certain form of brain cancer to mobile phones.)

Still, this is a bad idea.  It’s a horrible message to send out.  The problem is not that it’s entirely scientifically invalid to say that something is very remotely possible, but how politicians, the media and society take such statements.   It sometimes seems that research scientists don’t fully understand just how badly a statement can and will be butchered and taken out of context.

This non-story has already spawned over one thousand media reports.   Here are a few to provide a taste of just how this plays out:

Los Angeles Times: Experts say cellphones are possibly carcinogenic
Financial Times: WHO signals mobile phone cancer fears
Dallas Morning News: World Health Organization says cellphones might cause brain cancer
The Australian: Risk of brain tumour from mobile phone use is similar to pesticide DDT, petrol exhaust and coffee
Bellfast Telegraph: Brain cancer warning over mobiles
Newsday: Panel sees possible cellphone-cancer link
PC Magazine: WHO Finds Tentative Link Between Cell Phones, Cancer
Seattle Post Intelligencer – Experts: Cell phone use raises risk of cancer

Those are, of course, just a few.

A couple comments about this shameful reporting:
What the hell is a “tentative link?”   Does that mean that they don’t have a shred of evidence but are pretty sure they will at some point?

Also, in case you did not know:  DDT has never been conclusively linked to cancer in humans, though there were some conflicting studies about chronic exposure in prepubescent girls and breast cancer later, the link appears very weak.  There’s not even the slightest evidence that DDT is related to brain cancer.

Coffee has never been linked to brain cancer in any way shape or form, though some studies have found a small risk of increased bladder cancer in very heavy coffee drinkers.   The evidence of this is considered inconclusive, in part because the increase was very small and not found by all studies of coffee and bladder cancer.  There may be other confounding factors at play.

Automobile exhaust may be carcinogenic depending on the circumstances, such as the fuel burned, the exposure levels etc.   There’s little evidence that the combustion byproducts of properly and completely burned gasoline are directly carcinogenic.   Of course, these would be mostly carbon dioxide and water.

How can it be that I’m not getting paid a lot of money to write stories for news papers? Is it because I don’t have a degree in journalism? Well, despite that I can write a hell of a lot better than a lot of reporters seem to, and that is without the benefit of having editors to look over and approve what I write. Sometimes I wonder how some of the idiots who write for major media outlets managed to graduate high school, much less get hired.

In fact, one report from the Herald Sun was so horrible, I had no choice but to do something that apparently none of the professors or teachers of the writer did: I got out the red pen, or in this case, red brush in Photoshop.

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The claim made by a commenter in a previous post amounts to this: A Norway Maple tree existed in a location and was always very healthy, until a mobile tower was built approximately 180 meters away. After this, the tree appeared to be less healthy on the side facing the tower. The commenter claims that this is proof that it is the tower that caused this apparent problem with the tree.

Can we show this is a crock of bull? Thanks to the inverse square law, we can. In fact, we can do so with just one 620 by 680 pixel diagram.   In this case, we’ll assume that the estimate of 180 meters to the base of the tree is accurate, however it really does not matter that much.   The principle is the same, whether the actual distance is 170 meters, 190 or 200.   The numbers would work out to be slightly different but the fact that one side of the tree does not actually have a significantly higher or lower exposure to the RF energy from the tower does not change.

Note that the frequencies that mobile phone and data systems operate on pass through tree foliage easily without being reflected or shielded to any major extent, so the argument that parts of the tree are shielded by the closer foliage is not valid here.

What, you don’t believe in math?

A new study has come out proving yet again what we knew all along:
“Children” + “Radiation” +  “Study” = LOTS OF PRESS ATTENTION

The study claims to have found evidence that children born to mothers who used mobile phones heavily during pregnancy are more likely to have behavioral problems than those whose mothers did not use mobile phones heavily.

Via CNN:

Do cell phones cause behavioral problems?

Evidence of harm from cell phones continues to emerge: First there was the possible cancer link, and now there’s suggestion that those little hand-held devices may affect children’s behavior.

Children who had exposure to cell phones both in the womb and after birth, up to age 7 had a higher likelihood of behavioral problems than those who had no exposure, researchers said in a new study in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

The behavioral problems include hyperactivity and attention and social issues.

“These are important findings, but we are just at the beginnings of learning about potential effects of cell phones,” said Leeka Kheifets, of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health.

Kheifets and colleagues had previously found similar results in a smaller sample, of 13,000 children from the Danish National Birth Cohort. But she said that analysis needed further scrutiny because the mothers in it had been among the earliest adopters of cell phones, she said.

In this study, the researchers looked at more than 28,000 children. More than 10 percent of children who had prenatal exposure to cell phones had mothers who said they spoke on their cell phones four times a day or more. Nearly 50 percent of mothers said they had a cell phone turned on at all times. Again, these figures are based on self-reporting by the mothers who participated in the study.

They found that, as with the previous study, the more frequently a mother used a cell phone, the greater the risk that her child would have a behavioral problem. This time around, they also ruled out a family history of behavioral problems, as well as the inattention of the mother. Cell phone use and behavior problems were not related to time breast feeding and spent with the child, either, the researchers found.

The association between cell phone exposure is not terribly strong, Kheifets said. Also, the authors do not yet know the mechanism behind the connection between cell phones and behavioral problems. One theory is that cell phone use may lead to excess secretion of the hormone melatonin, which can affect the mother’s metabolism and may influence the development of the fetus’s brain. But this is just a speculation, Kheifets said.

Sorry, I missed the link between phones and cancer (maybe because it does not exist), but the link between mobile phones and media hype is pretty clear cut. This story has exploded in the media.

Some of the headlines:

AFP: Cell phone exposure linked to bad behavior in kids: study
Slate:  Cell Phones Linked to Childhood Missbehavior
The Australian: Mobiles linked to naughty children
WebMD: Cell Phone Use in Pregnancy: Risks for Child?
Reuters Canada: Study links cellphones to child misbehavior
The Sydney Morning Herald: Controversial study finds mobile phones a risk to foetuses
The Daily Mail: Using phone while pregnant ‘can lead to behavioural problems in children’
Time: Study: Could Cell-Phone Use in Pregnancy Affect Kids’ Behavior?
Today Online: No Mobile Use When Pregnant?

The actual study looked at children who reached age seven by the year 2008 and who had mothers who owned cell phones and used them regularly at birth and shortly after. Thus the time period represented is the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, a period of time when mobile phones began to become extremely popular.

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A rather interesting contention made by a new Dutch study is that trees are being harmed by wifi and mobile phone radiation. Apparently these trees all did fine with CB radios, VHF dispatch radios, analog mobile phones, television broadcasting, AM and FM radio, air traffic control radar and all the other RF emissions that have been around for many decades.

I should add, I have not yet been able to track down the text of the actual study itself, only the news reports.

Via PC World:

Wi-Fi Makes Trees Sick, Study Says

Radiation from Wi-Fi networks is harmful to trees, causing significant variations in growth, as well as bleeding and fissures in the bark, according to a recent study in the Netherlands.Radiation from Wi-Fi networks is harmful to trees, causing significant variations in growth, as well as bleeding and fissures in the bark, according to a recent study in the Netherlands.

The Department of Redundancy Department would like to inform the author that they have used a phrase twice and also that the same phrase was used two times.

All deciduous trees in the Western world are affected, according to the study by Wageningen University. The city of Alphen aan den Rijn ordered the study five years ago after officials found unexplained abnormalities on trees that couldn’t be ascribed to a virus or bacterial infection.

Additional testing found the disease to occur throughout the Western world. In the Netherlands, about 70 percent of all trees in urban areas show the same symptoms, compared with only 10 percent five years ago. Trees in densely forested areas are hardly affected.

Hmm.. well, that seems like quite a conclusion they have there, but then we have this…

Besides the electromagnetic fields created by mobile-phone networks and wireless LANs, ultrafine particles emitted by cars and trucks may also be to blame. These particles are so small they are able to enter the organisms.

Excuse me for asking, but is it the fine particles emitted by cars and trucks or the mobile phone radiation or both? If it actually is particulate pollution from vehicles then I can’t exactly say I’m shocked. It’s well known that the particulates emitted by vehicles and other fossil fuel uses can be harmful to plant life. This is hardly a new revelation.

And finally…

The study exposed 20 ash trees to various radiation sources for a period of three months. Trees placed closest to the Wi-Fi radio demonstrated a “lead-like shine” on their leaves that was caused by the dying of the upper and lower epidermis of the leaves. This would eventually result in the death of parts of the leaves. The study also found that Wi-Fi radiation could inhibit the growth of corn cobs.

The researchers urged that further studies were needed to confirm the current results and determine long-term effects of wireless radiation on trees.

20 ash trees? How exactly do we get from that to all the all deciduous trees in the Western world? And for that matter, why the Western world? Are the trees in Japan all immune to this? Also, does Australia count? In other words, are we talking about the geographic western world or the cultural one?

And what is a “lead like shine”? Is that the only symptom? Hell, lead isn’t even really all that shiny.

I think I might see some unfounded conclusions here.

If you actually are capable of building your PC, then I’d expect you might be tech-savy enough to realize that the idea that “radiation” from consumer electronic devices causing health problems is a crock, but if not perhaps this product is for you…

Via Tom’s Hardware:

Huntkey PC Chasis Offers Radiation Protection

Last week Huntkey Enterprise Group revealed its new SHIELD chassis slated for a global launch. The big deal behind its upcoming PC case is that it supposedly protects the end-user against radiation generated by PC components. This means the chassis could possibly reduce acne, balding and infertility–three side effects associated with PC-generated radiation.

According to the company, the chassis adopts full-body radiation protection and a TAC 2.0 design. The rack is made of premium conductive metal while a large steel mesh front panel ensures excellent ventilation, dust and radiation protection. It also has an independent USB rack wrapped with metal, EMI shrapnel embedded in the rear PCI slot for better chassis shielding, ventilation diameters smaller than 5.5-mm for an optimal balance between radiation protection and ventilation, metal panels shielding the HDD, and more

I just hope that that comment about balding, acne and infertility was tongue-in-cheek, because while many computer enthusiasts may suffer from such problems, it has nothing to do with radiation.

On the bright side, this is one of the few “radiation sheidling” products that I’ve seen that actually might have some legitimate uses. Assuming that it does indeed block a RF emissions from a computer, it could be handy in some situations where RF noise is a problem. Desktop computers are full of oscillators, pulsing clocks and cycling processors, which do create a fair amount of RF noise. This can sometimes cause some problems.

Over my many years of working with computers and other electronics, I’ve observed many occasions where a PC caused unwanted interference to other nearby devices. This may include increased radio noise or reduced television reception. On occasion it may even result in noticeable noise on nearby analog audio and video equipment, especially if the cables that connect them are long and poorly shielded. It’s possible that this noise could even result in some stations not being receivable on a TV tuner if they are on the edge of the reception area and close to the point of having too poor a signal to noise ratio. On occasion, the noise generated by a computer can also be a problem for computing tasks such as analog video and audio capture, where the capture device is poorly isolated from the noise produced by the system itself.

In these circumstances, this case might be just the ticket. Anyone who is planning on operating their computer in a setting with sensitive test equipment or who plans on using it in tandem with radio monitoring or amateur radio equipment should also consider RF isolation as an important factor – if not with a “radiation protection” case, then by some other means. Of course, filtered power supplies and a good grounding system are also critical.

However, don’t expect this kind of case to actually improve the health or safety aspects of computing. That said, it may offer relief to sufferers of “electrohypersensitivty,” but only if they’re convinced that the case is actually blocking bad radiation. Then again, a regular computer case and a trumped-up story about how it blocks radiation would work just as well, as is the case with any psychosomatic condition.

Yet another round of invented controversy has started with the release of a new book by Devra Davis “Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family.” It’s gotten a lot more attention than it should, being that the claims are big on the sensationalism and lack solid scientific backing.

Davis recently made the following comment:

It’s not the amount of radiation, necessarily. It’s the pulsed nature of the signal. It’s like: You can snap a rubber band, and it’s fine; but if you keep snapping it over and over again, it will break. Smart phones are constantly looking for signals, and it’s that sudden stopping and starting that I’m concerned about, not the total amount.

This has come up time and time again. It’s a claim being made by a number of alarmists who want to make it seem as if newer 3G and 4G applications and technologies are more dangerous than the phones and devices that have been around since the 1980’s and earlier. The fact of the matter is that there is ZERO evidence that “Pulsed” emissions are any worse than continuous RF emissions. NONE. There’s also no theoretical reason why they would be. Your body can’t demodulate the signals – it only responds to the potential dialetric heating that microwave radiation can produce.

But there’s another point worth making. Even if pulsed RF emissions were more dangerous (which they’re not) this is not what 3G technologies and new high speed data applications do. They don’t pulse. No, not at all. Some older 2G systems based on a system called TDMA do, but those are the ones we’ve had for more than two decades.

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I would hardly call them “public interest groups,” but they are certainly very unhappy about some recent changes in the FCC’s statements. This would seem such a small thing that you might think nobody would notice, but they did…

Via the Washington Post:

FCC changes position on cell phone radiation and safety guidelines

The Federal Communications Commission has updated its views on cellphone safety in a move criticized by a public interest group for downplaying the potential risks that radio frequencies could pose to users.

The agency, without issuing a press release, made the update on its Web site, saying that its guidelines on radio frequency limits were confusing and did not necessarily show whether one phone is safer than another.

Specifically, the FCC revamped its Web entry on cell phone health guidelines, removing a suggestion that users concerned about the radiation emitted from cellphones could choose devices with lower SAR values. SAR stands for “specific absorption rate,” which is a measure of the rate of radio-frequency energy absorbed by the body.

“The FCC requires that cell phone manufacturers conduct their SAR testing to include the most severe, worst-case (and highest power) operating conditions for all the frequency bands used in the USA for that cell phone,” the agency wrote on its consumer and governmental affairs section.

The issue of cellphone health risks has captured the attention of several jurisdictions, most notably San Francisco, which adopted a “Right to Know” ordinance that requires cell phone companies to label phones with radiation levels. San Francisco is scheduled to hold public hearings Thursday on the ordinance. A similar measure is also being considered by nearby Burlingame, Calif.

Public interest groups, scientists and some lawmakers have called for an overhaul of the way regulators assess the safety of cellphones. They say that testing of phones’ specific absorption rates should be conducted by regulators, and they cautioned that the current testing approach does not account for the fastest growing group of users: youth.

All of this has put the cellphone industry trade group, CTIA, on the defensive. It filed a lawsuit against San Francisco seeking to block the ordinance, said it would not longer consider the city for future trade shows and ramped up a lobbying campaign against similar measures elsewhere.

Scientists say the higher the SAR, the greater the potential danger to humans. To be sure, scientists do not agree on the effects of cellphone use on humans. Some studies show that radio frequencies absorbed by brain tissue have led to cell mutations and tumors – with the greatest threat posed to children. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and state lawmakers in Maine and California have called for a sweeping federal review of its oversight of cell phone safety.

The Environmental Working Group says the FCC’s changes mimic a message pushed by CTIA. The FCC said that measuring safety by SAR ratings can be misleading and cause confusion. A phone has different SAR levels depending on how far the phone is located from a cell tower base station and how closely it is being held to the body.

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