Good, Rational, Concise, Easily Understood Info on RF Radiation and Health
October 7th, 2009
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I recently got an email from someone asking me if I could point them to good scientific information on the health effects of RF radiation, such as from cell phones and wifi devices and the relationship (or lack there of) to cancer risk. There have been many posts on this site about RF Radiation and the trumped up charges of health effects, but none seemed to fit the bill for what this person was looking for.
It was then that I realized something: protection from non-ionizing radiation is a concern to health physicists and HPS generally does an extremely good job of providing scientifically sound and easily understood information. I’ve cited HPS before as being a scientific professional organization that is uncommonly good with outreach to the public and media and an organization that many others could learn from.
Sure enough, they have an excellent fact sheet on mobile phones.
The fact sheet is recent, adopted only last month. If I had to nitpick anything with it, I might say that the statement “data regarding long-term use (more than 10 years) of mobile phones is very sparse and unreliable” is a bit misleading, because we do have numerous studies that looked at people who have been using mobile phones since the early 1980’s. In general, there’s no reason to presume there are any dangers and this is something that the fact sheet makes clear. Even if it takes an average of 40 years for an enviornmental stressor to produce an effect, we should still see at least the beginning of the trend after much shorter periods of time.
Additional information on wireless devices can be found from HPS here.
Here is one of my favorite “Expert Answers on the topic”
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Education, Good Science, Misc, inverse square. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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October 7th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
I appreciate the last link as well. I suppose you could say that since cell phones have only been in common use for about twenty years it’s remotely possible that if they are somehow uniquely dangerous but only after 50 years of use, then maybe there is not enough data. Although I find it hard to believe that it would not show at least some effect earlier. It’s not like it happens all at once. When they say it takes an average of 20 years for smoking to cause cancer, they mean its a bell curve. Some can get cancer after 30 years and some after ten. There would be at least some increase sooner, depending on how steep it is.
I started professionally installing wireless communications of various kinds in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. At the time, there was an enormous amount of scientific data on health effects.
As the author points out (who happens to be talking about the same time period)
I disagree with the notion that there is too much uncertainty. As far as I can tell, what we knew when I started out was correct and everything since then has only confirmed this. I have never seen any good research that makes me think that we didn’t have this right since the 1950’s (maybe earlier??)
The biggest difference between then and now when it comes to the transmitters that people have next to their head is power – it’s less now. Back before the cellular networks were around, if you wanted a mobile telephone system (a full duplex, user-friendly wireless phone) you had to either use a VHF service, which was very expensive and limited in availability or you had to build your own. There were television stations and utility companies and so on that did just that. They would get license to use some spectrum, sometimes on an unused television channel and install their own base station and everything. Since there would be just that one per city and because of the nature of the systems at the time, an in-car transmitter might be 50 watts. A handheld or shoulder bag system could be a good 12 watts.
One reason they were so big is power. You’d have a big lead acid battery in that thing!
Amazingly, despite the fact that I would sometimes spend hours troubleshooting one of those things, here it is 2009 and I don’t have a brain tumor. Plenty of other people have been using that stuff for decades and nobody has found a solid link to anything. Go figure?
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October 7th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
The glass harmonica is an instrument that enjoyed a spell of high popularity during the 18th century. Also named the armonica it was invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761 after hearing a concert of 50 tuned water glasses during a trip to Europe. Deeply touched and inspired Ben Franklin did away with water tuning, had tuned cups fabricated, connected the glasses together, put them on a rotating spit with foot pedals. The ethereal sounds in Tchaikowsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from the Nutcracker comes from this instrument.
The point of this excursion into musical history, is that one of the reasons for the instrument’s fall from favor was the popular belief that the tone was so pure that it drove people chronically insane. This irrational fear was no doubt exacerbated by the attention paid the devise by the dean of psychic frauds Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer who used the armonica in his quack practice.
Expert opinion was divided, with the most vocal opposition coming from physicians serving the rich. The atmosphere was so strained that in some towns people were forbidden to play the glass harmonica under the pain of being charged with a crime. After some kid died at a concert in Germany, probably of heat-stroke, the glass harmonica was banned in that country.
Now of course the ‘curse of the glass harmonica’ was a crock, but ignorance, coupled with hysteria drove the device into the hinterlands for about a century. This story however is instructive, and should serve as a warning over the current nonsensical objections to low level RF – enough stupidity could see laws passed that pander to public fear and ignore facts. It wouldn’t be the first time apparently.
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October 7th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Good example! The fact of the matter is that what RF energy does to the body is pretty well understood and has been for a while. People seem to complicate it and throw in a lot of irrelevant info and talk about everything from the “blood brain barrier” and how it “makes cells take in toxins” and “is genotoxic” and it’s just making it overly complex in the hopes that people will think it’s beyond their understanding but somehow scary.
Looking back, the glass harmonica sounds like an example of panic over a lot of nothing that is trumped up in the same way. “The tone is so pure…” What a lot of bullocks! No tone can be more “pure” than the tone produced by a simple sign wave oscillator. That is as pure as an acoustic tone can be and yet it does not drive people insane does it?
Jeez.
@gordon: I know there were mobile phone systems before the modern mobile phones like cellular, but I didn’t know that companies had their own private systems. Basically just a two-way radio, I assume?
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October 8th, 2009 at 12:03 am
Engineering Edgar said:
There have been various incarnations of mobile phone systems for decades. In the 1950’s and 1960’s the Mobile Telephone Service was the one that was generally used. It was very expensive and also had the issue of limited bandwidth. In the 1960’s they introduced mobile phones that could direct dial and receive calls like a regular phone and not using a patch operator.
They had something like 25 channels assigned to it. Later some additional services increased to 50. Still, that leaves very little room for traffic. Huge waiting lists to get on it, even if the calls were $2 a minute and the equipment was briefcase sized. It was used by the press and some others.
If you wanted to communicate with workers out in the field, like a utility company or a local tv station or what ever might, you needed a private two-way radio system. If you were going to use this for any more than a small amount it was cheaper too, because you didn’t pay bills.
Starting in the 1960’s it became popular to set up systems that used a telephone receiver and some even had direct-dial capability. These were really just two-way radios but the fact that they could use a phone receiver and do full duplex made them more user friendly than the standard style with push to talk. A feature that could be added was an auto-patch to the telephone network which allowed the user of the radio to dial the phone. Not always useful, but impressive to your friends.
Of ourse the problem with this (in addition to the expense) was that you only had the one base station and so that meant you had to be within a reasonably small area. Although some TV news did pretty well because they already had a big tower to put it on to begin with, so they were fine. It was not a very reliable kind of thing in general.
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October 8th, 2009 at 12:13 am
There is a tendency of those in science to not be too definitive about certainty. It comes down to the null hypothesis. It’s why they will leave room for the possibility, even if all evidence points to something else.
The problem is that for most lay people, this comes across as seeming to indicate there is some kind of risk.
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October 8th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Actually you and the site you link to are both very wrong and Gordon is very wrong too. You are assuming that the only damage from the fields produced is from the heat. You are looking only at a narrow area. This was once thought to be all that matters, but now we know better. It is not the power level it is the vibrations it causes and in this way the new wireless is totally different than the old ones.
Old wireless walkie talkies and the old analogue cellular telephones are different than those now. The systems we use now are 3G and along with wifi and Tetra they are much more damaging. They are modulated with a lot of information riding on the waves. They pulse and they vibrate very fast. This causes vibrations inside the cells of the body. These are a lot like the vibrations and signals that our bioelectic fields produce and that means that the cells can’t tell the difference and it interferes with the internal healthy electric fields.
Our cells and our bodies have natural biolectric fields and frequencies and they do not work well when they are blasted with artificial fields that scramble the internal workings. Cancer is just the tip of the iceberg. It also causes autism, immune system problems, headaches, allergies and many other things are suspected to be associated. It can open up the cell membranes and let in toxins.
Do not believe me? This is all from the Bioinitiative report, which is by some of the worlds best scientists and backs this all with scientific facts and studies.
Your level of knowledge is stuck in the 1970’s. Maybe that was where you started but things have changed and we know more now.
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October 8th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
EMF Science Guru said:
As a mater of fact we don’t believe you, because what you are saying is a crock.
No respected scientist believes in this tripe, and you asserting it does not make it so.
Furthermore you are a charlatan selling snake-oil, and you are trying to use this site to drive traffic to your store.
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October 8th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
There’s no evidence that the modulation of radio waves or the bandwidth or information is in any way related to the health effects. Your body would need to demodulate the carrier to even know the difference. Different frequencies may have slightly different abilities to penetrate tissue or to impart heat to the cells in the body, but there’s no way that your body would ever be able to tell analog from GSM from 3G from 4G. This is based on nothing.
I read some of the bioiniative report. It’s not just inaccurate, but as this author likes to put it, it is “Not even wrong.” It’s absurd and anyone who knows the first thing about physics or biology would laugh at it.
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October 8th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
EMF Science Guru said:
‘Studies’ are not purified truth and wisdom. They must be interpreted with care and skepticism.
Also the source you quote / are affiliated with has <30 members. They are clearly ignoring the thousands of other scientists who believe that this is all just bull****e. As a minority group, you are entitled to your opinion but you are not entitled to be taken seriously by everyone else.
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October 8th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Fine then. Do not buy the products from my site if you think that is all I am about. The truth is that I will not claim these products eliminate the risk. Yes, they do reduce it, in some cases by 90%, but to eliminate it completely you need to stop using mobiles and wireless computers and stay away from the base stations. People do not want to hear this.
My advice is that if you do not think you can avoid using them, at least keep them away from children, always use protection products. Buy them from my site or another, if you want, but be sure to use them. I am pained to see anyone suffering or dying who does not need to.
Never buy a 3G phone. If you can get one that is only 2G. They are barely making them these days, but you can find them on ebay and other places. Only use air tube headsets and never use the phone directly near your head. Also bluetooth is also no good.
These companies work hard to suppress the truth. They are all profit driven and some of the money goes straight to politicians.
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October 9th, 2009 at 12:06 am
The whole concept is drivel that is no difference the example I gave above with the armonica driving people mad, it has no foundation in science or fact. People like you are doing a huge disservice to the community with this paranoid rubbish.
You BTW give yourself away by calling yourself “EMF Science Guru.” You are just a pathetic wanabe without the intellect to be that which you so transparently crave. So you create a parallel world of imaginary science that you can then pretend expertize in. Surrounded by other idiots that don’t know any better you salve your feeble little ego, and hide from the fact you are a nothing.
I swear if any one of these nut jobs ever prevents me from getting or using a piece of advanced technology by creating public hysteria with some nonsensical idea like this, I will sue them so hard Latin will become their second language.
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October 9th, 2009 at 12:10 am
Linking to your site is shameless attempt to get free advertising and in my opinion should be removed as spam. DV82XL and Steven have already said everything that needs to be said about you and your so-called products.
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October 9th, 2009 at 12:35 am
I was going to do a post soon to try to thoroughly debunk the idea that a charm or trinket of some sort could somehow “absorb” the radio waves or create a region of less EMF field. Assuming that you even needed that, it can’t be achieved by some kind of device like that. It’s impossible. It would be exactly the same as saying that there is a “dark bulb” that makes a room darker by sucking up ambient light when turned on.
Here’s a graphic to illustrate what I mean.
Such devices don’t exist, at least not in reality. “Inverse lights” or “light suckers” do exist in certain 3D rendering engines, but that’s the extent of it. You can’t do this with radio waves either.
(BTW: Yes, I do intend to address the whole angle of destructive interference, which only can happen at a narrow points in space and with very precise phasing. There are a number of reasons why the whole idea of interferometry by 180 out of phase waves won’t work in this circumstance – or at least, not for anything beyond some very narrow areas and only with some very precise alignment and active control)
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October 9th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
The site I linked to is not just my site and it is not just selling products. Yes, the site does sell products to try to help people live healthier lives, but if you looked at it you’d notice that it also has research and informative links.
Since this is such a problem to some of the very narrow-minded and self appointed experts here, I have not linked to it on this comment. Why does the site have a space for a website on the comment if it is so offensive?
Like I said, I would rather you buy a protective product from some other site than continue to expose yourself to the dangers of using a phone. I also admit that the products are helpful but will never be as safe as simply not using EMF producing products and avoiding the towers and base stations and the wireless internet transmitters.
Lets talk science. You can talk all you want about obsolete studies from the 1950’s or whatever. The fact is that the new 3G signals and their related signals carry more information and that means that they are different. They are pulsed at high rates so your body can’t adjust to them. You can’t understand that it’s NOT JUST THE SIGNAL! It is the secondary vibrations that are caused by the pulsating and the high speed modulation of the signal. The signals are pulsed and each pulse is like a hammer striking the cells. It happens so that the pulsing is many times a second. The cells are subjected to terrible damages.
There are many things this changes, some we don’t even fully appreciate yet, but the evidence is growing as we do more science. Only in recent years has the extent of the genotoxic properties been discovered. It has been noted that 3G and Tetra has been associated with increases in Autism, ASD, ADD, Hyperactivity and behavioral problems in children. We now are understanding why this is and it is because the pulsing energy forces toxins into the cells where they can’t get out. The heavy metals from modern life and pollution are pushed through the blood brain barrier where they can do maximum damage. The processed foods we eat, the toxic vaccines we inject into our children and the world we have created that is full of chemicals and toxins has created a perfect storm by combining with the EMF to create a situation worse than either would be on its own.
The Bioiniative report makes this crystal clear.
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October 9th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
EMF Science Guru can I ask what are your qualifications? Do you have a bachelors degree (field?), PHD etc?
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October 10th, 2009 at 1:58 am
I think you scared him away!
By the way: There has been a TON of BS in the mainstream press on this one recently. Most of it says the same thing: The studies are all conflicting but there’s reason to be concerned. We need more research. In the mean time, assume that it’s dangerous because it probably is.
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October 10th, 2009 at 4:42 am
Oh, but it can.
Way back I had an old, crummy TV that would frequently(and malciously I might add) whine loudly at the same frequency as its horisontal scan rate. The only relief came from smacking the damn thing hard a couple of times. This would make it sulk for 5-30 minutes while it was plotting revenge by starting the whine again at the the most obnoxious moment.
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October 10th, 2009 at 4:55 am
The “bioinitiative report” is a self-published report that contains no new information and no new plausible mechanisms.
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