recently getting worried about bluetooth headphones and EMF radiation

[Flying Sausages]

We all going to die sooner or later so you might enjoy your life fun moments while you can.

[Kisai]

On 10/31/2019 at 10:24 AM, kofman13 said:

I was watching reviews about to get new Airpods Pro and i watched  This video and got worried. tests here video show that the EMF radiation from air pods pro is 3x the healthy limit, 100 times more than normal cheap bluetooth $20 buds... any one else worried about this? I then researched and most bluetooth headphones especially with active noise cancellation also have tons of EMF radiation. And people are using them for hours and hours a day and then i read about the effects on cells they did in tests with the emitted by bluetooth headphones and its really scary. If im using headphones only 1-2 hours a day what do you think the risks are?

 

There's some health concerns, but the power levels that bluetooth operates at is not very high at all. The more concerning thing is having the phone to your head, because that sends the radio waves THROUGH your head. Now the problem with "ear buds" that are wireless is that each ear isn't independently talking to the base station in the phone, so that means YES IT IS GOING THROUGH YOUR HEAD.

 

With that said, most EMI/RF worries are overblown by people who are fishing for a lawsuit. There is no such thing as EMI allergies, there is no scientific basis for it. At worst, certain frequencies at certain power levels (2.4Ghz is the same frequency your conventional microwave, which operates at hundreds of watts, to cook food with) might make your skin a little warm. That's from the electronic parts warming up, not the radio. 

 

I had cell phones back in 1998, they were big, they got VERY VERY fricken hot. They operated on analog 850Mhz spectrum, you could not put these these phones to your ears because it would burn your skin. What we get today is a fraction of a fraction. Like at most bluetooth operates at 100mw. That's enough power to be seen from 100 meters away. Your average cell phone does not operate in this mode or it would sync with everyone' s headset in a building. (Samsung's apparently do this, but not iPhones) 

 

Likewise, 4G (LTE) operates at 200mw at most. 3G devices maximum power was 2 watts on 850/900, or 1 watt on 1800/1900Mhz.

https://www.ericsson.com/4a2921/assets/local/publications/conference-papers/output_power_levels_of_4g_ue.pdf

 

 

 

 

[Kilrah]

On 11/2/2019 at 3:57 AM, Vitamanic said:

Toss your cat into your microwave and run it for a few minutes and let us know how that exposure to non-ionizing radiation went.

But that has nothing to do with the microwave radiation itself, it's just the same effect you'd get by putting your cat in a regular oven.

 

Microwave radiation causes heat, in this case becasue it's at the right frequency to be well absorbed and converted to heat by water, and dumping 1000W of heat into a living body doesn't end well regardless of the means.

[Roswell]

15 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

But that has nothing to do with the microwave radiation itself, it's just the same effect you'd get by putting your cat in a regular oven.

 

Microwave radiation causes heat, in this case becasue it's at the right frequency to be well absorbed and converted to heat by water, and dumping 1000W of heat into a living body doesn't end well regardless of the means.

It's definitely not the same effect, a regular oven and a microwave have entirely different modes of action. It also has everything to do with radiation because that's... how a microwave works, via radiation!

 

Regardless, my comment doesn't appear to make sense anymore because either a mod or the poster significantly edited their comment down and changed the context. They were arguing that all non ionized radiation is safe and anyone that believes otherwise is "retarded". So I quickly gave him some examples of unsafe non ionized radiation exposure.

 

 

[Bitter]

On 11/1/2019 at 7:11 PM, xentropa said:

There is a difference between 1000 watts in your microwave and the 1 or 2 watts in the earphone.

 

Furthermore, microwave ovens operate at 2.46 gigahertz which is the resonance frequency of water molecules.  microwave ovens heat food up by vibrating water molecules.  A microwaved cat will suffer some bad burns, but it will not get cancer.  No data transmission band uses that exact frequency.  

 

 

https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-does-your-microwave-oven-mess-with-the-wi-fi-connec-1666117933

But they do get close enough to sometimes interfere especially if the microwave is between the base station and computer.

[Kenpachi1985]

Its disturbing to see how many people believe in false health informations and such things. Just because someone at youtube said "x", people start to panic and/or worry without even checking the facts.

Thats how stupid things like flat earth, anti-vax, homeopathy and much more spread - people spreading false concerns without having a clue most of the time about the real facts. Or even worse - they flat out lie about it.

[Totally Average Gameplay]

On 11/1/2019 at 1:39 AM, imreloadin said:

 

In short being outside on a sunny day is waaay worse for your health than wearing wireless earbuds...

This is a same comparison as eating bananas and worrying that this can kill you with its dose. You do these things on a daily basis. The onset won't appear until you grow old, like waaaaay old.

[Guest]

On 11/1/2019 at 6:24 AM, kofman13 said:

I was watching reviews about to get new Airpods Pro and i watched  This video and got worried. tests here video show that the EMF radiation from air pods pro is 3x the healthy limit, 100 times more than normal cheap bluetooth $20 buds... any one else worried about this? I then researched and most bluetooth headphones especially with active noise cancellation also have tons of EMF radiation. And people are using them for hours and hours a day and then i read about the effects on cells they did in tests with the emitted by bluetooth headphones and its really scary. If im using headphones only 1-2 hours a day what do you think the risks are?

There are very little risks. Stronger radiation comes from UV rays, so when you're on the beach or out in the sun without sunscreen, your body is actually actively repairing the damage done by UV radiation, much stronger than radiation emitted by the AirPods Pro. 

 

So most likely, even if the radiation is enough to cause little damage, your body can correct easily. 

 

Also - don't take too much credit on tests which use on a small number of cells, or individual cells in media. We are a multi-cellular organism, and as such have a high cell turnover regardless - in fact your skin on the outside is made up of dead cells. 

 

[WoodyWoo]

On 11/1/2019 at 4:24 AM, kofman13 said:

I was watching reviews about to get new Airpods Pro and i watched  This video and got worried. tests here video show that the EMF radiation from air pods pro is 3x the healthy limit, 100 times more than normal cheap bluetooth $20 buds... any one else worried about this? I then researched and most bluetooth headphones especially with active noise cancellation also have tons of EMF radiation. And people are using them for hours and hours a day and then i read about the effects on cells they did in tests with the emitted by bluetooth headphones and its really scary. If im using headphones only 1-2 hours a day what do you think the risks are?

Im studying mu final year of nuclear physics and can say this with confidence the EMF is non ionizing its no different to the radiation you get from your phone or PC. The truth is every piece of tech emits some sort radiation, the difference is it is most of the time non ionizing. There will be no risks from using them.

[Bramimond]

The way I see it, we don't know. It doesn't look that dangerous, but neither did X-Rays in 1895 nor cigarettes in the 1950s. Remembering this history obviously leads to a trust issue. Scientists assured everyone that smoking was healthy just 70 years ago, if memory serves well. Speaking of memory, I remember reading about London's sparrows disappearing shortly after cell phone towers were deployed and stories about cell phones increasing your risk for cancer if you hold them to your body while sending/receiving data.

 

In the end, it's all about whom you decide to trust. Personally, I choose to trust no one that is sure that these types of radiations are just fine. It could be the same type of people that were wrong about smoking. I wouldn't know, so I won't trust. Unless proven beyond a doubt to be safe I consider radiation harmful and try to avoid it. Though, I haven't plastered my walls with tinfoil... yet.

[tikker]

9 hours ago, Bramimond said:

Unless proven beyond a doubt to be safe I consider radiation harmful and try to avoid it.

The problem is that one can never prove something is 100% safe. We can only study things and their effects and conclude it's not unsafe, which is at the moment what is going on with all this radiation stuff. It hasn't been around long enough to do true long term studies.

 

Standards have been set to ensure emission is within safe levels, or that it is contained. Your CD/DVD/BluRay player/burner isn't safe either, there's a powerful laser inside that could damage your eyes. Microwaves operate on 100s of Watts, but are shielded so they don't cook you along with your meal. The most non-ionizing radiation can do is heat you up, which at the powerlevels and frequencies that cellphones etc. operate on, is unlikely to be significant. So far we have not been able to prove adverse effects from cellphone and similar radiation.

[Guest]

On 10/31/2019 at 5:39 PM, imreloadin said:

 

In short being outside on a sunny day is waaay worse for your health than wearing wireless earbuds...

As is not going out and getting daylight. There is a growing problem of vitamin deficiency due to people not getting that light. Slightly off topic but just pointing out there can be good and bad in everything.

[WereCatf]

2 hours ago, Bramimond said:

Scientists assured everyone that smoking was healthy just 70 years ago, if memory serves well.

I assume you haven't watched any Big Tobacco - documentaries; there were a bunch of studies that did, indeed, claim that smoking is actually good for you and all that, but those were paid studies by Big Tobacco. They were not peer-reviewed studies nor conducted by independent parties. Big Tobacco did threaten plenty of people that tried to voice out that tobacco is harmful and, while I'm not aware of any evidence of it, they likely had some of these people murdered.

 

This is to say, just saying "scientists assured everyone" is horribly misleading. It was not the scientific community that did that, it was paid-for entities that did.

[greenhorn]

2 hours ago, tikker said:

[...] Standards have been set to ensure emission is within safe levels, or that it is contained. Your CD/DVD/BluRay player/burner isn't safe either, there's a powerful laser inside that could damage your eyes. [...] The most non-ionizing radiation can do is heat you up, which at the powerlevels and frequencies that cellphones etc. operate on, is unlikely to be significant.

I totally agree with that assessment. I wanted to add something for those of you who are afraid of cell phones because they can operate in the same frequency range as microwaves (by the way, the 2.4 GHz band used by Wifi and other wireless technologies is also in that band).

My cell phone currently reports a signal strength (signal power) of -91 dBm, which equals 10^(-91/10) mW = 7.94*10^(-10) mW =  7.94*10^(-13) W < 10^(-12) W. If you compare that to power levels commonly found inside a microwave, you have hundreds of watts, so you are in the 10^2 W range, which is 14 orders of magnitude higher than the signal I am getting from my mobile network's base station. So in short, there is a very, very large power difference between those two scenarios, so it would not be wise to throw them into the same bin.

[YellowJersey]

Explaining the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation is why my sister in law hates me so much because I force fed her a dose of science and reality when she wanted to indulge in her crystals and homeopathy. (context: she was bragging about how she was going to stop using her phone and turn off the wifi router when she got pregnant with my poor brother's kid)

 

 Ionizing radiation, if it hasn't already been mentioned, is radiation (ie, light) with a short enough wavelength (ie, enough energy) to knock electrons off of atoms, which makes the molecules those atoms are apart of (like in your DNA) more likely to bond with other atoms/molecules and cause problems (like mutations in DNA). But, as has been mentioned, ionizing radiation starts with UV light and goes into X-rays and then gamma rays, none of which are involved in bluetooth, which uses radio waves. Radio waves, fyi, have significantly less energy than visible light, infrared, or microwaves. So there's not much reason to fret.

 

[Bramimond]

8 hours ago, tikker said:

It hasn't been around long enough to do true long term studies. [...] Your CD/DVD/BluRay player/burner isn't safe either, there's a powerful laser inside that could damage your eyes. Microwaves operate on 100s of Watts, but are shielded so they cook you along with your meal. [...] So far we have not been able to prove adverse effects from cellphone and similar radiation.

Because it hasn't been around long enough I tend to play it safe and avoid wherever I can. The disc player example is a little bit ridiculous, as not pointing a laser at your eye is different from radiation and I don't have a microwave, either, since some doubts were raised about it changing the molecular structure of the food and I can do just as well without a microwave. If it doesn't enhance my life by that much and it's no trouble to avoid, I will play it safe. Why unnecessarily put yourself at risk? Now, I could do research on that microwave claim and waste hours trying to figure this out or I can just not buy a microwave, which is far simpler. (Besides, microwaved food never tasted that good.)

 

5 hours ago, WereCatf said:

[...] but those were paid studies by Big Tobacco. They were not peer-reviewed studies nor conducted by independent parties. [...]

I can't tell the difference, to be honest. Back in the day you had scientists that did assure everyone it was safe. How am I supposed to know who is paid by whom? You could be a paid shill yourself, there's no way for me to know and I'm not inclined to waste my life on doing the research on everything myself. But I can assure you that now just as then there are business interests at stake and they probably are more worried about their bottom line than they are about your health.

 

That's why I'm saying it's a trust issue and I'm not trusting anyone on the Internet. Even the "true" scientific community can be wrong about things. If I can avoid it, I'll not be a test subject to figure out 50 years from now that it was responsible for my incurable disease. There's plenty of people willing to bet their health on this, I don't have to be one of them. So I don't microwave my food and won't let plastic touch it either and I'll avoid radiation as good as I can. It's not a big hassle. Worst case I worried over nothing.

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, Bramimond said:

and I'll avoid radiation as good as I can

You're sitting in front of a computer in a building with electricity running through wires -- you're already getting soaked in radiation.

[Bramimond]

@WereCatf

That's beside the point I'm making here. What I'm saying is that if you're worried and you can avoid it easily, then just avoid it. Getting reliable information on this will be a trust issue and my standpoint is that I do not trust just anyone.

 

Also, what you're saying is stupid. "Look at all this radiation around you, don't worry about this nuclear waste we dump across the street, you won't even notice."

[tikker]

23 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

Because it hasn't been around long enough I tend to play it safe and avoid wherever I can.

Fair enough, a little precaution never hurts, but it also isn't new. As I said, we cannot 100% proof that anything we do or eat or get exposed to is safe, just that within the limits that have been set we cannot find any evidence that there are harmful effects.

26 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

Now, I could do research on that microwave claim and waste hours trying to figure this out or I can just not buy a microwave, which is far simpler.

If you are truly concerned there is a risk, then you should do your research in my opinion. Cooking an egg changes it's molecular properties, but it's not like they'll suddenly give you cancer after cooking and eating them. All these terms of "changes molecular structure" and "radiation" are so broad, they don't tell you anything about whether it's safe or not, yet are perfect for spreading fear of the unknown. You need to know what changes, what type of radiation it is, how powerful it is etc. to say that. If you consider educating yourself about that is a waste of time, that's up to you, but we have no reason to believe microwaves or cell signals are harmful to us, whereas we have found links between exposure to UV radiation from the Sun to skin cancer, for example.

[Kawaii Koneko]

15 hours ago, Vitamanic said:

It's definitely not the same effect, a regular oven and a microwave have entirely different modes of action. It also has everything to do with radiation because that's... how a microwave works, via radiation!

 

Regardless, my comment doesn't appear to make sense anymore because either a mod or the poster significantly edited their comment down and changed the context. They were arguing that all non ionized radiation is safe and anyone that believes otherwise is "retarded". So I quickly gave him some examples of unsafe non ionized radiation exposure.

 

 

I saw your post before you changed it and I have to point out the error you made using melanoma as an example of non-ionizing radiation actually being harmful. Aside from genetics and possible exposure to harmful agents, it is the ionizing radiation from the sun which are widely attributed by the medical community as being the leading cause of melanoma. 

 

So I'm not sure what you meant by saying "Tell that to people with melanoma" in response to the claim that non-ionization radiation is safe. 

 

1 hour ago, Bramimond said:

Because it hasn't been around long enough I tend to play it safe and avoid wherever I can.

RFR has been around for at least a hundred years.

 

1 hour ago, Bramimond said:

...I don't have a microwave, either, since some doubts were raised about it changing the molecular structure of the food and I can do just as well without a microwave. If it doesn't enhance my life by that much and it's no trouble to avoid, I will play it safe. Why unnecessarily put yourself at risk? Now, I could do research on that microwave claim and waste hours trying to figure this out or I can just not buy a microwave, which is far simpler.

Key word being doubts. Doubts are always raised. Many because people lack even a fundamental understanding of science, medicine, engineering, etc.

 

I'd rather just do a little research than choose to alter my life or my family's. I mean, doubts have been raised over vaccinations. I could do my research but why not just not have my kid's vaccinated? It's far easier. Now granted, this is an extreme example of what you are saying but my point remains. Don't just base your life decisions over doubts when you could instead educate yourself.

 

1 hour ago, Bramimond said:

...I'll avoid radiation as good as I can. It's not a big hassle. 

It's only pretty much practically impossible for most people. You can't even walk outside without being exposed to RFR and other types of radiation, both ionization and non-ionization.

[Kawaii Koneko]

Mods, please delete this.

[Roswell]

27 minutes ago, Kawaii Koneko said:

I saw your post before you changed it and I have to point out the error you made using melanoma as an example of non-ionizing radiation actually being harmful. Aside from genetics and possible exposure to harmful agents, it is the ionizing radiation from the sun which are widely attributed by the medical community as being the leading cause of melanoma. 

As someone that's had melanoma (twice), I've become rather familiar. Your misinformed, only shortwave UV is considered ionizing and it's entirely filtered by the atmosphere.

[Bramimond]

54 minutes ago, Kawaii Koneko said:

Key word being doubts. Doubts are always raised. Many because people lack even a fundamental understanding of science, medicine, engineering, etc.

 

I'd rather just do a little research than choose to alter my life or my family's.

I'm not smart enough to solve this through a little research, I'm afraid. The stuff about microwaves was brought up by someone smarter in my family, who I trust. So since then, no one in my family uses microwaves anymore since I think it was five years ago. We've been happy with this decision up till now.

 

I'm repeating myself here, but it's fundamentally a trust issue. Of course there are lots of people not smart enough to make sense of what scientists do. Highlighting the difference in intelligence/knowledge doesn't change this. The problem is the deep mistrust towards "authority", which is reasonable, since lots of lying was revealed. And you don't have to be a scientist to figure out that it's not a good idea to trust in someone who repeatedly lied to you in the past.

 

So you get people who understand that they have been lied to, but can't differentiate between the liars and honest scientists, so they can't trust anybody and if doubts are raised on anything they also lack the means to verify things, since they just ain't smart enough for that. It's understandable that you get people suspicious of even vaccines. What are you supposed to do if you cannot distinguish between what's harmful and what isn't other than avoiding the stuff doubt is cast on? Would you drink a potion A says will heal you and B says will kill you when you don't have the means of telling which of them tells the truth? Even worse in case of vaccines is, that vaccines are associated with the government and the government are known liars. The guy living next door never has lied to you before and says vaccines are bad.

 

Education won't fix that. If you're not smart enough education can only get you so far. And the trust is already lost. From my perspective the situation is unfixable.

[Kawaii Koneko]

23 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

As someone that's had melanoma (twice), I've become rather familiar. Your misinformed, only shortwave UV is considered ionizing and it's entirely filtered by the atmosphere.

You're thinking of UVC. That is entirely filtered by our atmosphere. UVA and UVB aren't, not entirely. That is why we still make contact with them. All forms of UV can cause photochemcial responses at the cellular level. This is why on a very technical level they may not fit within the general definition of ionizing radiation, they are often considered to be ionizing. That's why I referred to it that way.

 

But it certainly isn't the RFR or other types of non-ionizing radiation that have been discussed in this thread that is responsible for you melanoma.

[Roswell]

5 minutes ago, Kawaii Koneko said:

You're thinking of UVC. That is entirely filtered by our atmosphere. UVA and UVB aren't, not entirely. That is why we still make contact with them. All forms of UV can cause photochemcial responses at the cellular level. This is why on a very technical level they may not fit within the general definition of ionizing radiation, they are often considered to be ionizing. That's why I referred to it that way.

 

But it certainly isn't the RFR or other types of non-ionizing radiation that have been discussed in this thread that is responsible for you melanoma.

Read the first paragraph: https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/radiation_nonionizing/

 

And another for good measure: https://science.howstuffworks.com/radiation2.htm

 

I'm sure you'll double down because you're convinced you're right.