Lead in petrol was an example of how epidemiological studies have great trouble finding small effects in a fog of confounding variables. It seems a good enough example to me!
Tetraethyl lead as a neurotoxin would have been recognized even before it was invented. Lead has been known as a poison for millennia [which doesn't seem to have stopped people using lead compounds as wine sweeteners at times, incredibly enough].
You are welcome to adopt the 'we have no idea what causes things so let's not worry' approach. I reckon that leads to dead people [usually the people not worrying]. If we have no idea what causes things, then we have no idea how to make things change for the better.
I'm advocating using the available science, not dumping it. The available science so far comes up with, "Duh! It is certainly less than we can measure so far with what we've done so far. But we have no idea how much it is caused by the 0.1% of the bond energy."
Until it's investigated, all they can say is that the number of brain tumours due to 2GHz is really really small compared with other effects. But they can't quantify how small it is because it's so small they can't measure it with how they are doing it.
I proposed the mechanism by which it DOES cause some tiny increase in tumours = 2GHz adds 0.1% bond energy to a bond already under stress from an incoming gamma ray or xray, sauna etc. I have no idea of the probability of a 2GHz photon and an Xray photon hitting a bond together [it might be so slight as to be statistically absurd]. But unless somebody shows that it is negligible, then the science hasn't been done.
We have NOT evolved for 100,000 years tolerating radio waves or higher energy waves. We have specifically been evolved by such waves busting up our DNA and creating lots of mutants which do or do not go on to reproduce. There is a balance we have evolved between being mutated and resisting mutation and repairing the resulting damage.
Mutation is desirable for evolutionary advantage - for the tiny, tiny few who use the mutation to their advantage while the others all get to die as a result of the mutation. We are NOT evolved to benefit individually or resist specially well, the mutational effects of radiation. Mutation for an individual and their offspring is nearly always bad.
Your point that we are susceptible to all the muck we eat and breathe and get on our skin is quite right. We are dying like flies from modern challenges, many of them found in supermarkets, [while now avoiding the old ones like smallpox, famine, wars etc]. Tobacco being a big one!
Trusting common instinct isn't an option these days. For lots of things anyway. Too much is different and we don't have senses to detect problems [for example fun x-rays of feet isn't so popular these days though our instincts and senses don't tell us it's bad for us]. I hope you don't misunderstand me to say trust our common instincts?
What you are simply saying is, "I have no idea whether cellphones cause brain tumours or not, but I do know it's so few that it's tiny compared with other stuff I have to worry about".
That's a reasonable approach to take. But it is NOT science-based.
If you have a million tiny risks, all at cellphone level, then you don't need to worry about any of them right? But what if they add up to 10 times the biggest single risk you face? Then you are likely to do well at avoiding the single big risk [keeping your car on the road in your frictional 12 mile trip to work] while succumbing to the multitude of little risks you can't be bothered figuring out. Our problem is that as individuals, we cannot spend the time to figure out the hordes of tiny risks and we depend on the FDA, FCC, doctors, police, mechanics and others to understand and handle those for us. As investors in something, we need to understand the risks [or hope that somebody else has understood them for us].
The only thing which really matters is whether the risk exceeds the benefit. For cellphones, the answer is certainly yes already, even with high-powered cellphones. But if the risk can be further reduced by using CDMA EarCell [TM] phones, without any extra cost, then why not do that and avoid that microrisk?
We should be science-based, not base our decisions on ignorance, wishful-thinking or positive-thinking. So far, we have ignorance about how many tumours are caused by cellphones [other than there are fewer than some very small number compared with the swarms of other major causes].
I've proposed the mechanism by which 2GHz from cellphones can do it. Tell me why it won't happen like that. I'd like to see the science demonstrating the hypothesis is wrong. You have some? Good old Popperian falsifiability can show the hypothesis is wrong, but an assertion that it's wrong isn't enough. Absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence, to coin a cliche.
Too much SI screen time is worse for me than negative thinking or cellphones I'd say! Also, I'm hungry [better watch out for nitrites, Red Number 2, burned bread crusts and no more roasted, carcinogen-loaded coffee beans and I'll keep off the flame-grilled steak] and too much hunger is bad.
Mqurice |
