Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro exceeds the FCC's limit

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 171 posts

Re: A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro exceeds the FCC's limit

#91

Post by Dylan16807 »

kube-system wrote: post #66
Dylan16807 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The danger of sunlight is ultraviolet. That's only about 4% of sunlight. Oh and it's worth mentioning that everything around you at room temperature is emitting 400 watts per square meter of infrared. That's almost as much infrared as you get from the sun (1kW total, roughly 4% ultraviolet, 53% infrared, 43% visible).

You're absolutely right, different wavelengths of EMR have wildly different effects on humans, so the comparison falls short that way as well.

Most of them just heat, though. And in terms of heat, you don't need to be "orders of magnitude" below sunlight. It's not exactly hard to have two walls in the same room differ by 100 watts per square meter.

Re: A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro exceeds the FCC's limit

#92

Post by moftz »

kube-system wrote: post #53
Robotbeat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sunlight shining on one side of a cube-shaped liter of flesh would be 10W/kg or so on average (and about 100W/kg if we consider the top 1cm). 1.6W/kg is a conservative limit.

I'd sure hope the exposure is orders of magnitude less than sunlight, considering how clear the dangers of sunlight are.

Radiowaves are non-ionizing radiation. Your DNA isn't going to be destroyed from anything below UV. Local heating from RF absorbtion might cause issues for certain biological functions but local heating can come from things like a warm laptop sitting above your crotch and reducing sperm count via heat. You need a lot of RF power to cause local heating though, think on the order of a microwave oven, not what a typical phone puts out.

Re: A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro exceeds the FCC's limit

#93

Post by Shikadi »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #74
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ISP supplied router has an option to turn the lights off, which is great as otherwise it illuminates the whole hallway. I don't get why electronics makers think their product needs to have such bright lights.

Simple. The engineers are working on the product during the day in well-lit spaces. Since the lights are always on, it never occurs to anyone that the LEDs might be too bright at night.

Alternatively, engineers point it out, and product managers don't listen

Re: A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro exceeds the FCC's limit

#94

Post by jjoonathan »

function_seven wrote: post #88
meekstro wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just try it. Turn off the electrical stuff before you go to bed but hey everyone has freedom of choice.

Right, but you wouldn't know if your sleep improved because the wi-fi is off, or if it improved because you have greater peace of mind just knowing that the wi-fi is off. These are different things. A blinded test would eliminate the peace of mind component and allow you to determine if there's a physical effect from the wi-fi being on or not.

Furthermore, if your peace of mind is the true reason why you sleep better with RF off, note that by talking of your experience you could actually be creating the problem that you were trying to solve (difficulty sleeping due to worrying about RF). If RF is really to blame as determined by a blinded test, it's worth talking about, but if not, please exercise restraint.

Re: A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro exceeds the FCC's limit

#95

Post by meekstro »

jjoonathan wrote: post #86
meekstro wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just try it. Turn off the electrical stuff before you go to bed but hey everyone has freedom of choice.

Placebos work. If that's what you want, cool. If you want to figure out if RF affects sleep, that's cool too, but you'll need to double blind the experiment. Because placebos work.

Yes but so does human intuition and its a heck of a lot faster.

A healthy person can endure a toxic environment. An unhealthy person becomes more unhealthy from increased toxicity.

I’m not saying electromagnetic radiation makes a healthy person unwell i’m saying it delays or worsens recovery of some unhealthy people and there are million different subsets of unhealthy people so which subset are you going to run the double blind placebo on before you decide reduce electromagnetic radiation while you sleep.

It’s a simple experiment anyone can try. Two weeks of camping is an effective insomnia treatment as per research which eliminates electromagnetic radiation from the equation. I think its a zeitgeber in subsets sick people but there’s no profit in researching that so the only tools you have are existing research, intuition, self observation and logic.

People figure out how to sex chickens without a causative mechanism. It isn’t a placebo effect or a double blind trial. Electrochemical gradients as per Michael Levins research affect genetic expression. Much like hedging one’s bet by believing in a creator just in case reducing your exposure to RF at zero cost is the smartest thing someone can do with the available evidence.

Re: A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro exceeds the FCC's limit

#96

Post by Shikadi »

ColanR wrote: post #58
triceratops wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus." Appears to contradict "What is relevant is reproducible results." Aren't reproducible results a form of consensus?

> Aren't reproducible results a form of consensus? Not in the least. "Reproducible results" represents the technical and methodological ability to confirm that an effect is real. "Consensus" is whether a political body is willing to admit that the effect is real. And we all know politics finds truth to be...

I think this is a semantic argument... If 100 independent scientists reproduce results, those results themselves are a scientific consensus, are they not?

Re: A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro exceeds the FCC's limit

#97

Post by enedil »

tomrod wrote: post #41
whatshisface wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about the rise in power as you get closer. 1/x² has a singularity, I doubt exp(x) can beat that...

Good point! -ln(x) may (would have to check), but exp(0) = 1 and 1/0 2 is defined as positive infinity (the Real numbers are not closed under division).

No, division just isn't a total function.

Re: A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro exceeds the FCC's limit

#98

Post by moftz »

nomel wrote: post #59
chillingeffect wrote: post #48

my father occupationally used to measure RF output from mountaintop cell repeaters. he was always pushing back on operators for pushing just a little outside the limits so they could pick up more calls.

I always assumed the phone to tower path would be the limit, not the tower to phone.

Right, in most cases, whatever side of a comms link that is hooked up to mains power isn't going that much about power usage. But there are limits on broadcasting power from the towers so as not to cause problems with farther away towers that want operate on the same frequencies. It's like how you usually want to not be on the same Wifi channel as your neighbor. It's going to take either more RF power to overcome their signal or take more time getting data through due to a less than perfect signal quality. Cell towers occupy a certain geographic cell so you want some overlap in signal between neighbors but you don't want it to extend much further than what it takes to leave enough time for someone in a car, for example, to have their conversation handed off to the neighboring tower. Cell tower operators might want to boost their signal power if they are bordering an area with low coverage but it's going to begin to interfere with cells outside their intended range. The FCC sets these limits for different applications and frequencies. An FM radio tower is going to have a massive output power as compared to a personal FM transmitter for your car and for good reason, no else one wants to hear your shitty music.

Re: A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro exceeds the FCC's limit

#99

Post by jjoonathan »

meekstro wrote: post #95
jjoonathan wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Placebos work. If that's what you want, cool. If you want to figure out if RF affects sleep, that's cool too, but you'll need to double blind the experiment. Because placebos work.

Yes but so does human intuition and its a heck of a lot faster. A healthy person can endure a toxic environment. An unhealthy person becomes more unhealthy from increased toxicity. I’m not saying electromagnetic radiation makes a healthy person unwell i’m saying it delays or worsens recovery of some unhealthy people and there are million different subsets of unhealthy people so which subset are you going to run the d…

Placebos in truth's clothing are toxins of human society. Please verify placebo vs truth before spreading, k? Thanks.

> Two weeks of camping is an effective insomnia treatment

Or two weeks away from the grind reduces stress. Or getting away from artificial lights/schedules reduces stress. Or it selects for people+times with less stressed. Or more healthy. Or higher SES. Or you're getting away from pollution. Or you need temperature variation to feel healthy. Or any two of those. Or three! Many plausible explanatory factors compete with RF, and you'd have to control for them in order to point the finger at RF. That's not impossible, and not even particularly difficult, but it does mean that you can't go on a camping trip, get better sleep, and then use that as proof that RF was to blame for your insomnia.

> People figure out how to sex chickens without a causative mechanism. It isn’t a placebo effect or a double blind trial.

The double blind trial is how you establish whether or not something is a placebo.

> Electrochemical gradients as per Michael Levins research affect genetic expression.

You need to blind you studies whether or not you have a plausible mechanistic explanation. You don't need a plausible mechanistic explanation to blind your studies.

> Much like hedging one’s bet by believing in a creator just in case

Which one(s)?

> reducing your exposure to RF at zero cost

Foregoing the advantages of technology is not zero cost. If you mean that turning your router off at night is zero cost, go ahead! I don't take issue with that.

I do take issue with spreading unblinded anecdata, because whether or not RF-induced-insomnia is real, RF-anxiety-induced-insomnia is definitely real, and anecdata like your own definetly spread it. If RF-induced-insomnia is real, that's for the best, but if what you experienced was a placebo (and I'd bet a substantial sum of money that it was), then unblinded anecdata literally are the problem. And that's not cool.

In the privacy of your own home: do what works and ignore the haters!

In society: please apply good experimental technique before causing anxiety in others. It's only polite.

Re: A radio frequency exposure test finds an iPhone 11 Pro exceeds the FCC's limit

#100

Post by jradd »

bananabreakfast wrote: post #55
meekstro wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't it tested at 2mm if that is the standard useage? Why rely on a model? 20,000 phones are being sold an hour. Why not buy 200 phone's off 200 shelves and test them comprehensively at 0 mm, 1mm, 2mm, 3mm ..... The cost to volume sold is completely negligible and it is useful consumer information as 3 percent of the population is electrosensitive. An estimated 30 million people suffer from Myalgic Encephalomyel…

Electrosensitivity is not a thing. It's a disorder made up by hypochondriacs. If you said 3 percent of the population are hypochondriacs then I would believe you.

One will become electrosensitive in a dryer climate.

capacitive touch is derived by galvanic response that can be impacted by pH balance and electrochemistry.

potassium is used to reduce the impacts of gamma radiation (wrong band, but not irrelevent)

microwaves can be lethal from a distance of 1 km (death ray)

there is so much radiation in the air, to study the affects of one wave length i'd suppose you'd need multiple band pass filters to narrow the band in question and a noise generator for controlled results.

Post reply on HN