Cellphone signal concerns raised again

[LancelotSA]

Funny to see this come up again considering I was asking about the antennas of the roof of our building just a few weeks back...

A point I do feel needs to be made is that neither side seem to have any proof... you'd think with all the money they have the cell companies would be able to conclusively prove that not harm is caused... it would be in their interests to do so. They do not. This in itself is worrying...

 

[bdt]

No it would not, you are not a medical doctor so stop trying to tell me what you think you might understand. YOU are NOT a doctor.

Points you should consider mulling over: I never said I'm any kind of a doctor, but I'm also not without relevant and accurate knowledge on what is fundamentally a technical issue. And it is only from that angle that I have presumed to speak with any kind of authority.

For a so called learned person you act like a child. When you are proven wrong you insult others - well done.

"hello pot, this is the kettle calling" So, have you heard of irony then?

Those days of study paid off. By the way you might want to learn English, is it not HIMSELF?

Sadly, this being a text-only medium, the cracked Hillbilly tone of voice with which that would have been delivered didn't come through - I made no mistake, that was deliberate. But I'll allow for your not being able to see that.

practice what you preach, you came in here sighing and name calling so why not go study some more and report back when you have something useful to add.

I think you conflated me with someone else there, sport. So I sighed ..meh, if it wasn't directed at you, why get so excited about it - or did you just feel picked on, hmmm?

But yes keep attacking the man

As I said: irony.

 

[marine1]

A point I do feel needs to be made is that neither side seem to have any proof... you'd think with all the money they have the cell companies would be able to conclusively prove that not harm is caused... it would be in their interests to do so. They do not. This in itself is worrying...

Do you not remember how long it took the cigarette fiasco to come to light?? Where have you guys been?

 

[JK8]

Funny to see this come up again considering I was asking about the antennas of the roof of our building just a few weeks back...

A point I do feel needs to be made is that neither side seem to have any proof... you'd think with all the money they have the cell companies would be able to conclusively prove that not harm is caused... it would be in their interests to do so. They do not. This in itself is worrying...

About that, you were to close to the antennae, try waving a low watt bulb near it to see if it blinks.
I doubt you have been exposed to to much but I would avoid getting too close to them for prolonged periods of time.

 

[Turiko]

A low watt bulb does not come on. An LED with a pick-up coil will light up yes but LED's are sensitive enough.

The only way you can light a small torch bulb with a cellphone is to connect it directly to the two antenna terminals. In which case almost all the power will dissipate into the lamp and the phone will likely not be able to communicate with the basestation.

All this about a little bit of RF, but everyone remains silent about all the rays attacking us in "small doses" from outer space. They are enough to cause deterioration in DRAM chips hence the need for error correction on your PC mobo which is transparent to you and your code.

what about all the people who live in Auckland park? The RF is so strong there most people don't need TV antennae... There they are pumping 22kW into the air at anything between 154MHz and 860Mhz (which is close to the 947MHz used by GSM)

My point is we constantly have people making noise about stuff they know nothing about. I work for an outfit that manufactures RF products at very high frequencies.

 

[mancombseepgood]

They do have statistics that show what is harmful and what is not, 20 - 30m from the tower show NO harmful radiation, if you go closer than you might be in danger but its not instant. The best way to test harmful radiation when you close to a tower is to hold a low watt flourescent bulb, if it flickers or worst goes on, you might be in danger.

All I can say is I'm glad they don't use you to do their 'studies'...
Having said that, what sustained studies have been performed to prove the safety of the technology again? NONE.

 

[mancombseepgood]

My point is we constantly have people making noise about stuff they know nothing about. I work for an outfit that manufactures RF products at very high frequencies.

EXACTLY - how much has been done to test the long term effects of wireless signals? NOTHING. Not knowing the effects does not equate to NO EFFECTS. And remember that different people react differently to different stimuli. How willing are you to take part in a cohort study over the next 10 years to test the effects of RF on the human brain? Do you have kids? How about them?

 

[JK8]

All I can say is I'm glad they don't use you to do their 'studies'...
Having said that, what sustained studies have been performed to prove the safety of the technology again? NONE.

Lol true! Theres obviously better equipment to test it, I tried the light bulb thing once and it flickered a lil bit so its just my rendition of how to test it.

 

[LancelotSA]

A low watt bulb does not come on. An LED with a pick-up coil will light up yes but LED's are sensitive enough.

The only way you can light a small torch bulb with a cellphone is to connect it directly to the two antenna terminals. In which case almost all the power will dissipate into the lamp and the phone will likely not be able to communicate with the basestation.

All this about a little bit of RF, but everyone remains silent about all the rays attacking us in "small doses" from outer space. They are enough to cause deterioration in DRAM chips hence the need for error correction on your PC mobo which is transparent to you and your code.

what about all the people who live in Auckland park? The RF is so strong there most people don't need TV antennae... There they are pumping 22kW into the air at anything between 154MHz and 860Mhz (which is close to the 947MHz used by GSM)

My point is we constantly have people making noise about stuff they know nothing about. I work for an outfit that manufactures RF products at very high frequencies.

The logic in this argument always seems to go along the lines of there already being so much RF out there that we shouldn't worry about a lot more... I am sure you will find that there are probably more cell phones in use than TVs now. And does the fact that TV sends out a stronger signal mean we should not worry about anything else?

You may work for a company that manufactures RF products which means very little. In fact it probably means we should not take your word for anything as you have a conflict of interest.

You guys always admit that being close to the antenna is dangerous. This to the normal man just proves that there IS a risk. If you said we could sit in front of it all day every day and not suffer then we might believe that there is no problem.

The "safe" distance quoted always varies too. I know this is because of output etc but then the question begs to be asked as to who monitors these outputs? In our flats if you are on the top floor you would be less than 30 metres from the antenna! If the cell company is making the decision as to the safety of the residents do you not see that their might be a conflict of interest there too? The conversation might go along the lines of "hmmm if we pushed up the output/signal (what ever you pros call it) we could save money by having less towers... the residents might fry but it'll take 10 years so no one will be able to prove it by then". Are they really worried if it shortens my life by 1 year? Five years? Ten years? I think not.

If there is absolutely no danger why has the FCC and WHO made recommendations that cell towers not be installed near "kindergartens, schools and playgrounds"?

 

[spacemuis]

I see wired.com reports that the director of the Pittsburgh Cancer Research Institute sent out a memo to 3000 staff advisign them to apply the "precautionary principle" and minimise cell phone use and to prevent children from using them at all.

All this in spite of "no conclusive evidence" that cell use increases the risk of cancer.

I myself have taken steps to minimise my exposure to EMF radiation and that includes cell phone (use speakerphone, seldom use), wifi (installed ethernet cables instead and disabled the wifi radio on my adsl router), cordless phone (got wired units instead). Some of it you just can't avoid, like radio, tv and radiation from the proliferating soup of wireless technologies including:
- cell phone masts
- neotel cdma/wimax
- wimax from various ISP's
- iBurst
- public WIFI networks from e.g. wireless user groups
- WIFI hotspots (public & private)
- microwaves (don't own one)

...where's it gonna end? There's just no way all this can be good for us, especially not in the light of recent studies as reported in New Scientist and the BioMed journal that show that radio frequency radiation can affect protein expression OTHER THAN by the heating effect that is normally tested for. This, for me, is the smoking gun mechanism that those who wish to indict cell phone (and other types of electromagnetic) radiation have been looking for.

We're all part of a global health experiment with far too many variables to understand the interactions and impact on our health. In the case of such complex and still controversial issues with potentially HUGE health impact surely the only intelligent approach is by applying the precautionary principle?

I've taken this same approach with adverse dietary and environmental chemicals since my teens and am now enjoying the fruits of that: my health is great and I look at least ten years younger than my chronological age. There are something like 50,000 chemicals that have been introduced into our food, cosmetics, cleaning products, etc all with absolutely minimal safety testing and NO testing of mutually synergistic effects in combination...
NO THANKS, I'm opting out as far as possible from this insanity.

 

[marine1]

My point is we constantly have people making noise about stuff they know nothing about. I work for an outfit that manufactures RF products at very high frequencies.

You are assuming nothing happens. Maybe they should do a study and see what the effects are however this is South Africa and this could never be done properly anyway.

 

[marine1]

The logic in this argument always seems to go along the lines of there already being so much RF out there that we shouldn't worry about a lot more... I am sure you will find that there are probably more cell phones in use than TVs now. And does the fact that TV sends out a stronger signal mean we should not worry about anything else?

You may work for a company that manufactures RF products which means very little. In fact it probably means we should not take your word for anything as you have a conflict of interest.

You guys always admit that being close to the antenna is dangerous. This to the normal man just proves that there IS a risk. If you said we could sit in front of it all day every day and not suffer then we might believe that there is no problem.

The "safe" distance quoted always varies too. I know this is because of output etc but then the question begs to be asked as to who monitors these outputs? In our flats if you are on the top floor you would be less than 30 metres from the antenna! If the cell company is making the decision as to the safety of the residents do you not see that their might be a conflict of interest there too? The conversation might go along the lines of "hmmm if we pushed up the output/signal (what ever you pros call it) we could save money by having less towers... the residents might fry but it'll take 10 years so no one will be able to prove it by then". Are they really worried if it shortens my life by 1 year? Five years? Ten years? I think not.

If there is absolutely no danger why has the FCC and WHO made recommendations that cell towers not be installed near "kindergartens, schools and playgrounds"?

Good points there.

 

[mancombseepgood]

And as for comparing TV signals with Cellphone - my cellphone has never needed a special roof mounted aerial to get a good signal.

 

[Sherbang]

EXACTLY - how much has been done to test the long term effects of wireless signals? NOTHING. Not knowing the effects does not equate to NO EFFECTS. And remember that different people react differently to different stimuli. How willing are you to take part in a cohort study over the next 10 years to test the effects of RF on the human brain? Do you have kids? How about them?

This is not strictly true, replace NOTHING with 'not very much!' There have been at least 4 studies in this area, the most well known being the Danish one as reported here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16059841/
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/98/23/1707

"Scientists tracked 420,000 Danish cell phone users, including 52,000 who had gabbed on the gadgets for 10 years or more, and some who started using them 21 years ago.

They matched phone records to the famed Danish Cancer Registry that records every citizen who gets the disease — and reported Tuesday that cell-phone callers are no more likely than anyone else to suffer a range of cancer types."

Other studies include:
*Tokyo Women's Medical University compared phone use in 322 brain cancer patients with 683 healthy people and found that regularly using a mobile did not significantly affect the likelihood of getting brain cancer. "Using our newly developed and more accurate techniques, we found no association between mobile phone use and cancer, providing more evidence to suggest they don't cause brain cancer," Naohito Yamaguchi, who led the research, said. His team's findings were published in the British Journal of Cancer.

*Radiation from cell phones doesn’t appear to cause cancer in rats, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The research team exposed rats to the two most common types of cell phone radiation for four hours a day, five days a week for two years. “We tried to mimic a high level of exposure that humans might experience,” says study leader Joseph L. Roti Roti, Ph.D., professor of radiation oncology, of biochemistry and molecular biophysics and of cell biology and physiology. “We found no statistically significant increases in any tumor type, including brain, liver, lung or kidney, compared to the control group.”