EMF's reason for concern?

[red baron]

What are your thoughts?

Anybody have any real knowledge?

[Grampa]

uhhhh.I'll take, what is an EMF ?, for 200

[abby normal]

You mean like buying a house near a high voltage power line?
If so, there is no corroborated scientific evidence that
Electromagnetic fields encountered in normal situations
( including use of a cell phone) are in any way dangerous.
The exception is cops using radar guns frequently ... Cancer
Rates are shown to be higher.

[Monsterlover]

What I know-

My dad sold corporate cell service for a number of years. Two of his clients who were on the phone a lot got brain cancer.

Also, when I was a kid we saved a picture from the paper. A guy stood under a high voltage tower and held up a 4' fluorescent tube.

It lit.

[abby normal]

Rf radiation (e.g. Cell phones) has insufficient energy to modify DNA ... Which
Would be the source of cancer.  You don't see that ability until
You get to microwaves (I.e. Radar).  Low frequency fields (e.g.
60 hz like in power lines) can move electrons in a vacuum
Tube but they can't alter DNA.   

In em radiation, frequency is energy ... Not amplitude.

[koko64]

I'm so torn between the foil hat and boobies

[lazylightnin717]

I'm so torn between the foil hat and boobies

Me too.

Wait... No I'm not.

[koko64]

Thanks man, voice of reason.

[Speeddog]

What I know-

My dad sold corporate cell service for a number of years. Two of his clients who were on the phone a lot got brain cancer.

And four of them probably got divorced after getting caught cheating on their wives/husbands.
Correlation does not equal causation.

Also, when I was a kid we saved a picture from the paper. A guy stood under a high voltage tower and held up a 4' fluorescent tube.

It lit.

As Abby said, the microwave range is the threat.

My dad told me a story of back when he was in a college physics class....
A classmate who was formerly a sailor spoke of standing near the radar antenna to stay warm on deck on cold nights.
He said the instructor paused, and looked down very hard at his lecture notes for a long moment, then asked the sailor to come see him after class.

[Skybarney]

I grew up in Redding California and have a great story to tell.

There used to be this "old guy" that would walk around Redding in a full length clear plastic aluminum foil lined raincoat including the hood.  For those of you that do not know the area it gets damn hot in the summer.  Yet there he was in his aluminum raincoat.

I asked my parents and others many times about this guy when I was a kid and all they ever had to say was that he was crazy.  For some reason the answers I got from them were not enough so one day shortly after I turned 16 and had a car I pulled up the street from him and waited for him to walk up.  Here is how the conversation went.

When I stopped him in the middle of the sidewalk I said "Hello, hope you are having a nice day, my name is Tim and I was wondering if I could ask you a question".  He seemed somewhat startled as I think no one had spoken to him in some time.  Yet, he said "well hello young man, my name is Norm,  What can I do for you?".

I said "please don't take this the wrong way but I have to ask, What is up with the raincoat?".  A smile came across his face and he said to me; "Son, you are the first person to ask me about this coat in at least a decade, everyone thinks I am crazy! If you really want to hear the story take a seat".  We both sat down on the bus bench and he proceeded to tell me his story.  I am going to shorten the heck out if it as I hate typing but the gist of it will be quite clear.

He claimed that he was a scientist that worked for Bell Labs when they developed overland high power transmission lines.  He claimed that he spent nearly a decade locked up in a sanitarium, who got him locked up?  Bell Labs!  His claim was that he went to them when he discovered that long term exposure to the high power transmission lines would cause a serious increase in cancers.  Bell Labs of course did not want to hear this so using they had him declared insane to silence him. 

Now if there is any truth to this story it is anyone's guess.  However I spoke with him several times over the next couple of years and if he was crazy it did not show up in any of his conversations.  Fascinating guy to be sure and I have always thought that there might be some truth to his story.  Nothing could ever get me to live under or near those types of lines.

[lazylightnin717]

Thanks man, voice of reason.

Always willing to help out

[PzKfW]

Doing research on the electromag radiation/cancer subject is difficult, costly, uncertain, and politically fraught with danger - consider this:

DNA polymerase, the molecular machine which replicates cellular DNA when cells divide, has an exceedingly high fidelity rate - in other words, it doesn't usually mess up. When it does, there are proofreading mechanisms built in to correct the errors. These rarely mess up as well. Generally, for a cell to become cancerous (IE, divide continuously), there are at least three or four specific DNA mutations which must occur to overcome the cell's safety programming (they commit suicide before becoming cancerous: apoptosis).

So, with the complete human genome which must be replicated each time a cell divides at approximately 3 billion base-pairs (think of these base pairs as 1s and 0s in computer language), you have the DNA replication machine which rarely makes mistakes (on the order of one mistake in every 100 million base copies), and error proofreading mechanisms which fix 99% of those mistakes, and then mutations have to hit very specific parts of that DNA, IN THE SAME CELL, three to four times, to get a cancerous cell... it's like lightning striking 4 times in the same spot.

BUT PEOPLE STILL GET CANCER, and often.

All you need, is a small reduction in the effectiveness of the copying or repair machinery, or an increase in the mutation rate, to dramatically increase the chances of cancer. But like a lot of things in life, it is still chance/luck that ultimately determines the outcome...

The chemistry of these molecules, such as DNA polymerase, and the repair mechanisms, are extraordinarily complex, and depend on many small-molecular and electromagnetic attractions to function correctly.

In other words, nobody knows. And technology marches on. No one is interested in removing all electro-mag radiation from civilization, and no scientists are willing to dedicate 30-40 years of their lives, not to mention millions of dollars (where will it come from?) to run an experiment which may or may not yield significant results. Scientists need to publish, to keep their jobs and funding.

TLDR:
It might have an effect. No one knows, no one is interested in knowing.

[ungeheuer]

I wrapped our smart meter in tin foil.

Power has been free ever since.

[red baron]

I wrapped our smart meter in tin foil.

Power has been free ever since.

That's awesome. 

Although technically stealing.

[stonemaster]

Doing research on the electromag radiation/cancer subject is difficult, costly, uncertain, and politically fraught with danger - consider this:

DNA polymerase, the molecular machine which replicates cellular DNA when cells divide, has an exceedingly high fidelity rate - in other words, it doesn't usually mess up. When it does, there are proofreading mechanisms built in to correct the errors. These rarely mess up as well. Generally, for a cell to become cancerous (IE, divide continuously), there are at least three or four specific DNA mutations which must occur to overcome the cell's safety programming (they commit suicide before becoming cancerous: apoptosis).

So, with the complete human genome which must be replicated each time a cell divides at approximately 3 billion base-pairs (think of these base pairs as 1s and 0s in computer language), you have the DNA replication machine which rarely makes mistakes (on the order of one mistake in every 100 million base copies), and error proofreading mechanisms which fix 99% of those mistakes, and then mutations have to hit very specific parts of that DNA, IN THE SAME CELL, three to four times, to get a cancerous cell... it's like lightning striking 4 times in the same spot.

BUT PEOPLE STILL GET CANCER, and often.

All you need, is a small reduction in the effectiveness of the copying or repair machinery, or an increase in the mutation rate, to dramatically increase the chances of cancer. But like a lot of things in life, it is still chance/luck that ultimately determines the outcome...

The chemistry of these molecules, such as DNA polymerase, and the repair mechanisms, are extraordinarily complex, and depend on many small-molecular and electromagnetic attractions to function correctly.

In other words, nobody knows. And technology marches on. No one is interested in removing all electro-mag radiation from civilization, and no scientists are willing to dedicate 30-40 years of their lives, not to mention millions of dollars (where will it come from?) to run an experiment which may or may not yield significant results. Scientists need to publish, to keep their jobs and funding.

TLDR:
It might have an effect. No one knows, no one is interested in knowing.

damn dude you paid attention in class