Walker: For extra safety stick the cell phone up your child's ass and just shout into his ass. Pay no attention to people staring at you. This is for your safety and so that they absorb all the radiation and not you.

Already way ahead of you.

Stop removing greenlit articles

Is it safe to pump gas while talking on the phone, yet?

StaleCoffee: Is it safe to pump gas while talking on the phone, yet?

Nope. Mythbusters doesn't count as "science."

krazyulysses: StaleCoffee: Is it safe to pump gas while talking on the phone, yet?

Nope. Mythbusters doesn't count as "science."

More science than most peer-reviewed journals nowadays.

Jake Havechek: Cell phones are the intercoms of Satan.

Is that a Cradle of Filth tribute band?

krazyulysses: StaleCoffee: Is it safe to pump gas while talking on the phone, yet?

Nope. Mythbusters doesn't count as "science."

Snopes kind of beat them there.

Something something ionizing something something blah blah.

/meh

The issue of concern is not whether cell phone radiation is, in itself, dangerous but if it compounds with other existing forms of electromagnetic radiation to push magnitude of incidents past the epidemiological tipping point. Even small amounts or degrees of change can cascade into enormius problems if they disrupt a system at equilibrium or saturation.

Quick! Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow! Align the phase inducers with the Heisenberg compensator!

namatad: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
ZOMG radio waves are radiation and killing us!!!!

why are cell phones radio waves bad, but TV and radio radiation good??

right, cause we hold the phone up to our head. but does the rest of the radiation go through us 24hrs a day? it must be MUCH MUCH MUCH worse

/if only there were some way to stop these retards

None of what you are getting at is necessarily true.

The supposed worry with cell phones is heating. You can get dielectric heating from electromagnetic radiation (think microwave ovens). This is a frequency dependent effect - so if you hit the right frequencies you can get substantially more heating than slightly higher or lower frequencies. I believe that the worry is that cell phones are close enough to the right frequency to cause enough heating of tissue in the head to be unhealthy.

I dont believe that any study has shown for sure that cell phones do anything bad (although there are certainly studies showing that they heat up tissue to some degree), but such lines of reasoning shouldnt necessarily be dismissed out of hand. Certainly repeatedly heating deep tissue in the brain is probably not healthy, especially at young ages, so its something worth being aware of.

Cellphones cited as the next cause of autism/ADD/ADHD/whatever other overhyped disorder a large breasted blonde celebrity wants to talk about in 5 . . . 4 . . . .3. . . . .

Aracnix: The issue of concern is not whether cell phone radiation is, in itself, dangerous but if it compounds with other existing forms of electromagnetic radiation to push magnitude of incidents past the epidemiological tipping point. Even small amounts or degrees of change can cascade into enormius problems if they disrupt a system at equilibrium or saturation.

Cascade failure?

And to build on my previous point, I will point out that a substantial number of prominant neurosurgeons advocate keeping kids away from excessive cell phone use due to concerns about the radiation heating up the head. Thats not to say that the science is by any means settled, but that there is enough of a concern with kids that its worth thinking about.

Aracnix: The issue of concern is not whether cell phone radiation is, in itself, dangerous but if it compounds with other existing forms of electromagnetic radiation to push magnitude of incidents past the epidemiological tipping point. Even small amounts or degrees of change can cascade into enormius problems if they disrupt a system at equilibrium or saturation.

Yeah, low energy radiation doesnt work this way. What you are saying is nonsense. If people were worried about anydoses of low energy radiation, they would be telling people to avoid sunlight (hey, its higher energy electromagnetic radiation than cell phone radiation) and cities.

And even when you think about high energy radiation (where you would worry about raw doses) there arent tipping points or sudden losses of some equilibrium condition. Its all a fairly smooth probabilistic process.

Jake Havechek: All_Farked_Up: krazyulysses: StaleCoffee: Is it safe to pump gas while talking on the phone, yet?

Nope. Mythbusters doesn't count as "science."

More science than most peer-reviewed journals nowadays.

Mythbusters relates their stuff to things people are familiar with, so I think it is a good primer on how science works, and how you can replicate some things, but not all.

Peer reviewed shiat is negligible since scientists have often sabotaged each other's work and research, so they can get the patent first.

You're thinking about engineers. Do you really think there are patents on nuclear cross-section measurements?

Oznog: [img834.imageshack.us image 400x224]

The radiation from a microwave oven is non ionizing, yet I dont think that you should stick a baby in one and let it run.

While ionizing radiation is certainly a much bigger worry than non ionizing radiation in general, its not true that all non ionizing radiation is perfectly safe for the reason that I pointed out above (it can heat stuff up pretty well under the right conditions).

IXI Jim IXI: It's going to suck if we find out 50 years from now all this extra electromagnetic radiation from cell phones, radios, radar, wifi, etc are what's causing increases in the rate of autism, cancer, migraines, male pattern baldness...


/especially the last one

All of those sources you mentioned are in the same band, microwave, and we have been bombarded by microwave radiation in some man-made form for well over a hundred years. Natural microwave radiation has bombarded us for millennia. We would have seen a spiked increase WAY before now, and pinpointed it.

Krazikarl: The supposed worry with cell phones is heating. You can get dielectric heating from electromagnetic radiation (think microwave ovens). This is a frequency dependent effect - so if you hit the right frequencies you can get substantially more heating than slightly higher or lower frequencies. I believe that the worry is that cell phones are close enough to the right frequency to cause enough heating of tissue in the head to be unhealthy.

I dont believe that any study has shown for sure that cell phones do anything bad (although there are certainly studies showing that they heat up tissue to some degree), but such lines of reasoning shouldnt necessarily be dismissed out of hand. Certainly repeatedly heating deep tissue in the brain is probably not healthy, especially at young ages, so its something worth being aware of.

Cell phones simply do not have enough transmit power to cause the heating necessary. Especially modern cell phones. Even at overloading the transmitting circuitry, and in the process killing it and the battery, would cause heating of only a few degrees, and even then, only on the surface. You would get a surface burn a long time before deep tissue damage. Cell phones operate in the milliwatt range, as opposed to your microwave oven which operates in the kilowatt range... A huge order of magnitude difference... You get more 'signal' leaking out of your microwave than your cell phone puts out at full power. That being said, unless you are in an extremely poor signal area, the phone cranks down the power to a minimum acceptable range so as to save battery.

Krazikarl: Oznog: [img834.imageshack.us image 400x224]

The radiation from a microwave oven is non ionizing, yet I dont think that you should stick a baby in one and let it run.


But it's a baby. Haven't you ever been tempted after hearing one of those little farks scream for hours on end?

namatad: RexTalionis: namatad: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
ZOMG radio waves are radiation and killing us!!!!

why are cell phones radio waves bad, but TV and radio radiation good??

right, cause we hold the phone up to our head. but does the rest of the radiation go through us 24hrs a day? it must be MUCH MUCH MUCH worse

The inverse-square law?

ROFL
you cant use part of science and ignore the others.

inverse sq or not, both the total energy of cell phones and hf are TINY. neither of them are enough to do jack squat.


Okay, then what about using the WHO study that showed that EM fields do not in themselves cause cancer, but cause localized heating that leads to cancerous growth? That's what the WHO said. (No, not Pete Townsend. Can you focus?) So this would indicate that kids would absorb more of this radiation, leading to more of that localized heating, which would in turn lead to more of that cancer-friendly growing conditions in the brain. That peer-reviewed WHO study should be considered conclusive unless proven otherwise by another equally-exhautive study.

As for the r^-2 law, that's exceedingly relevant. Yes, it is small radiation BUT the IEEE standards require a density and exposure time that's less than 4.5W/m^2 at 900MHz. (GSM) GSM phones have a peak power of 2W. At 1800MHz, the limit is 9W/m^2 with a peak power of 1W. If you have a very small transmitter in very close proximity for a long period of time then you can exceed the limits. That's exactly the behaviour that a teenager will engage in on a phone, at least when they aren't texting.

Now, I'm not a medical expert. I'm an Electrical Engineer with a focus on power electronics, RF, and equipment segregation. I could tell you with boring precision about how far you have to keep electronics away from oscillation sources so it won't frap out. I'm a military contractor. All I have to know about whether it's dangerous or not is this: There are no weapons systems that use RF as the payload. None. If it could kill people, it would be mounted on a tripod, I promise, and I would have the spec here for how to install the thing.

And astonishingly, when I drove past a cell tower last time I was on vacation, I got a directional headache that tracked the tower precisely. I can't explain that at all.

tgambitg: Cell phones simply do not have enough transmit power to cause the heating necessary. Especially modern cell phones. Even at overloading the transmitting circuitry, and in the process killing it and the battery, would cause heating of only a few degrees, and even then, only on the surface. You would get a surface burn a long time before deep tissue damage. Cell phones operate in the milliwatt range, as opposed to your microwave oven which operates in the kilowatt range... A huge order of magnitude difference... You get more 'signal' leaking out of your microwave than your cell phone puts out at full power. That being said, unless you are in an extremely poor signal area, the phone cranks down the power to a minimum acceptable range so as to save battery.

You have to realize that its heating by dielectric heating, not conduction. Since the radiation penetrates people pretty easily, it can heat your body pretty uniformly - you most certainly would not need to be burning the skin in order to heat deep tissues by a small amount like you would with your normal conductive heating.

I'd also point out that a change of a few degrees of your brain is a very big concern. If your kid gets a fever that high, its something to worry about. So if you can slightly change the temperature of the brain 10 times a day, thats something to be thinking about.

The point is that we dont really have a good understanding about how much our brain can tolerate small amount of periodic heating, especially in children. Until we do, its something to be aware of. I'm not saying that people need to freak out and not use cell phones (I use mine quite frequently). I'm just saying that we shouldnt dismiss concerns about the regular use of cell phones by children out of hand.

So hard to tell these days what you're supposed to use kids to attract and what you're trying to repel from you. But absorb? Well....where does it all go then? Ya gotta wring them out somewhere.

theMagni: That's exactly the behaviour that a teenager will engage in on a phone, at least when they aren't texting.

Which is when? I've never seen a teen actually use a phone to talk to someone unless it was a parent calling them.

Here's a site for all your anti-emf needs.

Link

Not sure why you would want conductive socks, but they got those too.

The "Microwave Radiation Protection Sleeping Bag" does look cozy.

So, what your saying is, I should stick my phone down my pants so my wiener gets lots of radiation; that way it grows to a monstrous size? With all my years of exposure to crappy b movies; I know that there's no way that this can come back to bite me in the butt. Wow, what a great idea; why didn't I think of it before?

\ as a bonus; I'll never need a flashlight at night.
\\ how YOU doin?

Well, I don't feel like paying $43 to read the actual paper, but this is almost certainly a sensationalized headline. The abstract of the actual article discuses measuring the "Specific Absorption Rate" for children vs adults; which is a measurement from which most safety guidelines are based. However, according to wiki, "The SAR value is then measured at the location [in the test dummy's head] that has the highest absorption rate in the entire head, which in the case of a mobile phone is often as close to the phone's antenna as possible." Most importantly though, this measurement is only taken over a small volume; the largest being 10grams in the EU. On the surface, this kind of measurement is a good idea; "playing it safe" as it were, using the worst-case scenario of what's going on in your head to establish safety limits. However, even a newborn's brain is a good 30-40 times that size, and with inverse-squared laws thoroughly in play, saying that children absorb more cell phone radiation than adults is probably woefully misleading. A more correct title might have been, "kids brains are closer to the cell phone antenna because their skulls are thinner; and they have higher localized absorption due to that." But if you were to actually integrate power absorption over the entire head / body, as I suspect (but cannot confirm) that this study didn't actually do, the adult is still absorbing a lot more power. If you take the worst case scenario measurement and use that value you'll get a higher localized result, and possibly a higher averaged result, but it will always give a lessor TOTAL value.

Also worth noting, since the surface area / volume ratio of a childs skull is much larger than that of a adults, their heads will cool off faster as well.

RexTalionis: namatad: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
ZOMG radio waves are radiation and killing us!!!!

why are cell phones radio waves bad, but TV and radio radiation good??

right, cause we hold the phone up to our head. but does the rest of the radiation go through us 24hrs a day? it must be MUCH MUCH MUCH worse

The inverse-square law?



YOU CAN'T EXPLAIN IT!!!

Here (new window) is a nice description of cell phone (and other non-ionizing) radiation, and why it really won't kill you. It is researched, referenced with links to studies, and explained both in detail and in simple terms.

If you want to understand why cell phone radiation won't kill you, read it. (It's also available as a podcast). If you want to go on not understanding and thinking the cell phones are dangerous.. please stop using them. You probably don't have anything intelligent to say anyway.

LOL at subby

kingoomieiii: Is a long phone call more or less dangerous to brain health than a stay in a wet sauna? You know, the kind where you get a little lightheaded from the heat?

This is important.

/csb- I had a looong shower last weekend that was a little too hot- I stumbled out when I realized my ears were ringing and I had tunnel vision, collapsed naked into a chair in the next room, and fought unconsciousness for about 10 minutes
//it was awesome

Get your affairs in order and say goodbye to your loved ones.

tgambitg: From Wikipedia (new window):

ugh... it ate my link... Link (new window)

IXI Jim IXI: It's going to suck if we find out 50 years from now all this extra electromagnetic radiation from cell phones, radios, radar, wifi, etc are what's causing increases in the rate of autism, cancer, migraines, male pattern baldness...

Has there been an increase in these, or has there been an increase in the diagnosis of these?

Or, is running the healthcare industry for profit a good thing?

/especially the last one

It adds an air of distinction son.

How is radiation formed?

How universe get filled with microwave radiation at pretty much equal levels at all points?

So a dubious scientific study, published in a journal that touts the risks of radios to the public, and repeated by a 'trust' with all the scientific credibility of PETA is somehow definitive? Or News?