Radiation

Written on 28 Jan 2007 by Fitzgerald Scott
last updated Sunday August 19 2007

I've encountered many people who worry about the effects of radiation, namely my mom, coworkers, friends etc. And they're all right radiation is a really dangerous thing. It can lead to a very horrible death like for the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

The problem is that most people who didn't take physics as a subject, don't realise that there are a large number of things that one can call radiation but only a very small number of these things are actually what people think of when they hear radiation. Pretty much in the same way that 90% of snakes aren't poisonous and by killing all snakes even more people die of starvation and disease than would have died from snake bites, since the rats and other vermin they would have eaten get to live.

Let's list some of the kinds of radiation that exist:

Radio waves
Heat
Microwaves
Light, UV Light
X-rays
Alpha Particles
Beta Particles
Gamma Rays
Cosmic Rays

Now let's start debunking if we may.

The sun emits every single one of these types of radiation
Even at night stars emit all of these types of radiation.
There is something called background radiation which includes all the above sources and is everywhere on the planet. There is no place on earth without some form of radiation.
Many of these types of radiation are partially blocked by the Ozone and other layers
Number 5,8 and things in between are the radiation that really killed people at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl, namely Xrays and Gamma rays.
Number 5, Xrays come mainly from having an Xray taken at the doctor's or the dentist. The dosages there are very low however. You should be able to take hundreds per year without a problem. (At least at the dentist. That what I checked.)
Gamma Rays come from nuclear reactions. Trinidad has no nuclear reactors or nuclear waste and even if we did the only way to check for this kind of radiation is with a Geiger counter. By the time someone thought to check using that you'd be dead because you'd have been exposed to too much already.

So you say "cell phone towers and cell phones and microwaves and lasers emit radiation they can make people sick, they have studies that prove it." Have you ever heard someone say correlation does not determine causality? Well it pretty much means that just because people who use cell phones have a higher incidence of heart attack, or diabetes or suicide or anything according to a study it doesn't mean that cell phones cause it.

For example what is the profile of someone who uses cell phones alot? An active business man who is always on the move making sure that things get done. He might smoke, drink skip meals, excercise very little, have a very stressful job and want everything done now, which is why he has and uses a cell phone. Well activities like this are very unhealthy and lead to heart attack, cancer diabetes and multiple organ failure and strokes.

Now what if people like this liked to wear the color blue. If we did a study and realised this would we say that wearing blue caused cancer etc? Well we might and that's exactly what some inexperienced "researchers" do. Anyone can call themselves anything and unqualified people have called themselves doctors in the past and killed people as well as all types of professionals unfortunately most people don't cite their references and even I have been taken in sometimes.

So can cell phones cause cancer or not? Well I don't think so at all and here's why,

Radio waves, microwave, heat, light, UV light, xrays and gamma waves in that same order are basically all the same thing, electromagnetic radiation. The only difference is how packed with energy they are. Radio waves have the least and gamma rays have the most.

From UV light up to gamma this kind of radiation can cause cancer no doubt. Kinda like saying a bulletproof vest can handle all the bullets except those from a rifle on up. Or like saying a fall from five stories up will definitely kill you. Yes there are exceptions to every rule but most people don't worry about dying from a bee sting for example or falling asleep while walking but some people do.

Below UV radiation though is ordinary light and heat, two things we aren't going to stop using unless we want to die soon and less powerful than these are microwaves and radiowaves, radio waves being the lowest possible type of EM radiation (electro-magnetic waves).

So basically if I'm not scared of light and I mean any light, flourescent, incandescent, sunlight, firelight or moonlight and I'm not afraid of heat, why would I be afraid of something with thousands of times less power? I think not.

People might say but don't radio waves actually travel through walls and people's bodies whereas light stops at the skin? Well there are two reasons that that doesn't scare me. Two big reasons.

One, whether its with a bright bulb or a flashlight noone has any fear seeing light glowing through their hand, for example in a dark room with your hand over a torchlight. Which proves light can penetrate a good way into our bodies.

Two, the way cancer forms is when something goes wrong with our DNA. Gamma rays to UV light can interfere with molecules in our DNA which is perhaps millions of times smaller than a cell which itself is trillions of times smaller than any of us. So what does that have to do with anything you say?

Well a gamma ray is on the same order of size as a molecule. All the way back down to visible light is small enough to interact with even bigger molecules example the molecules that allow us to see.

Radio waves though can be as large as a couple kilometres down to metres and below that. Microwaves go down to millimetres maybe. So if it takes waves the size of molecules to cause cancer and affect cells in various ways then waves the size of our bodies and many times bigger do what? Well to my mind absolutely nothing. I think I'll have more trouble with waves at Maracas than microwaves or cell phone tower waves.

Fitzgerald Scott