by CKR
One of our readers, a few weeks back, asked if I’d address the issue of cell phones and brain tumors. I didn’t at that time, but I need to turn away from politics this morning.
Here’s a short summary of the latest from a Danish team of researchers: no increased risk of brain tumors. Here’s some more on the subject, with links.
I agree with the studies that say there is no increased risk.
There’s a great deal of misinformation and fear attached to the word radiation. Cell phones send and receive via microwave radiation. (Maybe if we say the word enough, we'll get used to it.) There’s a whole spectrum of electromagnetic radiation out there, from radio waves to gamma rays, with light and microwave falling in between. (The NASA site I’ve linked talks down, but it’s good otherwise.)
One of the fears has been that microwaves will interact in unknown ways with brain tissue to damage DNA, leading to cancers. I spent a few years working on ways to influence chemical reactions with laser radiation, so I can speak to this point.
What we were trying to do with lasers was to break individual bonds in molecules so as to make them react in unusual ways. People are still trying to do this, with much less success than we hoped thirty years ago. The problem is that the energy just doesn’t stay in that individual bond, even if you can pump it in selectively.
Think of a molecule as atoms of different weights attached to each other by springs of different lengths. The springs vibrate at particular frequencies, determined by their own characteristics and the weights of the atoms at either end. The idea was to use a laser matching the frequency of one of the bonds (springs) to put enough energy in to break that bond. However, the energy jangles into the other springs in the molecule more quickly than the pumped spring (bond) can break.
The energy transfer happens even more quickly (we’re talking about billionths of a second and less) when the molecule hits something else. In a collision, energy is also transferred to the other body in the collision. We were working with gases to minimize energy transfer, and the molecules in your head are much closer together, bumping each other all the time.
So no reaction. No damage to DNA.
But energy transfer heats things up, so maybe proteins are damaged by heat as the cell phone microwaves pass through your head? They heat up a little, but probably not as much as when you lie in the sun to get a tan. Nobody has suggested a link between brain tumors and sunbathing, although skin cancer (from light, a higher-energy form of radiation) is something else.
The explanations of a possible link between cell phone use and brain tumors keep moving as studies show no links. This is characteristic of an unscientific argument: the causation always relies on an unknown component, and the unknowns keep being added.
At some point, one has to decide that more unknowns are not likely to emerge. I think we’re close to, or perhaps past, that point in the cell phone/cancer question.
It’s not unreasonable to question new technologies, and it’s not unreasonable to be concerned about something one doesn’t understand well. This has been the story of technology for a very long time. When railroad trains were first introduced, there was concern that the human body would not survive movement at speeds of more than 20 miles per hour. Now we know that that’s not a problem. But, as one of my high school teachers observed about falling, it’s not the speed, it’s the sudden stop that is damaging.
Thanks to JO for suggesting the topic.