

Could Wearable Computer Radiation Be Harmful? - igonvalue
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/style/could-wearable-computers-be-as-harmful-as-cigarettes.html

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huxley
From the article: "In 1946, a new advertising campaign appeared in magazines
with a picture of a doctor in a lab coat holding a cigarette and the slogan,
“More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” No, this wasn’t a spoof.
Back then, doctors were not aware that smoking could cause cancer, heart
disease and lung disease."

No, this is a complete fabrication, doctors and researchers were well aware
that cigarettes were carcinogenic and caused other lung ailments. Isaac Adler
proposed the link in 1912 to lung cancer. The first animal and human studies
showing the links started in the 1930s and the connection was well established
by the mid-1940s.

The reason why the advertisement advertised "More doctors smoke Camels than
any other cigarette" is because the general public was becoming aware of the
problems with tobacco and the advertisers wanted to use the authority of
doctors to create a sense of that their cigarettes were safe without talking
about cancer and lung disease.

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njohnson41
From a physics standpoint, this is a pretty silly idea. Here's why.

Whether we're talking about radiation caused by wireless communication (e.g.
wifi at 2.4/5 GHz) or high-frequency oscillations in a microprocessor, it's
pretty safe to say that all of the significant electromagnetic radiation
coming off of a wearable computer is under 10 GHz.

Damage to proteins, DNA, etc. due to radiation is either caused by that
radiation stripping electrons / breaking covalent bonds, or through heating.

The sort of electromagnetic radiation that strips electrons and breaks
covalent bonds is called ionizing radiation; ionizing radiation only occurs
above a certain frequency threshold (depending on the material being ionized).
This fact is, in fact, the reason Einstein got his Nobel in physics. Anyway,
its pretty safe to say that, say, red visible light (400 THz) does not ionize
important human molecules. Ultraviolet is usually considered to be the low end
of the ionizing radiation range.

Therefore, because 400 THz > 10 GHz, radiation coming from wearable computers
could not possibly cause molecular damage to humans through ionization. The
light coming from the screen is significantly more dangerous in this respect
than anything coming from the other electronics.

How about heating? Consider that a typical wearable computing device only
consumes a few watts. If this power were distributed diffusely, it is
harmless, and if it were focused, it would cause obvious and painful burns,
which we know doesn't happen.

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deathhand
Like all things we should take caution with how we embrace new advancements.
There is a history of humans screwing ourselves up in the name of
progress(mercury & lead poisoning,asbestos & iridium usage, even sand in bread
in ancient Egypt)

Can we shy away from these advancements in the name of safety? No-that is not
how progress is made. What the critical point is that we should be more
careful in vetting how we as society do/deal with things without the influence
of money or power. This maybe a far-fetched utopia delusion but the only thing
that will keep us from wiping ourselves out as a species. The world is getting
smaller and the actions of a few are affecting more and more everyday.

Heck, ask a AWS engineer to go pull a plug somewhere. Watch the tech world
burn.

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bitwize
Dafuq?

Any article that cites Joe Mercola approvingly should be dismissed as bogus
and irrelevant by default (barrin. _significant_ other redeeming
characteristics).

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jules
Really, this pseudo-scientific fear mongering is upvoted here?

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ptaipale
Whenever I see something like "a physician who focuses on alternative
medicine" used as a source, I'm ready to dismiss the article as rubbish. What
"alternative medicine"?

There is no alternative medicine. Medicine is a science. What people call
"alternative medicine" is something that is specifically _not_ a science; it
means that whatever is practiced or claimed, is not founded on evidence
gathered using the scientific method.

"Alternative medicine" suggests there would be some other, alternative way to
make science than systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the
formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses [0].

The minute something in "alternative medicine" can be substantiated with
repeatable findings that stand the trial of other, competent people looking at
what was done, it is just "medicine". Nothing alternative about that.

This does not mean that science wouldn't err. But please, speak of witch-
doctors or dissidents or whatever, but not "alternative medicine".

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method)

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dragonwriter
> There is no alternative medicine. Medicine is a science.

A fairly typical definition of medicine (and the one Google shows if you ask
it to define medicine) is "the science or practice of the diagnosis,
treatment, and prevention of disease (in technical use often taken to exclude
surgery)." And the "practice" part is a lot older than the "science" part.

And, in any case, even excluding alternative medicine, the practice of modern
Western medicine is (though this varies a lot from practitioner to
practitioner) a lot more intuitive and less science-based than many people
would like to think, and efforts by institutions with concerns about improving
that are often controversial in the field.

