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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."
Would you really want someone jamming *your* important calls? I wouldn't, and turnabout is definitely fair play. Besides which, jamming someone's phone is a DoS. Most people get rather upset over that sort of thing...
If you don't like cell phones, then go find somewhere that doesn't have them.
What is your Slash Rating?
Reduce your exposure to RF emissions by carrying around a powerful RF transmitter! Sure, that'll do the trick.
I'd be more worried about the cumulative effect of loads of commuters repeating the mantra..
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
The article looks like it's just a simulation of what may happen (with some microwave propagation tool), it would be more interesting to perform a measurement (I'm sure that the railways can "lend" a wagon for one day to the experimentalists) and really see what's going on...
It could be much less serious (or much more....).
over here in The Netherlands, mobile phone jammers are illegal. I think this is not too strange, considering the millions payed for GSM frequencies, and the billions payed for UMTS frequencies. No one except the license holder of these frequencies may broadcast on them.
"Might be time to buy a cell phone jammer."
;-)
No thanks, my cell phone came with a free jammer...it's called AT&T wireless service
Sent from your iPad.
While everyone else is getting brain cancer, I've been wearing my Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie for years.
Just a myriad of uses for these things...
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
"Tsuyoshi Hondou, a physicist from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, who is currently working at the Curie Institute in Paris, says Japanese commuter trains are often packed with people surfing the web on their mobile phones."
Ok, I am gonna ask a naive question here. I live in Hotlanta (or Atlanta, but if you have been here you know what I mean) and I have taken good ole MARTA enough. However, I have not seen anyone using a cellphone to surf the web. (Or maybe there is some new method of websurfing by putting it to your ear that I don't know about) I think this is because of two reasons....
1) have a fancy phone, you increase your chance of getting jacked, and MARTA ain't the safest rail system.
2) just not big in the southern US.
Anyone care to prove or disprove my thoughts? We all know cell phone advances occur at a much higher rate in EU, so is this a legitimate concern? Seems to me we got too many other things to worry about other than a stupid cell phone, but that's just my opinion.
Sent from your iPad.
a slightly more intelligent person, having the same hypothesis, just went in and measured the fucking thing, rather than coming up with some bullshit math and explanations of how it /MIGHT/ happen. Where the hell is the proof? I don't buy it, that this guy came up with such great mathmatical proof and NEVER EVEN FUCKING TESTED IT.
Some nerdy slashdotter want to head out and measure it themselves while this jackhole is sitting there with a pencil? Please post your results.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
People are worried because of the word "microwave". A mobile phone cannot produce any great amount of RF heating, for a few simple reasons.
A microwave cooker uses a very high power magnetron (usually >500W), directed in a narrow, focused beam, into a resonant cavity (the oven itself) from a distance of around 6". Furthermore, the oven uses a specific frequency, much below which RF heating is much weaker, and you need a lot more power (somewhere around 2.45GHz).
Now, a mobile phone uses around 1 or 2 watts *peak*. In normal use, it won't go above 500mW rms, otherwise the batteries would last only a few minutes. Not only that, but the antenna is designed to spread the signal over a wide area.
Mobile phone cell towers are also pretty much safe - although they use a much higher power than phones (15W or so, IIRC) they tend to be stuck up on high poles, well away from people. Inverse Square Law, anyone?
Here in Scotland, we recently had a series of large protests about siting cell towers near schools. The protesters were mainly middle-class mothers, from supposedly posh parts of Glasgow. Damn near all of them had sunbed tans. I'd take my chances with a mobile phone cell tower before I'd risk skin cancer from a sunbed...
"We"?
Excessive amounts of water is not good for your health, neither is a) eating too much organic food b) eating too much genetically modified food c) eating "normal" food d)
Microwave oven's output is typically from 600 W upwards. Are you really comparing this to hundreds of milliwatts?
The "risk" of cellular phones has been and is being investigated - large scale and publicly. Check your sources. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for those with radiation phobia, none of the scientific studies have linked cell phones to cancer or other serious health problems.
Microwave radiation has been shown to increase tissue temperature slightly. According to one study it also changes protein production in human cells
If everyone in a train fires up their mobiles at once then yeah, there'll be a measurable increase in microwave radiation. This MIGHT cause health problems. If the train company wants to protect itself from getting sued (a la tobacco companies) down the track (geddit) it should put in shielding to stop phones working in all but one area on each train - so people who want to phone can go there.
This would stop me listening to 'IM ON THE TRAIN, NAH, ITS GOING TO BE LATE, FUCKING RAILTRACK, HOWS NANCY? SHIIIIIT, TELL HER I'LL BE THERE SOON' for 8 hours a day on my way to work!
Microwave is simply an indication for the wavelength of a certain type of RF.
Your normal microwave oven works by emitting an RF signal at 2.45GHz
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
I'm not an RF expert but I am a physicist. As far as I know radiation can damage your cells in two ways:
a) Direct heating
b) Ionization
The latter one is easy to dismiss by elementary physics. Unlike in the gamma radiation, the photons of the cellphone microwave radiation simply don't carry enough energy to damage the DNA strands. Hell, microwaves pack less punch per photon than the infrared (heat) radiation!
The heating argument is more difficult to deal with. In general, the power of the RF field is again far too weak to heat your brain significantly (=more than the temperature varies naturally). However, if several fields overlap in a certain way (a standing wave forms inside your skull), then I guess there might be a possibility for an interference "hotspot" to form. Again I think this is very unlikely. Even a small head movement or the movement of the radiation source will change the geometry and thus the interference inside your head.
Quite frankly I am surprised by the anti-cellphone mentality in this thread. Most of it seems to come from experiences with annoying cellphone users. However, that's not a problem with the cellphones. That's a cultural problem. People simply have not learnt the proper etiquette yet.
Where I live the cellphones have practically replaced the landline phones. If the adaptation of the cellphones continues at this rate, there will soon be a one cellphone per citizen -- and that includes the minors. When the use is this widespread, the people in general know how to switch their phones to silent mode for meetings, movies and concerts. Having your cellphone ring, for instance, in the middle of a movie is socially extremely bad behaviour. If you start talking on your phone in the theatre, you will get thrown out -- either by the theatre staff or by the rest of the audience.
The owls are not what they seem
Radiation found to be harmful, largest Radiation source found to be the Sun, blow up the Sun advises Slashdot.
Scientists claim radiation can be use to kill cancer, carry more mobile phones advises Slashdot.
Living in City can lead to lung disease, move to the country advises Slashdot.
Living in country results in lower salaries, move to City advises Slashdot.
Car pollution causes Global warming, buy bigger cars advises Slashdot.
Is there a risk from this RF, yup, is there more of a risk from people driving while using a mobile than from this... oh boy yes. Is there a risk from Coal fired powerstations from radiation... oh wow yes.
Passive Mobile phone usage, Caligormia to legislate.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
that instead of doing all these calculations to determine what the amount of RF radiation might be that one might instead actually go on to one of these trains and take measurements?
Thats bullshit....
The frequency has nothing to do with power... There is one thing though: higher frequencies get absorbed better, but they also penetrate less. The peak (goog penetration and absorbtion) is at 2.45Ghz which is the working frequency of your microwave oven. Above or below that frequency it is far less effective.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Why does everybody still take this stuff seriously? Read the article- all this study does is establish that you get exposed to more RF radiation in a crowded train car than you do in other places. The scary part only comes in when it brings up these "international guidelines" which such exposure may exceed. Who established these guidelines, and how? The article does not say anything beyond the name of the organization, but I note that its name makes it sound like an independent, non-governmental organization- so this could be effectively anybody smart enough to give themselves a clever-sounding name
The idea that RF transmissions will kill you or cause cancer has a long and ugly history of bad science concealed by calculated emotional appeals. It was basically started by a guy whose wife (who used a cell phone a lot) died of brain cancer, from which he concluded that cell phones cause cancer. Most of the "science" that has been done on this issue is basically the same idiotic reasoning dressed up in white lab coats. It is highly likely that the organization setting this 'standard' is in fact one of the lobbying groups associated with the anti-cell-phone movement.
Consider- radio waves are extremely low-energy- far below the threshold necessary to break molecular bonds, which is how genuine cancer-causing radiation works. Thus, if RF waves do cause cancer, the mechanism by which they do this is A. different than for other sorts of radiation, and B. totally unknown.
Plus, as has been pointed out a million times, a 'jammer' is a device which drowns out a signal by emitting a much more powerful signal of its own, not by magically making the other signal go away. If RF waves give you cancer, the jammer will give you cancer faster.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
Nope. A jammer will *emit* RF, a blocking device (farraday cage for instance) would passively block RF, therefore disable cellphones in a "cleaner" way..
Sounds like all the more reason to use a car instead! That way we can justify building more roads!
Sure there are dangers with microwaves, however as with all things, it comes down to dosage. Strong signals - bad. Weak signals - less bad OR no effect OR benificial. So what is it?
There is an awful lot of research into the effects of mobile phones (certainly here in Europe) as it is such a big issue and people are worried. However, so far no effects have been shown apart from usage of phones actually improving your short term memory by a small amount.
Still worried? Well here is a parallel example. Find yourself a large magnifying glass and stand underneath it in bright sunlight. You will be cooked. Does this mean that sunlight is dangerous? Well yes if its bright sunlight (sunburn / cancer etc). However at low levels it is good for you. Your body needs sunlight to produce vitamin D, without it you get rickets etc.
So will mobile phones kill you? The answer to that is a definite Yes. Many people have already died directly caused by mobile phones. How? Well by walking out in front of cars whilst talking, driving in walls whilst using them etc. Compared to this, this risk of getting cancer or other ill through mobile phone usage is tiny. Not nil, this can't be proved, but tiny.
wot no sig
So your view is that if a study is carried out and it doesn't agree with your uninformed preconceptions, then that study is worthless?
:)
The studies are all public, and the results are frequently published on the TV news and in papers over here. It couldn't be any more open, seeing as the vast majority of the population have mobiles it's in everyone's interest. The fact is there hasn't been any real conclusion one way or the other yet, but that's not because of a cover up or because of people "closing their eyes", it's because science doesn't know whether it's a risk yet or not.
So it comes down to personal choice - I for one and happy to take the (slight, IMHO) risk that there may be health problems in exchange for the convenience. If you don't think that's a risk worth taking, don't use a phone. Just make sure you live in an oxygen tent to avoid pollution, don't drive, don't take drugs, drink or smoke, and avoid eating bread or cakes. All those things have been PROVEN to cause health problems, but people still do them
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
So where does the author get 2 watts from?
And what about digital, which is what most phones use now. Don't they operate at even lower power?
OK - so let's get geeky about this. Why do we need to broadcast continuously to disrupt mobile phones. Why not listen for outgoing packets and emit a nice big rf chirp when the base station tries to handshake.
Benefits -
prevents users dialling out
prevents users accepting calls
low rf power requirements
reasonable battery life
difficult for law enforcement to track down
Disadvantages -
illegal
more difficult to design
Any final year electronics students looking for an interesting project??
Keith.
It's amazing how everyone is suddenly an expert on microwave radiation isn't it ?, and how we all know the results of exposure to raditation because we've seen documentaries about nuclear reactor accidents, and because, we've seen cartoons that show that all you have to do to turn into a big eyed green monster is get exposed to a little radiation.
l 1/ emspectrum.html
_ gc i775674,00.html
The media would have us believe that radiation is an evil thing that destroys and mutates anything it touches.
So let's just be a little more scientific here shall we, and find out a bit about what EM radiation really is.
Electro-magnetic radiation is a term referring to the radiated field (ie, moving energy) of all types of electro-magnetic waves, from completely benign low-energy stuff like the radio waves your tv and radio receive, to quite nasty stuff such as gamma radiation. The difference is the amount of energy (and hence frequency) involved, and what happens to matter when exposed to those energies.
A large portion of the EM spectrum contains radiation that is of such a low frequency that the most it could do is impart some heat (okay, maybe a lot of heat) into your body. Anyone who has ever stood outside in the sun (yeah I know, I'm talking to a bunch of IT geeks who have probably never gone outside), will have noticed that it feels quite warm. You may not realise you've just experienced what it's like to be exposed to infrared radiation.
Look around, and bask in the knowledge that without the radiation we call visible light hitting the back of your eyes, you wouldn't be able to see a damn thing out there.
Now go back inside, turn on your TV and enjoy the television signals that are propogating through your house and are being converted into a very weak electrical current by the aerial on your TV, which is then hugely amplified so that you can watch a cartoon about mutant ninja turtles who live in a sewer.
When you fall and break your leg, you get carried off to the local hospital, where they radiate your leg with a high-energy radiation commonly called x-rays. When they do this, they cover the parts of your body they don't want to radiate with layers of lead, since lead is a cheap and dense atom and tends to absorb most things that hit it. This provides a shielding affect, which is good, because x-rays *are* dangerous if you are exposed to them for too long.
The reason that x-rays and gamma rays are dangerous, and radio waves and visible light are not, is that high-energy radiation contains sufficient energy to break the bonds within an atom, and can knock off electrons - creating a charged atom (known as an ion).
To say that another (simpler) way, ionising (ionizing for americans) radition is a dangerous thing to play with, since the cells in your body are not designed to operate well when charged. This is not to say that they will 'mutate' and your skin will turn green. More likely is that those cells will die and if you continue to be exposed to the radiation source, your body will be unable to produce new cells fast enough to replace the dead ones. Organs will shut down and stop functioning, and eventually your body will die from specific failures that I don't need to get into here.
Non-ionising radiation does not contain sufficient energy to break nuclear bonds, and thus is pretty safe to be around (The world would be a boring place without visible light).
Having said that, it's not entirely accurate to say that all non-ionising radition is safe - because it can destroy cells by heating them past the point that they can operate at. Anyone who has stayed out on the beach too long will be well aware of the danger of ultraviolet light, which is a non-ionising form of radiation, and thus does not destroy cells at an atomic level, but simply heats them up and burns them.
Fortunately the human body is capable of dealing with this, and the deeper layers of your skin produce a dark compound that is quite good (but not perfect) at absorbing UV radiation. Most people have seen this happening, and call it a sun tan.
This is not *quite* the same as the infra-red radiation that comes from say an oven or heater - that too can burn your skin, but since it has a different level of energy, and thus frequency, the exact manner that damage occurs.
What may surprise many people is that MICROWAVE radiation (1ghz - 100ghz) is also non-ionising. The damage it can cause is thermal, just like UV, radio, tv, infra-red, and ultra-violet radiation.
Microwave ovens work at 2.4ghz by *heating* whatever it is that you put in it. The reason they are shielded is that the makers don't want to cook the people standing outside the oven. If you were stupid enough to stick your hand in a microwave oven and turn it on, your hand would suffer a similar fate to as if you had put it in a fire or over a bunsen burner.
Incidently, 802.11b wireless networking works at around 2.422ghz - the same freqency that your microwave oven works at, but at a much lower power level, which is why you won't even feel a warm spot on your hand if you stuck it in front of the aerial.
GSM cellphones operate at 980Mhz, 1800Mhz, and 1900Mhz, depending on what type of network you are on. Those frequencies are at the end of the 'radio' part of the EM spectrum and the beginning of the 'microwave' part. Bear in mind that the term 'microwave' is simply referring to the size of the wavelength, and covers frequencies in the range 1Ghz to about 100Ghz.
Don't just take my word for it - check for youself. Google knows all, but I'll give you a few starting points:
There's a nice clear diagram showing where the different energies (types of radiation) fit in to the EM spectrum on nasa's site:
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_
And there's a good explanation of ionising and non-ionising radiation here:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9
All SNCF trains here in France have cute little stickers in the passenger compartments with a sleeping cell phone. Out near the bathrooms and the luggage compartment they have similar stickers with a happy smiling cell phone.
:) before entering the area as well.
Lots of movie theaters, concert venues, etc. tell you to extinguish your portable (that's a literal translation anyway
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.
Yeah, but radioactivity and X-rays are ionising radiation. Non-ionising isn't really as dangerous.
There's a much larger EM field set up by the traction motors. Why isn't anyone worried by that?
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.
Mmmm, my lunch wasnt cooked when i brought it in with me this morning....
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Both kinds of radiation can kill, as can a rock that's dropped on your head. The question is whether the RF you are exposed to daily is a significant risk compared to other risks (including risk from ionizing radiation) you are exposed to daily, and whether we can control those risks through public policy.
I don't know whether it is dangerous or not, but I do know that your arguments for why people shouldn't worry don't hold. We know that individual cell phones operating in normal ways have measurable biological effects, so it stands to reason to suspect that they might be harmful if either radiation increases or exposure is long-term.
There's a much larger EM field set up by the traction motors.
Not necessarily inside the passenger cabin, which is usually shielded from those motors. They are also much lower frequency and don't result in tissue heating. And nobody has demonstrated physiological effects from that.
Why isn't anyone worried by that?
Lots of people are, in fact, quite worried about it.
Gadget gratia Geekus
Jouster
Back in the days when CB was popular people frequently ran "burners" that upped the power to 10s if not 100s of whats. Now if someone had one of them in their car, truck or house next to you
imagine the radiation you'd be absorbing then. Surely all truckers would have cancer by now?
Sure its a much lower frequency but I can tell you
from persojnal experience (I once held an aerial that was transmitting by mistake) that even SW
radio can heat you up quite considerably!
The problem is, there is no mention of any real-world measurements being taken. Maybe the model is fundamentally flawed. Maybe having people in the carriage causes the signals to be attenuated more quickly than the model allows for. Maybe the metal of the carriage is not a perfect reflector. Maybe there is destructive interference between phones like the fading on AM radio stations in the evening etc. After all, if too much of the radiation were bouncing around internally, not enough would get out to allow the phones to work at all.
People used to think that radioactivity and X-rays were really nifty and harmless, but things turned out differently. Maybe we should learn from that and be more careful this time around.
However people also thought humans can never survive speeds at 20 miles per hour, and doomed the frist trains, and were backed by scientist. Even then most medics critizied that there are high possibilities that travelling at such "enormous" speeds is likely to leave permanent damadges on the human body, and warned everybody not to risk that. What do you think today of this?
What should we learn from this? Panoia can also be very rediculous, seen afterwards.
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
"Might be time to buy a cell phone jammer."
This reminds me a scene from Spaceballs, where Lone Star (Bill Pulman) fires a pot of raspberry jam at Dark Helmet's (Rick Moranis) radar.
"Raspberry. There's only one man who would dare give me the raspberry: Lone Star!"
If you covered someone's mobile in jam, that'd stop them using it. Only while they stopped to smash your face to a pulp, mind, but it'd stop them none the less.
I think what the original poster was getting at was a jammer does no good. You'd still be getting radiated. Probably got EMI and EMF mixed up. It could be argued I suppose, that RF is EMF since an antenna is a LC tuned load.
Banned from moderation 01-27-2002. Fuck you too
when one can use a cheap and long known device, a Faraday cage.
As for the train, the only area not covered is the windows, adding a fine mesh of wire (inside the glass) and connect it to the body off the train, and you have an effective mean of shutting down most of the mobile phone emmision, they only remaining is the mobile phones trying to reach a base station.
If people travel a certain amount of time, say 20 minutes or more, they are likely to turn off the mobile phone since there is no access until they get off the train. And they will save some power on the battery (not as big a problem as it used to be though).
Carbon based humanoid in training.
i.e. A 1 watt transmission at 1 Ghz will have as much of a heating effect as 1 watt at 2Ghz (assuming equal tissue absortion characteristics).
AFAIK, around the microwave range, higher frequencies have less of a heating effect on human tissue.
So which is it?
Banned from moderation 01-27-2002. Fuck you too
How much RF will you soak up when you have a device in your pocket that will have to put out a 50-100 watt RF spike into every 1 khz of a 50-100 MHz wide frequency BAND? Your ass will melt. Besides: you're not soaking up that much RF from other people's mobiles, not compared to what they do, and if I were you I wouldn't worry so much about a few watts from a tower: if you want something RF to cry about, how about that 50+ kHz wide 50 MEGAWATT radio station that you live only a few miles away from, that's blasting you much harder than a tiny little cell phone tower. Sheesh!
I will agree with you, though, if you say a no-phone section ought to be created in resteraunts. You don't just drop your pants and crap on the floor at a restaurant, do you? No, you get up and excuse yourself and go to the bathroom. That's what people should do when the get or have to make a call in a busy social situ. Plus, all CP's should have a silent ringer.
Indeed, if you're in a restaurant, and someone starts gabbing and laughing on a cellphone right at his table, just go over to his table, pull down your pants, and take a shit right on his table, (preferably in his food, or his lap). When he says "hey!" Tell him, that that is what he is doing to your meal by yacking on his phone while you're trying to eat.
Just a suggestion anyway.
The man has made calculations and assumptions based on these calculations. I see no mention of measurements. There are meters that will measure radiation field strength, and will let you isolate the sources by frequency. Without measurements, the conclusions are just as valuable as the cries of Chicken Little. The sky is still where we left it.
you think they are gonna spend the money for that?
we happen to know that electromagnetic radiation isn't very good for your health.
What's even worse is there's never been a full-scale study about the dangers of Light bulbs. Just look at them (figuratively, I mean) radiating electromagnetic radiation everywhere. I mean, your house is full of the damn things, and those evil light bulb companies don't want us to know the truth.
Turn off the lights!!!
-Chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
no one else has mentioned this. in the article the guy says that in his calculations he factored in that 30 people were using the phone in the one train car. not that the phone is on, but that 30 people are USING thier phones. here in sweden anyway i notice 1 or 2 people actually using thier phones while in the train car. not 30 people simultaneously.
But if every extremely vocal teenybopper with a cellphone and unlimited minutes suddenly develops cancer and DIES.... I'm supposed to feel SAD about that... right?
It was nicer back in the day when it cost 30 cents per minute to use your cell, and thats if you were only making a local call. A lot of people had them, but nobody used them unless they HAD to, and even then they kept the conversations short and to the point. There was no fear of idle chitchat while in a movie theatre.
And no offense to women, but they're abusive phone users. This is nothing new. But before cheap cell phones, they were isolated to their own homes and didn't seem too compelled to share their hours long conversations with the rest of the world. But now, go into any large grocery store and I can almost certainly guarantee you that there will be at least ONE woman in there gossiping up a storm with someone over the cell, almost completely oblivious to the world around her. Its worse when they drive.
So hey, I'm all in favor. LET the phones cause cancer. Hell, make them even MORE dangerous. And the louder the user speaks, make it emit more radiation. Its the perfect way to rid the world of the people that seem to dedicate their lives to annoying others.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Ok, let's put it this way. If you switch on a light bulb, you expose yourself to non-ionising radiation that causes measurable tissue heating. If you light a fire and sit in front of it, guess what? Non-ionising radiation again. Causes assloads of tissue heating (indeed, that's the whole point). If you sit too close - you'll burn yourself. So evidently tissue heating does cause damage. Great. No argument there.
My point is that any effects from the minute amount of RF produced by mobile phones is not going to have any physiological effect worth mentioning. There probably are very tiny effects, but it's unlikely there will be any damage to your health.
Sticking your head in a microwave oven, on the other hand, will harm your health. But, only because the absorbed RF energy is many many orders of magnitude higher.
What should we learn from this? That those mercury skin treatments are great! And asbestos is a great material to use everywhere! And that we'll control those pesky bugs by introducing their natural predator, the canetoad!
What we should learn from all this is not to react emotional, but objective. Watch the fact how strong rdiation is, what impacts it does have, etc. "radiation" is in the meanwhile a bad word. I would watch the earth we're walking on. You know? It radiates, and yes relatiwe strongly even. 1/2 of radiation impact upon you comes from the inside of earth.
In contrast of asbestos and xrays we do not know what impact mobilies have. For one I can't tell you for sure for any person but the caller it's indeed "mostly harmless". It's 100 times weaker than radio or television signals. For the caller himself the problem is that you hold the sender directly to the head. It is known that temperature of the brain can increase up to 1 degree, if doing long calls. Maybe you experienced yourself, I did when using a wobile langer than 1 hour, you'll feel you ear warming up. How it impacts on the human body? We don't know honestly. For me who is doing such calls ~once in a month, it's most likely no problem. For one daing this on a day by day basis, well then after ten years he might have effects from that. We'll just see, but it will really effect if at all only the most hardcore mobile users.... (whereever they take the money to use the mobile 4 hours a day or so~)
It's the same with electromagnetic fields "radiated" (uhhh... evil word) by the powersource network. We honestly dan't know what long time impacts are, they are proofen rather weak on a normal dose, as we've electricity over a century already, and haven't noticed anything remarkable. How it is with really strong fields over long times, nobody knows. However i.e. RM medics are exposed to very strongf magnetic fields on day by day, and yet alse nothing noticable seemed to have effected those, who knows exactly?
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Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Strangely enough, though, despite all the efforts you might make to avoid these toxins, you're still going to die.
Let me make this clear - *You* are going to *die*. So am I.
You're far more likely to get cancer from exposure to benzine from unleaded petrol than from mobile phone radiation.
First, I don't see all these supposive people dropping dead from RF over-exposure via cell phones. Maybe it's just me, or maybe it's one giant conspiracy. Right. Second, I think the person who has the most to worry about is the user. We're not talking second hand smoke here. The power at range just isn't significant to harm a 3rd party. Third, your worried about cellphones when you probably drive through a myriad of high intensity EM fields everyday!? Take a florecent light and walk under some high-tension power lines one of these days. Or put one in a mirowave. I'm sure you'll find the effect enlightening. Funny how a cellphone doesn't produce either of these effects, but it just happens to be everybodies whipping-boy of the day. I love it.
And you actually want to jam cell phone calls? I hope those people get their asses sued off the day somebody tries to phone in a life threatening injury but can't. If you have the right to jam my phone, I must have the right to slash your tires to keep from annoying me. I can't wait until they make jamming triangulators so they can find you, beat your sorry butt down and break your little toy. heh.
Ironically, I'm betting your little jammer will produce more EM radiation than a cellphone. I used to work on EA-6b Prowlers in the navy and you're going to have a tough time jamming without generating an equal or greater amount of power than the source. That, and the greater the range, the more power it'll require. Have fun irradiating yourself, chumps.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
at rap (or hiphop these days) stars (and Mr. T) that wore 10-15mile worth of gold chains around their neck didn't you? they were smarter after all. you still don't get it? gaussian cage around their head. who's laughing now ;) run forest run ... to the nearest jewellry store. or just dig into wife's dresser.
Who keeps their keyring in view more often than their phone? It guess it's an "outside NYC" thing -- I just wouldn't understand.
Don't mind me, I was just being alarmist. :-)
Still, at least, there is cause to make a physics study on the propagation of microwave radiation. Hell it would be fun, and physicists might learn something. There are definite hot spots and cold spots in any microwave oven, due to standing waves. This is why most home ovens have a rotating plate.
I think there's the remote possibility that this could have a bizarre and adverse effect. I recall reading about a modern art sculpture in a public square, made from stainless steel, that unintentionally focused the sun's rays to some tiny point a few metres above it. That point would become almost as hot as the surface of the sun. Once in a while pigeons would burst into flames as they inadvertently flew through this region.
I'd hate to see that on a train or other public place. Think of a curved ampitheatre building full of people, and shaped like a concave mirror. At the end of the show, if enough people turn on their cell phones and then dial their voicemail to check their messages, it's concievable that several people at a focus point could end up like the pigeons... Quite a thought!
BTW I am a physics undergraduate, I find this really interesting.
Just go onto trains with the proper equipment (if he's so adept in this field, he'd have access to it, right?) and MEASURE the amounts? I'm suspicious of any research that's so purely existent on the back of an envelope, especially when the researcher has eschewed an easy opportunity to test the real world.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Non-existant? This is the best overview I've been able to find of the extensive research that has been done in this area. Note that nearly all of the results were negative, and most of the positive results were refuted by later studies. I have only been able to find a reference to one study of cell-phone radiation and it was apparently undertaken by the cell-phone industry, so I won't insult your intelligence by citing it. However, it is suggestive that studies of even much more powerful RF signals have yielded no evidence of a health hazard.
Your suggestion that it is usually better to guard against unproven risks is preposterous- we should guard against risks in proportion to the amount of evidence for the risk, and in inverse proportion to the costs of guarding against it. The problem is that the levels of RF radiation that the alarmists say are cancer-causing are so low that this would effectively mean banning broadcasting, which seems an awfully high price to pay to avoid a risk with little to no evidence that it even exists.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
Hmmm...never managed to get my mobile to work underground actually.
And anyway, the power from a single handset is so small, given the inverse square rule you are getting far more radiation from the TV, radio, and other broadcast signals than you are from my handset sitting 3 feet away. It _may_ affect me, with it right next to my head, but not you.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
And the Cutesy Songy Ringtones get annoying after the 20th time in an hour
Just as a bit of a defence for those with "cutesy" songy ringtones : As anyone with a cellphone knows, the simplistic sine wave tones generated by todays cellphones are extremely hard to audio-locate, which is why you get the situation where 8 people all are reaching for their cell phones simultaneously. Instead I have my phone play a little song that I sent it from some website, and I know that if I hear that theme that it is overwhelmingly likely that it is my phone within the first three tones or so (versus the countless stock Nokia tone people). Mind you, 98% of the time I have my phone on silent anyways, and if I do have the ringer on it's on volume level 1 at most.
The telephone really is a fascinating part of our society: So many people are brought up believing that the telephone is instant attention from the receiving end. I personally almost never answer the telephone (that's what voicemail is for. Note that people who hate voicemail are usually the "BUT I'M TOO IMPORTANT FOR VOICEMAIL! WHERE ARE YOU! I NEED YOU UNDIVIDED ATTENTION NOW BECAUSE I'M SPECIAL AND SUPERCEDE ALL OTHER TASKS!"). Speaking of cell phones : What's with the people who always have the volume of the ringer on super-loud, and they yell into their cellphones? Totally unnecessary, and again I think it's a little too much self-importance.
Of course, if you stuck with vibrate, you'd know the call was for you without (1) everyone else knowing it too or (2) advertising that you've got your own ring. Which, of course, goes back to the "I'm important enough for everyone to notice" point you made. I carry two cells on my belt and (every couple months) a pager. One cell is personal. The rest of the gear is work. It's all on vibrate. Mind you, sometimes I have the "which one is it" routine that everyone who is playing "Ode to Joy" on their cell has in a restaraunt, but what the hey...I know it's me, and nobody else does. :)
What is your Slash Rating?
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
The catch is, what else resonates at around 2.45GHz? Well, DNA for one thing.
Where did you get this idea? And which "resonance" are you talking about? In the case of water, the microwave frequency is resonant with a vibrational mode of the molecule; hence, putting water in a microwave over increases its temperature. Exciting a vibrational mode of DNA would also increase it's temperature, but you have to keep in mind that the mass of a DNA molecule is on the order of a million times greater than that of a water molecule, so you need a proportional increase in the power to get an equivilent increase in temperature. And that has nothing whatsoever to do with mutagenesis. Damage to the chemical structure of DNA requires ionizing radiation, which radio/microwave radiation certainly is not.
As for being only a meager 1-2 watts? I played with a meager 2 watt water-cooled laser once. It was too bright to look at, even with filters.
Apples and oranges, my friend. Apples and oranges. And I guarantee you that a bandpass filter at a frequency other than that of the laser beam would have made it perfectly tolerable to "look at", as none of the light would have passed through.
In a small town in Connecticut, they put a cell phone tower in a church a couple years back. Since then, people keep mentioning ther've been less and less birds around, except for crows, who seem to have multiplied. I'm not saying there's any connection (and it's likely there isn't), but I wouldn't be suprised.
c-hack.com |
microwave ovens have that much power so they can cook food quickly. You can cook food at 1W, just slowly, but we are talking about long term exposure.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So you emit a signal, and thats ok because its your choice. But what about the choice of the people who don't want that risk? You can eat all the raw beef you want, thats fine because it won't kill me, smoking does.
Where's my choice to emit any freq. that I find convienant?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The US FCC requires manufacturers to test the RF Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) on tissue. The FCC specifies a maximum SAR of 1.6 W/kg of tissue. All of the filings are available for public consumption at http://www.fcc.gov/oet/fccid/
t rieve.cgi?attachment_id=182858&native_or_pdf=pdf
Enter the FCC ID number from your cell phone (mine was under the battery) in the form, with the first 3 characters in the left dialog and the rest in the right.
This links to a list of filings for this device. Check the "Display Exhibits" and you'll see the SAR report for the device. For example, for the phone I have, the Kyocera 2255, this is the report filed for body-worn SAR:
https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/forms/blobs/re
The data included has the power output and SAR at all of the different transmission modes for the device. Also, check out the neat-o plots.
Interesting that they have different permeabilities for muscle fluid and brain fluid, resulting in much higher maximum SAR for holding the phone to the ear (1.47 W/kg) than when its on the body (0.562 W/kg).
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
My cell phone (the ubiquitous Nokia 3360) is a TDMA phone that operates in the IS-54 (800 MHz) and IS-136 (1.9 GHz) bands. Now, 1.9 GHz sounds like a big, scary cancer-causing number. So let's see if it really is.
First of all, we need to know how radiation causes cancer. We'll just assume it's electromagnetic radiation, since cell phones definitely do not emit anti-protons, neutrons, muons and other shit like that. There's no way in hell a battery the size of a Triscut can generate reaction energies high enough to produce hadrons or leptons, so we can forget about them. (Well, actually, with a big capacitor you might get a few, but you're already getting showered with cosmic rays, and the pathetic little fart of hadrons you'd get out of a cell phone battery wouldn't count for didly squat.) The cancer-causing mechanism for electromagnetic radiation is fairly simple. In order to be dangerous, a photon (the electromagnetic force carrier particle) needs to carry enough energy to ionize (chemistry parlance for "fuck up") something important. It doesn't really matter how many photons you're slinging around, since it's the frequency that determines the energy of a single quanta.
So, what is our hypothetical candidate cancer-causing quanta going to have to inonize to do the deed? Well, DNA of course. It's going to have to cause a genetic mutation. Because of the way photons interact with matter, they are most likely to be absorbed by electromagnetically contiguous objects of sizes roughly equal to their wavelength. The reasons are deeper than this, but suffice it to say that a photon is "smeared" over an area about the size of its wavelength. Since you can't absorb part of a quanta (that's why they're called quanta, after all), you have to have a thing big enough to soak up a whole particle about the size of the wavelength. In this way, everything is, or is made of, antennae. To cause a mutation, you have to have a photon whose wavelength is about equal to diameter of a DNA molecule. Actually, the ideal length of an antenna is a quarter the wavelength of its intended optimal frequency, so we'll say the wavelength we're looking for is four times the diameter.
So, as I said, my cell phone operates at 1.9 GHz, or 1.9 billion cycles per second. What's the wavelength? Well, wavelength is the period times the speed of light. The period is the the inverse of frequency, so :
3*10^8 / 1.9*10^9 ~= 0.16 M
That's about the length of your hand, give or take a thumb. One quarter of that is about 4 cm - about the length of your thumb, give or take a nail. Now ask yourself this question: How big is your DNA?
If your DNA is built out of atoms the size of rasins, you might have something to worry about. The diameter of the DNA helix is 2 nm and the vertical rise per base pair is 0.34 nm. If you want a photon that will be able to reliably zap DNA, it needs to have a wavelength _smaller_ than 8 nm. The probability that a photon will be absorbed by a given object decreases with respect to the difference between the size of the object and the wavelength of the photon according to the standard deviation. So what's the probability that a given photon spewing out of my cell phone is going to fry some of my DNA? Well, we're a factor of five million away from the optimal wavelength. I'd say it's pretty fucking unlikely.
But wait a second - what's kind of radiation has a wavelength of 8 namometers? Well, we do the opposite to find the frequency :
3*10^8 / 8*10-9 = 3.7*10^16
That's in the ultraviolet range. Surprise, surprise!
So, what can we conclude from this? Well, since a cell phone has a transmission power of less than a watt and a wavelength the size of your thumb, it's not going to do jack shit to your DNA. Nada. Zilch. In other words, THERE IS NO WAY CELL PHONE RADIATION CAN GIVE YOU CANCER!!! I'd be more inclined to beleive that the plastic in the earpiece causes cancer.
You're several orders of magnitude more likely to contract cancer as a result of proximity to a 100 watt incandecant light bulb. It's got a much, much higher output, and its frequency range is thousands of times higher.
So relax, enjoy your wireless technology, and wear your SPF-30.
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
Did you know that at one point in the 1950s, a US federal agency (I think it might have been the FDA) recommended DDT for use as a genital lice remover?
I don't understand what your point is here. There would have been nothing wrong with that use of DDT. It was the widespread use in agriculture that caused problems. What's so outrageous or horrifying about using DDT to kill lice? In fact, it's rediculous that people cannot use DDT to kill lice today because we found the use of DDT to be harmful in other applications. From what I heard, DDT was one of the most reliable treatments.
To clear one thing out what this article is completly wrong for. If there is any effect of mobiles in the human body, it's not passive. If at all it effects the user himself. So no need to worry about mobiles that other uses, or the one that is on your roof. For the user himself he does hold it directly to the brain, and it does heat the body 1 degree. That are all the effects, the ultimate question is how does the body take an temperature raise of 1 degree? For a minute he doesn't care really, same goes for a quater, also a day should not be a problem. When we're having fever we have higher temperatur raises for days and sometimes even weeks. So okay if you strap a mobile to ones head, and let it running (in talk mode, not in standby) for a whole month, then we can talk about possible effects.
What you guys all tell is to be afraight of the unknown, to be scared from the future, and this argh! Honestly right now, what are you doing? You're starting with your eyes into an electron tube. I say stop that immediatly! Do you know what effects that could have? The radiation electrons couse? The strong magnetic field that is used inside the screen to focus the beam? Throw away all monitors because they *might* be a danger of something we don't know. Honestly if the world constisted only of such peasant we would not have trains, cars, and all that. Oh yes we would have no medicine at all, die at the age of 20 and on. Do you know how much medicine is and was practisced with techniques which effects were not known? Today such "alternative" medicine is even modern. Stop taking praying to god! we don't know how it functions and what effects it has, so we *don't* *know* what dangers are in there...
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Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
One more thing...
Today, the general public doesn't know how bad constant exposure to RF of all kinds of intensities might be.
In fact we know exactly how harmful exposure to RF can be at many intensities and frequencies. Isn't it interesting that while we can show that some levels of exposure are harmful, we can't show that the levels from cell phones are harmful even with an enourmous test group over 20 years? If you want to be paranoid, I suggest you stop using your computer. Between the motors and oscilators in the system unit, and all the radiation bombarding you from the monitor (what, you use an LCD, well there's radiation bombarding you from that too) you should be practicing lots of precaution. After all, we can't really prove that all that isn't bad for you either. You better stop using your regular telephone too. The speaker in the headset generates a varying low frequency RF field that could be dangerous.
is in Japan. I don't know about the rest of you folks, but in the US and I assume in Europe there are few trains and they are full of people who either do not own these devices or choose not to let them be seen.
The most RF I've ever been exposed to was as the ALS in the Cobb Galleria convention center. All those geeks could fry chicken at 100 yards with their gadgets. Trains are pretty safe tho.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Our bodies have evolved to deal with the level of IR radiation that occurs in the environment. Our bodies have not evolved to deal with the level of RF radiation that cell phones emit, and RF radition emitted by cell phones has very different physical properties from IR. So, in different words, your argument is just plain stupid.
Sure. Look at Alan Preece's research here, summarized here.
There's no practical difference between IR and RF, other than RF has a much lower energy level than IR. It's all just electromagnetic waves. Go and read a physics book.
You are making the mistaken assumption that microwave heating of liquid water is primarily based on the excitation of a particular vibrational mode. It is not. A simple explanation can be found here.
What does this have to do with cancer?
I have no idea what your mistaken ideas about how microwaves heat water have to do with cancer. I didn't even mention the word "cancer".
Let's see if we can follow your logic, and extrapolate a solution: 1) cell phones can heat your brain a tiny amount 2) heating it might give you cancer, even though there's no evidence for it 3) therefore anything that heats your tissue more than a cellphone should be banned 4) therefore, all clothing, heaters, laptops, and warm food should be banned.
I made no such argument. I didn't even say that cell phones should be banned. Perhaps your education is not just deficient in physics, it is also deficient in basic reading comprehension?
No, sorry, that's not the only way in which physical or chemical agents cause cancers. DNA damage and mutations arise in our cells constantly and spontaneously. We wouldn't be able to survive if we didn't have a variety of biological mechanisms for repairing the damage and for killing pre-cancerous cells. Non-ionizing radiation may disrupt or alter inter-cellular signalling and thereby interfere with those mechanisms.
I've heard this kind of stuff over and over again - and alarmingly often from people who ought to know better (physics teachers, engineers, et cetera). The next time someone starts to tell you about cell phones giving you cancer, here's what you should tell them.
Physicists and engineers should practice a bit more humility when it comes to biology because most of them just don't have a clue (as your posting demonstrates).
Well, since according to the profound physical insights of "Gordon", IR and microwaves are really the same, then let's just use IR for cell phones.
Our bodies have not evolved to fly. If we were meant to fly, we would have wings.... So lets shred the airplanes.
Our bodies were never meant to go faster than 20 mph, so lets put speed governors on cars and trains (and boats).
Our bodies have not evolved to swim, otherwise we'd have more lung capacity. Thus having a swimming pool should be a capital crime.
Our bodies have not evolved to use keyboard, so why on earth are you posting on Slashdot?
Our bodies have not evolved to use cell phones.. So what? Nothing is consequenceless.... Cellphones, like planes and cars, offer convenience and productivity advantages; the question is are they worth the price.
Sure, there are negatives, but do the negatives. (What, *MAYBE* a few brain cancers after 20 years.) outweigh the advantages?
If you don't really know what's happening inside a black box, you don't really know what will affect it, and how severely.
You are theorizing that there won't be any effect to be observed. This is nice, but needs to be backed up by experiment. But the experiments have been equivocal. So people reasonably don't know what to believe. (As far as I can tell, the experts don't know either. They've got theories...)
When people suspect that something might be dangerous, especially dangerous to their children, then it is quite rational for them to campaign to do something about it.
You may think that they are being silly, but as I read the evidence, it's uncertain. What you could establish are limits as to how powerful an effect it is. But that gets a bit hard to explain. (Yes, it's a weak effect, if it exists.)
Another problem is that many medical problems only happen after a significan time delay. If it's a weak effect with a ten year delay, I don't think any of the experiments so far would have detected it. Even if it eventually (say 30 years) resulted in 100% mortality. You can say that "No theory justifies that!", but theories are made up to explain results. If this effect is detected, a theory will be created. (I've already seen one about electron passage through membranes being affected because a moving electron generate a magnetic field and this causes it to move in a circular path, so fewer electrons get through the membrane and more positive ions get through (they're more massive, so they are less affected. There's a lot more to is, check the recent New Scientists [or Science News] issues.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.