it is, and the french are kinda catering to the wackos by letting them tinker with the EU/FCC standards. unsurprisingly when you place the phones closer than normal, you get a higher measurement, and if you do not adjust the absorption limits then wow, it's over the limit! scary!
but there's no particular reason to think that this new, effectively lower absorption limit correlates to any particular health risk, or that it's a relevant threshold for absorption now that you've moved the phone closer.
the fact of the matter is, if there was some major absorption risk from phones, we'd have seen an abrupt spike in cancer rates in the 2000s when like 90% of the population suddenly started carrying a phone against their body for 16 hours a day. The world’s greatest (and ethical!) A/B test lol.
The evidence is already in, just from weight of mass public usage. At least at these frequencies and transmit powers.
In some countries cell phones became ubiquitous even earlier, like in Japan where they started taking off in the 90s (~1 million phones by 1991, 10 million by 1995, 50 million by 1999).
I believe the concern is that non-ionizing radiation can still warm tissues, and depending on the frequency, these can be deeper than what normal sunlight or IR radiation would reach.
Whether a few milliwats of that type of warming are actually cause for concern I don't know, but even if it's bogus, that doesn't mean that regulators will not be enforcing legal maximums anyway.
>In 1996, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, adopted exposure guidelines that limited the intensity of exposure to radiofrequency radiation. These guidelines were designed to prevent significant heating of tissue from short-term exposure to radiofrequency radiation, not to protect us from the effects of long-term exposure to low levels of modulated, or pulsed, radiofrequency radiation, which is produced by cellphones, cordless phones and other wireless devices, including Wi-Fi.
>Yet, the preponderance of research published since 1990 finds adverse biologic and health effects from long-term exposure to radiofrequency radiation, including DNA damage.
>More than 250 scientists, who have published over 2,000 papers and letters in professional journals on the biologic and health effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields produced by wireless devices, including cellphones, have signed the International EMF Scientist Appeal, which calls for health warnings and stronger exposure limits. So, there are many scientists who agree that this radiation is harmful to our health.
Sorry, but the quoted article seems a bit dubious to me:
> The difference is the kind of microwave radiation each device emits. With regard to cellphones and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, there is an information-gathering component. The waves are modulated and pulsed in a very different manner than your microwave oven.
What is an "information-gathering component"? What does that have to do with pulsed emitters and (averaged) EIRP values, which definitely is a thing for some, but not all of the mentioned transmission technologies: Especially 3G and some versions of Wi-Fi use DSSS or other spread-spectrum techniques which are not pulsed, unlike TDMA.
I could even see an argument being made for "pulsing" making a difference and maybe another measure than the EIRP being needed (just like how the linear-no-threshold model for the effects of radiation on organisms might be a simplification of what's actually going on), but then it doesn't help to just throw a bunch of wildly different wireless technologies, using greatly varying transmission powers from 10 mW to 2000 mW, into a single bag and call them "very different from microwave ovens" without describing what that means.
I assume they mean each pulses at a different frequency range, the information is gathered or clumped up around its own band.
You can assume modern articles repeat themselves and say the same thing several times. I suppose this is the first useful instance I've seen... or is it?
> What does that have to do with pulsed emitters and (averaged) EIRP values
I'm definitely not an expert but I can share my layman view on the topic.
Equivalent isotropic radiated power is just power.
If you strike an object it makes a sound, it vibrates at it's own frequency. Sometimes it dampens quickly sometimes it sticks around. Like say a bell, a wine glass or a tuning fork.
It takes very little energy to push a swing and keep it going. It will eventually get rid of the energy though friction but much slower than you can gently push it up to speed. You can't push the swing at some random frequency, you have to match it exactly (1/2 or 1/4 would also work of course) just like you cant shatter a whine glass if your voice doesn't match the frequency. You can make a hell of a lot of noise (power) without shattering any wine glasses.
EIRP would be like trying to destroy the glass with just decibels.
All parts of our body big and small vibrate too, with all the liquid it dampens quickly and there is very little for magnetism to hook into but if the frequency matches exactly (or some octave of it) it doesn't seem a stretch of the imagination that one can have an effect without much power. The power just needs to exceed dampening.
With dental fillings the effect is well known.[1][2] Say mercury spreads around the body, would that have no effect on reception?
Sorry to butcher the topic, I'm just trying to picture how it might work. There are plenty of (strange[3]) studies and 5000 scientists who agree it's just bad for our health.
And of course the addicts who don't want to hear any of it :)
If it isn't, it's probably only because of a loophole lobbied for by Big Shower. Technically in France it's only a Shower in the shower region, outside of that geographically protected area it must be referred to as an hot water cleanse.
Unshielded microwave ovens definitely cause cancer. The energy penetrates the skin, and some of it plays billiards with the atoms in DNA, genetic transcription machinery, etc.
I can’t find a study because the internet is full of blog spam saying your microwave oven has shielding that keeps emissions to a safe level (of course), and studies looking at microwave radiation exposure near the cell phone limit, not 1000x higher, which is roughly what your microwave does if the shielding is missing or the safety interlock is broken.
Ionizing radiation damages DNA. But microwaves do not emit any ionizing radiation. For a microwave to damage your DNA it would have to burn your flesh. Then you wouldn't be worried about cancer, you'd be worried that you just microwaved your arm until it started burning.
I thought unshielded microwave ovens are a problem because they heat stuff, and humans operate quite close to their thermal maximum. If you're at the upper end of normal body temperatures, a change of just 8°F/4°C can bring you from normal operating temperature to cell damage.
“Cell phone radiation increases the risk for a number of biological and health disorders, including gliomas and acoustic neuroma brain cancer. Researchers discuss how to reduce the risk of cell phone radiation.”[1]
The evidence is very weak establishing a risk of any kind to radio transmission at the levels exhibited in consumer devices. And the risk of cancer specifically is even weaker.
The study mentioned by the person in the above article exposed rats and mice to levels far above any SAR limits, and across their entire body. The study authors themselves say it is not representative of human exposure. And even then, they found that male rats lived longer than their normal lifespans when exposed.
My guess is that "There are no neutrons flying around" is a flippant way to say it's not ionizing radiation, since the common ionizing radiation is made up of alpha particles, beta particles (electrons), neutrons or very high frequency photons.
Imagine it says "It's not like there are high speed neutrons flying around".
Once again, it all depends on the frequency! Gamma radiation is EM radiation and can cause nuclear fission [1], which in turn can release neutron radiation.
I'm fairly certain that no iPhone model to date emits gamma radiation, though.
