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Are we slowly microwaved to death?

In the last few years I’ve heard ever more people question the potential risk posed by what’s become known as ‘electrosmog’. I’ve always been very sceptic towards it. Never really believing it could have any significant effect. I’ve studied physics for almost two years, so it wasn’t really hard for me to argue against it, since somehow all the people I’ve met didn’t have any strong arguments. I mostly cited one of my profs who once said:”As far as I know, the effect that could have any significance to humans has yet to be discovered.” In response to a student asking him whether he believed using cell phones posed any risk. Until today this and explaining the magnitude of the radiation and comparing it to known extremes were the strongest arguments used. But browsing the web I came across a press release of a research conducted in The Netherlands with strong evidence arguing GSM and UMTS pose no risk (Dutch).

Field strength

The press release and the actual report containing the results are Dutch, but I’ll sum it up in English. The Dutch Telecom Agency has measured the field strength of GSM and UMTS in the frequency bands 900Mhz, 1800Mhz and 2100Mhz on 211 locations throughout The Netherlands which are publicly accessible, picked on request after public concerns and randomly. The measured field strengths are well below the set limits which in turn are based on the recommendations by The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP).

The Limits are:

  • GSM
    		•  900 MHz 41 Volt/meter
  • GSM
    		•  1800 MHz 58 Volt/meter
  • UTMS
    		•  2100 MHz 61 Volt/meter

    In 198 out the 211 cases the field strength 2 Volt per meter or less. In a remaining 8 cases it was between 2 and 3 Volt per meter. Field strengths between 3 and 4 Volts per meter were found only three times and then there remain two measurements which are 5 and 10 Volts per meter.

    The highest result of 10 Volts per meter was measured inside a publicly accessible church tower just 20cm behind a antenna which is well within the 0.5m safety margin of the antenna and still well below Limits. The conclusions are that all values are well below the limits and that there is no notable trend throughout 2005-2007 in field strengths. Notable as well is that the second and third highest measurements were taken on randomly picked locations!

    My finding are that all though the researchers are of a strongly biased party, the research seems solid and based on good principles and is not trying to bend anywhere to put things in a better perspective. The results give me a strong argument to believe that there’s nothing to worry about concerning electromagnetic radiation from communication antenna’s.

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    This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 16:32 and is filed under Links, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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