Your not supposed to stand near or look into a microwave oven very often;

If your microwave oven is correctly shielded, it poses no risk at all. If you have a microwave that is old enough to have potentially duff shielding, isn’t it about time you bought a new one?

cell phones are the same thing mini micro signals.

Well, yes and no.

GSM phones operate at around 900 MHz, which is UHF, not mcrowaves. Other phones operate at about 1.8 GHz, which is still a lower frequency than microwave ovens, but is the same order of magnitude.

Microwave ovens have emission power in the vicinity of 800 W, whereas phones have a typical peak RF emission power of not more than 1 W. And if you are close to the base station, it will be substantially lower.

Wait until 2040 and the huge amount of brain cancer. Y risk it and your kids

Why do you ever cross a street? You are far more likely to be harmed crossing a road once than using a cellphone non-stop for a month.

Radio frequency radiation can hurt. Take it from a radio amateur who’s had a couple of RF burns. (Cooks your flesh under your skin, admittedly at way higher powers than a phone could ever do). So I was playing with 50 watts into a dummy load (with bad connectors as I found out) – it CAN damage you. A cellphone is way way less powerful (1% as much?) and certainly cannot immediately burn you. But in general your cellphone is so much closer, a lot closer, and in general perhaps to your brain or chest area. I’m not about to dump my phone but I would not dismiss the concerns out of hand – many people use this stuff for many hours a day. The power ain’t there, but long term exposure (which could have no effect – or long term effects) IS there. Keep a phone in your jacket pocket all day as you walk around and it is irradiating (radio waves) you at a low level. I’m certainly not qualified to say if that is a danger, but it is within millimetres of your skin all day.

Yes, but would an RF burn be possible at all if the rate of heating were to be lower than the rate at which heat is dissipated in the tissue?

It seems to me that the only way in which RF emissions have been shown to affect biological material is by heating it. If you dissiptae the heat faster than it can be applied, you are highly unlikely to have any ill effect at all.

Remember asbestos, ciggies, lead in gas all that. I think this at least needs watching.

Fortunately it has been investigated.

While it is statistically impossible to rule out the possibility of a link, the studies that have been done do tell us with some confidence that either there is no link between cellphones and brain cancer or there is a very very very weak link.

People were oblivious to the effects of smoking for a long time.

Not really.

Even 25 years ago, cigarette packs here in the UK were obliged to carry the health warning “smoking may seriously damage your health”.

Why it took so long to get the truth about cigarettes out (that smoking can cause cancer) was down to a deliberate and extended campaign of obfuscation by the tobacco industry. A bit like the campaign currently being mounted by Big Oil about GW.

For a long time (I would guess since the early ’70s), information was widely available to indicate that smoking was harmful. Unfortunately, there were also a great many lies and artificial “doubts” spread by the tobacco lobby. Plus a social attitude to danger that suggested it was somehow weak to be concerned about hazardous substances.

What we need is more . . . media accountability to deliver truth and not just a good story.

Seconded!!

The baseline incidence of brain cancer is very low, which means that brain cancer statistics should be very sensitive to any cancer-inducing effect of cell phones, yet there is no evidence of any increase in overall incidence or death rate. Of course, one can argue that we just haven’t been using cell phones for long enough for the hazard of chronic exposure (through some unknown, biologically unimaginable mechanism) to manifest, but in that cases the handful of epidemiological studies that claimed to see evidence of risk after a decade or two of use must all be wrong, too–in which case there’s no evidence of risk at all.

You have no way of knowing that. First it would have to be proved there is ANY kind of risk, and that hasn’t been done. All the WHO is saying is that we haven’t absolutely positively ruled out any chance that cell phones cause brain cancer. At MOST there is only a very tiny risk, so tiny they haven’t yet verified if it is actually zero or not.

Jacqueline also said “I am curious about Scott Hurst’s comments. We absolutely do not have the history of data to say anything conclusive about cell phone risks; cell phones are still too new. But if there are studies where people were exposed to the same type of radiation, over the long-term (decades) at frequencies and intensities that are somewhat analagous to that emitted from cell phones, that would tell us far more than these old (early 2000s) cell-phone studies.”

There is nothing unique about the radiation coming from cell phones. Millions of people have spent their entire working lives exposed 40 hours a week to exactly the same frequency ranges, but to their entire body, and at enormously higher power levels. Cell phones are rather unique in the history electronic communications, for their power output is so very low compared to what communication works have been exposed to since the 1940s.

If have to ask, did you really read my post or just the first sentence, “The problem is that we do have relevant data for a much greater than a couple decade span.”? It isn’t “somewhat analagous” it is precisely analagous, except the equivilant “dose” is often millions of times higher.

Tabacco was in the category 2B 20 years ago. Many people didn’t care and they were expose. Now about 80% are dead.

Statistics from WHO, say this: “is like playin russian roulette, having a revolver with one bullet in one of the 30 chambers”

So, IMHO I can’t stop using the cellphone, but I can follow the prevention indications to reduce exposure: using headphones, speaker, etc. either way I don’t have anything to lose.

I would say that there is probably some contributing factor to cell phone use, but I don’t think it had anything to do with my mom’s brain cancer. And if it does affect it, it’s really low.

Gasoline is nasty stuff, and I avoid it entirely unless I have no choice. I don’t even drive, and the bus I take is electric!

If cell phones are like gasoline, I don’t think that’s reason to be OK with cell phones. I think that’s even more reason to avoid gasoline!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17cellphones-t.html?_r=1