Can Cell Phones Damage Our Eyes?

Roland Piquepaille writes "I'm sure you've read dozens of stories about how our cell phones could be dangerous to our health, causing brain tumors for example. But so far, there is not a definitive answer. But now, according to IsraCast, a team of Israeli researchers has discovered that the microwave radiation used by our cell phones could destroy our eyes by causing two kinds of damages to our visual system, including an irreversible one. If the researchers are right, and even if you only occasionally use your cell phone, the lenses in your eyes can suffer from microscopic damages that won't heal themselves over time. As this study has not been not done -- yet -- on humans, I guess the controversy can begin and that another scientific team will soon tell us that this study is not correct. In the mean time, read more for other details and references. And whether you think that cell phones can damage our eyes or not, feel free to post your comments below."

Comments

Scientists at the U. Washington have shown similar

[ReformedExCon]

I believe that the UW study was on the affects of cellular radiation on mice, and the results were equally disturbing. The exposed mice were invariably stricken with cancer while the unexposed mice remained at the norm.

But that study also showed that such effects were only engendered when the amount of radiation was both high and prolonged. The bovine lenses in this article were exposed to cellular radiation for 22 hours a day. If the exposure intensity is to be believed, then the transmitting antennas were placed right against the eyeball.

Neither of those situations is remotely near what normal cellular phone usage patterns resemble (unless you are a teenage girl, I suppose, but even then you aren't sticking the phone in your eye) (are you?).

So more study is necessary. The edge cases like the ones in the article and the UW study are very important to know, but the results of real-world testing ought to be examined as well. If we see a huge increase in the number of cancer and scratched lens cases in the coming years, there may be some validity to these studies.

I'll continue using my cellular phone, though. The convenience is just too great to pass up.

Re:Cell Phones are not new

[cagle_.25]

Not exactly. The FDA limit was fixed in 2000; most phones fall within 25% to 100% of that limit, with digital phones lower than analog by a rough factor of 2.

Here is an exhaustive list of radiation exposures.

Re:What about Wi-Fi networks?

[Detritus]

Wrong.

Re:Everybody hurts

[fatboy]

As I understand it, water is resonant in the infra-red portion of the EM spectrum. Microwave ovens use 2.4GHz because at that frequency RF energy is absorbed by water, but not my plastics and ceramics.

BTW, I am a radio amateur as well. DE KE4PJW

Re:I'm Asking Nicely

[Osty]

Anyway, I'm begging here: Can't we please have a Roland Piquepaille section so we can filter this stuff out? I'm not saying anything negative. I'm sure he's a wonderful guy and has a tremendous singing voice. I just don't want to read his blog.

The Slashdot editors are slow (in more ways than one). Do it yourself (requires Greasemonkey for Firefox or Turnabout for IE (be sure to get the advanced installer so you can add new scripts), and may be compatible with Opera 8).

And yes, I use my own script. I just decided to slum it and pimp my crap :)

Re:Everybody hurts

[modecx]

The thing is, 2.4GHz isn't anywhere close to the resonant frequency of the bonds in water, which IIRC is around 8-10GHz, but is almost unmeasurable because it varies rapidly, so it's a ballpark figure.

The fact is: if you put energy into a system, the stuff in the system gets hotter. It dosen't really matter if it's 10Ghz, 10Mhz or anywhere in between.

As long as it gets absorbed, it makes the object hotter. 2.4 Ghz was chosen because it's in the unliscensed band and microwaves used to leak quit a bit of RF, and also because it will penetrate food well enough to heat something largish. It's sort of a sweet spot. Higher frequency waves would be absorbed nearer the surface, and lower frequencies were in demand for communications, though they'd work about as well, apparently.

So, there you have it.

Had me worried until I read...

[aztektum]

As this study has not been not done -- yet -- on humans...

Seeing as how the study has been conducted on humans and I haven't heard anything bad, I breath a sigh of relief. However if it said the study has not been done on humans, I might be slightly concerned.

What...? You don't say.

Re:All danger is relative

[Dun Malg]

Consider when the commercial airline industry was younger and after a number of aircraft crashed, they discovered metal fatigue. If slashdot had been around then I'm sure half of the slashdotters would have spewed the usual "what are we supposed to do, get rid of aircraft technology" crap. But fortunately nobody in the real world did that - instead, they simply figured out a way to build aircraft from better materials, and made safer aircraft. Thanks to the studies that helped us understand the metal fatigue problems, we now have all the same benefits of commercial airline technology, with far fewer risks than it used to have.

Not a very good analogy. Metal fatigue was a well-known in the early jet age and didn't require "discovery"; also, it's not something that has been solved. You're probably thinking of the the de Havilland Comet crash in 1954, where fatigue cracking at the corners of the square windows resulted in catastrophic decompression. The Comet windows were squared essentially for cosmetic reasons-- no other aircraft manufacturer was dumb enough to stray from the tried-and-true round design. The problem was solved by letting engineering take precedence over appearance. As far as metal fatigue goes, there's not way around it. It's still a major cause of plane crashes and thousands of man hours are spent inspecting aircraft structural members to catch the signs of fatigue early.

Re:Thermal?

[tgibbs]

From reading TFA (I know, I guess I'm not typical), they went to some lengths to make sure there was minimal temperature rise, as that wasn't what they were trying to look at. Their thermometer measured to 0.1degC. They held the temperature at 35degC and didn't see a temerature rise.

As it happens, I did read TFA, although I was unable to get access to the complete original reference. All it said in TFA was that "The entire system is placed in an incubator maintaining constant temperature for the duration of exposure." This is not necessarily adequate to maintain constant temperature within the chamber, which depends on how well the microwave energy is absorbed in the chamber, as well as how rapidly heat is conducted out of the chambers. They appear to be surrounded by air, so they are obviously better insulated than a lens in a body, which is effectively a big constant temperature water bath. A thermometer in the incubator would not necessarily measure the temperature in the chamber next to the lens. The illustration provided shows no temperature measuring device in the chamber itself.

Re:That attitude is pretty stupid

[Bad_Feeling]

This happens because of what is referred to as intermodulation or just intermod. Even though the phone's frequency is waay out of the frequency of the audio transisters in your speaker's amp, the power level at that short distance is enough to overload the transisters and push them into what is called the non-linear region. In this region, the transister acts like a diode or am radio and rectifies the signal from the cell phone. As such many different frequencies are produced inside the transsiters, some of which fall into the audio spectram that you hear.