30-08-2016, 03:00 PM
Hi Phil – sorry for the tardy response, have been a bit busy, my excuse anyway 
. Thanks for the kind words.
MOBILE PHONES “Ironic isn’t it that this subject arose on a chess forum on a thread which discussed X ray exposure at airports. Chess events must be one of the few crowded public spaces where there should be no active mobile phone within many metres.”
Yes ironic – though wireless technology is proliferating into virtually all aspects of life and chess will not escape without a change in awareness. Andy Howie has called for signal jamming to prevent cheating. And there’s wireless electronic boards but I believe CS now use wired ones.
“Last I heard objections to siting of mobile phone masts on health grounds were routinely disallowed.”
Yes generally true; well having coined in billions (about £9bn in the UK) from the mobile operator licenses, governments tended to use the same device to impose the masts on communities – passing legislation preventing councils from refusing phone masts on health grounds, while simultaneously proclaiming them safe, ignoring whatever evidence was offered to the contrary and pointing to the ‘safety guidelines’ which apply to microwave ovens not long term risks. A very small window for opposition was left ajar (though which some have successfully climbed), in that councils were allowed to ‘take public concern on health into account’. Essentially this meant that lots of people had to complain about things like visual unsightliness or the mast being proposed for ‘the wrong place’ while others expressed strong health concerns. If the campaign was organised and big enough, councils – which benefit financially from mast sitings in public areas – occasionally might refuse a mast on ‘visual’ grounds when it was really about the health fears. Most refusals were overturned on appeal however, or the mast application would move somewhere nearby with less resistance (repeat until resistance successfully bypassed). Or they doubled up the equipment on existing masts.
Powerlines risk vs mobiles – difficult question. Risk from powerlines is a subset of risks from low-frequency (electro)magnetic fields generally. These have been studied in the occupational context. For this I would like to show how the general picture is coloured (and no doubt add some colour of my own ).
The high threshold (95% certainty) for recording a positive result combined with probably a similar threshold again having to be exceeded before cautious medical viewpoint (in conjunction with denialist governments and industry who strongly influence the research) will recognize when the quantity of evidence has gone past the point where opinion should change – this all forms a formidable barrier to recognition of what can be ‘obvious’ to anyone looking objectively at the overall research results. In the case of smoking (ionizing radiation is another) the industry succeeded by obfuscation in keeping the ‘statistical’ reality officially obscure decades after it was common knowledge amongst the relevant specialists. It might still be officially ‘inconclusive’ but for those pictures of discoloured smokers’ lungs we all saw years ago on TV... :|. Finally (to complete my grandstanding) the first paper detailing the harmful effects of asbestos was presented to Parliament in Victorian times.
Back to EMFs...a very careful, measured review of the research (though a huge quantity of Russian research was ignored) on low-frequency EMF was done for the Californian government over 10 years ago (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.buergerwelle.de/body_emf-omega-news_16-02-04.html">http://www.buergerwelle.de/body_emf-ome ... 02-04.html</a><!-- m -->). This review was intended to be kept secret but the threat of court action forced its disclosure. The experts compiling this thousand-page report expressed themselves as more than 50% sure that electromagnetic fields increase to some degree the risk of child+adult leukemia, adult brain cancer, miscarriage, ALS (a form of motor neurone disease). For those illnesses, the cautious wording masked collective p-values (for the studies included) that would have been off-the-scale – except the cautious wording has a compressing, logarithmic effect even before it reaches the politicians.
I find Wikipedia ok except for political (including scientific) controversies when it almost always sides with the mainstream view while trying to ‘knock out’ the alternative view with superficial swipes. With this caveat, it’s not a bad place to start, as it usually mentions the contrary view which can then be investigated further. In my view, it’s a bad place to stop, though! I only cited Wikipedia because the role played by oxidative stress (overwhelmingly found to be caused in some measure by mobile radiation) in most major illnesses is not a medical controversy. It is stated bluntly in medical studies eg “Imbalance between ROS/RNS production and elimination results in oxidative stress (OxS), which has been implicated in aging and in numerous human diseases, including cancer, diabetes or age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia)”. There is the question of quantification of any harm from these effects, but it would first be necessary to recognize the problem.
Antioxidants and ‘placebo with a good taste’ ( ) – I’m neutral on supplementation myself as \I don’t know what works and what doesn’t.
I agree judgements have to be made, there is a risk to everything as you say – I’m just pointing out that the picture on which people naturally want to base this judgement is subject to considerable interference.
I’d better stop there for now Phil... appreciate your interest in my ramblings.
Cheers
Walter
. Thanks for the kind words.MOBILE PHONES “Ironic isn’t it that this subject arose on a chess forum on a thread which discussed X ray exposure at airports. Chess events must be one of the few crowded public spaces where there should be no active mobile phone within many metres.”
Yes ironic – though wireless technology is proliferating into virtually all aspects of life and chess will not escape without a change in awareness. Andy Howie has called for signal jamming to prevent cheating. And there’s wireless electronic boards but I believe CS now use wired ones.
“Last I heard objections to siting of mobile phone masts on health grounds were routinely disallowed.”
Yes generally true; well having coined in billions (about £9bn in the UK) from the mobile operator licenses, governments tended to use the same device to impose the masts on communities – passing legislation preventing councils from refusing phone masts on health grounds, while simultaneously proclaiming them safe, ignoring whatever evidence was offered to the contrary and pointing to the ‘safety guidelines’ which apply to microwave ovens not long term risks. A very small window for opposition was left ajar (though which some have successfully climbed), in that councils were allowed to ‘take public concern on health into account’. Essentially this meant that lots of people had to complain about things like visual unsightliness or the mast being proposed for ‘the wrong place’ while others expressed strong health concerns. If the campaign was organised and big enough, councils – which benefit financially from mast sitings in public areas – occasionally might refuse a mast on ‘visual’ grounds when it was really about the health fears. Most refusals were overturned on appeal however, or the mast application would move somewhere nearby with less resistance (repeat until resistance successfully bypassed). Or they doubled up the equipment on existing masts.
Powerlines risk vs mobiles – difficult question. Risk from powerlines is a subset of risks from low-frequency (electro)magnetic fields generally. These have been studied in the occupational context. For this I would like to show how the general picture is coloured (and no doubt add some colour of my own
).The high threshold (95% certainty) for recording a positive result combined with probably a similar threshold again having to be exceeded before cautious medical viewpoint (in conjunction with denialist governments and industry who strongly influence the research) will recognize when the quantity of evidence has gone past the point where opinion should change – this all forms a formidable barrier to recognition of what can be ‘obvious’ to anyone looking objectively at the overall research results. In the case of smoking (ionizing radiation is another) the industry succeeded by obfuscation in keeping the ‘statistical’ reality officially obscure decades after it was common knowledge amongst the relevant specialists. It might still be officially ‘inconclusive’ but for those pictures of discoloured smokers’ lungs we all saw years ago on TV... :|. Finally (to complete my grandstanding
) the first paper detailing the harmful effects of asbestos was presented to Parliament in Victorian times.Back to EMFs...a very careful, measured review of the research (though a huge quantity of Russian research was ignored) on low-frequency EMF was done for the Californian government over 10 years ago (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.buergerwelle.de/body_emf-omega-news_16-02-04.html">http://www.buergerwelle.de/body_emf-ome ... 02-04.html</a><!-- m -->). This review was intended to be kept secret but the threat of court action forced its disclosure. The experts compiling this thousand-page report expressed themselves as more than 50% sure that electromagnetic fields increase to some degree the risk of child+adult leukemia, adult brain cancer, miscarriage, ALS (a form of motor neurone disease). For those illnesses, the cautious wording masked collective p-values (for the studies included) that would have been off-the-scale – except the cautious wording has a compressing, logarithmic effect even before it reaches the politicians.
I find Wikipedia ok except for political (including scientific) controversies when it almost always sides with the mainstream view while trying to ‘knock out’ the alternative view with superficial swipes. With this caveat, it’s not a bad place to start, as it usually mentions the contrary view which can then be investigated further. In my view, it’s a bad place to stop, though! I only cited Wikipedia because the role played by oxidative stress (overwhelmingly found to be caused in some measure by mobile radiation) in most major illnesses is not a medical controversy. It is stated bluntly in medical studies eg “Imbalance between ROS/RNS production and elimination results in oxidative stress (OxS), which has been implicated in aging and in numerous human diseases, including cancer, diabetes or age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia)”. There is the question of quantification of any harm from these effects, but it would first be necessary to recognize the problem.
Antioxidants and ‘placebo with a good taste’ (
) – I’m neutral on supplementation myself as \I don’t know what works and what doesn’t.I agree judgements have to be made, there is a risk to everything as you say – I’m just pointing out that the picture on which people naturally want to base this judgement is subject to considerable interference.
I’d better stop there for now Phil... appreciate your interest in my ramblings.
Cheers
Walter