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Comment by SigmundA | Hacker News Reader

Thats the way I read it too, change 5 millimeters to 2 millimeters following inverse-square law and no surprise you get a higher absorption rate. Thats not "emitting twice the allowed radiation", thats just being closer to the source.

Still no proof this extremely low amount of power causes any biological issues. Its literally the same power level as an LED flashing next to your head, its just in the RF range vs visual and non-ionizing unlike say going out in the sun which is a 1000 watt per square meter radiator emitting UV radiation know to cause cancer.

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It's not necessarily a good argument to compare to sunlight, because we also have take into account biological adaptation.

Sunlight has existed for millions of years on this planet, and therefore all biological life has had time to adapt to it.

Human skin for example, has both a protection mechanism, in the form of melanin, and a utilizing mechanism, in the form of vitamin D production.

So these are the two things you would normally expect to happen with adaptation: protection and utilization.

But when it comes to RF radiation, especially in the microwave range, the natural background flux is not 1000W/m2, but 10^-18 W/m2 (!), at 1 GHz.

The current safety limits again are set at around 10W/m2 @ 1Ghz. That's a difference to the background of over a quintillion times (18 zeroes). See image here for reference:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dt2NMoJU4AE2oYY.jpg

Because the background has been 10^-18 W/m2, we can consider it basically nonexistant, and therefore there has been no adaptation to these frequencies, no utilization, and no protection.

But there is another difference to natural sunlight also, and that is that man-made RF is not continuous, but pulsed.

Consider what would happen, if the sun suddenly started pulsing on and off a few thousand times per second.

These are some of the factors that need to be taken into consideration. It is not as simple as just saying that pulsed microwaves are just like sunlight.

From both a physics standpoint, but especially from a biological standpoint, they are not the same, and that is where the problems come from.

I think its a very good argument to compare because its based on our understanding of physics.

Even with all our adaptations we still get cancer from sunlight on a regular basis.

It is easy to understand why, UVB light is near ionizing has enough energy to damage human DNA causing cancer.

Below UVB there is not enough energy to cause DNA damage through a known mechanism except heating.

Heating directly related to power absorption, a 1500 watt microwave will cook you a 300 milliwatt pulsing microwave transmitter will not heat your flesh enough to cause any damage.

We have a pretty good grip on how various frequencies of radiation affect human biology and cell phone emissions are orders of magnitude lower power that whats needed to heat flesh enough to cause damage you literally get more heat directly from the phone being warm than RF absorption.

I don't propose we stop looking for any possible biological activity due to microwave (or any other spectrum) but repeated test have not shown this to be the case and to do so would mean there is some new mechanism for this to do so.

If you are scared of 300 milliwatt RF emissions I would be more scared of multi-watt LED light emissions due to higher energy levels (terahertz vs gigahertz).

You do understand that the ionizing argument is a logical fallacy?

If I say A is dangerous because of X, it is a logical fallacy to say B is safe because lack of X.

Lack of X is not an argument for safety, therefore you cannot use lack of ionization as any form of proof for safety. The only thing you can say, is that it does not ionize. It does not say anything else related to any other biological effects.

With regards to the mechanism and the observed effects in laboratory and animal experiments, here is the proposed pathophysiology:

https://i.imgur.com/xNzDsPo.png

If you want the TL;DR, the summary is: there are other ways to cause cellular and genetic disruption, than just ionizing radiation or by heating effects.

And yes, we have a good grip on the science: here is a graph of peer-reviewed scientific publications, showing biological effects much below current exposure limits:

https://i.imgur.com/14uxRru.png

The problem is, this science has not been incorporated into the current safety standards. This science shows, there exists non-thermal non-ionizing mechanisms of harm, that have not been taken into consideration.

But if you trust the over 20 year old FCC guidelines, then of course you will think everything is fine.

It is not a question of being scared, it is a question of looking at the science, and updating our understanding, and then look at the technology with this new understanding, so that we can make it safer.

It is most definitely not a fallacy to argue that EM radiation below a certain energy threshold has no proven mechanism other than heating to damage DNA.

Maybe we haven't found it yet, and we should always keep looking, but it is no more likely to be caused by microwave or visible light at this point.

The images you posted are to a paper done by Martin L. Pall who is a known scaremonger for EMF and has been met with skepticism [1]. It certainly is not proof of microwave being dangerous to the human body at power levels emitted by cellphones, its a theory that has yet do be proven of a possible pathway that is non thermal.

1. https://betweenrockandhardplace.wordpress.com/2020/01/15/int...

Thank you, those are great images

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