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Electric Shavers Rot Your Brain
Damek writes "According to UW researchers, prolonged exposure to low-level magnetic fields, similar to those emitted by such common household devices as blow dryers, electric blankets and razors, can damage brain cell DNA. The damage appears to be cumulative, so you'd best get rid of your electric razors & blankets ASAP! The full study is available online now. No word yet for Cell Phone users' brains..."
Wouldn't this only be a problem if you use these devices every day directly in contact with your skull? I mean, is the range really that far reaching? If the range really is that far reaching, what about power tools and such? Of course, I can think of a few people [McBride] I'd like to have power tools come in direct contact with their skull, but that's beside the point.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Personally I'm not concerned, my tinfoil hat doubles as a Faraday cage.
Trolling is a art,
I'd say that apoptosis is better characterized as "natural cell death". It's a natural and essential part of the cell's life cycle, and certainly isn't as alarming as the article's tone suggests.
In fact, we have a word for cells that don't undergo apoptosis: Cancer.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
How does staring at a monitor for 10-14 hours a day affect your brain? Not good is my guess.
Hmmmm. Let's see: Electric shaver in the morning, RF access through security to my labs, Bluetooth synching, 802.11b & g for my internet access and music streaming, television, radio, microwave oven, cell phone..........Oh man, I'm screwed. :-)
But at least I got rid of most of the CRTs in my life.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
So not only am I more manly for using a straight razor...I'm also less likely to have brain rot!
Now if I could just find some more tissues before pass out from bloodloss....
The anti-salmon
its the BLOW DRYERS.
FisterBelvedere -- Putting a whole new meaning to "streaks on the china" since 1996.
What about headphones? If something powered only by a couple of AA batteries causes damage, how about my headphones with two silver dollar sized speakers in them?
uggg...
Sitting in front of an electron gun in a building full of wires... we're never exposed to magnetic fields...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
..when she told me not to sit to close to the TV
I used to work for a guy who buzzed the stubble off his face like twice a day. He was a real hustler and he thought he got more sales if he was all bay smooth I guess. But he was dumber than a bag of hammers. I guess now i know why.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
When electric cars become widespread, we'll all be fucked!
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
What about living directly under a ~40kV power line?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
They're low-level magnetic fields. Headphones, speakers, etc etc.
Electric shavers have been around long enough that if they caused and serios damage (besides pulling the hair out of my face instead of cutting it) we would have heard about it by now.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
no blow dryers and razors?
Now I understand why Richard Stallman is so smart.
So, I'll need to upgrade my tinfoil hat to a full tinfoil helmet?
You probably shouldn't click this.
OK, there's a previous study that used a really strong field for 2 hours, and it caused damage. Now they used a low-level field for 24 (and 48 hours) and it caused damage. How exactly does that get extrapolated to a low-level field for 3 minutes a day over a long period of time causing damage?
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
"No word yet for Cell Phone users' brains..."
I'm sure someone will prove its existence, eventually.
If my anecdotal experiences gathered at the mall are any indication, good luck.
KFG
These are rats exposed to 60Hz AC EMF at 0.1 to 0.5mT for two hours (continuous). Also studied were rats exposed to 60Hz AC EMF at 0.1mT for 24 hours (continuous).
So I suppose, as an analog ....
Go lie down in an MRI for a couple days straight. If you don't go deaf from the noise (they're loud), then you might see similar results. Oh, and don't wear deodorant ... it contains aluminium which will cause it to be dragged through your arm... ouch.
Not that I'm saying there may well be something in this ... but how many of us even use the shaver/hairdryer for 2 continuous hours in a sitting? It may well be (and is likely) that the effects are not cumulative, but are actually acute trauma scenarios. For instance, you can assert that dropping a grain of dust on your foot 5 times a day for 10 years would make for the same mass as, say, dropping a car on said foot. However, the problem then comes in saying, "therefore, the two are analogous - we will see the same damage from the dust as we would with the car".
It just does not follow.
Also, let us note that when the article discusses 'apoptosis' (which, indeed, may be called natural cell death - where a cell simply stops living and breaks down its DNA in response to some trigger), it points out that the incidence of apoptosis and necrosis were increased by a statistically significant amount by the presence of magnetic fields.
All in all, kiddies, take yer vitamin E and melatonin regularly if you use a cell phone or blow drier. You should be all right then.. :)
Thinking outside my Head
You are making the assumption that people on /. shave, use hair dryers, or any type of personal grooming.
Fight Spammers!
I use a dual G5 shaver every morning, and the g/f always points out how I missed something here, something there, and it gets consecutively worse - I keep missing more and more.
And here I thought it was just because I was hungover.
RTFA. This study relates to 60Hz magnetic fields.
60Hz: Cell phones operate in the several GHz band. Wireless networks do too. Microwave ovens are at an even higher frequency( and besides, are always surrounded by an effective faraday cage ).
Magnetic fields: radio waves( cell, wireless )and microwaves are electromagnetic radiation, which are decidedly different from magnatic fields.
This study has ZERO bearing on the effects of high-frequency non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation, so next time read the article before posting your ill-informed luddite drivel.
are not that mitotically active in the adult brain anyway. The Glial cells continue to divide, etc... but the neurons themselves are largely established by childhood, and their numbers steadily go downhill over the course of your life.
That's not to say that neurons don't develop new connections and synapses... they do (otherwise learning could not take place)... they just don't divide much. The implication here is that since they don't divide, they are unlikely to become neoplastic, or pass on their damaged DNA.
Apart from the apoptosis angle, I'm not sure how much clinical relevance this research actually has.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
In related news, DARPA funds research to eliminate the North and South pole.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
In the study, the researchers discovered that rats exposed to a 60-hertz field for 24 hours showed significant DNA damage
In Europe we have 50 Hz fields. *sighs in relief*
Fortunatly, most women use their vrbrators no where near their brain, However, the male version of this device is typically placed directly over the male brain.....
Here is what Robert Park (author of "Voodoo Science") has to say
http://www.aps.org/WN/
-and-
http://www.aps.org/WN/WN97/wn070497.cfm
In fact, he devotes a whole chapter in the aforementioned book regarding the complete lack of evidence regarding EMF as a health risk. I use the chapter and this topic of research when teaching stats and epidemiology classes as an example of bad science, misused statistics, and causation vs. correlation.
jeff
Hmm,
...
I'm getting this weird vision.
Well maybe the rat likes it
We have been remodeling our house, and found the old circuit breaker panel improperly wired. The Neutral (white wire) was hardwired to the ground inside the panel. Now, having neutral grounded is normal for a MAIN DISCONNECT panel, but not for a SUB panel. If you have more than one panel, some are going to be SUB panels, and ground and neutral should be isolated from each other.
Anyway, since neutral was grounded in the breaker panel, it means all the return current in the house was balancing between the ground and neutral wires to get back to the main disconnect panel. Now, sending current over wires makes voltage, and in this case, that voltage is seen on every grounded item in the house!! Electrical fields everywhere.
Normally with 120V AC currents in your house, current on hot equals current on neutral, and the net RF field balance of a circuit in use is ZERO. (Try and clamp on ammeter to confirm this..) But if your ground and neutral are improper, it can make all kinds of wires have fields.
mobile phones operate at frequencies many millions of times higher than the fields used in this study. cellular damage from exposure to low-frequency fields (if real) would surely be mediated by a different effect than cellular damage from exposure to high-frequency fields (if real).
i am skeptical of this study because a friend of mine who works in biomagnetics assures me that the effects of high B-fields on human tissue were carefully invesigated prior to the approval of MRI macines for use in biomedical imaging. any ill effects due to low-frequency or DC fields would have been found at that time. of course this is just hearsay and i am not qualified (or inclined) to assess this particular study on it's scientific merit! : )
to your mind than Professor X:
;)
One significant implication of this is that certain types of cells with higher iron content - such as brain cells - may be more susceptible to damage from electromagnetic fields.
I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed...
And what qualifies as prolonged? Are some people so shaggy that they are using electric razors for hours on end? and not only that, but the only thing in an electric razor is a recharchable battery, maybe some electronics for charging said battery, and a motor and wires and switch. Millions of devices have these things in them, and humanity as a whole isn't getting stupider by the second (although sometimes it does seem that way). Scientists who make brilliant discoveries (and geeks in general) tend to have more of these devices, and these people represent the smartest people that humanity has to offer.
I think this may be a case of a study finding some correlation where there really shouldn't be any, or just bad methods overall. I'm currently taking part in a medical study, and if nothing else i've learned that there a ton of ways for the participants and doctors to skew the results. Designing a good study is essential, but actually carrying it out properly is the tough part.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Rat cells are the same size as people cells.
Bitchslapped. Neat.
A lot of good science doesn't prove a causal link. A lot of the times it just proves an association which the scientists may or may not believe is causal. The association is justification to come up with theories and do more research on the subject in order to figure out the cause of the observed phenomenon. A recent example is the study that use of anti-biotics is associated with breast cancer. Scientists are telling women not to stop taking anti-biotics prescribed by their doctors because they believe the cause was the diseases the anti-biotics were supposed to be fighting, but it's just a belief, they may change their minds later as new evidence comes in.
In this case they believe it _is_ causal. They have a proposed mechanism for the damage, and they predicted that certain drugs would reduce the damage before the conducted the tests, and those drugs did indeed reduce the damage.
"To test the idea, the researchers gave some of the rats drugs that either neutralize free radicals or decrease free iron before exposing the animals to the magnetic field. The treatments supported the hypothesis, effectively blocking the effects of the fields and protecting the rats' brain cell DNA from damage."
The scientists may be wrong, but that's always a possibility. They're saying what they believe their research shows, and they'll be proven right or wrong later.
And on a side note, since i use an electric shaver (as well as the many other magnetic field producing devices in all of our lives) does that mean i should start taking more anti-oxidants? Seems like whatever treatment they used on the rats would be a preferable alternative to living in a cave.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
You shave for maybe 5 minutes very second day, or perhaps even less often. With prsonal music you have speakers next to, or even inside, your ears for hours on end.
People sleep all night, often every night, with electric blankets warming their bodies, and if it's cold they tuck their heads under the covers too. I'd think that'd be an even greater risk than the headphones.
Good news: The study says that the brain cell damage effects were negated by use of "free radical scavengers" like melatonin!
Bad news: Now I have to worry about falling asleep on the freeway!
Because all magnetic fields are dipole fields at best, the field drops with the cube of distance, not the square of distance. So, it is even harder to get that field into your skull.
This is because there is no such thing as a "magnetic charge" like there is for electric charge.
(note to pedants: magnetic monopoles are too exotic to comment on, assuming they exist.)
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
you are partially right, some cancer cells undergo apoptosis... while other cancer cells have mutations that fight actively against it.
Apoptosis is also characterized as "programmed cell death," something common during development. Apoptosis of some tissues is absolutely required, particularly vestigial structures that form during your early embryology (this happen in many species, not just humans).
It should be noted that apoptosis is not simply rampant cell-suicide... it's actually a well-described and orderly process. Rampant cell membrane destruction, particularly in the brain (we see this with larger strokes) leads to the release of all kinds of inflammatory mediators... leading to swelling, damage to surrounding cells... all bad things. Nice, orderly apoptosis prevents much of this.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
The free radicals do the damage, so just consume foods with antioxidants and everything will be fine.
Crisis averted.
On a separate note, it's getting increasingly difficult for people who want to avoid antiperspirant on (perhaps ill-founded) fears of aluminum damage to one's body. Particularly for women; my girlfriend literally can't find any deodorants for women any more.
....if this affects the DNA in, oh I don't know, the "nether" regions of the human body. I mean, I do plan on having kids someday, provided I ever hook up with a woman (ANY WOMAN). Please respond immediately as my razor finished recharging and I'm kind o in the middle of something.
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
That, and I like the fact that if I take care of my straight razor, I'll probably need to buy another one in, oh, 50-75 years. The one I'm using now was manufactured around 1895 and I picked it up at a flea market for $3. Shaves great.
I've only found one downside. If you're in a real hurry and try to rush a shave, you'll end up looking like you were in a knife fight ^_^
Moral of the story: spend an extra 3 minutes and take your time.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
I find this whole study to be flawed. I mean, really, when are rats gonna use electric razors or blow dryers in the "real world"? C'mon!
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
Isn't a rat's skull much thinner than a human's? Wouldn't a thicker skull protect your brain better than a thinner one? If they really wanted to compare the effects on humans, they should have put helmets on the rats.
ayottesoftware.com
"Exposure to a 60-Hz magnetic field at 0.01 mT for 24 hrs caused a significant increase in DNA single and double strand breaks."
If this is true, just imagine what the 4T used by the MRI scanner at your local hospital will do to you.
Man this article just cracked me up.
Transporter
I'm going to be wearing a hockey mask when I go off on everyone...
Most people get the majory of their EMF exposure from their alarm clocks. While it's not quite as strong as a hair dryer or electric shaver, you're exposed to it for about 8 hours every day instead of 5 minutes.
How about a cordless razor operating off of a battery? Woudn't that be direct current w/out an alternating magnetic field?
-Nick
If you are a male who not only owns a blow dryer but uses it, you have bigger problems than potential brain damage. =P
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Hell, pretty much anything becomes paramagnetic if you have strong enough fields. Some things have stronger diamagnetic properties than others though.
Aluminum is actually fairly paramagnetic, if I recall.
Back in 1997 a group even levitated a frog in a 16 Tesla field. How fun is that?
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
The article abstract states that a field strenth of 0.01 mT (millitesla) applied over 24 hours caused a significant increease in DNA strand breaks.
The Earth has a magnetic field with a strength that varies between 20,000 nT and 70,000 nT (nanotesla, the unit usually used.) Converting nT to mT using my few undamaged brain cells gives a background field strength for the planetary magnetic field of 0.02-0.07 mT. The lower numbers are found near the equator and increase with latitude.
Using an electic shaver or hair dryer for five minutes a day would increase exposure by a factor o 0.0007, given the ranges for them found on several sites. You might be better off leaving the Earth's magnetic field altogether except for that nasty cosmic radiation it protects you from.
Magnetic field, gamma radiation, take your pick.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Get laid much?
-"Food is disgusting, it's what they make shit from."-
Hey, I resent that! I shower at *least* once a week, or even more often if the flies that follow me around start dying by Wednesday or so...
First off, I'm an RF Engineer. 2nd, I know an RF Engineer who specializes in RF and EM biohazzard. Don't just take my word on it concerning the following information - please go ahead and double check it with what information you can find.
This supposed damage from low-level EM fields has been a concern and a wife's tale for quite some time. Cellphones that are close to people's heads and electric blankets have often been the center of the discussions.
But think about the MRI machines, where there are absolutely huge magnetic fields concentrated around someone's skull, where the brain tissue is housed. Does getting an MRI cause huge amounts of brain damage? Don't you think we would have found such correlations prior to now if there were some?
I've heard stories of people coming out of MRI machines "seeing stars" briefly - that would make some sense because the brain works via electromagnetic impulses, which are effected by strong magnetic fields. I haven't heard of permanent damage resulting from exposure.
Hair dryers and personal Shavers? Come on. No.
Electric blankets are a bit more diffult to dismiss, since they do create an EM field covering a person's body, and at 60 Hz. Cellphones far from cell stations transmit more power, and right next to a person's head.
However: the only thing that has been shown to conclusively disrupt DNA is ionizing radiation such as that of radioactive materials or ultraviolet light. (As can be shown of instances of skin cancer in the case of UV, and cancer from radiation - even though it's also used as a treatment for cancer - for the very same reasons). Those are things to be concerned about.
RF energy such as that in cellphones has been found to be safe except for the heating created by the RF energy, the very principles behind the microwave oven. [Which concentrates 1,000 watts into a metal cage with a small amount of food in it - a very different scenario than a very low power cellphone next to a quite large meaty object in open air.]
There are areas where people work where CRT monitors do not function due to the magnetic fields in the vicinity. I.E. we're talking more than 1 gauss [yes, 1,000 mili gauss] of magnetic field. Hint: THEY LIVE, and they're working in that environment every day. [Think about broadcasting stations, or power stations, etc, etc.]
This will eventually be shown to be mostly bunk.
Pure BS, of course, just like this 'research'.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
It is not a static magnetic field. A 60 Hz magnetic field is also a 60 Hz electric field. The radiation field from a dipole drops of with the inverse of distance squared. The intensity drops off with the fourth power.
It has been a few years since I studied this material. Please let me know if I am in error.
Not as often as I'd like.
...the electric field put out by my mon....mon thingy...this glowy thing next to my computer with the pretty pictures on it. Mon...mon something.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I went through this once before a while back...
50/60Hz Magnetic and Electric fields seem to be rather imnical to living things.
At DC currents up to 10ma, you probably won't notice.
At AC currents at 50/60Hz up to 10ma, your muscles will start twitching in an odd manner...
At DC currents up to 1A, you'll get a zap not unlike sticking your tounge to a 9v battery proportionate to the current involved.
At AC currents at 50/60Hz up to 1A you'll have painful muscle contractions such that you can't let go if you grabbed the line with your hand(s) and if the conduction path is through your heart it'll stop it outright.
Higher currents in DC can burn/cauterize tissue.
Higher currents in AC can do the same, along with the consequence of stopping your heart or causing fibrillations if the conduction path is through your heart.
Magnetic fields are likely to have similar ill effects on tissues (as it stands, they KNOW that it increases tumor growth these days...).
Cell phones, GSM/TDMA/CDMA mobile phones, Microwave ovens, etc. use completely different frequencies with completely different consequences- there's been several studies that indicate that the RF power from a digital mobile phone may actually increase your intelligence by a negligible, but still measurable result.
The studies aren't analogous because the frequencies are completely different.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
No I'm not kidding.
7 .j pgl itey ouknow/id24.html
t =VIBRATORS
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There used to be shavers that relied on the user using a squeezing action to pump a ratchet gear which kept an internal flywheel working.
They were manufactured by "Viceroy". I was given a broken one to play with when I was a kid. I was fascinated by it.
http://www.fixyourshaver.com/images/Viceroy_193
http://bakelite_world_2001.tripod.com/itsbake
Is there as causal link between women using vibrators and medical problems?
Anyway, before items such as those we may have seen on television appeared e.g. as found here: http://www.toysforusonline.com/productlstR.cfm?ca
there were clockwork alternatives, as theis article explains, (diagram half way down page):
http://www.libidomag.com/nakedbrunch/main
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
It is not a static magnetic field. A 60 Hz magnetic field is also a 60 Hz electric field. The radiation field from a dipole drops of with the inverse of distance squared. The intensity drops off with the fourth power.
It has been a few years since I studied this material. Please let me know if I am in error.
I believe you are. It's quadripole fields that fall off with inverse fourth.
Dipole fields fall off with the inverse cube, as I recall. Inverse square for the individual poles, pluse an extra inverse first-power for the separation between the poles. (Quadripole fields get an extra inverse first-power for the separation for their component dipoles in the other dimension.)
Let's assume for now that the leakage from the motor is mostly a dipole field. (CAN'T be a monopole. B-) ) For a DC field, or the "near field" of an AC field, the dipole field dominates - and it falls off inverse cube. Get two inches from the shaver and the field is 1/8th what it was at one inch. Four inches makes it 1/64th, and so on. Falls off REALLY fast with distance.
As you get farther out the changing magnetic field creates a changing electric field that in turn supports the changing magnetic field (as long as they're both propagating at lightspeed). Then you have an electromagnetic wave, detached from its launcher. This falls off with inverse square.
Under a quarter wavelength the near-field is so dominant you can pretty much ignore the far-field. Over a wavelenghth or so away the situation is reversed (unless your driving element is large compared to a quarter wavelength).
So what's the wavelength of 60 HZ? About three thousand miles.
I don't think we need to worry about the far field. B-)
So figure inverse cube falloff - or faster if the motor's magnetic leakage has more than two poles.
(This is why you need to get REALLY CLOSE to a magnet to erase your credit cards.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I wonder what the magetic fields from my '04 Prius' electric motor is doing? Also, has anyone else noticed their cassette tapes have a 2 week half life?
There is no statistical test which is valid for small groups of inbred mice. Particularly when trying to extend those results to humans.
Saying that "Electrical shavers make your brain rot" off of significant but not astoundingly skewed results in a single study involving 16 mice is a little bit premature.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Not if it's 10 Tesla. Found that out the hard way. ;)
Joe: These magnetic fields are sucking away my electrons.
Billy: Are you sure?
Joe: I'm positive!
Maybe I should just disconnect myself from the so called grid, move out into the country and orienteer in the dark for entertainment. All I'll need is matches and a compass ... (?) .... AAAAIIIRRRGGH !!!
My God, I'm doomed....
Dean G.
The effect noted in the article is hypothesized to be caused by a Fenton reaction. This is the reaction of iron with other materials to form radicals. In this case it would be to form oxidizing radicals, such as hyperoxide species. These cause oxidative stress and damage if they're too concentrated. This was discussed in a recent /. article on high EM fields (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/ 09/1223246&tid=). Their hypothesis comes from the fact that they used oxidizer scrubbers, like vitamin E, to prevent the effect. Oxidative stress is blamed for causing Parkinson's and other apoptosis based disorders, arthritis and non-viral immunosuppression (chronic fatigue/immune deficiency syndrome).
As I said then, we're sadly ignorant about the effects of water in its various conditions and products due to external forces, on our systems. We're starting to find out a lot of answers, good and bad, are focused on water. In this respect, this article makes perfect sense.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Next on the list, that alarm clock on my headboard that I sleep next to for 5-6 hours a day. Not that I'll be sad to see it go.
OK.. I'm looking at this... and I REALLY don't know very much about cell biology, but I have to ask.. they seem to be really, really worried about DNA being damaged by this. Except as far as I am aware, brain cells never reproduce or divide. Is this correct, and if so, why would I worry about the DNA being damaged if Mitosis is never going to happen? Unless, like, you're shaving the head of a two week old baby or something.
The implication I guess is that cell breakdown and death occurs more quickly, but aren't you constantly losing brain cells at a breakneck pace anyway?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
> As I've said elsewhere, your tinfoil hat won't do a damn thing to block a magnetic field, grounded or not. Come on, you can surely find a magnet and piece of foil somewhere in your house and perform the extremely simple and obvious experiment that proves this...
(Score:-1, No Freaking Sense of Humor)
"A Sharp Blade for a Sharp Mind!"
I'd say that apoptosis is better characterized as "natural cell death". It's a natural and essential part of the cell's life cycle, and certainly isn't as alarming as the article's tone suggests.
Yes and no. There are certainly cells that naturally undergo apoptosis (a.k.a. programmed cell death) in their life cycles. If not for apoptosis, we'd all have webbed fingers. But apoptosis also seems to function as an "emergency self destruct" circumstance in which something has gone catastrophically wrong with a cell. And just as in the movies, it's likely that occasionally something manages to push that big red button by mistake...
That's good news! All I need to do now is shave _before_ I go to bed!
don't shave.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
There is much more to this article than just the potential dangers of lower level EMF. Very interesting to me is the suspected mechanism of the damage: Lai and Singh hypothesize that exposure to magnetic fields affects the balance of iron in certain cells, leading to an increase in free iron within the cell. That free iron undergoes a chemical reaction, which releases "free radicals," or charged atoms that attack cell structures, including DNA, lipids and proteins. The article also says that when the researchers controlled the free iron or when they neutralized the free radicals, the effects of the EMF were eliminated. Its seems to me that nutrition might play a role here. People who get good nutrition may not be as susceptible to this effect as people who don't or get too much iron.
Is this like when they inject rats daily, with three times their body-weight of caffeine, and then say that caffeine gives you cancer?
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
My electric shaver has a Nicad battery that is charged by AC power, but the motor itself runs off of power from the DC battery. I'm not an EE major, but isn't having a DC current next to your head a lot different than having a 60 hz AC current running next to your head?
:-)
I'm just curious, because I just bought a nice electric shaver and I'd like to keep using it. I never use my shaver while it's plugged into the wall. I only plug it in about once a week to recharge it.
There is an increasing number of western medical doctors that are starting to believe that having electric fields near your body aren't health for you. One of my favorite doctors, Dr. Weil, who has a great website, by the way, recommends that you should get rid of the clock radio by your nightstand as well as any electric blankets in your house. It has also been proven that women who spend 8 hours a day in front of a CRT monitor during pregnancy have a higher rate of birth defects. Exposure to electromagnetic fields can't be that good for you, so I try to stay away from them...
Of course, I'm typing this from my Powerbook sitting on my lap while I sit on the couch, with the AC adapter plugged in and charging away... Maybe I shouldn't try to have kids for the next little while...
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
some numbers about the magnetic induction of simple devices:
fridge 0.5-1.7 0.01-0.25 0.01
washing machine 8-50 0.15-3 0.01-0.15
microwave oven 73-200 4-8 0.25-0.5
vacuum cleaner 200-800 2-20 0.13-2
hair dryer 8-2000 0.01-7 0.01-0.3
e. shaver 15-1500 0.08-9 0.01-0.3
So what you see is that a hair dryer, an electric shaver or an iron (not shown here) can cause _very_ strong magnetic field. The problem is you probably not used to use an iron next to your brain (3cm or such) but the shaver is _much_ stronger, because of the small distance.
Don't forget these are ELF fields , "extreme low frequency", so don't compare with radiation of a cell phone!
Aren't most electric razors these days battery powered? Mine is. So, I'm not using that 60Hz AC wall power.
But, I assume the electric motor emits an electric field. I wonder how that compares to the field in their study.
Where the hell did they get their control group? Rural Africa? Anywhere remote enough and poor enough to not be surrounded by electrical devices in this day and age would have standards of living so low that life expectancy wouldn't be that high for anyone anyway.
Well worth the risk if you ask me.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
At last a rational scientific explanation for observed facts ;)
When I was in Radio Shack a few months ago, I saw a sign posted that looked somewhat like this:
WARNING
Certain components sold
in this store, such as portable
CD players, contain lead, which can cause
cancer. You should wash your hands thorougly after
touching these materials.
Of course, it was a lot more formal than that (I don't exactly possess a degree in Lawyer Talk), but that was basically the gist of it.
Now, it's kind of hard to take an article like this seriously when stuff like this is being posted. How much risk, exactly, is there in getting lead poisoning from a portable CD player?
Defenestrate Windows...
What does my brain care if its DNA is damaged, does that affect my thinking? Will i stop shaving with an electric razor? I dunno.
But, I guarantee I WILL stop shaving my genitals with an electric razor. No way do I want to damage any sperm swimming nearby.
Yes, but you will have to admint that it is the very BEST of the worst kind of junk science!
Basically, it has not been proven that small magnetic fields can influence chemical reactions. The energy of heat at room temperature is far, far more than the energy of a small magnetic field.
Magnetic fields have an effect on electrons. They have an effect on the nucleus. But the electrons are moving energetically already, due to room temperature heat, and no low-energy influence on the nucleus affects chemical activity.
Check out these conclusions: "The outcome of oxidative damage induced by magnetic fields will, thus, depend on various factors, including the oxidative status of the cell, capability of endogenous antioxidation enzymes and processes to counteract free radical build up, availability of exogenous antioxidants, iron homeostasis (a balance of iron influx, storage, and usage), the parameters of exposure (e.g., intensity and duration of exposure and possibly the waveform of the magnetic field), and whether the oxidative damage is cumulative."
There are many statements like this that are not supported by the experiment that was done.
The wires in your home have almost no net magnetic field from just a few inches away. The reason is that the supply (hot) and return (neutral) conductors are relatively very close together so that the fields cancel. GFCI breakers in your bathroom rely on this principle - when they sense a small field (usually 5mA imbalance) they trip. You can also try this with a clamp-on current meter. A co-worker built a magnetic field detector with an LED and a few thousand turns around some iron laminates (for making transformer cores). The LED would only light-up at 0.5 inch for 50Amps in a conductor pair. However it was bright at ~4 feet for 2000 Amps (return conductor was about 2 feet away).
As long as an electric motor is spinning, there is a magnitic field. The electric motors in your razor and toothbrush probably have permanent magnets that spin relative to the stator coils.
But I think the frequency will depend on the motor's spin rate times the number of stators, so it probably isn't a 60Hz field.
I used to work with MRI, and with a 1.5 Tesla magnet the effect of distance was quite important (people have been killed by objects pulled into the magneet).
anyway, we were told the force varied with the CUBE root of distance. according to this source, the drop-off depends on the nature of the source:
http://www.emfs.info/source_distance.asp
as for a deleterious effect on humans, i won't believe it until i see solid proof, preferably with some mechanism explained. distance is a good place to start -- if someone tells you a microwave oven is dangerous, ask them if they are threatened by their neighbor's? how about someone down the street? how about someone else using an electric razor? etc., etc. -- there is a lot to explore.
This isn't some statistical study where some big group in an uncontrolled environment shows some statistical anomaly. It's a straightforward experiment.
The main criticism of the study is that they need to try different field strengths, over at least a 1:10 range. If a clear relationship appears between field strength and DNA breaks, that provides a much stronger indication of a valid result.
Small amounts of saliva trickling down your throat causes cancer.
Aaaahh.... So that's why smart men have beards =].