Rant:
All non-ionizing radiation is harmless except in acute excessive doses (heat from excessive microwaves, IR light, etc). There are no cumulative effects from non-ionizing radiation that are any worse then stepping out on a sunny day. In fact, exposure to reasonable levels of non-ionizing radiation is less harmful than being outside on a sunny day due to the fact that there is some ionizing UV light in sunlight.
All radio waves, visible light, cosmic rays, microwaves, x-rays, gamma rays, wireless communications, power lines, tanning lights, and just about everything around you puts out some sort of radiation. Radiation isn't harmful at reasonable levels and there's no evidence to say that non-ionizing radiation can do damage to your body in any way outside of acute, immediate effects of intense exposure (heat from IR light, induced electric currents from low frequency radiation...). Ionizing radiation on the other hand can have cumulative effects on your body due to the way it can modify your DNA. Ionizing radiation is put out by cosmic and solar rays (mostly deflected by our magnetic field), x-ray machines (that x-ray of your broken arm will do more damage to you than a lifetime of cellphone use), and your local tanning salon will bombard you with both ionizing and non-ionizing UV radiation.
If you look at a picture of the electromagnetic spectrum, you will see that all ionizing radiation is higher frequency and lower wavelengths than visible light. (UV light to "cosmic rays") All non-ionizing radiation is visible light, microwaves, radio waves, etc.
Yes, if you had a cell phone radio that operated in the microwave part of the spectrum, you could have problems due to heat generated by the microwaves, but your microwave in your house operates at many hundreds of watts. The little radio in your phone operates on milliwatts, and it isn't necessarily even close to the wavelength of a microwave used to heat food.
Radio stations have been using transmitters with far more power than your microwave since the birth of radio, and this simply causes NO problems from the radiation.
Should you be worried about excessive radiation of any kind? Yes you should, but you also have to keep in mind the intensity and distance from you. Visible light is radiation, so it's easy to think about. You have an old flashlight using an incandescent bulb. When the batteries are full, it can be hard to look directly into it, but it won't cause any long term cumulative harm. When the batteries are low, you can easily look directly at the light source until you get tired of doing so with no worry of any harm whatsoever. This is the same thing as a cell phone versus a cell phone tower. The only difference is that you can't see it. Put that same full flashlight on top of a tower, and the light will be easy to look at from a distance because the radiation dissipates.
|