Subject: Dr. Mild's mobile phone study.....
Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 101828 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To: emfguru@hotmail.com
--------------------------------------------------
Hi everybody:
After receiving the Mild study (which has been forwarded to you),
I asked Alasdair to give me his reaction to the study. In what follows,
I'd say that he did even better than his usual good job.....
May I make two points about the study. (1) Keep in mind that this study
is looking at 'symptomatic' conditions, headaches, etc. It may or it may
not have any relevance to the more serious conditions like lymphomas,
cancer, etc.
(2) Also, all of the information collected -- which one might observe is
of a highly 'subjective' nature in the first place -- is provided by the
mobile phone users, themselves, without benefit of any "interview" process
which would normally be expected to better "standardize" the data for
comparison purposes. (Of course that would have substantially increased
the cost as well. I am not criticizing the study for this....)
I do not know who paid for the study. I suspect it was the phone
companies??? Nevertheless, the most intriguing aspect of Alasdair's
excellent commentary below is probably his reference to additional results
"not yet published." It is for that reason that I decided to forward
ALL of the study and ALL of Alasdair's commentary ... unedited.....
Also, Alasdair has provided a real service by "cleaning up" the tables
below.....
Cheerio......
Roy Beavers (EMFguru)
rbeavers@llion.org..............http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html
................................It is better to light a single candle ...
than to curse the darkness...............................................
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 10:26:54
From: Alasdair Philips
To: "Roy L. Beavers"
Subject: Re: Mild Study on mobile phones.....
Roy,
Thanks for the invitation to comment on the Mild study. I have
re-formatted the tables to be suitable for e-mail and include these
as part of my reply.
This is the large epidemiolgical Questionnaire study that many of us
have been waiting for. It is based on 17,000 users of whom 11,000
returned Questionnaires, so there may be a slight selection bias towards
people who thought they were experiencing problems (ie if they were not,
then why bother to spend time replying?)
Anyway, it is a large sample so the basic statistics will be good.
We need to remember that we are not comparing non-mobile phone users
with users, but that the control group are users who use their phone
less than 2 minutes per day on average. Although this will receive
criticism it is probably a reasonable, if not good, choice as the
people are likely to be from a similar socio-economic group and have
similarish life-styles ~ ie we are not comparing 'rural peasants' with
'city slickers'.
The MOST important thing to bear in mind is that this is just the
first, and less interesting PART of this study ~ the full analysis
of the people with problems will come later, and I am quite certain
that WILL show that GSM users experience far more concentration and
memory problems than do NMT (analogue) users.
This first part is interesting in that it shows that for the five
categories selected (fatigue, headaches, & warmth/heating) that
GSM phones are either no worse or produce slightly less of these
'problems'. I suspect that is one of the reasons they were chosen
as I am quite certain that concentration and memory problems will
show up as being far worse for GSM users when the second part of the study
analysis is published later.
Table 1 shows the comparison between NMT (analogue) & GSM (digital):
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Table 1. Adjusted OR and in brackets 95% confidence^)":N interval for
different symptoms with respect to transmitter system.
Reference category is NMT900.
Symptoms OR (95% C.I.)
Norway Sweden
Fatigue
1.07 (0.83-1.37) 0.85 (0.70-1.03)
Headache
0.94 (0.71-1.24) 0.78 (0.63-0.97)
Warmth behind ear
0.71 (0.56-0.91) 0.74 (0.55-0.99)
Warmth on ear
0.71 (0.56-0.90) 0.56 (0.43-0.73)
Burning skin
0.83 (0.60-1.15) 0.99 (0.72-1.36)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
This shows GSM problems are 'less' or 'the same' for these problems.
This is not really surprising as the Scandinavian NMT analogue
system only has two handset power levels 1 Watt or 0.1 Watt. This
will mean that many users will be holding a 1 W FM transmitter to
the side of their head and it will only go down to 0.1 W when very
close to a base-station.
The GSM system on the other hand has a peak pulse power of 2 W but
as the duty cycle is 8:1 the average transmit power (max) is 0.25 W.
In other words the max. RMS power is only one quarter of the NMT
phones, so of course there will be less heating effects.
In addition the GSM phones turn their power down in 12 -2dB steps
from an RMS max of 0.25 W to an RMS level of only 0.001 Watt, to a
level which is the minimum needed to maintain an adequate communications
link. Therefore a typical GSM RMS level is almost certainly less
than 0.1 Watt and may be nearer 0.05 W ~ so OF COURSE the heating
effects are less.
The USA & most of Europe *TACS & *AMPS analogue phones run from
0.6 Watt to 0.006 W RMS (FM)in five -4dB steps and therefore their
average RMS power will be less than the Scandinavian NMT system,
probably running at an average level of 0.1 W or below. This means
that the Table 1 results are not really translatable to any other
area than Scandinavia who use the NMT analogue system.
My suspicion is that for other areas the numbers would be inverted
~ ie for these 'problems' the GSM phones would come off very
slightly worse or the same ~ i.e. the ratios would tend towards
1.2 rather than the 0.8 in Table 1. This isn't a real problem and
I think there would still be little overall difference between the systems
for THESE problems.
Table 2 (A & B) shows the actual comparisons:
--------------------------------------------------------------
Table 2. Adjusted ORs and in brackets 95% confidence intervals
for calling time.
Reference category is calling time less than 2 min/day.
A: Norway OR (95% C.I.) p<0.05
NMT NMT NMT
2-15 min/d 15-60 min/d >60 min/d
# Symptoms #
Fatigue
1.14(0.64-2.02) 1.59(0.89-2.81) 2.47(1.16-5.24)
Headache
1.81(0.82-3.98) 3.31(1.53-7.18) 6.36(2.57-15.8)
Warmth behind ear
2.42(1.20-4.89) 4.29(2.13-8.62) 18.1(7.83-41.8)
Warmth on ear
2.65(1.35-5.18) 5.30(2.72-10.3) 12.4(5.52-27.8)
Burning skin
1.44(0.53-3.94) 4.29(1.65-11.1) 11.8(4.14-33.6)
GSM GSM GSM
2-15 min/d 15-60 min/d > 60 min/d
Fatigue
1.10(0.63-1.92) 1.55(0.88-2.74) 4.14(1.86-9.22)
Headache
1.94(0.90-4.20) 2.69(1.24-5.88) 6.31(2.35-17.0)
Warmth behind ear
1.68(0.83-3.40) 2.93(1.45-5.92) 16.0(6.34-40.4)
Warmth on ear
1.65(0.84-3.24) 3.94(2.02-7.71) 8.37(3.41-20.6)
Burning skin
1.56(0.59-4.13) 3.48(1.33-9.07) 8.42(2.70-26.2)
B: Sweden OR (95% C.I.) p<0.05
NMT NMT NMT
2-15 min/d 15-60 min/d > 60 min/d
Fatigue
1.33(0.94-1.89) 2.26(1.54-3.32) 2.32(1.06-5.07)
Headache
1.81(1.22-2.69) 3.24(2.12-4.95) 3.40(1.43-8.12)
Warmth behind ear
4.28(1.90-9.64) 10.7(4.74-24.1) 30.3(11.2-81.8)
Warmth on ear
6.18(2.92-13.1) 15.3(7.19-32.5) 47.8(18.9-121)
Burning skin
1.05(0.61-1.81) 2.12(1.20-3.74) 4.17(1.59-11.0)
GSM GSM GSM
2-15 min/d 15-60 min/d > 60 min/d
Fatigue
1.25(0.89-1.75) 1.80(1.25-2.59) 1.40(0.65-3.00)
Headache
1.49(1.02-2.19) 2.50(1.66-3.75) 2.83(1.37-5.85)
Warmth behind ear
2.63(1.16-5.98) 9.00(4.05-20.0) 21.9(8.46-56.7)
Warmth on ear
2.73(1.26-5.91) 10.2(4.81-21.5) 22.4(9.10-55.0)
Burning skin
1.06(0.64-1.77) 2.34(1.40-3.92) 2.77(1.13-6.75)
------------------------------------------------------
Here we see some #phenomenal# dose response relationships and
clear, unequivocal, evidence that mobile phones really do
heat (? fry ?!) part of the user's head ( & brains ?!).
What are the long-term health consequences ? We do not know.
It certainly doesn't seem a very clever, sensible or prudent
thing to do with one's head.
#########################
The clear message for employers that we should emphasise is
that they should encourage their employees to MINIMISE their
use of either type of mobile phone as the evidence here strongly
suggests that people who use their phone for more than a few
minutes per day are likely to perform their work less well as
they are more likely to suffer headaches and general fatigue.
They should watch out for, and push for, publication of the detailed
analysis of the actual complaints. I am CERTAIN this WILL show that
GSM phones actually are more detrimental to a person's well-being.
#########################
With best wishes to all EMF-L'ers
Alasdair Philips
Ref:
Mobile Phone Users and Symptoms
A Swedish-Norwegian epidemiologial study
Kjell Hansson Mild, Oftedal, Sandström,
Wilén, Tynes, Haugsdal, & Hauger
Announced on 14th May 1998 in Umea, Sweden.
==============================================================
At 12:49 17/05/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Alasdair:
>
>Would you take a few minutes to give me some comments (I may quote you)
>on Mild's study (below)? Perhaps, in terms of: a) its overall concept
>validity; b) its methodology; c) its results; d) its significance, if
>any, and anything else you may want to say....
>
>
>Thanks.....
>
>Roy Beavers (EMFguru)
>rbeavers@llion.org..............http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html
>................................It is better to light a single candle ...
>than to curse the darkness...............................................
>
... snipped .....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alasdair Philips (aphilips@gn.apc.org)
Director, UK Powerwatch,
EMC Engineer and EMF-bioeffects researcher
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html