No Extra Brain Cancer due to Cell Phone Use (or WPXI is trying to kill us)
A recent article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute shows no increase in brain cancer rates since cell phones became popular. In the meantime WPXI tv is trying to kill us all.
No Additional Cancer?
You've heard this before: the radiation from cell phones causes brain cancer. But I (and many other people) have argued that cell phone electromagnetic radiation is in the microwave frequency range and is therefore far too feeble to disrupt biological molecules. The only effect it can have is heating your ear a tiny bit. Could this extra heat cause brain cancer? Common sense says no: it would imply that wearing hats or exercising regularly raises the incidence of brain cancer. It would also imply some completely new and unexpected interaction between heat and brain cells.
But common sense is not always common, and respected doctors and epidemiologists are claiming that cell phones are dangerous. Of course it is possible to answer questions like this by making a study. For example, one could ask 100,000 people if they have brain cancer and how much they use a cell phone. If people who use the phone more tend to have more cancer, we have our proof. (Well not quite, this only shows correlation, not causality. For example, people who use cell phones a lot may be outdoors more and hence exposed to cancer-causing UVA light more.) One must be careful however, not all studies are created equal -- in fact a shocking percentage are really pretty shabby.
Which brings us to a recent study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The authors examined the rates for a type of brain cancer (glioma) in the entire adult population of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden (these countries maintain thorough national cancer registries). The results are summarized in the figure below.
The top figure (A) is for men, the bottom (C) is for women. The points represent glioma incidence by year. Circles are for people aged 20-39, squares are 40-59, and triangles are 60-79. We learn some interesting things: the older you get the more likely it is that you get brain cancer; women get less brain cancer than men; and the cancer rates have been roughly constant since 1974. To be fair this is a logarithmic plot, so slight slopes can mean a lot. For example, young men saw their cancer rates rise from about 3/100,000 in 1974 to 4.5/100,000 in 1988. One can speculate about the cause for this, especially since all the other rates are essentially unchanged. One thing for sure, it is not due to cell phone use, which only took off in the mid-1990's. In fact, if we take the data too seriously, it looks like cell phone use has lowered the rate of cancer (at least among young men).
WPXI is trying to kill us!
What if I'm wrong? Well a lot of people are going to die. And not just from cell phones. There are a lot devices out there that emit microwave radiation. Cell phones, wifi routers, microwave ovens, wireless phones, and the biggy: pulse-Doppler radar. Yup, the fancy radar used by your tv station emits at nearly the same frequency as your cell phone. And it is powerful, real powerful. WPXI tv in Pittsburgh just turned on their "Storm Tracker Doppler 11 Radar" (read about it here); it is rated at 1 megawatt. That amounts to 10 million cell phones all emitting their killer energy. So if you live near the tower (and are worried about cell phones) you might want to move.
