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I've been thinking a lot lately about the dangers of EM radiation around us.
If this is true, energy can be created from those signals in the sky ; one might wonder which effect this has on the human body, DNA and the brains.

Daily signals get added with watts/megawatts of power behind it. It's already proven DECT could create medical problems.

So, how safe are we really inbetween this vast space of electromagnetic radiation? And how does this affect our lives with all those signals combined bouncing off and through our bodies by the second, mostly for commercial gain?

To summarize your post: "Many people believe microwaves are unhealthy" (you, your father, the government of Switzerland, etc.) Many people believe the Earth is 6000 years old, too. But that doesn't make it true.

Apples and oranges. The belief that the Earth is 6000 years old is something those people have just been told and either decided to accept, or accepted without thinking. Many of the people who believe that microwaves (at less than 'cooking' levels) can cause harm believe that microwaves are personally causing them harm - they are experiencing physical symptoms (headaches, nausea, difficulty sleeping etc.), looking around for possible causes, and seeing a microwave-transmitting tower in the vicinity as a likely culprit. They may or may not be right; it's possible that the symptoms have another cause and they're just blaming the first thing they see. But if lots of people in the same town start experiencing these things at the same time just after a new tower has been erected... the allegory of the box of cereal says it quite well.

A more accurate analogy would be to liken the people who believe the Earth is 6000 years old (because it's just what they were told by priests and it's the predomimant belief in their community) to the people who believe microwaves don't cause any harm (because it's just what they were told by 'scientific experts' and it's the predomimant belief in their community).

Of course, if lots of complete, perfect studies that satisfy a few people's very arbitrary definitions of 'scientific proof' don't magically spring forth fully-formed from the pages of the 'right' peer-reviewed journals, then all those 'crackpots' (or whatever's the preferred insult-of-the-day) who complain about XYZ (e.g. electrosensitivity) must just be imagining it and should shut up and stop 'scare-mongering'. Right?

TETRA Watch - Anecdotes demanding investigation:

The NRPB tell us it's 'just anecdotal'. That is usually where science starts, not ends! From anecdote to hypothesis to research, to replication and peer review. Here are some anecdotes that deserve a hypothesis to be properly tested.

(See also their list of links including to scientific studies.)

Of course, if lots of complete, perfect studies that satisfy a few people's very arbitrary definitions of 'scientific proof' don't magically spring forth fully-formed from the pages of the 'right' peer-reviewed journals, then all those 'crackpots' (or whatever's the preferred insult-of-the-day) who complain about XYZ (e.g. electrosensitivity) must just be imagining it and should shut up and stop 'scare-mongering'. Right?

TETRA Watch - Anecdotes demanding investigation:

The NRPB tell us it's 'just anecdotal'. That is usually where science starts, not ends! From anecdote to hypothesis to research, to replication and peer review. Here are some anecdotes that deserve a hypothesis to be properly tested.

(See also their list of links including to scientific studies.)

Of course, if lots of complete, perfect studies that satisfy a few people's very arbitrary definitions of 'scientific proof' don't magically spring forth fully-formed from the pages of the 'right' peer-reviewed journals, then all those 'crackpots' (or whatever's the preferred insult-of-the-day) who complain about XYZ (e.g. electrosensitivity) must just be imagining it and should shut up and stop 'scare-mongering'. Right?

TETRA Watch - Anecdotes demanding investigation:

The NRPB tell us it's 'just anecdotal'. That is usually where science starts, not ends! From anecdote to hypothesis to research, to replication and peer review. Here are some anecdotes that deserve a hypothesis to be properly tested.

(See also their list of links including to scientific studies.)

Actually, the best way would be to use subjects which have no subjective bias: rabbits, monkeys, etc. After all, they are trying to test whether or not the masts are causing the symptoms. Mind you, they cannot control for other possible environmental influences, i.e. other sources of radiation, because they are so prevalent and widely varied. The drawback to using animals is that how do you know if they are nauseous or dizzy?

Finally, in Bavaria, in 1996, after a mobile phone mast was attached to a pylon, adjoining a farm, some of the cows showed extraordinary behaviour. When investigated by the University of Hanover and the University of the German army in Munich (on measurements) it was found that the cause of the extraordinary behaviour, after eliminating every other possible cause had to be emissions from the mobile phone antennae (2G). When the cows and the herd were taken 10 kilometres away to an open farm with no masts anywhere nearby, the milk yield returned to normal from having dropped 30 per cent and the cows which had been showing extraordinary behaviour (only some of the cows) returned totally to normal

When the cows were returned to the original farm it all happened again. When it was written up and reported in the German Journal of Veterinary Medicine, 38 other farmers in Bavaria stated that similar occurrences had occurred to their herds once a mobile phone mast had been erected in fee vicinity. A subsequent replication study failed to come to the same conclusion, because it came to no conclusion at all, due to having been very inadequately set up so that confounders confused any findings.

However, as everyone knows, cows don't read newspapers, don't listen to radio or television and therefore cannot be described by the NRPB as having been fed media scare stories. In the same way as in BSE everyone knew that 'cows eat grass' except apparently Government scientists, and those acting for the concentrates industry, who probably knew and ought to have known better. You cannot feed cows bits of other animals. It should not have been beyond the wisdom and scientific expertise of scientists to have been able to work that out for themselves.

Actually, the best way would be to use subjects which have no subjective bias: rabbits, monkeys, etc. After all, they are trying to test whether or not the masts are causing the symptoms. Mind you, they cannot control for other possible environmental influences, i.e. other sources of radiation, because they are so prevalent and widely varied. The drawback to using animals is that how do you know if they are nauseous or dizzy?

Finally, in Bavaria, in 1996, after a mobile phone mast was attached to a pylon, adjoining a farm, some of the cows showed extraordinary behaviour. When investigated by the University of Hanover and the University of the German army in Munich (on measurements) it was found that the cause of the extraordinary behaviour, after eliminating every other possible cause had to be emissions from the mobile phone antennae (2G). When the cows and the herd were taken 10 kilometres away to an open farm with no masts anywhere nearby, the milk yield returned to normal from having dropped 30 per cent and the cows which had been showing extraordinary behaviour (only some of the cows) returned totally to normal

When the cows were returned to the original farm it all happened again. When it was written up and reported in the German Journal of Veterinary Medicine, 38 other farmers in Bavaria stated that similar occurrences had occurred to their herds once a mobile phone mast had been erected in fee vicinity. A subsequent replication study failed to come to the same conclusion, because it came to no conclusion at all, due to having been very inadequately set up so that confounders confused any findings.

However, as everyone knows, cows don't read newspapers, don't listen to radio or television and therefore cannot be described by the NRPB as having been fed media scare stories. In the same way as in BSE everyone knew that 'cows eat grass' except apparently Government scientists, and those acting for the concentrates industry, who probably knew and ought to have known better. You cannot feed cows bits of other animals. It should not have been beyond the wisdom and scientific expertise of scientists to have been able to work that out for themselves.

TETRA Watch : this site is mainly about the controversial new TETRA police radio system in the UK, but it naturally overlaps with cell phones because both are part of the more general question of whether microwave radiation can damage health. *Lots* of links to articles including peer-reviewed studies. Which I must admit I haven't read many of; who has time to? So most people don't at all, they just accept whatever the 'experts' tell them, even though many of those 'experts' are being paid by someone with vested interests.

802.11a is generally much less crowded than 802.11 b/g and as fast as 802.11g. Wireless in a crowded area can suck quite bad.

I'm trying to help out some folks with a network in their home office - at the moment there are Ethernet cables strewn everywhere and it's a hazard (not to mention constant cable failures from chair casters, etc.). Wifi seemed to be a likely solution, but when I arrived, I discovered that I can pick up 4, sometimes 5 nearby 802.11b/g signals from many places in the house, on channels 1, 6, and 11. The people I'm helping have several 2.4GHz cordless phones (including a very expensive 4-line one that would be painful to abandon). The neighbours on one side, believe it or not, have six 2.4GHz cordless phones (at least that's how many I've spotted around the house so far). I haven't been in the other neighbours' house but I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same over there.

So 802.11b/g is pretty hopeless. I travel with an access point, and gave it a try, but the signal conked out every few minutes.

I looked into 802.11a, but could not find a single router that did not get trashed in Amazon reviews and the like. If reviewers say it's hard to set up, I don't care about that. But they all had multiple reports of frequent lockups requiring resetting the hardware, which isn't acceptable. The situation here is such that any sufficiently disruptive technology problem, such as a router that crashes every few days, is going to require me flying 20000 miles (Asia to USA and back) to deal with it, and I would prefer to minimise that.

So we've just ordered a pair of Netgear XE104 HomePlug switches to see if those do the trick. Based on what I've read, I'm optimistic.

Where I live there aren't any 2.4GHz cordless phones (that I've seen) and wifi interference seems to be much less of a problem. It's all 1.9GHz DECT phones. But given the potential hazards of all this microwave energy in the home, I'm thinking of ditching the cordless phone and, if the XE104s work out, getting some of those for my apartment since I basically use the laptop in the same 2 or 3 places all the time anyway.

http://www.tetrawatch.net/science/dect.php

"DECT pulse frequency concern

It is important to put out a warning about DECT phones, as they could be up to 100 times worse than an ordinary mobile, particularly if used in built up areas. The reason for this is the frequency of the pulse. DECT pulses at 100Hz whilst a GSM mobile pulses at 217Hz. Remember, the lower the pulsing frequency, the stronger the biological effect. It's the pulsing within the ELF (extremely low frequency) range we have to be concerned about. That's why TETRA is so dangerous. It pulses at 17.6Hz, right within the human beta brainwave rhythm range. Dr von Klitzing, who was one of the Medical Physicists signing the Freiburger Appeal, reported his research regarding DECT phones. His research on blood samples taken from children in the vicinity of DECT phones showed that the red blood corpuscles did not 'ripen out properly' (a direct translation of his words). The physical signs were: listlessness and/or aggression, pallor, sleeplessness etc. This could be reversed with the removal of the phone. "

I'll address some major points from what you have said.

Firstly, you are saying that Dr Lai and others are committing fraud because they make us believe that electromagnetic radiation behaves in a special way towards biological organisms and we can't just examine chemical reactions.

I don't believe there is any fraud being committed. A paper by Gerard Hyland at http://www.tetrawatch.net/papers/hyland_basestatio ns_0803.pdf entitled "How Exposure to GSM & TETRA Base-station Radiation can Adversely Affect Humans" explains why aliveness matters.

He says "the living organism [is] an electromagnetic instrument of great and exquisite sensitivity that is able to recognise and discern the presence of external electromagnetic radiation informationally, by decoding (demodulating) its various frequency characteristics" and "non-thermal influences of an informational kind are possible only when the organism is alive".

He also mentions interactions that don't require aliveness: "particularly if the frequency of the radiation matches or is close to that of an organised (collective) electrical vibration of a molecule".

It would be appear there is a genuine reason to believe that aliveness matters and this means there is no fraud, regardless of whether they are right or wrong. There is a genuine belief that research on living organisms is useful.

You say that exposing rats to 0.1 mT is not relevant because humans are unlikely to be exposed to such levels. Actually it is a useful experiment because it still allows us to learn something about radiation at non-thermal intensities. It may be easier to observer affects at these higher intensities than lower ones and provides a good starting point. There is always a question about whether thermal affects are coming into play, and we need to check that the researchers have designed their experiments properly. However, the studies do purport to be at non-thermal levels.

Now moving on to your points about Dr Lai's statement that "Non-ionizing electromagnetic fields do not contain enough energy to affect chemical bonds in molecules directly."

I'm confused about what you have written. You are correct to say that "In fact, ionizing electromagnetic fields are very, very strong. They cause electrons to be completely liberated from the atoms to which they were attached". This is true by definition. However, the statement is about non-ionizing electromagnetic fields which, by definition, are not strong enough to liberate electrons from atoms. Dr Lai is really just stating this definition.

Then you say "Actually, non-ionizing electromagnetic fields often promote chemical reactions" but you use an example of ultraviolet light which is not non-ionizing; it is ionizing. As you say, it is "especially energetic".

So I think there is some confusion here about ionizing vs non-ionizing radiation and no reason to call Dr Lai a liar unless I'm missing something.

The "junk science" label gets thrown around a lot but it is highly subjective.