What makes you sick

Science is most importantly about running controlled experiments. The difficulty with finding the cause of human illness is that being human practically guarantees the subject is out of control. Furthermore, if the subject's environment is a contributor, everyones environment is unpredictable and potentially toxic or infective. A current very active controversy concerns the effect of electromagnetic fields (abbreviated emf's) in causing brain tumors to develop. Since an increased incidence of brain tumors coincides with a spectacular increase of cell phone use, accusations of cause and effect swiftly arose, and recently, this writer observed organized opposition to the building of a new cell phone tower in a lightly settled residential neighborhood. But to this student of electrical engineering, a number of pertinent questions arise. First, what aspect of an electromagnetic wave is responsible? For over 100 years,our scientists have pointed out that radio waves and the like contain both electric fields and magnetic fields. If one considers what the electric utility delivers to our homes to produce hear and light, It is dramatically changed just before it enters the house. The utility has known since the time of Edison that if it distributes the power to a neighorhood at high voltage, it loses much less of the energy (for which it is being paid) than if the current were high. Thus, the practice is to distribute at high voltage, then to step down to 120 volts just before intering the house.

Now, if high voltage is the villain in producing brain tumors, one might expect linemen and other professionals to have a high incidence of tumors; this has not been observed. Some investigations of magnetic fields in domestic settings have found them to be higher near machines, such as vacuum cleaners, mixers and hair driers. In our civilization, electric and magnetic fields cannot be avoided, although a careful individual can reduce, but not eliminate exposure.

And so, what about thsse cell phones? They contain very low power transceivers, "Listening" for incoming signals and producing a ring-tone if a call is intended for that receiver. The user then turns on more circuitry to receive the call. Since the power comes from a tiny battery, the phone is designed for high efficiency, and this family's IPhone 3 will stay charged for more than a day if not heavily used. Oh course, the brain receives maximum emf's when the phone is pressed to the user's head. The cautious might prefer to listen through earbuds. The thinking human will give some thought to which risks he/she would prefer to avoid.