do cellphones cause brain cancer yeah if
you're on them a lot yes you can't be
good for you I did decide to stop you
know putting the the phone whilst I'm
driving in my groin inside movie and
over there in case it's gonna cause
testicular cancer my doctor advised me
on this now it doesn't seem to make
sense that cell phones should cause
cancer because the radiation they emit
is non ionizing which means it doesn't
have enough energy to rip electrons off
atoms or molecules and destroy DNA
so how would cellphones cause this type
of cancer in the as black magic today
and the radiation from cellphones is
almost identical to the radiation inside
a microwave the wavelengths are almost
the same about 15 centimeters long
basically the same size as your phone oh
it was my microwaves they like heat food
up and like they fry they fry like
living stuff living organisms so maybe
it would fry your brain barbecuing
O'Brien slowly this led to various
internet videos where cell phones were
shown popping popcorn or cooking eggs
now that is obviously impossible because
the amount of power in a microwave is
over a thousand times the power of
radiation of microwaves emitted from
your cell phone would you be concerned
about living near a cell phone town do
you think that's worse than just yeah
initially right next to it yeah but the
truth is this if you live in an area
with better reception that means your
phone has to emit less microwaves in
order to transmit to the tower so you're
actually exposed to lower levels of
microwave radiation living near a tower
than living far from it however there
have been some scientific studies that
show very high level microwaves like
those from a mobile phone can cause heat
shock proteins to be released inside the
body and it's thought that that could be
related to the onset of cancer so
perhaps there is a reason to study the
biological effects of cellphones on
people what would happen if a study came
out saying that you were two or three
times as likely to develop a brain tumor
if you used a mobile phone regularly
with that change absolutely yes two to
three times it's just massive like I
know it's a slim I'd but still the
chances of life you don't want that to
happen to anyone let alone yourself so
it definitely not use it as much what if
I told you that a study has come out
that says over long periods of times
there's a three-fold increase in brain
tumors a recently published Swedish
study found that cellphone users were
30% more likely to develop glioma that's
the most common form of malignant brain
cancer and it gets worse those people
who had used a cell phone for over 25
years had a three-fold increase in this
type of cancer due to studies like that
one and expert opinion the World Health
Organization actually classified cell
phone radiation as possibly carcinogenic
to humans but now consider that brain
cancers are exceedingly rare in any
given year you have a three in 100,000
chance of developing of glioma now
according to the Swedish study long-term
cellphone use can increase that risk up
to nine in a hundred thousand still a
very small risk but a significant
increase now given the scarcity of brain
cancers how can they really quantify
this risk the ideal way to do the
experiment would be to perform a
randomized control trial which is where
you get a group of people who don't use
cell phones randomly give half of them
cell phones and force the other half to
live without then follow them for 15 to
20 years and see how many in each group
developed glioma oh and you would need
hundreds of thousands if not millions of
people to take part because of just how
rare brain tumors are and immediately
you can spot the problem with this
experimental design virtually everyone
already has a cell phone I mean there
are more mobile devices than there are
people on earth more people have access
to a cell phone than to a working toilet
so the next best way to do the
experiment would be to perform a
prospective observational study in which
you gather a group of people and follow
them over a period of decades monitoring
their cell phone use and then you find
out how many developed glioma and
correlate that with their cell phone
usage the problem is people who use
their cell phones a lot may differ
in other ways than just their cellphone
use plus there's the problem of scale
even if you followed around 50,000
people for 10 years you'd only expect to
observe 20 gliomas and that's not nearly
enough to detect a difference between
the groups so the third way to do the
experiment is to perform a case control
study where you collect a group of
people who have brain tumors those are
the cases and you find a demographically
very similar group who don't have brain
tumors those are the controls and then
you ask them about their behaviors over
the previous decade and see if they
differ markedly between the groups for
example did the brain tumor cases use
their phones a lot more than the
controls the Swedish study was one of
these large-scale case control studies
but there is a question about whether
this study was methodologically flawed
in hindsight if you get a brain tumor
you might remember using your phone more
than you did and if you don't have a
brain tumor you might remember using it
less now there have been a few
prospective studies completed including
one in Denmark using almost the entire
Danish population and records from their
cell phone companies and they found no
link between cell phone usage and
incidence of brain cancer another
prospective study using almost 1 million
women in the UK again found no link so
what are we supposed to believe then
what are we supposed to believe this is
where I think we really need to figure
out the right methodology exactly to
look at it and here's a thing right over
the last 15 to 20 years almost everyone
is used to mobile phone mobile phone use
has gone way up
everyone's going so you can look at the
actual brain cancer rates on the overall
population yeah and if there is a link
you would expect that to be going up is
it
it is not
okay if the results of the Swedish study
were correct then the rates of glioma
would be more than 40 percent higher
than they are so it is extremely
unlikely that cellphones actually cause
brain cancer and if they do either the
effects take decades to show or the
increase in risk is very very small
hello Hey
so if you're looking for more ways to
use your smartphone maybe you should try
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want to thank you for watching