On Oct 24, 2008, at 5:19 AM, Kris Tilford wrote:
> On the health side, studies have shown that for children, the risk of > childhood cancers is as high as 2 for users of CRT monitor. This means > your child may double their chances of cancer from prolonged use of > CRT monitors. (2) I'm sorry but the article you cite makes no such claim. It says, specifically: "Epidemiologists have suggested that the risk factors for some childhood cancers (particularly leukemia) are as high as two for some populations exposed to low frequency EMI. " Note "some populations" and "exposed to low-frequency EMI" not CRT's. THEN ONE LINE LATER it says: "In general, a risk factor of less than six is not considered significant (cigarette smoking has a risk factor of 10-20)." Sadly, like may other fields (law, engineering,etc) to paraphrase Inigo Montoya: "those words, I do not think they mean what YOU think they mean" Having worked in the carcinogenesis field, I can state that a risk factor of two derived from some study is not significantly greater than chance, unless it's a really really REALLY big study, controlled for a huge number of variables, and absent a police state keeping accurate and detailed health and lifestyle records of everyone, there just isn't the data available for that kind of study. This means that you can draw NO CONCLUSIONS from the study, because it is equally probable that pure coincidence would give you the same results. Sadly, these terms get tossed into articles directed at laypeople without a clear understanding or explanation of what the words mean within the field they're being used in. Also the numbers on childhood cancer are very very low, so presuming the observed risk is real, even doubling the risk still means they have a very very low risk of the actual adverse outcome. Seriously, the risks of letting your children near a street are far higher than the elevated risk from looking at CRTs. Finally, while there have been widely touted studies linking living under power lines and cancer in young children, there is a glaring flaw in most of these studies: almost invariably this housing is relatively new, and almost invariably, significantly lower socioeconomic class, a whole host of other risk factors involved. When these studies are properly controlled against this, the EMI effect vanishes. This isn't 'massaging the numbers' or 'lying with statistics' it's plain old ordinary science. Anecdotes != Data. This is akin to the 'brain cancer epidemic' we've been saddled with since we got the MRI which could find brain tumors too small to be found in the past. If there IS an EMI effect, it is below the background noise of all other carcinogens in the environment. And no I'm not a paid shill of the power industry, but if EMI caused cancer, we'd see a massive epidemic among factory workers, janitors and barbers...power tools, vacuum cleaners and barber's shears have vastly stronger EM fields than CRT's...that's why your TV goes crazy when the vacuum cleaner comes near. -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
