I recently read an article: DNA Damage From Magnetic Fields Linked To Iron In Cells which shows that electrical currents (magnetic fields) damage cells and particularly those in the brain due to the high concentration of iron in brain cells.
So, is my computer frying my braincells? I know electrical currents make magnetic fields, but I thought only things like electric motors and such things make large enough fields to have a negative impact (if even that). Should I stop sitting two inches away from my monitor? Which is worse LCD or CRT? Thanks for any straight dope on this one.
find someone that works on an MRI… if they are a drooling idiot then your theory is correct, if they are normal then its unlikely magnetic feilds will be the death of you.
While the study looks interesting, it’s just one study. One study found a link between electric fields and childhood leukemia in the late 70’s, but other studies didn’t back up the findings. Every year or two a study comes out finding a link between electric fields or radio waves and some ill effect on the body, but as of yet I haven’t seen any conclusive proof (backed up by multiple studies) that either can cause anything at all harmful.
Your CRT is a different story. Placing a geiger counter in front of a computer monitor can be a rather enlightening experience. The important thing here is that this type of radiation has been proven to be dangerous, but also important is the fact that sitting a couple of feet away from your monitor, the exposure you get isn’t much above background radiation.
Since LCDs work on a completely different principle, you don’t have to worry about them.
Heh- my mother is head of an NMR lab with a 4 tesla magnet. As far as I can tell she hasn’t gone any more psycho than having two male kids will cause.
I read somewhere else that MRI scans cause an elevation in mood in many cases. People on antidepressants who have an MRI often dont need their medications for a day or so afterwards.
Really? I’ve always like scienceagogo.com, if you can suggest some better sites to go to I’ll start checking those out instead for my daily science fix. I also read newscientist.com and wired.com daily.
Um, did you read the article above, or look the site over? Please support your above conclusion with facts. A skeptical scientist type doesn’t create false information to support knee-jerk reactions, nor try to attach an emotional stigma to opponents.
Read the article. They’re actually describing a study done here at the U of Washington. (See below.) Of course the study might be wrong (replication is obviously required), but that’s very different than what you say above.
The many-tesla field of an NMR system is “DC” which is pretty much known to be safe. The paper in question is about weak 60Hz fields. The authors speculate:
“We hypothesize that exposure to a 60-Hz magnetic field initiates an iron-mediated process (e.g., the Fenton reaction) that increases free radical formation in brain cells, leading to DNA strand breaks and cell death. This hypothesis could have an important implication on the possible health effects associated with exposure to extremely-low frequency magnetic fields in the public and occupational”
If the rat experiments are replicated elsewhere, then the big question
is… does the same thing happen in human brains? Maybe it doesn’t.
And if it does happen in human brains, then the question is… what
negative effects result from strand breakage? (After all, there are
repair mechanisms running all the time.)
After working for years in front of computer monitors, the only thing
I’m worried about is an increasing incidence of, um, what’s the term…
memory loss. Loss of memory for certain words. Getting worse
over years. But that could be caused by old age, or perhaps I’ve
read to many paperbacks and now my RAM is almost full.
Hmmm. I’ve never heard of this. I remember that color TVs in the 70s had a slight x-ray output, but they switched over to lead-based CRT glass to stop it (that’s why you have to pay to discard your CRT.) I have a counter here with a great big ion chamber pancake probe w/thin alpha window. I’m in Seattle where the background count is extremely low. It’s saying 120 counts per minute with this large probe (at high altitudes like Colorado it might be 100x higher.)
I bring it across the room and place it on my 16" computer monitor glass, a Sony Trinitron. Nothing. The background count wanders up and down around 120. Hard to see any changes under 20%. If I had a fancy counter I could integrate over many minutes to pull any signal up above background. But if anything’s there, it’s a fraction of the background count in an already-low-background environment. Worry about cosmic ray background during airplane trips and living in the mountains, not about ionizing radiation from CRTs (at least from Sony Trinitron 16-inch models.)
