Dear Science,

I am totally addicted to my iPhone and use it constantly: on the toilet, in bed (before and after sex), on the bus, at work, at dinner, at breakfast. Is it killing me? When I’m really churning on the data network, I can hear the buzzing in my earphones. Certainly, all that radiation cannot be doing good things to my body and my brain. Science, are we all going to die of gigantic brain tumors before our two-year contracts are up with AT&T?

Glowing iPhone User

First, the good news: Despite quite a bit of study now completed on the subject, no clear connection has been drawn between cell-phone use and tumors, specifically brain tumors, in end users. Enough studies have been done to confidently rule out cell phones causing lots of common brain tumors. The small question of whether cell phones make incredibly rare brain tumors slightly less rare in those exposed remains, but the risk of outright cancer from using a cell phone seems quite low and most likely nonexistent.

But cell-phone radiation has potential effects on the body beyond cancer. To understand these potential effects, and why this kind of radiation is unlikely to cause cancer, we need a little bit of physics. The radio waves generated by your phone are a form of radiation that is nonionizing. Unlike X-rays, gamma rays, and other ionizing forms of radiation, these waves of electromagnetic energy cannot rip electrons off atoms. At most, these waves can jiggle the electrons around a bit, warming up the atoms. X-rays increase cancer risk by this electron ripping on DNA molecules; radio waves made by your phone are too gentle to do that.

What these radio waves can do is induce a small amount of electrical current in the tissues of the body. (This is how they transmit information—by inducing current in the antennas. Your brain and body can act as a poor, but functional, antenna.) The frequencies used by cell phones are close to some of those used by the body. A recent study by a National Institute on Drug Abuse group, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked for changes in brain-tissue activity when exposed to cell-phone radiation. It found that regions of the brain closest to the antenna showed higher activity levels (consuming more glucose) as compared to the opposite side or an unexposed brain. The result is clean and definite: Exposure of the brain to cell-phone radiation has some effect. What’s not clear is if the effect is good or bad.

So Science feels confident in saying your iPhone probably won’t give you brain cancer. It’s undoubtedly having an effect on your brain, but the radio waves might be the least of your problems with your iPhone.

Refractorily Yours,

Science

Have a science question? Send it to dearscience@thestranger.com

Jonathan Golob is an actual doctor.

3 replies on “Dear Science”

  2. About the glucose thing: I wonder if it is just a secondary effect associated with thermal regulation. The various parts of your body have little internal thermostats, right? And if some region gets too hot, blood flow (internal coolant) gets cranked up to cool it down. That previous sentence was mostly a guess, so tell me if I’ve got that wrong. Anyway, maybe along with increased blood flow comes increased glucose metabolism? If that’s what’s going on, it doesn’t sound very worrisome. As humans we’ve spent many millenia sitting in the sun, so that one side of our head gets warmer tan the other. That side maybe had transiently enhanced glucose metabolism. It didn’t seem to hurt us much, as a race. I’m wondering if the researchers tried just putting a hot-water bottle on one side of the subject’s head, and seeing if comparable glucose-metabolizing effects are oberved. The reason I doubt it has anything to do with electricity flow itself is that the frequency scale seems so wrong. Nothing happens in the brain on the time scale of a nanosecond, which is roughly how fast the electric current would switch directions back and forth. Unless there’s some sort of rectification going on, I doubt very much your brain’s “circuits” would notice it.

  3. While it’s true that cell-phone radiation doesn’t damage DNA in the same way that ionizing radiation does, this doesn’t mean it doesn’t damage it. Indeed, there have now been dozens of studies showing that this radiation causes single and double-strand DNA breaks. The mechanism by which this occurs is still a bit mysterious, but the finding has been replicated. A lot. In industry-funded studies, it’s typically failed to be replicated (shocking, eh?).

    See:
    http://www.ewg.org/cellphoneradiation/ex…
    http://www.seattlemag.com/article/nerd-r…

    Also, there’s a really well-done documentary worth checking out, made by a former producer of 60 Minutes:
    http://fullsignalmovie.com/trailer-credi…

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