Cancer and Cell phones?

The latest flap in the news is that a meta study has found an increased risk of brain cancer among people who regularly use cell phones and scary articles make great headlines for the news services.

The metastudy was done by a scientist named Leonart Hardell and has not been published yet (nor peer reviewed). However, Hardell did another similar metastudy of the research about cell phones and cancer in 2007 which is available on line.

The studies reviewed were mostly survey studies and did not control for known risks of brain cancer like Nutrasweet/aspartame. The relative risk factors in much of the research presented was less than 1.8 (has to be over 2.0 to be significant) and only in a couple, was higher like 3.x.

A bit intrigued, I went to the Environmental Health Trust Organization website to look for all this evidence they claim is available. They have safety precautions for the use of cell phones. They have videos. What they do not have any of, are actually study cites.

I watched one of the videos which presented three scientists (none of whom were biologists). The Title is: Expert EMF Workshop at San Leandro High School. It's the second video on the page. The speakers compared cell phones and cigarettes. "The ads encouraged people to smoke" said Dr. Magda Havas, showing the ad from the 1960's, "claiming more doctors smoked that brand!" Problem in logic there - in the 1960's we were only beginning to have an inkling that smoking posed serious risks. That is, now that smoking has been proven to have bad effects on health, one does not see those ads anymore.

During the video, one of the speakers showed a cutsie video of people dressed in white suits (looked like teletubby outfits) supposedly illustrating what cell phones do to our DNA (the video didn't make much sense to me).

But all of the over 30 minute presentation was devoid of any real research except the mention of Lennart Hardell, mentioned previously.

The kids who listened to the talk (looked like High School age) seemed extremely bored and totally unconvinced.

And they are not the only ones who are questioning these claims. Scientists in the UK are also questioning it, according to the BBC News which called Leonart's research, flawed.

"The National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), which advises the government on safety levels, said the study "lacks statistical precision" to draw such conclusions. "

Meanwhile, Dr Lennart stated more research is needed (for which he is, undoubtedly, looking for funding which perhaps might be, at least, some of his underlying motivation for the sensational claims - people do funny things for money and scientists are definitely humans!).

Even the "green folks" say if you use the speaker phone on your cell or portable phone or text (rather than hold the phone against your head), the danger, if at all, is greatly minimized, so that seems like a good solution.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that cancer and other diseases which seem to be 'on the rise' these days, are aging diseases. At the turn of the 20th century, very few cases of cancer were diagnosed, but the average age of death was 45. And now, the average age of death is around 78-80. Oddly though, no one seems to take that aspect in consideration.

As for radiation, it has been pointed out that we receive more radiation from the sun than we do from microwaves and cell phones. We also are exposed to a lot of radiation from some of the tests routinely done like mammograms. Mammograms deliver 3 times the radiation of a chest X-ray to each breast and yet, most medical providers are still highly recommending them. (I don't do mammograms either)

I remain open to definitive research but for now, take the current cell phone fear mongering with a huge grain of salt.

Microwaving - Examining the claimed risks

I had an inquiry about "the recent discussion about the dangers of microwaves" as a comment in another blog of mine and decided to do a bit of research. The questioner asked me what I thought of the stated dangers. I only found a couple of articles in a search of Google.

One article details the claimed risks of microwaving. This article, found on a website called "global research" (but apparently from an article in "Natural News") included a photo of two plants, supposedly a student science project - the one watered with microwaved water was dead, so went the story. (A student science project where we don't know all the facts? Not exactly hard evidence!) Don't do microwaving, concludes the author. Well, that's fine if you have all the time in the world to cook the slow way but will avoiding the microwave oven really protect from cancer?

To review a couple of the claims from the article:

"Microwaved prepared meats cause the formation of d-Nitrosodienthanolamines, a well-known carcinogen"

Fact remains, cooking meat can cause the formation of carcinogens. For example, if you barbecue your meat, and char the meat, that is considered a carcinogen also.

But is eating small amounts of a carcingen, going to cause cancer? No proof of this. And evidence suggests not - things like heredity, smoking and even consuming trans fat etc are likely, much greater risks. And by the way, the article does not explain how the "d-nitro..." is formed either nor does it give any cites for further study. FYI, giving up fast food, would probably much sooner lower the cancer risk (though probably only slightly) than giving up your microwave, and doing cardio exercise daily can actually lower your cancer risk by 40%!

"Studies have shown that human breast milk heated in microwave ovens is altered and that not only is its vitamin content depleted, but some of the amino acids are also rendered biologically inactive. Some of the altered amino acids are poisons to both the nervous system and the kidneys."

Another undocumented and un-cited statement and fact remains, any time you heat milk, some of the vitamins are altered - regardless of how you heat it which was why even when I was bottle feeding our son in the 1970's, the books suggested it was best to mix the formula from powder in room temperature water (I used bottled water) to preserve the vitamins (rather than preparing a larger amount, keeping it in the fridge and reheating it.

The author also claims that when you microwave broccoli, 97% of the Vitamin C was destroyed. First of all, Broccoli is not that good a source of Vitamin C and then, anytime you cook it, it destroys the vitamin C but few of us can stomach it raw.

A conversation on the Snopes message boards expressed that all of the posters were very skeptical of these claims and several pointed out that there are no studies backing the claims up. Another conversation on the "Physics" message base is also good source reading. Again, the consensus is, the "death by cancer" claims about microwaving are likely not true but there, a person can read some explanations of the nuts and bolts of microwaves which are enlightening.

Microwaves have been around for a long time - and it's good to remember that cancer is not a single cause disease. It's likely that moderate use of the microwave isn't a real danger - and no studies have been done to support the "sky is falling claims" one reads on some of the natural websites.

Cancer update email forward

You might have gotten an email entitled "Cancer update email" or "Johns Hopkins update - very good article", which claims to be from an article sent out by the Johns Hopkins newsletter. The email gets stranger and stranger as you read it. Chemotherapy doesn't work to help cancer, it claims but changing your diet will do it. By the time you get down to the bottom which informs you that milk produces mucus which "feeds the cancer", you might be wondering about it.

This article of unknown origin never went out on Johns Hopkins newsletter according to Snopes and Hoaxslayer, the latter which suggests that especially with medical forwards, it's best to check them out before sending to friends.

Johns Hopkins, not real impressed (to put it mildly) about the email stating so many myths about cancer being attributed to them, dedicated a page on their website to deny and debunk the email, point by point.

To "Google" a forward, take the title and put it in quotes. In the case of this, since the title was more generalized, I also took a few key words like "cancer" and "alternate" and "Johns Hopkins" and added them to my search. With the search engines being so comprehensive and computers being so fast, it only takes a couple of seconds to check out a forward and it's really worth doing rather than sending out wrong information especially in the medical arena.