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Another Reason to be Annoyed by Cell Phones
lotussuper7 writes: "This story at newscientist (free, no registration, unlike the NY Times) has some insight into the amount of RF you may be getting from all those cell phones people around you are using. Might be time to buy a cell phone jammer."
Ever seen one of those wireless phones you have at home? So you can run around the house while speaking in it. Got any idea how strong that signal is? How often it transmits signals?
Or what about wireless ethernet for that matter...
We need science, and we need to know what is dangerous and what is not. But these reports, or the reports about the dangers of potato chips, is not especially valid yet. I belive that two independant studies has to be made before you can draw any conclusion, and both of them has to live up to certain scientific standards.
As someone who has been in a few large substations, and near to high power transmitters, they do have effect on your body. You feel dizzy and ill after being near to these sites - there are no two ways about this. Many others claim this as well.
Phones may not do this to such a great extent - but open up one of the many "monkey drum" microwave dishes found all over the place in the UK, and the USA as well I should imagine. What do you find? A conventional cooking microwave magnetron. Ok, slightly different, and usually of a lower power.
Radar can produce huge bursts of power - and round radar sites, there are exclusion zones to stop you receiving a dose large enough to make you infertile or even kill you. Precision Approach Radar can be very dangerous in this respect due to the fact that the frequency and power used are dangerous, the dishes are located at ground level, and some of them can rotate 360 degress in seconds (the unit has to realign when different runways are used, and if you are in the way). Yes, this is an extreme case... but it still shows something.
I think that dismissing RF as safe because it doesn't cause ionisation or heating is stupid. In the same way as smoking was once viewed as safe, and that skin cancer has only been noticed very recently. Often our bodies do not behave in the ways which we think they should. I just think we should wait to see all the evidence before we jump to conclusions.
Surely electric currents in the brain are affected by RF? Do we know if this is bad or not? People also die when they are using their phone and can't pay full attention to the situation they are in.
Other issues are that when many radio waves are in a small space, they do not always combine to produce the same frequencies. Harmonics and other frequencies are generated, so saying that the frequency that the phone transmits is not dangerous doesn't mean the area is. Powers can also mount up.....
And jammers tend not to be high power - they disrupt the signal in a more clever manner. Although in the short term, the phones will transmit with more power, people will turn them off or the phones will stop trying so regularly.
I don't have a mobile. I don't want one mainly for the reason I don't want to be conctacted when someone doesn't know where I am. Landlines tend to be cheaper as well.