In article <telecom24.37.11@telecom-digest.org>, Dave Garland
<dave.garland@wizinfo.com> wrote:
> It was a dark and stormy night when John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
>> That's not enough power to heat anything.
> With all due respect, heating may not be the mechanism.
With all due respect, what other mechanism do you think could cause
cellphones to harm human tissue?
> EM waves can affect things in other ways. Want an example? Hold a
> fluorescent tube up next to a transmitter antenna, or near a
> high-tension line, it lights up. (Hold up an incandescent bulb,
> which is optimized to produce light from heat, and nothing happens.)
> I once made small neon tubes without electrodes, and lit them by
> putting them in a microwave oven, the lighting mechanism was by
> direct excitation of the gas (neon lamps don't use heat to make
> light). The tubes were stone cold when removed from the oven.
None of which has ANY bearing on human tissue.
Give me an example that has some resemblance to cellphone wavelengths
and power levels acting on human tissue, and I'll take your
reservations seriously. Until then, you're only crying wolf.
> Some studies have indicated that things like the shape of the
> waveform make a difference. Some studies that have nothing to do
> with safety show effects on nerves and enzymes that are unlikely to
> be thermal in nature. Do a PubMed search on "electromagnetic
> radiation", you'll get over 8000 hits. Look at all of them that
> relate to interactions between EMR and biologic systems, not just
> those related to cell phone safety. There doesn't seem to be any
> dispute that EMR can have biologic effects that are not caused by
> heating.
There also doesn't seem to be any dispute that a fraction of a watt
isn't nearly enough power to cause any problems of that sort.
> None of which is to say that cell phones are dangerous. I have no
> idea. But it seems foolhardy to flatly say they can have no effect
> whatsoever.
No, it seems foolhardy to flatly say that we don't know, when in fact
we *DO* know quite a lot. We can say with very high confidence that
cellphones do not cause any harm to human tissue. (As to the
difference between "very high confidence" and "absolute certainty," in
scientific terms we can only say with "very high confidence" that the
sun will rise in the east tomorrow.)
It is the people who insist that cellphones somehow "might" be
dangerous who are refusing to look at the topic objectively.
There is ZERO evidence that cellphones *are* dangerous. There is
considerable evidence that they are *not* dangerous. Do the math.
Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * lincmad@suespammers.org
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[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I don't think you can absolutely
say radio frequency radiation is totally without harm to
people. Consider for example the very cruel thing that some people
(mostly children) do of putting small animals in microwave ovens and
then turning on the unit. And why is it that microwave ovens have very
well-shielded doors on them and the oven will not work if the door is
open. I understand that radiation at microwave levels is different
than radiation from a cell phone, but is there no comparison at all?
PAT]
Linc Madison (lincmad@suespammers.org)