"Truth About Cell Phone Radiation" Dr. Devra Davis Melbourne Lecture

[edy]

This video was forwarded to me by a friend.... It seems to be making the rounds on the internet. I'm sure this is probably nothing new, as I assume this lecture must have already been reviewed before here on EEVBlog? A search of the forums didn't reveal anything. Here's the video:



So the title says "the truth" and I have to ask, based on the well-educated technology engineers here on the forum, is this lecture fear-mongering and is our entire generation going to die of cancer because of cell phones, or perhaps some other source of radiation, or the unhealthy food we eat, or pollution, or water quality? Or will we just die of cancer because we end up living longer and other diseases are being treated while there have been less in-roads to curing cancers?

Should I no longer be carrying around my cell phone, or wearing a smartwatch, or using a bluetooth headset? 

This seems to refute all concerns:

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet

Big/Deep conspiracy theory people? Tin-foil hat wearers? What's going on? Is the government and electronics industry in collusion here to cover up the science? What does Dr. Davis know that everyone else doesn't?     

[JRosario]

Should I no longer be carrying around my cell phone, or wearing a smartwatch, or using a bluetooth headset? 

I honestly feel like out generation is being plagued with a cloud of health death threats. I am yet to watch this video, but over the past few weeks I have come across several things reminiscent of this. They range from warnings involving cell phones to the things we eat. But I will definitely watch this to see if there is any credence to it.

[Synthtech]

This generation is also seeing a steep rise in auto-immune disorders.

[RoGeorge]

The talk was nothing but a waste of time. 

[BrianHG]

I have seen 1 legitimate case of cell phone cancer a few years back, however, it was an oddly positioned cell phone, the tumors were miniature bubbles in the shape of the cell phone's internal antenna where the cell phone was consistently placed right above the skin day and night without any space.  The cell phone had no space between antenna and it's extra thin backplate where it sat flush on-top of the skin with only a extra thin shirt of separation.  The user always used speaker phone and left it at that location.  From what I saw in the skin and tumor photographs, it was obviously RF burns just under the top layer of skin.  This 1 case is nearly impossible to replicate today as you would have to get everything just so absolutely perfect to replicate this effect.  This includes the perfect repetitive positioning of the phone every single day to transfer that antenna pattern.  You are much more likely to be struck by lightning than replicating this...

So, whatever is said in the video is clear BS unless they show these micro-mini bubble RF burns, which may be malignant, in the shape of a cell phone's antenna with that antenna placed in contact which is on the bottom of the cell phone placed flat right in contact on the skin when transmitting.  Anything else and the RF transmit power is way too weak and disbursed to do anything at all.

[apis]

WHO has a page about EMF, it seems a bit outdated though...

Revised 2014:
Electromagnetic fields and public health: mobile phones

Are there any health effects?
A large number of studies have been performed over the last two decades to assess whether mobile phones pose a potential health risk. To date, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use.

From 2002:
What are electromagnetic fields?:

It is not disputed that electromagnetic fields above certain levels can trigger biological effects. Experiments with healthy volunteers indicate that short-term exposure at the levels present in the environment or in the home do not cause any apparent detrimental effects. Exposures to higher levels that might be harmful are restricted by national and international guidelines. The current debate is centred on whether long-term low level exposure can evoke biological responses and influence people's well being.

Conclusions from scientific research
In the area of biological effects and medical applications of non-ionizing radiation approximately 25,000 articles have been published over the past 30 years. Despite the feeling of some people that more research needs to be done, scientific knowledge in this area is now more extensive than for most chemicals. Based on a recent in-depth review of the scientific literature, the WHO concluded that current evidence does not confirm the existence of any health consequences from exposure to low level electromagnetic fields. However, some gaps in knowledge about biological effects exist and need further research.

Electromagnetic fields and cancer
Despite many studies, the evidence for any effect remains highly controversial. However, it is clear that if electromagnetic fields do have an effect on cancer, then any increase in risk will be extremely small. The results to date contain many inconsistencies, but no large increases in risk have been found for any cancer in children or adults.

A number of epidemiological studies suggest small increases in risk of childhood leukemia with exposure to low frequency magnetic fields in the home. However, scientists have not generally concluded that these results indicate a cause-effect relation between exposure to the fields and disease (as opposed to artifacts in the study or effects unrelated to field exposure). In part, this conclusion has been reached because animal and laboratory studies fail to demonstrate any reproducible effects that are consistent with the hypothesis that fields cause or promote cancer. Large-scale studies are currently underway in several countries and may help resolve these issues.

Summary of the ICNIRP exposure guidelines

	European power frequency		Mobile phone base station frequency		Microwave oven frequency
Frequency	50 Hz	50 Hz	900 MHz	1.8 GHz	2.45 GHz
	Electric field (V/m)	Magnetic field (µT)	Power density (W/m2)	Power density (W/m2)	Power density (W/m2)
Public exposure limits	5 000	100	4.5	9	10
Occupational exposure limits	10 000	500	22.5	45

ICNIRP, EMF guidelines, Health Physics 74, 494-522 (1998)

[james_s]

Cellphones have been around for long enough now that I suspect we'd be seeing some really clear cause-effect data if they did indeed cause health problems. More likely the increases in some conditions are due to an increase in correct diagnosis whereas previously many people would have died simply of "natural causes".

I strongly suspect this is also the reason for the increase in autism diagnosis, many people who today are diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorders previously would have just been called eccentric, weird, retarded, etc.

[apis]

Cellphones have been around for long enough now that I suspect we'd be seeing some really clear cause-effect data if they did indeed cause health problems. More likely the increases in some conditions are due to an increase in correct diagnosis whereas previously many people would have died simply of "natural causes".

Exactly, so many has owned a cellphone for long enough that if there was a major risk of any kind it would have been obvious by now.

I suspect the biggest health problem we have today is air pollution, and it's something that is very often ignored sadly. In Sweden, with 10 million citizens, 5000 die prematurely each year because of air pollution. 1000 of those was due to smoke from wood furnaces. 3000 from particles from outside Sweden (mainly from coal power plants).

In ten years, wood furnaces kill more people in Sweden alone than Chernobyl ever did in the entire world (~9000; or if you are to believe the most pessimistic estimates: 30 000, then make that 30 years). Divide by power output of wood furnaces and nuclear power in Europe and the madness becomes even more obvious. Large scale coal is probably better than domestic wood furnaces since they burn more efficiently, but even so, in about 3-4 years coal from Europe has killed as many swedes as Chernobyl will kill globally. Europe has a population of 741.4 million, so maybe a very rough estimate is that coal cause 3000*74=222 000 premature deaths in Europe, every f** year! Yet people are afraid of nuclear. It's just insane.

And negative health effects from cellphone radiation, if any, is hardly measurable...

[David Chamberlain]

Oh, where to begin?

I've watched about half of the video and from that I got the following - Very little scientific research has been conducted in to the safety of cellular phones or other microwave transmitting devices on the human body. THAT's IT. Perhaps you are all reading way to much in to it, clearly the lecture was dumbed down for the audience.

On paper, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, she is very accomplished in her field so why do the above commentators presume some kind of trickery? To believe so would be an example of tinfoil hat wearing for sure.  I see an equal amount of uneducated fear of technology from the lay persons elsewhere on the web ONLY to come here and find an equal measure of bravado given byway of presumed expertise.

For example arguments like 'cell phones have been around for 20 years and half of the worlds population has not died' or the 'surely we would have seen an effect by now' ideas are just about as good of an argument as someone saying the world is flat because they think it's true.

If no one is looking at an issue then it seems conceivable that any ill effects would go unnoticed, and I doubt she is talking about people dropping dead left right every-time they pick up the phone. It's more about how average life expectancy changes over generations, or the increase in cancers in a wider population on average, AND how all that plays in to long term government health programs, planning and regulation.

Please don't respond to this with 'I've been climbing up radio masts for 50 years and I'm fine' types of arguments.

[apis]

Oh, where to begin?

I've watched about half of the video and from that I got the following - Very little scientific research has been conducted in to the safety of cellular phones or other microwave transmitting devices on the human body.

Except that isn't true according to the World Health Organisation (WHO):

Conclusions from scientific research
In the area of biological effects and medical applications of non-ionizing radiation approximately 25,000 articles have been published over the past 30 years. Despite the feeling of some people that more research needs to be done, scientific knowledge in this area is now more extensive than for most chemicals. Based on a recent in-depth review of the scientific literature, the WHO concluded that current evidence does not confirm the existence of any health consequences from exposure to low level electromagnetic fields. However, some gaps in knowledge about biological effects exist and need further research.

That was in 2002.

It's all in my fist post:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/truth-about-cell-phone-radiation-dr-devra-davis-melbourne-lecture/msg1574749/#msg1574749

[OE2WHP]

Does Glass shatter if you throw an object against it? Same question. The answer is, it depends. If the energy is high enough it will break.

To alter cells or DNA structures the energy of the em field need to be higher than the molecular bondig force (not sure if this is the proper name in english).
The rest is simple math. The frequency is too low and the energy is too low.

Am I missing something?

[T3sl4co1l]

I've watched about half of the video and from that I got the following - Very little scientific research has been conducted in to the safety of cellular phones or other microwave transmitting devices on the human body. THAT's IT. Perhaps you are all reading way to much in to it, clearly the lecture was dumbed down for the audience.

If that's it, then why isn't it thirty seconds long?  Why does it have an alarmist title?

On paper, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, she is very accomplished in her field so why do the above commentators presume some kind of trickery?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Which, I guess by direct admission, she doesn't have.

Not interested.

For example arguments like 'cell phones have been around for 20 years and half of the worlds population has not died' or the 'surely we would have seen an effect by now' ideas are just about as good of an argument as someone saying the world is flat because they think it's true.

Uh huh.  So, what would count as acceptable proof to you?

Science doesn't have to be tested in the lab.  Epidemiology uses a live population as its laboratory.

An epidemiological study as broad as cell phones could only be dreamed of* by workers on other diseases.

*Well, dreamed of in the sense that, your statistical certainty is great, but also, dreamed of in the sense that, only a nightmare would see so many people infected by an otherwise-fatal pathogen.

If no one is looking at an issue then it seems conceivable that any ill effects would go unnoticed, and I doubt she is talking about people dropping dead left right every-time they pick up the phone. It's more about how average life expectancy changes over generations, or the increase in cancers in a wider population on average, AND how all that plays in to long term government health programs, planning and regulation.

So what you're saying is, you expect the resulting signal is so far down in the noise floor that it's undetectable against all the other possibilities?

There are some pretty good detection rates, for rare cancers, for example.  A lot of contaminants and toxins carry a very slight increased risk of cancer and death, tens of percent -- hardly, say, the orders of magnitude that hit Hinkley, CA*, and we should expect to see provable cases from cellphone use in a population quite this large.  No link has been made.

*Which, now that I'm reading on it, seems to be a rather specious case actually.  It was legally proven, well enough to get big payouts, but settled, not judged by the court or a jury.  Let alone in peer reviewed literature, that I'm seeing.  It doesn't seem to be very statistically interesting.  Hmm.

Tim

[Cerebus]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

One complaint, and that's of this oft used soundbite. No, no, no! Extraordinary claims require quite normal, quite ordinary evidence.

This little cliché sets my teeth on edge the same way some coach demanding that his jocks give 110% does. Whenever I hear someone use "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" it makes me suspect that they have a weak case and are demanding evidence beyond what would ordinarily be more than adequate to demolish their argument so that a merely ordinary disproof can later be dismissed as inadequate. For avoidance of doubt, I'm not accusing Tim of this, just of using a hackneyed cliché that needs taking behind the woodshed and shot.

[Richard Crowley]

1000000x (or perhaps even 10000000x) more people die from poor diet and exercise practices than will ever die from radiation from cell phones.  But certainly Dr. Davis couldn't go around earning speaking fees for saying that.

https://youtu.be/sWN13pKVp9s

[helius]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

They really do. This is the basic idea behind Bayesian inference: if a hypothesis is unlikely, strong evidence must be adduced to make it plausible. The more extraordinary the hypothesis, the stronger evidence required.

[coppice]

One complaint, and that's of this oft used soundbite. No, no, no! Extraordinary claims require quite normal, quite ordinary evidence.

Let's say you have two friends. One claims they have a pet dog. The other says they have a pet that is a furry four legged creature from a small planet orbiting Sirius. Are you honestly going to apply the same standard for the quality and depth of evidence you require when asking these two people to support their claims? The one who says they have a pet dog might really have a creature from a planet around Sirius, but if it looks and acts like a dog are you really going to probe further, unless something strange and suspicious crops up? Are you really not going to probe the friend making the extraordinary claim a lot deeper?

[T3sl4co1l]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

They really do. This is the basic idea behind Bayesian inference: if a hypothesis is unlikely, strong evidence must be adduced to make it plausible. The more extraordinary the hypothesis, the stronger evidence required.

I guess I'm spoiled because, as a physicist, 5 sigma is considered normal proof; a degree of certainty to which a medical practitioner would surely consider "extraordinary".

Regarding "extremes", it seems to me the dearth of epidemiological confirmation, over such a large sample size, puts at least three sigma into the "it ain't happening" category, a degree to which medicine probably considers a sure thing.  (Fads (and by "fad", I here mean fads within the medical community, not just something the public commonly believes) have certainly been based on much less: take dietary sodium, and second hand smoke, for example.)  To contravene that, you must provide "extraordinary" (>3 sigma) proof to the contrary.

So, to return to the present example: absence of proof (as apparently being claimed in the OP video) is not proof of absence (or harm, as the case may be).

So I repeat:

Not interesting in the least.


Speaking of cliches, there's also "correlation does not imply causation" -- of course it does, you just have to be much more rigorous in applying it.  Namely, you need to show correlation with the hypothesized causes, and uncorrelation with a reasonable number of possible alternatives.

Tim

[Cerebus]

One complaint, and that's of this oft used soundbite. No, no, no! Extraordinary claims require quite normal, quite ordinary evidence.

Let's say you have two friends. One claims they have a pet dog. The other says they have a pet that is a furry four legged creature from a small planet orbiting Sirius. Are you honestly going to apply the same standard for the quality and depth of evidence you require when asking these two people to support their claims? The one who says they have a pet dog might really have a creature from a planet around Sirius, but if it looks and acts like a dog are you really going to probe further, unless something strange and suspicious crops up? Are you really not going to probe the friend making the extraordinary claim a lot deeper?

My complaint is about a phrase that involves hyperbole and your counterclaim involves more hyperbole. In what way does the evidence about this purported creature from the dog star have to be qualitatively different to the evidence of ownership of an Earth dog? You've deliberately chosen an example where the quantity of evidence required is orders of magnitude different because it requires a massive space travel program as a starting point in gathering evidence for one case, whereas for the other case common knowledge can be assumed.

Let's make a more realistic example that doesn't offer five orders of magnitude of difficulty of proof between the alternatives (we all know what a dog looks like, we don't have the super-luminal travel capabilities to assess what's a normal pet from the vicinity of Sirius).

A dishevelled man begging in the street claims to be the Earl of Iveneverheardofit, so does a well dressed man you meet walking out of the House of Lords. The former is an extraordinary claim, the latter not. Yet the ordinary evidence of a passport bearing a photograph and the man's name serves as proof or disproof in either case. An extraordinary claim, ordinary evidence.

I challenge you to come up with any realistic case, rather than a flight of pure fantasy or theology, that can only be proved with extra-ordinary evidence and doesn't (like theology) require magical thinking.

[coppice]

One complaint, and that's of this oft used soundbite. No, no, no! Extraordinary claims require quite normal, quite ordinary evidence.

Let's say you have two friends. One claims they have a pet dog. The other says they have a pet that is a furry four legged creature from a small planet orbiting Sirius. Are you honestly going to apply the same standard for the quality and depth of evidence you require when asking these two people to support their claims? The one who says they have a pet dog might really have a creature from a planet around Sirius, but if it looks and acts like a dog are you really going to probe further, unless something strange and suspicious crops up? Are you really not going to probe the friend making the extraordinary claim a lot deeper?

My complaint is about a phrase that involves hyperbole and your counterclaim involves more hyperbole. In what way does the evidence about this purported creature from the dog star have to be qualitatively different to the evidence of ownership of an Earth dog? You've deliberately chosen an example where the quantity of evidence required is orders of magnitude different because it requires a massive space travel program as a starting point in gathering evidence for one case, whereas for the other case common knowledge can be assumed.

Let's make a more realistic example that doesn't offer five orders of magnitude of difficulty of proof between the alternatives (we all know what a dog looks like, we don't have the super-luminal travel capabilities to assess what's a normal pet from the vicinity of Sirius).

A dishevelled man begging in the street claims to be the Earl of Iveneverheardofit, so does a well dressed man you meet walking out of the House of Lords. The former is an extraordinary claim, the latter not. Yet the ordinary evidence of a passport bearing a photograph and the man's name serves as proof or disproof in either case. An extraordinary claim, ordinary evidence.

I challenge you to come up with any realistic case, rather than a flight of pure fantasy or theology, that can only be proved with extra-ordinary evidence and doesn't (like theology) require magical thinking.

Your example is not extraordinary by any means. Its not even that unlikely. I've known wealthy people who are often to be found in a dishevelled state, as they engage in their pastimes. If forced to back up their claim to  be a certain person, they can just take their wallet from their pocket. You seem to have a strangely low bar for considering something extraordinary. Carl Sagan originally used the line that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof about things like claims that go against well established properties of physics.

[Cerebus]

Speaking of cliches, there's also "correlation does not imply causation" -- of course it does, you just have to be much more rigorous in applying it.  Namely, you need to show correlation with the hypothesized causes, and uncorrelation with a reasonable number of possible alternatives.

No, correlation causes a lot of people to infer an implication of causation and then treat it as fact. And yes, we do usually call them "Doctor" or "The Right Honorable" or any of a number of similar titles.

I suspect that there's a strong correlation between people who confuse "imply" with "infer" (especially when said people talk about someone writing in HDL inferring a structure rather than implying) and those who can't argue their way out of a wet brown paper but think they can, but I don't have the evidence to support a causative link. For those in the later category I ought to point out that I'm just having fun with words here lest you infer that I'm making a substantive argument?

Getting back on topic, and being serious for a minute, I think the causes of the perpetual return in the public realm to "'X' causes disease" when there is no worthwhile supporting evidence or, worse still, exclusionary evidence in existence is two fold.

One is the public's loss of trust in public figures. Once upon a time, if public heath officials had said 'nothing to look at here', the public would have taken note and stopped worrying. Unfortunately public figures have misled the public too often and been caught out without consequence, and so people now distrust official pronouncements or 'expert' opinions. A case in point is the UK's current Chief Medical Officer. She issued new guidelines for alcohol consumption a while back that now stated that there was 'no safe lower limit on alcohol consumption'. This was shown to be clearly wrong in the face of the available medical evidence, and it then became apparent that two of the 'experts' on the panel that decided this were from organizations promoting tee-totalism. She still has her job, the recommendations stand, but everybody knows they are worthless. In face of that, who wouldn't doubt official pronouncements on health?

Secondly we seem now to live in the attention economy. People 'get on' by being noticed. With that as a, possibly unconscious, motivation why not do the most you can to get noticed? Being proved wrong doesn't seem to attract the failure or repercussions that it ought to. British ex-Prime-Minister  Tony Blair suffered no repercussions for being caught red-handed lying to the British population (not least about the justifications for the 2nd Gulf war) and retired from public life at the time of his own choosing to highly lucrative positions dealing with exactly the same issues that he'd been seen to make such a public mess of. Again, with that as an example, why would you worry about doing the right thing when making the most noise seems to be the most successful strategy?

[helius]

I challenge you to come up with any realistic case, rather than a flight of pure fantasy or theology, that can only be proved with extra-ordinary evidence and doesn't (like theology) require magical thinking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly

In what way does the evidence about this purported creature from the dog star have to be qualitatively different...?

I'm not sure exactly what "qualitative" evidence would mean, unless you're referring to the kind of informal evidence considered by a jury. Scientific evidence is quantitative by its definition.
Stalin remarked, "quantity has a quality all its own," but I don't think that's what he meant.

[T3sl4co1l]

One is the public's loss of trust in public figures. Once upon a time, if public heath officials had said 'nothing to look at here', the public would have taken note and stopped worrying.

Nothing new under the sun.

Speaking of epidemiology -- look back at one of the earliest examples, John Snow's work on the cholera epidemic in London.  People were dying in droves.  It turned out, sufficient evidence to support his claim was merely removing the lever from the local well pump.  People stopped dying.  Like, by orders of magnitude.

His research alone was excellent, persuasive by modern standards -- but at the time, there was no sense that rational thought, and statistics, was better than anything else.  He gathered data for months, costing many lives (uh... hundreds? I forget), before finally being given the chance to prove it.  Most people believed the cause was "bad air", or maybe the humours* being unbalanced, or something else also now fully discredited.

(*I'll humor you all with the geographically correct spelling just this one time. )

Perhaps this is too extreme an example, in the opposite direction.  Scientific medicine was still in its infancy (and, I would dare argue, largely remained so for another century; alas, small steps, eh?), so no one had any feeling of trust for the methods.

It seems today, it remains the case that feelings outweigh reason; as has always been, and always will be.

Tim

[apis]

Speaking of cliches, there's also "correlation does not imply causation" -- of course it does, you just have to be much more rigorous in applying it.  Namely, you need to show correlation with the hypothesized causes, and uncorrelation with a reasonable number of possible alternatives.

There is also a 'chicken or the egg problem'.
For example, if A is correlated with B, it could be because A causes B, but it could also be because B causes A. (Or C causes A and B, or C causes A but D causes B etc.)

[Ampera]

My question is why haven't there been MASSIVE spikes in cancers from people living near VHF or UHF transmitters for TV/Radio that have been here for decades longer, and have WAY larger power outputs, at least to my knowledge, than cellphone towers. (I find 100W urban, 500W rural for Cell towers, 500,000W maximum radiated power for UHF transmitters, when they were active, in the US from an FCC document)

If, truly, the absorption of lower frequency RF is a direct cause of human cancers, then the same effect with higher energy should increase the effect? This is just anecdotal, but I do think it's worth something.

[Cerebus]

Speaking of epidemiology -- look back at one of the earliest examples, John Snow's work on the cholera epidemic in London.  People were dying in droves.  It turned out, sufficient evidence to support his claim was merely removing the lever from the local well pump.  People stopped dying.  Like, by orders of magnitude

I used to drink quite regularly in the Blue Posts, a pub perhaps 30m away from the pump in question. The pump itself has been preserved and there's a little plaque in the kerb, put there comparatively recently (tens of years, I'm not quite sure when I first spotted the plaque but I already knew the pump and its story). If you get a pint that's a bit off the Blue Posts there's a standing joke along the lines of "Did you get this from the Broadwick Street pump?".