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Comment by apsec112 | Hacker News Reader

I call BS. There is no known plausible mechanism for this - radio waves from phones are much longer wavelength and much lower power than the infrared radiation emitted by everything at room temperature. The study itself is paywalled, but from the abstract it appears to be small, based on a survey rather than a randomized trial, and doesn't mention controlling for obvious confounders like socioeconomic status.

Beware The Man Of One Study: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-s...

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Smartphones usually also have WiFi, which is the correct wavelength to heat things up.

The amount of energy involved is tiny though, and we have a variety of systems that continually manage temperatures throughout our body.

It's like people who go crazy about radiation because it destroys DNA. Yes, it does, but that's happening continuously and is under continuous repair. Adding a small amount of energy to a system in homeostatis changes nothing.

With chronic exposure, the rate of damage will eventually exceed the rate of repair as cell energy is depleted. If you examine the sci.literature on biological effects of RF, you'll discover that oxidative stress and free radical formation following non-thermal RF exposure is well documented.

WiFi: 2.4 GHz

GSM: 0.9 - 1.9 GHz (UMTS, LTE go up to ~3 GHz)

Microwave ovens: 0.9 - 2.4 GHz [1]

Seems like more or less the same wavelength to me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Principles

Your microwave work at around 800W, not your phone (2W for the worst)

My 800W microwave is shielded and sitting on the countertop at least several feet away from me; my phone is in my left side pocket for probably 10+ hours a day. I'm not arguing that there's any danger (I'm also not arguing that it's safe), but that's a huge difference which needs to be accounted for.

this topic is nothing new, I've seen it in various forms for at least 10 years. to have conclusive results, long term studies need to be done, which AFAIK so far haven't been done properly.

in this case, I don't get why anybody at least slightly sane would carry wound 10+ hours a day cell phone in their pocket. if all this is true, and you get "damaged", you can blame only yourself then...

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