Google Testing Project Loon: Concerns Are Without Factual Basis (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In a filing submitted to the FCC, Google has stated that while concerns for health and environmental risks posed by Project Loon testing were 'genuinely held,' 'there is no factual basis for them.' Google's filing attempts to address a wide range of complaints, from environmental concerns related to increased exposure to RF and microwave radiation, to concerns for loss of control and crashes of the balloons themselves. First, it states that its proposed testing poses no health or environmental risks, and is all well within the standards of experimentation that the FCC regularly approves. It also pledges to avoid interference with any other users of the proposed bandwidth, by collocating transmitters on shared platforms and sharing information kept current daily by an FCC-approved third party database manager.

Comments

Re:A summary would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Fuck you. If you don't know what Project Loon is you shouldn't even be here. Go post comments on CNN.com.

Radiation does affect cells, and possibly DNA

[goombah99]

FYI, there are biophysical effects to cell radiation. Well documented, published research from prestigious institutions has shown that under exposure to cell phone frequencies that bacterial and mammalian cells produce a lot of lipids. Why this happens is not known. One of the speculations is DNA is being activated by the radiation. At first this seems impossible to believe since the wavelengths of the radiation are orders of magnitude larger than the size of DNA. But models have shown that it does not take a lot of energy to cause Diploid DNA to separate into two strands. What happens if resonance occur and small "bubble" openings between the strands ripple along the chain. Thus very tiny amounts of radiation can affect the DNA. Where these opening occur depend on where a resonance condition can occur. Thus it is possible to imagine selective activation of parts of the DNA in the presence of cell phone radiation. Controls have shown the effect is not due to heating and a number of other possible laboratory artifacts in setting up the tests. Since there is no way yet to observe the predicted DNA response and the models are idealized it's not known if that happens in real cells or if that effect is any way connected to the observed lipid production. None the less what you can say is:
1) it's not crazy to say Cell phone radiation can selectively excite DNA
2) Cells do repspond inthe presence of cell radiation

Thus while there is as far as I know zero evidence of direct damage to a multi-cellular human, the fact that it can act on individual cells is cause for further study.