On the radio this morning was an advertisement for “Ex-Ion” (spelling mine; it was radio, after all). Allegedly, if the device is affixed to your cellular phone near your antenna, it will cancel-out the harmful ions emanating from said phone. A toll-free order number was given; the price was $14.95 US.
Obligatory disclaimer: some of the details and precise wording are approximated, because I was driving on a narrow, winding residential road with storm drains the size (and function) of sand traps on either side, and I couldn’t write it down and I couldn’t use my voice recorder because I don’t have one. But I’m certain of the gist of the claim.
The purported benefit sounds completely bogus to me. I was involved in some aspects of the safety of traffic RADAR for police, a much more powerful device, and no bad side effects were found for that and no bad side effects were found for that and no bad side effects were leio ewoijd ewop kdwjowi78 sss!
A lot of snake oil is sold with scientific sounding jargon wrapped around it. For starters your antenna does not “eminate ions.” Electromagnetic radiation may ionoize atoms - change the electric charge by adding or taking an electron - but then again so does shuffling your feet on a synthetic carpet. I can’t say the device does nothing useful but the ad copy doesn’t give you much useful information.
Excess jargon is everywhere. When I was a weapons tech on F-14 Tomcats, one of the failure modes of the AWG-9 radar was an ion pump overload. That’s just a highfalutin’ way of saying the high voltage power supply for the big-ass vacuum tube took a dump but it sounds ten times cooler, like something R2D2 would bleep to Luke Skywalker in his X-wing.
I certainly agree about the jargon, Padeye. I saw an auto wax manufacturer’s web site that, in the list of the product’s properties, labelled it “hydrophobic.” I dismissed them as either sleazy or pretentious (like those who constantly insert the word “approximately” hoping to sound more authoritative).
I immediately dismissed the Ex-Ion product as useless in a real sense, but wondered whether the claim was technically possible, though absent any benefit to the user, like a product that promises to kill 99.9% of the armadillos in your attic: it may work, and even work as advertised, but is still pointless.
Let’s think this out. The harmful radiation emitted by a cell phone is radio waves. The radio waves are what makes the cell phone communicate. This device absorbs the radio waves. No radio waves, no cell phone conversation. I dunno It just doesn’t seem plausible.
Keith
VE5KIS
Re: health problems from cell phone transmissions…
I’m still searching for the references, but I’ve read that the danger from cell phones is false, due to the fact that microwaves are not ionizing radiation. I guess they supposedly don’t carry high enough energy to produce exotic effects like damage to DNA.
On my uninformed level, that seems to make sense, since microwave fields used for cooking only induce heat, without changing the basic composition of your food.
Is this true?
If you say it, mean it. If you mean it, do it.
If you do it, live it. If you live it, say it.
I realize that I left out the quotation marks around the word harmful. I don’t think the radio waves are harmful (or not as harmful as the people who try to drive while talking on cell phones).
Keith
