On 26/06/2006, at 11:28 PM, Dan Minette wrote:
Which, IIRC, have been now shown to have an effect, albeit low level.
The US national institute of health's website states at:
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/emfrapid/html/WGReport/Chapter5.html
<quote>
The predominant evaluations of the various health end-points
covered in this
report are 'limited' and 'inadequate' evidence.
<end quote>
Fair enough. I was thinking of something from the Lancet a while ago,
but ICBA to go look. It was very low level at best (worst).
That's just it - it doesn't need to be ionising. Heat at very low
levels can cause damage to cells - spot heating effects could cause
denaturing of proteins. That's not to say they do at the frequencies
that mobile phones emit, it' s conjecture.
It's possible for spot heating to do this...but it does depend on
the change
in temperature. We do spot heating all the time. When we wash
dishes in hot
water, we do spot heating on our hands. I'd argue that, for a
total 3 watt
signal from a cell phone, the heating rate is rather low.
Sure. It's like microwave ovens though - the heating is not at all
uniform.
Further, the heating should fall off as exp(-a*r)/r^2, where a is the
attenuation coefficient in the head. Maybe Zimmy knows what the
attenuation
in the skull is. We can also assume that it's the attenuation that
does the
heating, so we could use similar numbers to look at the heating of the
brain.
How about this for a test? Put a cell phone next to a few cc's of
water.
Place a thermostat in the water. See how much it warms. This
should be
greater than the warming of any spot in the brain, unless one is
wearing the
wrong tin foil hat, causing a focus at one point. :-)
I'd use jelly (jello to you), which melts about the same temperature
as protein denaturing (50 degrees) and see if there's localised
effects, convection in water would negate those. Or better, use a
jelly with a protein (say egg albumin) in, and another with a
specific nucleic acids in, with some sort of marker, and see both if
phones can cause spot damage, and what frequency and power *does*
cause damage (obviously, somewhere between a phone and a microwave
oven there's a danger line...).
Recent studies did show correlation between a cell phone on the hip
or in a trouser pocket and lowered sperm counts. Of course,
correlation does not mean causation, but it's interesting anyway (and
watching porn increases sperm production, so if you're trying for a
kid, watch porn an hour or two before you plan to ejaculate...).
Interesting that you saw fit to extensively fisk my post, but not the
original article.
I thought about it, but Zimmy got to it first. Then, when you
responded to
him, I thought I'd give it a whirl. Also, I've had much more luck
discussing science with you than I have discussing it with the Fool.
Maybe because I've got formal science training...
He has
a rather personalized technique for evaluating research.
He does indeed.
Charlie
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