I’m always amused when I meet people who insist on always using earphones, for health reasons.
And they have the supposedly-dangerous phone in their pocket. Right beside their genitals. If there’s one place to not get zapped, it’s there…
I wouldn’t tell him about the pain, just that I could detect the “turned on” cell under double blind conditions.
1 mil in your pocket…
I assume you mean:
And the answer is Yes. Electromagnetic radiation is around us all the time - it’s light, it’s radio waves, without it we wouldn’t exist. The radiation from mobile phone masts adds a miniscule extra amount to this.
The trouble is the duality of the word ‘radiation’. Without a decent education in physics, there’s no reason you’d know it meant different things. But the kind of dangerous radiation generated by a nuclear reaction, or emitted by nuclear waste, has nothing whatsoever to do with mobile phones.
And that’s from a full-blown nuclear-power-phobe 
I’m not trying to be a jerk, but this isn’t true, as i pointed out in my last post. Gamma radiation is normally considered the most dangerous radiation generated by a nuclear decay, because it’s the most penetrating. Alpha and Beta radiation can be stopped by a piece of paper or a book respectively, while gamma radiation requires several inches or more of lead (hence the lead or concrete casings for nuclear reactors).
…And Gamma radiation is just Electromagnetic radiation, exactly the same as light or radio waves, except operating at a different frequency. So it has everything whatsoever to do with mobile phones.
However, the radio waves your mobile phone emits and receives are much lower frequency (and thus lower energy) than light or gamma radiation. Thus, they are much less dangerous, unless they excite a particular rotational or vibrational state of molecules (as is the case with the radiation utilized by a microwave oven).
Fair enough, theckhd. I guess I was trying to emphasise the difference between ‘bad’ radiation and normal radiation at the expense of the facts :eek: …but I guess my basic point, that mobile phones have nothing to do with the popular understanding of “radiation”, is still valid.
Actually, no, I was referring to my second question in my opening post: earpieces.
Some research, much originating in the UK, suggests that these devices actually expose the brain to much higher levels of radiation, as Andrew T noted in his post. In fact, I believe Consumer Reports suggested concerned individuals use earpieces, and sparked a flurry of letters in which readers said some preliminary research suggests this is the last thing wants to do–other than irradiating one’s genital’s of course. 
Gorillaman: that statement i will totally agree with. The source of cell phone radiation is an antenna, not a decaying nucleus. It’s a shame that the popular understanding of radiation is limited to this small subset of its scope.
Carnac: I have serious doubts about the idea that the cord of the earpiece would cause more radiation to pass through your brain. The cord could act as an antenna and scatter the radiation, but that would tend to scatter perpendicular to the cord, not along its axis. Furthermore, you can’t get something for nothing. Consider the following:
The radiation from the cell phone antenna is emitted into a full 4pi solid angle (all directions). If you hold the cell phone up to your ear, you are effectively letting half of the radiation pass through your head (2pi solid angle), whereas if your have the cell phone several feet away, you are allowing much less to pass through your brain, as you subtend a much smaller solid angle from the cell phone’s point of view.
For the earpiece to increase your exposure, it would have to force over half of the signal to travel along the cord and pass through your head, which is unlikely – if this was true, you’d almost never be able to talk to someone when using a headset, because over half of your signal would be sent in the direction of your head and not in the direction of a signal tower. So we have to assume that the phone is still emitting radiation in all directions equally so that you can still connect to your service.
So the only way for a headset to expose you to more radiation than holding the phone against your head would be if it amplified the radiation – a dubious claim as it has no serious power source of its own. So you’d have to be creating energy out of nothing – something most physicists will scold you for.
If you have cites to publications in scientific journals, i’d be happy to look at them and re-evaluate my position on this.
Here’s another nitpick. Microwave ovens are not tuned to any resonance in the water molecule. I’m not positive that this is what you were saying, but it sounded kind of like it. Microwaves heat water molecules because water molecules are polar - the molecule has a more negative charge on one side, and more positive on the other, so the microwaves jiggle it around effectively. Molecules that don’t have this polar nature aren’t too affected by microwaves, such as those comprising “microwave safe” cookware.
Er… no.
Microwave ovens **are **indeed tuned to a vibrational resonance in the water molecule. If they weren’t, the molecule couldn’t absorb the radiation, a result of quantum mechanics and the quantization of vibrational modes (and a well known tenet of IR spectroscopy).
You are correct that the underlying cause is the polarity of the molecule though. Since water molecules are polar, when you excite them to a higher vibrational mode their dipole moment changes, making it an allowed transition (and thus allowing the radiation to be absorbed by the molecule). Microwave safe cookware is made out of material that does not have vibrational modes excited by the frequency of the microwave radiation, which means it’s not resonant at that frequency (whether due to lack of appropriate level structure or that any vibrational resonances it excites do not change the dipole moment, and thus aren’t allowed).
So yes, microwave ovens are tuned to a particular resonance of the water molecule, which exists because the molecule is polar. This is why the microwaves can “jiggle” the molecule around.
You can learn more about microwaves here and here, and IR spectroscopy here.
No, they are not. I didn’t point this out in my Staff Report, but it’s also important to note that resonances don’t really exist in liquid water anyway because of intermolecular cohesion. Part of my research for the Report took me to this site, which states, in part:
very interesting. A quick google search turns up lots of explanations that claim resonance, but only a few that state the explanation you cited (which does make a lot of sense, in fact – especially the bit about absorbing most of the radiation in the outer layer). I’ll see if i can dig up a microwave spectroscopy book tomorrow and get a confirmation of it, or at the least an absorption spectrum of liquid water. My apologies to CurtC. The rest of my explanation is true of resonant interactions, even though the microwave oven interaction may not be resonant.
Also, a clarification: we wouldn’t even be looking at a vibrational resonance, since those should be in the IR anyway – it would be a rotational transition if it were in the GHz range.
I used to have a handy dandy chart of the absorption of RF vs. various frequencies for water. Took a bit of googling, but I managed to find basically the same chart here:
http://www.physics.hku.hk/~tboyce/image_gifs/water.jpg
Note that this chart measures how much signal you get vs. the frequency, so the most energy absorption occurs where the graph is at its lowest, right around 2 GHz. As you can see from the graph, anything from about 0.8 GHz to about 4 or 5 GHz will work pretty well for a microwave oven. What the graph calls the “water hole” (around 2 or 3 Ghz) is the area where microwave ovens work best. For exactly the same reason that you get good heating in a microwave oven at these frequencies, you also get really lousy radio wave propogation in communication systems using these frequencies. You wouldn’t want to run a broadcast music radio station at these frequencies because the water in the atmosphere is going to absorb most of your signal.
As QED said, for microwave ovens they simply picked a frequency that was in this range that also didn’t interfere with existing equipment.
A very important difference for this discussion is the fact that once you get high enough in frequency, electromagnetic radiation becomes ionizing, meaning that it contains enough energy that it can strip electrons off of atoms. This can lead to cell damage and cancer. Alpha, beta, and gamma radiation is ionizing. Microwaves, light, and longer wave radiation (lower frequency radio waves) are not ionizing and don’t cause cell damage in the same manner. You don’t start getting ionization until you get up into the ultraviolet range of frequencies.
Please, ** Q.E.D.**, engineer_comp_geek, theckhd, CurtC, let’s focus on my last question.
Here is a claim re: earpieces. Does this sound scientifically rigorous, or does it lean toward the Land of Scientific BS?
A common misconception in the late 90’s was that Headsets were hailed as one of the best ways to reduce overall cranial exposure to cell phone emissions by greatly increasing the distance between the phone and head.
In 1998, RF Safe published scientific data supporting headsets increased RF Hazards greatly - especially with regards to fetal development because of relocation of the handset and wave-guide effects if a conducting link (wire) is used between a phone and user.
Then in 2000 there were worldwide concerns over the effectiveness of a headsets abilities to greatly reduce cranial field intensity by accredited studies (see footer stories) The reason for this was that under certain configurations the headset wire could act as an antenna and transmission line to channel significant non-thermal emissions directly into the ear and along the body.
The British Independent Group on Mobile Phones suggested headsets would be an ideal solution if they were used with filters to stop the headset wire from acting as an effective antenna. RF Safe offers a WireGuard for this problem; it is a simple clip on Ferrite filter for maximum radiation reduction. A headset using an RF Safe WireGuard typically emits only 2-5% of the radiant microwave energy at the earpiece that an ordinary headset device would emit, so like sun block it offers a precautionary option to reduce microwave exposure. Wired headsets can also be further shielded by inserting earbud shields under the foam earpiece cover to seal off the ear canal completely. Neither of the two methods of rf reduction above were manufactured directly for cell phone safety. The well tested rf shielding properties of Ferrite’s and reflective fabrics are backed by accredited testing labs around the world which proves without question RF Safe’s methodologies of shielding cell phone radiation is based on HARD science and engineering that has proven itself useful for many decades in controlling microwave energy for thousands of industrial purposes.
That covers shielding the headset that comes free with a phone or other aftermarket ones, but safer hands free options exist and are much more recommended by RF Safe.
That site doesn’t just lean towards the land of BS, it broke the dial on my BS meter. I’ll be sending you a bill for the repairs shortly.
For some reason all of the links direct me to another web site. I wasn’t able to find a single useful statistic on the page you mentioned, though it claims “RF Safe published scientific data supporting headsets increased RF Hazards greatly”. The only statistic on the page is that a ferrite significantly reduces the RF in a wire. That’s not exactly news. That’s what ferrites are for.
The site mentions brain damage, DNA damage, and fetal damage, none of which has been proven to occur from cell phone radiation. Unfortunately, those links don’t work so I can’t see exactly what they were saying about each of those. They also make the claim that “metal rims of eyeglasses created a conductive surface that intensified RF exposure to a cell phone users unprotected eyes.” This is similar to the fact that some RF will travel down through the earpiece. Both are basically true, but overstated and misleading in the context provided.
Some RF is going to travel down the wire, but it’s going to be much less than the amount of RF you’d get from having the antenna next to your ear. Some RF is going to be reflected off of your glasses into your eye. It’s going to be so small of an amount that you’d have a hard time measuring it.
Carnac: I agree with e.c.g, that site is BS.
<last hijack, i promise>
Q.E.D. et al: I spoke with my friendly neighborhood spectroscopist at work today, which both confirmed and refuted some of what we’ve said.
Microwave ovens aren’t tuned to a resonance, that much is plain. The hydrogen bonding in liquid water broadens the rotational absorption bands in that area significantly (“smeared out” as Q.E.D.'s source states) so that it absorbs all across the microwave region of the spectrum, and the absorption features are not at all sharp. So the term ‘resonance’ can’t be applied to this situation.
However, the microwaves do get absorbed and excite rotational modes in the molecule – otherwise you can’t say that the molecule rotates or “jiggles” as CurtC put it. You can’t talk about the waves providing energy to the water molecules to “jiggle” them without talking about absorption of photons, and to talk about absorption you have to talk about vibrational or rotational modes, which are quantized. It seems likely that the hydrogen bonding forces the water molecules into a state such that the excited rotational mode is a quasi-continuum state or an interesting mixing of rotational states, which would lead to the broad absorption band that e.c.g.'s diagram indicates.
So in summary:
Microwaves excite rotational modes of the water molecule, but are not situated at a particular resonance and thus don’t singly excite a particular mode.
</hijack>
At the risk of exposing myself to another round of minor ridicule …
-
I never claimed to be able to tell a turned-on cellphone from a turned-off one. When on but not in use, a cellphone emits a short transmission every so often, but the average power is negligible.
-
When a phone call is in progress and the phone is actively transmitting more or less continuously, and I have it held against my ear, THEN it generates a localized tension headache sensation in my head immediate adjacent to the antenna. If I switch the phone from right to left ear, the sensation moves with it. It fades within a minute or so of ending the call. In difficult locations where the phone would be expected to ramp up to higher power output, there’s often a distinct stepwise change in the intensity of the feeling.
-
The intensity of the sensation follows the inverse square law; holding the phone 3 or 4 inches from my head all-but eliminates the effect.
-
Who or what is “Randi”?
OK, some more ridicule 
…
Firstly, psychosomatic pain is real pain - it’s pain without a physical cause. Without some kind of blind test as suggested, to prove that your pain is not psychosomatic, your further perceptions of what makes it greater or lesser are not reliable.
And as an extra test - try holding your arm in the ‘phone’ position for a few minutes, without a phone. I get pains down the side of my face and neck if I do this - it’s not a natural position to hold your arm in for a length of time. And holding my hand further away from my head lessens the difficulty. (BTW, calling it a “tension headache” while claiming it’s caused by the phone is contradictory.)
And a further suggestion for a more mundane possibility - that you’re reacting in some way to the heat from the phone. The heat from the battery in the phone.