Thursday, December 19, 2019

Still No Scientific Evidence that Mobile Phones or Cell Towers are Dangerous

According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, there is no scientifically validated evidence that chronic exposure to radio waves at frequencies between 0 and 300 gigahertz are connected to adverse health effects. 

Likewise, the World Health Organization has found nno adverse health effects associated with mobile phone use. 

Much of the research is inconclusive, in part because a good portion of studies rely on participants to self-report their experience and because there are too many environmental factors that could play a role in the health effects that do appear. And faulty research has been an issue in the past. 

Power levels for cell phones and even cell towers are quite low. Consider that a cell tower radio emits energy 100 to 5,000 times lower than a TV transmitter, for example. Some liken the power level to that of a light bulb.

Radio signals weaken (attenuate) logarithmically, by powers of 10, so the power levels decay quite rapidly.

Basically, doubling the distance of a receiver from a transmitter means that the strength of the signal at that new location is 50 percent  of its previous value. Just three meters from the antenna, a cell tower radio’s power density has dropped by an order of magnitude (10 times).

At 10 meters--perhaps to the base of the tower, power density is down two orders of magnitude. At 500 meters, a distance a human is using the signals, power density has dropped six orders of magnitude.

And that is for macrocell towers that transmit at higher powers.  Small 5G cells will have lower output powers, and have to be characterized as well. But the general rule of thumb is that output power really matters: high power is of more concern than low power. 

If you are concerned about exposure, phones are the issue, not cell towers.

No comments:

Consumer Feedback on Smartphone AI Isn't That Helpful

It is a truism that consumers cannot envision what they never have seen, so perhaps it is not too surprising that artificial intelligence sm...