However, I don’t know what the power output of a typical tower is. If it were high enough, then that could be of concern, too.

I think a core difference here is scale.
It’s easy to isolate out smokers and say we want to study a group of people who’ve smoked a pack a day for the last 10 years.

Saying “lets study a group of mobile phone users who’ve had them for the last 10 years” provides a very different result. The differences even between individual handsets and the radiation put out by them is massive. Plus, users that have had them that long were probably on older networks which used a technology that isn’t current and operates at different safe levels.

I also think lifestyle conditions are probaby something that’s tested. Say the 1.3 ratio is an interaction effect – if you’re spending several hours on the phone a day, i’d imagine some significant portion of that group was in a high stress environment. Maybe phones + stres = cancer.

It goes back to the Duhem–Quine thesis, which says scientific hypotheses are never tested in isolation. This is very, very true and we’d all do very well to remember it. Particularly in this kind of study.

It doesnt matter. Schools are all fighting to get a piece of the pie.
My friend works for an engineering firm and they have installed towers on elementary schools and hospitals and he says that they arent lacking for choices.

I saw the plans for towers used on top of a hospital which makes me laugh when they ask you not to use your cellphone when you visit.

My warning bells, as I age, actually increase when I hear that evidence goes both ways and big money is involved.

One would expect science to produce facts of some kind, consistently. Its the mix of money and science that makes it all just that seedy, don’t you think?

Apologies for the double comment.

A similar industry – how much is it worth – are cell phones. I’m personally not comfortable getting those waves in my skull regardless of any controversial studies.

What I think we really have to wake up to is what a phone tower near our local school is risking? As we saturate our living environment with this stuff are we once again taking “controversial” risks with our health for the sake of Nokia or some company to get rich?

I do keep it in perspective, as I do use a cell phone, though. True. But I’m yet to be satisfied beyond the cancer question of the effects of power users in their teens with growing brains etc…

Ahh maybe cigarettes aren’t killing people. Ha. Forget I ever mentioned it. :)

Its good to see people still discussing this topic.