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Comment by achrono | Hacker News Reader

> it's of course very silly

Beg to differ -- this is quite valuable as a new kind of paging device that you want to keep around instead of your higher end iPhone's battery constantly draining, and more importantly, for people who'd like to keep radiation at a distance.

(Yeah, no, I'm not saying you should keep away from radiation, just that some people do prefer to and it's therefore a market segment.)

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Doesn’t the watch also emit radiation?

Yes, but this way of ensconcing it reduces the radiation exposure since the device now likely won't be kept constantly in contact with the body.

You don't plan to carry this in a pocket?

I think their point is pocket as opposed to against wrist the whole time.

Or hanging around your neck with a lanyard.

Isn't the biggest danger to your reproductive organs anyway? That would make the pocket the worst location.

You would certainly notice if your genitals were absorbing enough energy via RF emissions to pose any kind of hazard. You would probably notice long before that threshold.

That makes no sense. Phones and watches mostly use 4g and wifi band signals which both go through thin plastic shells and indeed your entire body without interference.

Distance decreases the intensity of exposure. I'm not trying to achieve complete avoidance, just a decrease of risk.

To those who down-voted (actually or even as a psychological reaction) my original comment: consider for a moment that while this might be a fringe opinion, it is not without some evidence.

https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/07/01/health-risks-of-cell-ph...

If you think rats getting cancer from radiation is not relevant evidence, that's your personal opinion, not the most scientifically validated hypothesis.

From the linked NIH page about the study (via the Wayback Machine):

> “The exposures used in the studies cannot be compared directly to the exposure that humans experience when using a cell phone,” said John Bucher, Ph.D., NTP senior scientist. “In our studies, rats and mice received radio frequency radiation across their whole bodies. By contrast, people are mostly exposed in specific local tissues close to where they hold the phone. In addition, the exposure levels and durations in our studies were greater than what people experience.”

'Beware the man of one study.'

Sure, but is causing a little damage to a tiny part of the body acceptable? Exposure levels and durations -- common sense would suggest those are going up with people using more devices for more time every day.

I was not inclined to believe this whole radiation business for such reasons too -- "it's one study", "if it were so bad this would make front-page of the NYT", "entire labs of scientists and governments cannot be lying about this", "it's non-ionizing radiation, that's why it's safe you idiot!" etc.

What made me look a little deeper was Huberman's AMA on EMF. It's become fashionable to dunk on him now but it gave me a pause in that I began to wonder if there might be some merit to this after all.

Ultimately, this is like assessing the evidence for any other controversial topic -- unless you're working in R&D on radiation yourself, individual retail consumers of research like us can rely on the published evidence only to a certain extent. Beyond that, it's your priors, risk thresholds and heuristics for who to trust that will determine what you believe.

Would that be Andrew Huberman? The podcaster and self-promoter whose former research specialism has nothing remotely to do with RF, or indeed radiation of any variety? You should consider the possibility it has become fashionable to dunk on him because he deserves to be dunked on.

> Sure, but is causing a little damage to a tiny part of the body acceptable?

I'll answer that question once you've shown credibly that it is meaningful in this context.

Huberman is not citing any evidence or meaningful research in his conclusions. He’s fear mongering over a fringe concern without merit. He’s dunked on because he leans on bunk science

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