You cannot see them, but radio waves pervade your peaceful living space. They emanate from an increasingly large menagerie of electronic gadgets, appliances and satellites. FM radio and broadcast television have been around for years; more recently, cell phones and Wi-Fi routers have added their high frequencies to the mix.
Should we worry? In May the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared that long-term cell-phone use could “possibly” cause cancer; it says the same for coffee drinking. The intensity of exposure is proportional to distance, and cell phones are held close to the brain, but many studies conclude that evidence of a cancer link is nonexistent.* The sheer number of radio-frequency sources is not a concern either. Exposures “do not all add collectively at any one point in space,” says Jerrold T. Bushberg, head of health physics programs at the University of California, Davis. And average exposure is still far below safety standards, which have a large margin built in.
*Clarification (8/17/11): In a general discussion about electromagnetic radiation, we wrote that "the intensity of exposure is proportional to distance." We simply meant that exposure varies with distance, but should have used the generic "varies" instead of the mathematical "proportional," because as several readers pointed out, intensity is inversely proportional to the square of distance.
— Mark Fischetti
» Learn more about radiation, cell phones and electromagnetic bombardment in the August 2011 Graphic Science Web Exclusive
Graphic by Jude Buffum; Source: Federal Communications Commission
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7 Comments
Add CommentWhile is is interesting to know, this graphic science didn't contain information important enough to be brought into such a spotlight as the last page of a magazine as prestigious as Scientific American. The reason is simple: other than the purpose they are designed to serve, low-frequency radiation emitters have no effect on human life. All the radiation mentioned is too low energy to cause genetic mutations (and by extension, cancer) or any other ailment. In addition, this is a played out topic for graphic science, as the May edition's Graphic science covered radiation as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is misleading. It states that "exposure is still far below safety standards" while it fails to mention that radiation levels which resulted in the IARC designation of electromagnetic radiation as Possibly Carcinogenic to Humans were also below those standards. IARC recommendation is to reduce exposure levels, not to worry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFurthermore, SciAm published another misleading article stating that cell phones cannot cause cancer:
Michael Shermer : "Can You Hear Me Now? The Truth about Cell Phones and Cancer; Physics shows that cell phones cannot cause cancer", Scientific American 303, 98 (October 2010) 2010
which is based on an old error in physical arguments exposed years ago in:
Arnt Inge Vistnes and Kristoffer Gjotterud; Why Arguments Based on Photon Energy may
be Highly Misleading for Power Line Frequency
Electromagnetic Fields Bioelectromagnetics 22:200^204 (2001)
SciAm should be more careful about the soundness of its articles.
Michael Peleg
In your article „Bombarded: Electromagnetic Radiation of Our Own Making Fills the "Empty" Air“, the statement about the intensity of electromagnetic fields (radiation) „The intensity of exposure is proportional to distance“ is false. For EM radiation propagating from a source through space, like for many other fields in nature, the stengths behaves according to the „inverse square law“, means the intensity decreases with the square of the distance from the source. I suppose, it is not the intention of SA to redefine the laws of nature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, IARC treats electromagnetic radiation rather differently from coffee. It recommends immediate reduction of exposure to radiation while it does not recommend (to my knowledge) to reduce normal and typical consumption of coffee.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess high coffee drinking is connected to a reduction in some kind of cancers. See MDLinx
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can look also at Entrez PubMed, searching with the words: coffee AND cancer .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEditors:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn p. 96 of the Aug 2011 SA, the picture is unfortunately misleading, because Mark Fischetti omits from his "Graphic Science" depiction of "electromagnetic radiation" the part of the spectrum that contains, by far, the greatest amount of energy in the "empty air" around us, namely, heat and light.
I wonder if the author considered these big-time electromagnetic waves unimportant, because God said "let there be light," and, unlike radio waves, you can "see" [light] and "feel" [heat] these electromagnetic waves; so, they can't be bad for you, and they're not stealthily invading "your peaceful living space." But, "light" has an unequivocal, confirmed link to cancer, unlike the waves depicted in the graphic.