Slashdot Mirror

2. Effects on Humans: Mercury vapor can cause effects in the central and peripheral nervous systems, lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes in humans. It is also mutagenic and affects the immune system [Hathaway et al. 1991; Clayton and Clayton 1981; Rom 1992]. Acute exposure to high concentrations of mercury vapor causes severe respiratory damage, while chronic exposure to lower levels is primarily associated with central nervous system damage [Hathaway et al. 1991]. Chronic exposure to mercury is also associated with behavioral changes and alterations in peripheral nervous system [ACGIH 1991]. Pulmonary effects of mercury vapor inhalation include diffuse interstitial pneumonitis with profuse fibrinous exudation [Gosselin 1984]. Glomerular dysfunction and proteinuria have been observed mercury exposed workers [ACGIH 1991]. Chronic mercury exposure can cause discoloration of the cornea and lens, eyelid tremor and, rarely, disturbances of vision and extraocular muscles [Grant 1986]. Delayed hypersensitivity reactions have been reported in individuals exposed to mercury vapor [Clayton and Clayton 1981]. Mercury vapor is reported to be mutagenic in humans, causing aneuploidy in lymphocytes of exposed workers [Hathaway et al. 1991].

Since lasers are not classified on beam access during service, most all Class I industrial lasers will consist of a higher class (high power) laser enclosed in a properly interlocked and labeled protective enclosure. In some cases, the enclosure may be a room (walk-in protective housing) which requires a means to prevent operation when operators are inside the room.

expend a significant amount of money to defend themselves against these bogus charges

Unfortunately this appears to be what happens when you combine a society fixated with junk science with a political class ruled by trial attorneys.

The State of Missouri had an issue a bit more than a year ago with a state legislator that was trying to get all communication towers banned. The reason? "It might harm children." A few folks did some research on the legislator pushing the bill and guess who one of his largest financial supporters was? Incumbant local telephone companies (the competition to wireless providers). Save the children unfortunately has become code for political and legal system payola.

Unfortunately this poster touches on the reality of the current US legal nightmare: many defendents cannot afford the fight for what is right due to the complete lack of financial accountability of irresponsible plantiff attorneys and their clients. I'm predicting the school will back out and turn off their wireless devices. Their students will lack the access to information that other students might have. Unless other parents get vocal and oppose this luddite activity, they'll further the progress of their children towards a future job at Burger King.

Per the allegation that the school has been ignoring evidence that electromagnetic radiation from Wi-Fi networks poses health risks, I'd invite the luddite parents and their attorneys to have a radiofrequency engineer show them what the airwaves in the classroom (or better, at home) look like. 802.11b/a/g is background noise compared to many of the narrowband signals out there. Better shut off the FM, AM and TV broadcasters immediately. Throw away that cellphone (you don't hold that anywhere *near* your head, do you?) Better start packing candles in the kids lunch bag... those fluorescent lights are little RF monsters ("to quote: while the intentional radiation of fluorescent light tubes lies in the visible light range, such tubes also generate very low levels of microwave and RF white noise (Mumford, 1949)... microwaves? That's not a classroom lit by fluorescents, it's a Easy Bake Oven from Hell!). Lock up the school TV sets - what do you think that gunnplexer is firing at your eyeballs? Get weather, aviation and police radar shut off immediately (sure hope that speeder doesn't crash into the school bus). And god forbid you have one of those Air Force E-4B 747's fly over your home as they do mine... one of those bastards wipes out my TV amplifier every time it flies over my farm! Heck, we haven't even thought about RF experiments like HAARP that can probably melt a human in milliseconds!

Of course, the final step for the trial attorneys and their luddite clients will be banning the ultimate producer of raw RF. Once that's done, we can all rest assured that no RF deathrays will harm us.

*scoove*

This is insane. My company rolled out 802.11 a while ago, and they had a few statistics they sent out to address safety concerns.

Stuff like, "Since these run at low transmit power (.03 Watts), it's 1/10-1/20 the power of a cell phone." and "You'd have to hold a body part within 2cm of the antena for 30 minutes while the radio operated continuously at 100% capacity for that time."

Just look at IEEE C95.1 1991, which details the maximum safe exposure for any EM radiation.

Or, gosh, here's a thought... what about OSHA?! They've got a bazillion links on the research involved.

I hope this gets thrown out of the courts faster than you can blink. The last thing students need is to be shoved back into the backwaters of technology.

Government regulations cannot protect consumers, workers, or whatever from stupidity and cannot replace commen sense. As if local governments have enough problems, regulations, and paperwork to meet . . . if they feel that open source is right for their particular instance, great, but if not, why muddle the process, unless there is some budget crisis or something!

First of all I would reccomend that you not do any home experiments unless:
a.) you are fully aware of the hazards/risks involved and know how to minimize them.
or
b.) the experiments you perform are not hazardous.

Check up on your laboratory safety at The Laboratory Safety Institute or take an Online Safety Course or visit OSHA's site. Final note on safety---> It's always fun until someone gets hurt!!!

I assume that you still want to do chemistry experiments. Choose choice b. There are many experiments that you can do that are not hazardous to humans. e. g. mix Baking Soda an Vinegar to produce carbon dioxide.

Keeping a laboratory book is essential in science laboratory and highly reccommended for amature experementation. This typically includes information such as Introduction/Purpose(what do you expect to occur)...Experimental Method(how you will do the experiment, EXACTLY)....Experimental Results...Disscussion of Experimental Results/Conclusion...Reference information.

Basically as far as the laboratory manual is concerned, your experiments should be repeatable by someone else. An excellent book on the subject is : H. M. Kanare, Writing the Laboratory Notebook, American Chemical Society, Washington, D. C., 1985; ASIN: 0841209065.

As far as studying general chemistry goes; I would recommend you get a handle on fundamental chemical laws, basic naming of chemical compounds, understand the polyatomic ions, stoichiometry (e.g. 2 moles of hydrogen react with one mole of oxygen to produce 1 mole of water), Acid-Base Reactions, Oxidation-Reduction Reactions, gas laws and thermochemistry.

These are the things that you should master in the first course of general inorganic chemistry.

As far as amateur science is concerned the Society for Amature Scientists is excellent.

I think chemistry as an amature science is greatly underrepresented. As far as chemistry sets are concerned they are generally geared toward children and therefore may not be much fun for an adult. If you study chemistry seriously, and are interested, you can develop you own experiments. As far as chemicals and glassware are concened; it's probably better to get them at a yard sale or auction site. This is because they are cheaper. If you don't know exactly what chemical you need it is not recommended that you buy any though. Some chemicals available on ebay are extremely hazardous.

For further information I would recommend the very excellent Jounal of Chemical Education.

Think-Learn-Think-Experiment-Think-Learn have fun and be careful!!!

The question isn't so much whether microwaves cook you (which nobody believes) but whether their high frequency EM radiation accelerates cell mutation thus increasing the chance of cancer. A lot of experts have weighed in on this issue, generally contradicting whatever the previous expert said. I'm not sure how I feel about the issue, though I can't help but remember those police officers who may have gotten cancer from their radar guns. OSHA EMF info here. FCC EMF page.

Just a quick parallel for those interested. OSHA's new Ergonomic Standard is set to go into effect on January 16, 2002. You can read the final standard yourself, be patient though, it's a large page.

The Challenger didn't run on pure liquid hydrogen, but on a special compound called Hydrazine ( H2NNH2), which is VERY explosive (and corrosive too if I remember correctly) and extremely reactive. It will never make a safe commercial fuel for airliners, if for no other reason than manufacturing and safe storage costs.

To make things more interesting, it's also highly toxic (hydrogen - h2 - is not).

Osha comments on it as:

1.1.2. Toxic effects (This Section is for information only and should not be taken as the basis of OSHA Policy.)

Hydrazine is a severe skin and mucous membrane irritant in humans; in animals, it is also a convulsant and a carcinogen. In humans, the vapor is immediately irritating to the nose and throat and causes dizziness and nausea; itching, burning, and swelling of the eyes develop over a period of several hours. Severe exposures of the eyes to the vapors causes temporary blindness lasting for about 24 hours. Recurrent exposure to hydrazine hydrate has been reported to cause contact dermatitis of the hands without systemic intoxication.

In humans, hydrazine is absorbed through the skin, by inhalation, and orally; systemic effects include weight loss, weakness, vomiting, excited behavior, and convulsions; the chief histologic findings are fatty degeneration of the liver and nephritis. (Ref. 5.6.)

Of course hydrogen still reacts well in the presence of oxygen, but unlike hydrazine, requires a spark or other catalyst to start cumbustion.

- The Ravnos
FreeSpiritMind.com

Do the bloody research. It's all out there. It only takes an evening or two.

I have done. In my work with Navy RADAR equipment, and my interest in HAM radio, going back 13 years. I left the Navy as a civilian in Electronic Weapons, RADAR/Fire Control, fearing for my future health. But not because of RF radiation, because of the asbestos and chemicals used that are the biggest culprit in long term illness and death in that field.

Can you please point me to some links to studies that show undeniable proof that non-ionizing radiation causes cancer?

You've been bought and sold by the media. They love scare value stories. You are much more likely to hear a "mobile phones cause cancer" story on the news than you are a "mobile phones don't cause cancer" story.

Not only is the typical mobile phone frequency range well below the typical ionizing frequency range where UV, x-rays and gamma-rays hang out, but mobile phone power levels are also astronomically below the levels required to ionize at their frequency. They could ionize, if thier power levels were far FAR greater.

http://www.osha-slc.gov/SLTC/radiofrequencyradiati on/rfpresentation/nonionizing/nonionizing2handout. html


It has been known since about 1904 that exposure to ionizing radiation causes elevated risks of cancer, yet amongst all these same studies to date, no conclusive evidence has been found showing non-ionizing radiation to also cause a cancer risk.

http://www.labor.state.ak.us/lss/pads/ionizing.htm


Even if non-ionizing radiation can elevate cancer risk, it would seem to be at an extremely miniscule level given the lack of evidence.

As an interesting tidbit, almost all of the men in my dept who had children, had girls. It was not a small group and the ratio was astounding. This could possibly be an effect of the RF, but I'm not talking about 0.6 - 2 Watt 900MHz phones here, I'm talking eyeball popping, 1 MegaWatt 30GHz RADAR, which may well be ionizing. ; )

The employer IS responsible for your workplace at home: http://www.osha-slc.gov/OshDoc/Directive_data/CPL_ 2-0_125.html. That's why a lot of employers are starting to stepping back on telecommuting.

OSHA does have a standard on home-offices: http://www.osha-slc.gov/OshDoc/Directive_data/CPL_ 2-0_125.html

When I do that, I cannot reach the keyboard. Those who are more than one standard deviation from normal size still need to cope with normal equipment. Many of us already have viable workarounds that are not mentioned in the rules. Someone could get bureaucratic and decide that I have to give up my child-sized keyboard, footrest, and teeny mouse.

Asking my employer to get a special $1200 adjustable desk strikes me as an undue burden when I can spend $25 for a reasonable footrest.

I telecommute for part of my workweek. I am most concerned about the regulations regarding contractors and work-at-home employeees. One of our boxen has a good chair (adjustable, back support, etc.) but the other does not. Does this mean my employer has an obligation to make sure my home equipment is up to snuff?

This could have a chilling effect on telecommuting, and work by indys working from home offices.

Also, you can use a trade secret if you discover it legally. You can't steal the secret from a safe. You could analyze the product yourself and try to duplicate it. The secret holder is not required to confirm that you did it right, of course. But the keeper of the secret has no legal protection against someone else rediscovering the secret. [IANAL; you can look it up in any introductory protection document]

"[Herman] said an advisory drafted by departmental officials was informal and was not intended to be taken as a statement of policy for the entire business community. [...]

Herman said, however, that the controversy has raised important questions about what protections Americans who work at home can expect from the government. She said she will convene a conference of business and labor leaders and set up an interagency task force to conduct a wide-ranging study of the issue."

So yes, this will be revisited -- with ample media attention no doubt. No, its not a disaster -- any more than the idea that employers may have some responsibilities for home office conditions is a disaster. It is the start of a broad discussion of a previously unexplored issue that is very relevant to those of us that telecom mute.

I couldn't find the contorversial letter in a quick scan of the Labor Department and OSHA sites. I suppose its been removed. Does anyone have a URL for it? I would have expected to find it here but its a gonner.