Tuesday, June 7, 2011

About cellphone radiation . . .


If you've been worried by recent reports claiming that there may (or may not) be a risk that the radiation emitted by your cellphone may cause cancer, take heart. The Silicon Graybeard has published an excellent and very informative article, examining radiation overall as well as that emitted by cellphones. He knows whereof he speaks, and makes a great deal of sense.

After reading his article, I'm no longer worried. I think he's performed a valuable public service by publishing it. Go read it for yourself, and relax.

Peter

3 comments:

Bob@thenest said...

I discounted the whole thing as soon as I saw the word "may" in the byline. Anytime I see that in a supposedly scientific piece of work I turn the page.

SiGraybeard said...

Thanks for the linkage, Peter.

I think Bob@thenest has a good approach. Far too many articles in the news are about things that "may" be correlated or "may" happen. It's best to take them with a giant grain of salt.

skreidle said...

Scott Hurst, on the WHO report that classed cell phone use as a 'possible carcinogen' (same category as coffee) based on insufficient evidence to label it either safe or clearly dangerous, 2011-06-01:

The problem is that we do have relevant data for a much greater than a couple decade span.

We've been exposing people (like me) who work in communications and RADAR fields with exactly the same frequencies but at enormously higher power for the better part of a century. If there was really something to worry about here, we'd long ago had stories like Marie Curie's and the "Radium Girls".

Nothing like hanging out in a room with fluorescentcent lights shining and all the switches turned off, you know you're getting some serious RF exposure then.

Radiation in the 1-10 Ghz range hold few surprises any more. Not only does our theoretically understanding of light offer no possible way for such puny photons to cause cancer, we have spectacular evidence of no harm after 'high dose' exposure to the same from at least the 1940s.