[p2p-research] Health implications of wireless
Tere Vadén
tere.vaden at uta.fi
Mon Feb 11 11:23:19 CET 2008
I have been following these discussions with one eye after having been
involved with some neuroscientists doing studies in Sweden (Antti
Revonsuo, Sakari Kallio).
Last week, we had a discussion in my place of work, a university dept,
over the placement of wifi routers. A colleague had measured top
emissions of over 1000 milliwats from the routers at peak bursts (over
100 times more than regular mobile phones). If some people get,
allegedly, trouble over mobiles, then the wifis are much more of a
problem. (We decided to move the routers further away).
The main problem, as I understand it, is that the official standards
(like the IEEE or the Finnish ministry for health regulations) are based
on fairly old research that looks only/mainly at the temperature
elevation. What the people found in Sweden & other places in the late
90's/early 00's was that mobile radiation (not talking to the phone) had
an effect on *cognitive* function. There are also the effects on
*biological* function, discussed in this thread. Now the problem is that
the known physical effect, i.e., elevated temperature, has no known
causal link to either the cognitive or the biological effects. This
means that the radiation is doing something (the cognitive, biological
effects), the causal mechanism of which we do not know, and which,
accordingly, is not taken into account in the standards & regulations.
The whole is complicated by the fact that all of this (mobiles, wifis)
is waves, producing real-life interference phenomena that are very hard
to study in laboratory conditions. (Imagine an airport bus after a plane
has landed and everybody switches their mobiles and laptops on at the
same time -- the waves are bound to interact in messy ways.)
Well, what left the most profound impression on me was that none of the
neuroscientists I knew allowed their children using mobiles.
Samuel Rose wrote:
>
> *http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/rf_mw.htm
>
> *
>
> Quote:
>
> /"A large body of data exists on the biological effects of exposure to
> RFEM fields. Much of this literature describes experimental
> investigations with laboratory animals, tissue preparations, or cells.
> There are also several epidemiologic studies. Consequences of exposure
> to RFEM energy that have been reported in the literature at various
> exposure levels include effects on behavior, the central nervous system,
> blood parameters, the immune response, the endocrine system, metabolism
> and thermoregulation, reproduction, the auditory system and the eyes./
>
> /Several standard-setting organizations have evaluated the data on
> biological effects and have determined that a threshold SAR of about 4
> W/kg averaged over the whole body is the level at or above which adverse
> health effects may occur in human beings. This SAR is equivalent to
> about 2.5 times the resting energy production rate of the human body.
> Organizations that have used 4 W/kg as a basis for standard-setting
> include the ANSI (ANSI, 1982
> <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/rf_mw.htm#ANSI-82>), the IEEE
> (ANSI/IEEE, 1992
> <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/rf_mw.htm#ANSI-92>), the
> National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP, 1986
> <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/rf_mw.htm#NCRP-86>), the
> American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH, 1993
> <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/rf_mw.htm#ACGIH-93>), the
> National Radiological Protection Board (NPRB, 1993
> <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/rf_mw.htm#NRPB-93>), and the
> International Radiation Protection Association (IRPA, 1993
> <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/rf_mw.htm#IRPA-93>). However, in
> 1984 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Elder and Cahill, 1984
> <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/rf_mw.htm#EPA-84>) concluded that:/
>
> /the review of the currently available literature on RF radiation
> provides evidence that biological effects occur at an SAR of about 1
> W/kg; some of them may be significant under certain environmental
> conditions." Therefore, although biological effects may occur at
> SARs in the range 1 to 4 W/kg, 4 W/kg is the consensus threshold
> level of potentially harmful effects./
>
> /Evaluation of the experimental data on biological effects in laboratory
> animals does not provide convincing evidence that prolonged RFEM
> exposure at low whole-body-averaged SARs (0.4 W/kg or less) can be
> harmful to human health; further, the available evidence indicates that
> moderate absorption rates (approximately 1 W/kg) can be tolerated by
> human beings. However, unless properly supervised and controlled in a
> medical setting, prolonged whole-body exposure at specific absorption
> rates high enough (e.g., greater than 4 W/kg) to elevate the body's core
> temperature in excess of 1 degree C should be avoided. The ANSI/IEEE
> (1992) <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/rf_mw.htm#ANSI-92>, NCRP
> (1986) <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/rf_mw.htm#NCRP-86>IRPA
> (1993) <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/rf_mw.htm#IRPA-93>
> standards and recommendations are based on a SAR of 4 W/kg threshold.
> Each incorporates safety factors to derive the recommendation that
> whole-body average exposure levels not exceed 0.4 W/kg in environments
> designated either occupational or "controlled", or 0.08 W/kg in
> environments designated either general-public or "uncontrolled".
> Detailed definitions of controlled and uncontrolled environments can be
> found in the ANSI/IEEE C95.1
> <http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/embs/comar/rf_mw.htm#ANSI-92> guidelines
> (1992)./ and
>
> /Although individual standards may differ somewhat in the specifics,
> they generally all converge on similar threshold values of SAR. Some
> standards also provide data on maximum allowable partial body exposures
> and criteria for avoiding RF shocks and burns. It should be noted that
> SAR criteria do not apply to exposures at low frequencies (less than 100
> kHz) for which nerve stimulation (shock) occurs, or at frequencies
> higher than 6 GHz for which surface heating prevails."/
>
> ----
>
>
> That is as of 1995, and this combined research has generated the
> standards that we are currently operating under. Although, there
> probably is ongoing research, I am not aware of a new standards-altering
> review (I can't find one, anyway).
>
> I interpret the above IEEE publication as saying that ther definitely
> are known health concerns, and there are known thresholds upon which a
> consensus has been reached from several independent sources, that known
> health risks/biological damage can occur.
>
> So, what is the usual mW output, and exposure of Frequency Division
> Duplex, and what is the amount of time exposure normally experienced? I
> think this will give us a better idea of the danger/non-danger of
> FDD-based WiFi, and other technologies (if you accept IEEE and other
> findings, which is agreed upon to be at 4W/kg average exposure being the
> threshold for damage).
>
>
>
> On Feb 9, 2008 12:20 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com
> <mailto:michelsub2004 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Does anyone on this list have special knowledge on the following topic?
>
> see:
>
> 1. Sepp Hasslberger <http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/> Says:
> February 8th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
> <http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/ecomm-2008-conference-will-report-on-wireless-revolution-in-the-making/2008/02/08#comment-185278>
> e
> <http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/wp-admin/post.php?action=editcomment&comment=185278>
>
>
> Hi Michel,
>
> I won't be able to participate in this conference, but would
> like to ask you to bring up, either in your talk or perhaps
> better in your informal contacts, a question that is running
> around in my mind.
>
> You may have heard that apparently, wireless technologies,
> especially the mobile phone tech but also wifi seem to come
> with health problems. Tumors in heavy users of mobile phones
> and in people who live close to repeater antennas, headaches,
> an other less noticeable health effects cannot really be
> denied any longer. Two articles on my site detailing such
> health effects are:
>
> Mobile And Wireless - Largest Biological Experiment
> <http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/04/20/mobile_and_wireless_largest_biological_experiment.htm>
>
> The Cell Phone Experiment: Is Mobile Communication Worth The
> Risk?
> <http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/12/14/the_cell_phone_experiment_is_mobile_communication_worth_the_risk.htm>
>
> A recent article in /The Ecologist/ narrows down the mechanism
> by which these EM waves may be affecting biological organisms:
>
> "There are many different theories on how electromagnetic
> radiation interacts with our bodies, but pulsed microwave
> radiation, such as that used by Wi-Fi and mobile phones, is
> thought to affect the body's cells in a unique way.
>
> Although microwaves oscillate (change direction) many
> thousands of times each second, the carrier pulses which
> convey your voice or emails along the signal actually
> oscillate at a much slower rate, only hundreds of times a
> second. This slower rate allows the pulses to interact with
> protein vibrational receptors, like microscopic hairs, on the
> membranes of our cells. The cells interpret this unusual
> stimulation as a foreign invader and react as any organism
> would - by closing down the cell membrane. This impairs the
> flow of nutrients into the cell or waste products on their way
> out. It also disrupts inter-cellular communication, meaning
> that clusters of cells that form tissues can no longer work as
> effectively together.
>
> The increase of trapped waste products can lead to an increase
> in the number of cancer-causing 'free radicals'. Worse still,
> a chemical known as 'messenger RNA' inside the cell passes on
> this 'learned response' to daughter cells, meaning that the
> cell's offspring also learn to interpret microwaves as an
> external threat and react in the same way.
>
> The disruption in cellular processes is thought to lead to the
> many and various symptoms of electrosensitivity, and the
> build-up of free radicals released when the cell dies could be
> connected with the increase in tumors seen in those exposed to
> frequent doses of microwave radiation."
>
> and also
>
> "Both systems [Wi-Fi devices and mobile phones] use
> high-frequency microwaves that are 'pulsed' rapidly on and off
> to transmit data. This pulsed aspect of data transmission is
> important, because it means that, although a signal might
> appear to be low-powered when measured over a period of time,
> it could reach 'spikes' of much higher levels when data is
> actually being transmitted."
>
> So it doesn't seem to be necessarily be the microwaves that
> are bad for us, at least at low levels of strength, but the
> pulsing (the on-off between data packets) which links them to
> biological processes.
>
> Now recently, I have read that there may be different
> protocols of data transmission, that use different methods of
> separating the packets of data. One is time division duplex
> (TDD) and the other frequency division duplex (FDD).
>
> Could a passage of the technology of wireless communication
> from time division duplex to frequency division duplex
> eliminate what appears to be the major cause of 'linking'
> microwave radiation to biological tissues, that is, the low
> frequency division of transmitted data into time-detached
> 'packets'?
>
> I realize that you may not have the answer to this, but as you
> are going to the conference with the wireless strategy
> planners, could you put that question to one or more of them?
> I would be very happy if you did.
>
> Perhaps passing from TDD to FDD (or some other change of that
> nature) could resolve many of the health problems we see today
> around the application of wireless technologies.
>
>
>
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