> you can imagine what would happen to EEs working on MW class military radars, MW class broadcast transmitters,
They're not getting exposed to MW level field strengths, or else they would be literally cooked.
The amount of power you get from a 0.6W phone in your pocket is dramatically higher than your exposure from the 50KW broadcast due to the inverse square law.
An isotropic radiator at 300m distance with 50kw power results in a field strength of 0.04421 w/m^2, while a 0.6w isotropic emitter at 3cm results in 53.0504 w/m^2. About 1200x higher. And unless you work at the transmitter you're not going to be within 300m of it most likely (there are fences set by exposure limits!), even if you work around it you're not going to be around it long while the phone is near you 12 hours a day, nearer than my 3cm example too. Though to be fair it's not putting out 0.6w all the time (though its maximum is also a lot higher than 0.6w for a normal phone, try more like 3w).
(the station is also not isotropic, but depending on the type of station the radiation pattern probably lowers exposure near the station-- no point in illuminating the ground!)
I'm mostly correcting your justification, the fact that we have limited evidence of problems from high power (except due to heating) is a good argument that lower levels of exposure are not likely an issue, but exposure levels from a running phone in your pocket are higher than you might expect simply because how close it is to you.
And when it comes to weak long term effects like cancer rates, it might actually be hard to tell for sure particularly since we lack any natural control group. Anyone different enough to NOT have a cellphone is different enough to make their cancer rates incomparable.
They're not getting exposed to MW level field strengths, or else they would be literally cooked.
The amount of power you get from a 0.6W phone in your pocket is dramatically higher than your exposure from the 50KW broadcast due to the inverse square law.
An isotropic radiator at 300m distance with 50kw power results in a field strength of 0.04421 w/m^2, while a 0.6w isotropic emitter at 3cm results in 53.0504 w/m^2. About 1200x higher. And unless you work at the transmitter you're not going to be within 300m of it most likely (there are fences set by exposure limits!), even if you work around it you're not going to be around it long while the phone is near you 12 hours a day, nearer than my 3cm example too. Though to be fair it's not putting out 0.6w all the time (though its maximum is also a lot higher than 0.6w for a normal phone, try more like 3w).
(the station is also not isotropic, but depending on the type of station the radiation pattern probably lowers exposure near the station-- no point in illuminating the ground!)
I'm mostly correcting your justification, the fact that we have limited evidence of problems from high power (except due to heating) is a good argument that lower levels of exposure are not likely an issue, but exposure levels from a running phone in your pocket are higher than you might expect simply because how close it is to you.
And when it comes to weak long term effects like cancer rates, it might actually be hard to tell for sure particularly since we lack any natural control group. Anyone different enough to NOT have a cellphone is different enough to make their cancer rates incomparable.