Killer Cell phones

Factual Questions
21

Perception is everything; fact means little to nothing. What i am about to relate concerns the transmitting antennas not the phones themselves. I have very superficial information about this case so it may not be 100% factually correct but it is essentially correct.

A few months ago, in the town of Valladolid (Spain) a few kids turned up with cancer of some kind, the number totally out of proportion with the average. The parents decided to blame the cell phone antenas placed on top of the school building. They pulled their kids out of school and demonstrated until the antennas were taken down. This caused a national panic regarding these antennas which are everywhere and now Spain has legislated a study concerning these antennas and they must all be inspected and measured and studied, one by one. This is totally ridiculous because there are plenty of studies about this and the radiation limits have not been shown to be harmful. This was done only to quiet public opinion and show that the politicians cared and were doing something about it. The cost of all this is staggering.

What I remember is this: In the photo of the parents demonstrating with their kids in front of the school, many if not most mothers were smoking. Now, I do not know what the cancer incidence due to sell phone antennas is but I do know the incidence due to smoking and to second hand smoke is thousands of times higher. And yet these ladies who were demanding the entire dismantling of the cell phone networks (which costs them nothing) would not consider quitting smoking which is much more in their control.

It was also revelaed the school had been permeated by solvent smells for quite some time (used in some renovation project). It was also revealed the solvent was a known carcinogen. never mind all this, the parents were adamant and the kids did not go to school until the antennas were removed which then started the nation-wide scare which prompted the ongoing tests and studies.

Perception is everything. That is why people are afraid of flying in airplanes but not afraid of crossing the street.

22

I only mentioned DNA because that’s the part that would need to be damaged in order to cause cancer. The waves aren’t strong enough to break chemical bonds anywhere else, either.

Note that there have been some studies looking for ways that microwave radiation could still cause cancer, such as slightly interfering with the way that molecules interact with each other. Cells have mechanisms to repair DNA damage that happens all the time due to ionizing radiation and free radicals, so some people have hypothesized that if the electromagnetic wave slightly modifies this chemical activity, it could affect cancer. Nothing here is very plausible, but I thought I’d mention it out of fairness.