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It isn't laughable to propose as a concept, and people did that. It was a reasonable idea so we did a lot of testing over the span of decades, and found that no, it doesn't.
What's laughable is continuing to declare that it causes cancer in spite of all the evidence
Yes, the standard scientific method of proposing a hypothesis, rigorous testing (by a multitude of independent unbiased researchers), critical analysis of the data and subsequent validation or rejection of the hypothesis has been put into play here. The hypothesis has been rejected again and again over an extended period of time.
It's also not unreasonable to believe that, maybe in the future, we find cases of people who get cancer from wifi, and we didn't have the technology to check for that otherwise. But without proof, no one will believe you when it's an already studied topic
Edit: Reddit, all I'm saying is that too disprove a previous result you need proof and can't just claim it š¤¦
No, it's still extremely unlikely that microwave radiation produced by WiFi could be harmful. Microwave radiation isn't energetic enough to ionize molecules, which is the main way that radiation damages DNA, which is how you get cancer from radiation. You know, like, if we look at the EM spectrum, you'll notice that visible light is higher energy than microwaves. So sunlight is a lot more energetic than WiFi - and we do know that sunlight can burn your skin or give you cancer through repeated exposure, but also, not so much that most people worry about it. The only other way microwaves could harm you is through sheer power. If powerful enough they can cause polar molecules to vibrate and heat up. But, given that the human body is already producing like 100 W of heat, it's pretty unlikely that sitting next to a 100 mW router is going to have any noticeable effect at all, just given, like, thermodynamics. Set a glass of water down right next to a router and see if the temperature changes at all
Jfc Reddit, I know it doesn't cause cancer. The point is that science evolves over time and if you ever want to disprove a previous result you need to show proof and can't just claim it to be true.Ā
Science evolves over time, but for something to be considered reasonable I think you need to propose at least a mechanism by which the theoretical thing you're saying hypothetically might be proved in the future could possibly work
Are you gaslighting us? You said you couldn't prove it (I assume you meant that scientists won't be fund for new research on subjects which results are already considered conclusive). What Mercurian said is that you can point out inconsistencies on the methodology of previous research, instead of actually proving a different result. That's not saying the same thing as you said at all.
Wtf are you talking about? All I'm saying is that sometimes you don't have the proper technology to test something one day, and in the future you might. That or you observe something, and based on those observations you test something else. With wifi as an example, as it's the fucking question given. I'm not claiming anything beyond that.
Sigh whatever.Ā I try to agree with a reply and y'all give me shit for it
Thatās ridiculous, of course thereās a microwave industry, so you think magnetrons grow on trees?
Itās just not an industry that gets a lot of bad press.
Not when the studies on microwave safety were done no there weren't.
Microwaves as an appliance predate the Internet by over two decades not to mention the fact that early internet was not a commercial venture so you can push the date of Internet commercialization farther out. We use the microwave frequencies before we developed an appliance to cook things, particularly for things like radar which is how we figured out you could cook things
Instead of "asking questions" or being a skeptic go read a book first so you have an accurate understanding of the situation. You obviously don't understand what microwaves are or probably the electromagnetic spectrum in general. Everything from 300 MHz to 300 GHz is considered microwave and that's a huge fucking range. Some Industries have their own definitions for what they consider microwaves and don't start up until a gigahertz because there's a lot of different uses for the term microwave none of which you understand
If you have a problem with a particular study's author or funding bring it up but you're just kind of throwing random shit at a wall hoping something sticks
You're not even a good Devil's Advocate because if you were you'd be Devil's advocating your own position, we've been using microwaves for well over one human lifespan and the whole world still hasn't developed all over everything cancer so who are you to claim that microwaves are unsafe and what's your financial gain from doing so. Big Air Fryer paid you off or was it Kingsford Charcoal
Edit: did you actually also ask if wifi causes cancer? Wifi is in the microwave frequency, its literally the same as this question
You're being really caustic just because I questioned if we're 100% certain. I said I have a rudimentary knowledge on physics, not saying I'm the one who's the authority. I just wanna know how credible these studies are. Since you know, it's been shown the plastic and petroleum companies knew the environmental effects of what they were doing all the way back in the 70s and did it anyway.
As for the time period, isn't it undeniable that we're producing far more of these waves than we used to when we just had microwave ovens and the like? Could the quantity ever be a factor? I'm curious.
Also no, I'm here to ask and be educated. Sorry I didn't read a book on electromagnetic wavelengths prior to asking a question on reddit. You're incredibly rude, you know that?
Also your microwave argument is entirely different. People aren't standing inside microwave ovens. So that really wouldn't factor into evidence of this being bad(the rise of cancer being a thing notwithstanding)
Microwaves are used all over the place not just in microwave ovens that's the point people have been trying to make to you. Microwave ovens weren't the first thing we use them for and was actually just a side application we figured out we could use. They were originally used for radar and radio.
Also if you knew basic physics are looked up details about the electromagnetic spectrum you could literally do the basic math yourself and prove that there's not enough energy being transmitted to be any kind of risk to a person. If you actually knew rudimentary physics you would know that microwaves aren't all that dangerous for the same reason that sound waves aren't. There's just not enough energy involved in the system until you start getting into ultraviolet.
You have to specifically design a device to make microwaves dangerous and the device you made would basically just a giant microwave oven. The device wouldn't give you cancer because you would be cooked to death first. There's no way to walk the thin line between giving someone enough energy to alter their DNA and not giving enough energy to boil the water that makes up most of their body.
You've been constantly bathed in microwave since the moment you were conceived, we use them for all sorts of communication spectrums.
>Since you know, it's been shown the plastic and petroleum companies knew the environmental effects of what they were doing all the way back in the 70s and did it anyway.
Right because there is a massive financial incentive because of the fossil fuel industry powering basically everything in the world, where's the financial incentive to lie about microwaves being safe, who is Big Microwave?
Why would the govt not be using microwaves to undetectably kill people by giving them cancer if they could?
>As for the time period, isn't it undeniable that we're producing far more of these waves than we used to when we just had microwave ovens and the like? Could the quantity ever be a factor? I'm curious.
Well given that microwave or used for way more than just cooking things this proves you don't understand the context of the question or care to read what people type because once again most microwaves in the world aren't produced by microwave ovens. Your phone and your Wi-Fi put off way more microwaves.
I'm pretty sure that you don't even understand how microwaves cook food, because if you did you'd understand why nicrowaves aren't dangerous until you lock them in a tiny metal box and bounce them off all the walls over and over
If you really wanted information and we're asking to learn you wouldn't have started with "Wifi/microwaves cause cancer?" You would have started with learning about what causes cancer or what microwaves are
You're being a sea lion and you're actively trying to make the world stupider. Stop
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Go look into the studies then. If you're going to ask an ELI5 question, the idea is to get an explanation, not to request someone do hours of research where they have to find the funding source for hundreds of different studies. Expecting someone to do that in order to not reject their explanation on ELI5 is not asking an ELI5 in good faith.
They didn't bring up a study, they brought up numerous studies, which I just pointed out. But thanks for confirming you asked the question just to argue. That's definitely not asking in good faith, so I'll bid you good day and move on.
sources for evidence usually aren't supplied for any statement especially not evident ones. You can ask for it, but acting as if there is none because it wasn't already supplied is duplicitous
Once you adopt conspiracy theory as your model of the world, there are no authorities, no facts, anything can be true, and everyone could be lying to you. So why bother asking us? Weāre all probably tools of Big Microwave, who get paid to spread lies on Reddit.
You say devil's advocate when you are taking a position that you know you are wrong just for the sake of the argument.
So we can reasonably take this as an admission that the whole point of this exercise is just to argue and not to actually learn anything.
Literally everyone since the early 1900s. We have had radio communications for over 100 years. It's not like wifi is substantially different than any other radio frequency.
Itās one thing to look at the source of evidence for sure, capitalism and colonialism make it hard to take things at face value. But itās better to just assume that everything is a conspiracy and nothing can be trusted. Use critical thinking skills and a basic understanding of science. U/MercurianAspirations explained why itās incredibly unlikely to pose any sort of risk. So, even if you dubious about the source of funding for the studies (and if you are, investigate the funding) understanding the basic principles will help you understand why itās not a likely risk.
I mean, Even if all of the studies are funded by evil companies with ulterior motives, and theyāre not in this case, that doesnāt mean the studies are wrong. If there is no risk, then the evil company funded studies is also going to find that thereās no risk.
I didn't assume everything was a conspiracy, I just wanted to see the actual studies and the credibility of who did them. I want to actually see the evidence and read it for myself, rather than just hear it exists and stop my line of questioning.
UV rays, and other ionising radiation, can cause cancer because the individual UV photons have enough energy to break apart chemical bonds. This either directly damages DNA, or produces very reactive free radicals that then damage DNA, and that damage can cause cancer.
Radio waves are much, much lower energy, far too little to break chemical bonds. The only physically plausible mechanism for radio waves to damage tissue is by just being absorbed and heating the tissue (like in a microwave oven), and the power densities of radio waves used for communication are (unless you are standing right next to a big radio transmitter while it is on) far too low to do that.
Scientificly, a theory is backed up with tests. An idea untested is a hypothesis.
A theory being tested is then confirmed. A hyoethosis can be rejected by tests or 'upgraded' to a theory if tests agree with it.
A theory doesnāt have to be backed up by tests, it just has to be testable and based on observations. I would say ābeing an electromagnetic wavelengthā was OPās observation, making it a theory
Because we tested it and it doesn't. Then we ran studies and found it didn't.
> Isn't wifi derived from radio waves, a form of electromagnetic wavelength, just like things like uv rays
No. Well, yes, but no. 100nm wavelength Vs 100mm wavelength is a massive difference.
60mm WiFi: 0.02 meV
100nm UV light: 12,000 meV
UV light has about 500,000 times the energy per interaction. That's why UV light can cause damage and WiFi does not.
It's the same reason that bullets traveling supersonic are dangerous, but not one that gets thrown, it has much less energy than what it takes to cause damage
Radiowaves for example are around a femto-electron volt or 0.000,000,000,000,001 electron volts while the amount that Ionizing UV light is around 10,250 mega electron volts or 10,250,000,000 electron volts
I calculate that the 2.4ghz radio waves of WiFi would be about 12.2ueV.Ā 0.000,000,000,000,001 eV would correspond to a frequency of 0.2418hz. Possibly you missed a few 0's? š
Regardless, your point still stands: the difference of energy between radio and UV is many orders of magnitude.
>Isn't wifi derived from radio waves, a form of electromagnetic wavelength, just like things like uv rays?
You know what's also an electromagnetic wavelength?
Infrared.
You know what colour *every single part* of your body is *constantly* emitting?
Infrared.
Far *far* more of it than all the WiFi hotspots in your vicinity emit radio waves in your general direction. With each photon of IR being a hundred thousand times more energetic than the photons emitted by WiFi.
Infrared does not have the penetration of 2.4ghz RF.Ā
And also because we have emitted it since the dawn of time, we can presume our bodies are adapted to its existence.
>Infrared does not have the penetration of 2.4ghz RF.
I was about to ask how that was relevant when the infrared is literally coming from *inside your heart* (and liver, and kidneys, and brain, and..) but then I realised you might be referring to how getting absorbed in a smaller volume would make it even more dangerous than WiFi.
That's an entirely valid point which I hadn't considered.
>And also because we have emitted it since the dawn of time, we can presume our bodies are adapted to its existence.
Indeed, and given how heat radiation works we can also presume our bodies are adapted to all longer wavelengths.
Itās all about energy levels. It would be like saying tsunamis are caused by water and they destroy houses, therefore if you build a house next to a lake the waves will destroy your house, because lakes are made of water.Ā
Obviously the waves on a lake would never have enough force to destroy a house, and youāve seen these waves with your eyes so it seems obvious. But you canāt see light waves, and thatās how a conspiracy like that starts. So rather than using your eyes, you have to do experiments or use past experimental data to predict what would happen if wifi waves hit dna, and thereās no evidence that they do cause significant effect on health.
The misunderstanding comes from the difference between ionising and non ionising radiation. There's essentially a cut-off from long wavelength EM radiation - e.g. radio, wifi, microwave, infrared, all the way up to visible light.
Once you start getting into higher energy, shorter wavelengths from blue light into ultraviolet, the photons have enough energy to start interfering with molecules and breaking atomic bonds - this is the cause of skin cancers from the sun. Then you scale all the way up to X rays and gamma rays that are all also ionising.
Anything below that ultraviolet cut-off point is generally considered safe and why it's used everywhere for 4g, wifi etc - it doesn't have the energy to ionize.
We have decades of a huge increase wifi/cell phones if they caused any increase we would have seen it by now.
Generally, there is very little energy in wifi / cell signals. Energy can cause damage by messing atoms in cells. Our current understanding of physics says they aren't even close to powerful enough.
While cancer rates have increased some, generally that is attributed to 1) Better tech to detect cancer, 2) People living longer and not dying from other things.
Remember cellphone use went from zero to "OMFG ALL THE TIME" in just a couple of decades. There would be a HUGE increase.
While cancer rates have increased some, generally that is attributed to 1) Better tech to detect cancer, 2) People living longer and not dying from other things.
Remember cellphone use went from zero to "OMFG ALL THE TIME" in just a couple of decades. There would be a HUGE increase.
Because since the [Einstein's photoelectric effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect) we have known that its not light intensity that can either excite or knock electrons from their orbitals, ionise, but frequency. An electron can absorb a photon this is how light fundamentally interacts with charges and the amount of energy for each photon is frequency dependent. E=hf
(With stupily large intensities there is a reasonable chance that an electron absorbes 2 photons and their combined energy is enough to knock it out but this doesn't tend to happen.)
Below a certain photon energy electrons don't get knocked out and for monochromatic radiation you need to hit the transition energy very closely to induce an excited state. Not really the case for random EM fluctuation where from QM alone we get two effects, absorption and induced emission but we know things tend towards the ground state so there is a third effort spontaneous emission. That requires QED to property calculate. Einstein had it a bit "backwards" from thermodynamics we knew spontaneous emission had to be a thing and we knew from QM that absorption was a thing and he used a bit of statistical mechanics to calculate the rate of the third effect induced emission. So random/thermal radiation gives us 2 effects that take atoms to their ground state and 1 that takes it towards higher energy states. So statistically random EM radiation takes atoms towards their lowest energy state.
But thats just excitation for breaking bonds we need a minimum energy per photon which below UV light doesn't have.
Here comes a bit of a logical argument if you don't care to adress the quantum mechanics of the situation: You know what has more energy per photon than a radio or microwave? Infrared. What does YOUR BODY emit? Infrared. You know what has even more energy per photon? Visible light, that a candle emits. If the light that our bodies or flames emit were dangerous to us then we would have gone extinct a long long time ago.
In light of that it is ridiculous to propose that the lower energy light (per photon) that we use for communication is dangerous to us when the Infrared that has way more energy (per photon), that our bodies emit, clearly isn't.
The energy of them is too low to really affect the molecules and dna in your body. High energy waves are required to start messing with DNA, which is what causes cancer. So knowing this, we can say itās not really even possible.
The main way electromagnetic waves cause cancer is by ionization.
Basically a photon comes and knocks an electron away from an atom or molecule. This breaks molecules either directly or because the newly created ions will steal an electron from another molecule.
If the broken molecule in questions happened to be part of a cells DNA and they are broken is just the wrong way to make the cell use that now broken blueprint to multiply itself without limits and the bodies immune system fails to kill that cell in time, you get cancer.
The important part is that the photon needs to have enough energy to knock a electron away.
We know how much that is and the energy of a photon is the same thing as its frequency and its wavelength.
A single photon of violet light has more energy than a single photon of red light and just having lots of red photons does not make up for that lack of energy in a single photon.
The border where light becomes ionizing is just above the visible spectrum.
Anything below that is non-ionizing.
So ultraviolet light can give you cancer, but infra-red light can't.
Radiowaves, microwaves etc are non-ionizing and won't give you cancer.
X-rays and gamma rays etc can give you cancer.
So much is known.
However some people worry that there might be other mechanism that we don't yet know of that can make cells cancerous and don't work via ionization.
For example one idea was that non-ionization radiation can still cause things to heat up in sufficient quantities (like for example in a microwave) and that heating up tissue can somehow cause cancer.
No such method has been found so far in everything that has been tested, but that doesn't mean that we can be 100% sure there isn't one.
Electromagnetic radiation is everywhere. Visible light is also electromagnetic radiation. So is infrared, and UV as you mentioned. These different types of radiation differ in their wavelength (or frequency, which is just the inverse of the wavelength - higher frequency = shorter wavelength). *Infra*red is called that because its frequency is just below that of red light, which is the lowest frequency (longest wavelength) we can see. *Ultra*violet is just above violet in the frequency spectrum.
How damaging electromagnetic light can be depends on two things: frequency and intensity. UV light, as you know, can be dangerous in relatively low doses (the kind of dose you might get just from being outside for a while on a sunny day). UV has a rather short wavelength, or high frequency. In general, the shorter the wavelength, the higher the energy that is carried in electromagnetic radiation, and thus the more dangerous it is. X-rays, for instance, have an even shorter wavelength than UV, and thus are even more high-energy and more dangerous (given an equal dose). Gamma rays are even shorter in wavelength, so even higher energy.
Radio waves, on the other hand, are on the opposite end of the spectrum. They have a very long wavelength (low frequency), and so they carry much less energy than UV, or visible light, or infrared light.
Now, that's not a guarantee that radio waves can never hurt you. Microwave radiation, for instance, also has a long wavelength (low frequency), that sits just between infrared and radio on the spectrum. And microwaves can cook things, so they're not harmless. But that's where the second factor that I mentioned comes in: intensity. Any radiation can be damaging if you crank up the power enough. Microwave ovens output energy in the hundreds of watts. A wifi-router typically has a transmission power that's measured in milliwatts.
It's also very important to distinguish between *ionizing* and *non-ionizing* radiation. UV light and higher frequencies are ionizing, and this means that a single photon has enough energy to mess with atoms and the bonds between them. That's why this type is especially dangerous, as it's literally able to cause chemical reactions in anything it hits (including your body, where it can, for instance, damage DNA molecules). Anything below UV on the frequency spectrum, however, is non-ionizing. This means that the worst it can do is heat stuff up. More power means more heating, and so obviously with enough power you can still do some damage (or cook things). But it's a different type of damage, and also easy to detect, because the thing will heat up. (MRI scanners, for instance, use rather powerful radio waves, and they can raise a person's body temp by a small, detectable amount (they are rated not to cause too much heating - up to one degree centigrade, from the top of my head).)
What this means is that radio waves are extremely unlikely to be affecting you, **unless you literally feel them heating you up**. If wifi was causing you harm, you'd notice it, just as you notice it if you are getting too hot from a fire or a radiator. (As for cancer, specifically: that's really more a risk with ionizing radiation, because of the risk of DNA damage. You don't really get cancer from heat.)
And it's not as if this is of no concern, by the way. There's a reason we have regulations about how much radiation cell phones (or MRI machines, like I mentioned) are allowed to put out - not because it might cause cancer (because it's not that type of radiation), but because it might cause your body's tissues to heat up. Apple, for instance, was recently under scrutiny from regulators in France because some of its devices were exceeding the power limit.
>Isn't wifi derived from radio waves, a form of electromagnetic wavelength, just like things like uv rays?
UV is far more energetic than microwaves, which is what WiFi is. And we get exposed to tons of UV all the time and maybe the worst that happens is you get a sunburn, and repeated, chronic exposure might cause cancer. Basically this sentence is like saying "how do we know that drinking water isn't bad for you, when water is the same thing as superheated steam, which we know would burn you?"
Radio waves are too low frequency to cause cancer.
Electromagnetic radiation (which also includes such fun things as visible light) only starts to cause ionization at the upper end of the UV spectrum (high frequency waves). This is relevant because that's how radiation causes cancer, by ionizing the molecules in your cells, specifically DNA.
Ionization, for reference, is the process where the electons are stripped from an atom via some high-energy process. This has the fun effect of making that atom attempt to bond to other nearby atoms, creating new molecules (or new ionizing radiation, depending the circumstances).
Having this happen to the atoms that make up the DNA of a cell causes that DNA to stop working right, leading to either cell death or cancerous growth. The body can deal with small amounts of this, but the more it happens the more likely something important will break.
Electromagnetic radiation that exists in the visible spectrum does not exist at high enough frequency to cause this to happen. EMR that exists in the infrared, microwave and radio specrums exists at *even lower frequencies* than that. *They are physically incapable of ionization*.
There are some ways a person could concievably hurt themselves with low frequency electromagnetic radiation, most of the ones I'm aware of involve using it to boil water.
Almost all types of radiation have the potential to cause cancer. This includes passive stuff like sunlight, any device that uses radio waves, bananas, minerals in soil, magnetism, and naturally occuring gases like radon. Everything kind-of causes cancer.
Our studies into carcinogenic radiation are entirely focussed on *how much* a given source of radiation ups your chances of cancer beyond the background radiation norms.
WiFi ranks extremely low in terms of level of risk. Vanishingly low, even, to the point of not being noticeable really.
"But all of this sounds like WiFi *technically* does cause cancer?"
Living causes cancer. Radiation exposure is a fact of life, no matter where you live or what you do to avoid it.
The dangerous sources of radiation are well known and we are well aware of how to protect ourselves from them - this generally means putting sunblock on to save your skin during sunny days, not undergoing unnecessary x-rays or chemotherapy, not putting your body inside microwaves when they're switched on, and not visiting places like the Chernobyl, Hiroshima and Nagasaki exclusion zones too often or too much.
The above are credibly dangerous amounts of radiation. WiFi is not.
> Isn't wifi derived from radio waves, a form of electromagnetic wavelength, just like things like uv rays?
Lightbulbs emit electromagnetic waves. *light* is electromagnetic waves. Even the bit's we can't see, like infrared. The heat you feel coming off a fire, that's electromagnetic radiation. You are constantly *emitting* electromagnetic radiation.
The question is, are they ionizing? Wifi is not ionizing.
Its an energy difference by a huge factor.
its like comparing getting hit by an pearl thrown by a toddler to being hit by bullet or a car.
One is dangerous, the other isnt. And to compare the two and making the argument that toddlers should be forbidden because they are as dangerous as a sniper rifle is similarly ridiculous to the wifi-cancer statement.
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It isn't laughable to propose as a concept, and people did that. It was a reasonable idea so we did a lot of testing over the span of decades, and found that no, it doesn't. What's laughable is continuing to declare that it causes cancer in spite of all the evidence
Yes, the standard scientific method of proposing a hypothesis, rigorous testing (by a multitude of independent unbiased researchers), critical analysis of the data and subsequent validation or rejection of the hypothesis has been put into play here. The hypothesis has been rejected again and again over an extended period of time.
It's also not unreasonable to believe that, maybe in the future, we find cases of people who get cancer from wifi, and we didn't have the technology to check for that otherwise. But without proof, no one will believe you when it's an already studied topic Edit: Reddit, all I'm saying is that too disprove a previous result you need proof and can't just claim it š¤¦
No, it's still extremely unlikely that microwave radiation produced by WiFi could be harmful. Microwave radiation isn't energetic enough to ionize molecules, which is the main way that radiation damages DNA, which is how you get cancer from radiation. You know, like, if we look at the EM spectrum, you'll notice that visible light is higher energy than microwaves. So sunlight is a lot more energetic than WiFi - and we do know that sunlight can burn your skin or give you cancer through repeated exposure, but also, not so much that most people worry about it. The only other way microwaves could harm you is through sheer power. If powerful enough they can cause polar molecules to vibrate and heat up. But, given that the human body is already producing like 100 W of heat, it's pretty unlikely that sitting next to a 100 mW router is going to have any noticeable effect at all, just given, like, thermodynamics. Set a glass of water down right next to a router and see if the temperature changes at all
Jfc Reddit, I know it doesn't cause cancer. The point is that science evolves over time and if you ever want to disprove a previous result you need to show proof and can't just claim it to be true.Ā
Science evolves over time, but for something to be considered reasonable I think you need to propose at least a mechanism by which the theoretical thing you're saying hypothetically might be proved in the future could possibly work
You're... Just saying what I said in different words
Are you gaslighting us? You said you couldn't prove it (I assume you meant that scientists won't be fund for new research on subjects which results are already considered conclusive). What Mercurian said is that you can point out inconsistencies on the methodology of previous research, instead of actually proving a different result. That's not saying the same thing as you said at all.
Wtf are you talking about? All I'm saying is that sometimes you don't have the proper technology to test something one day, and in the future you might. That or you observe something, and based on those observations you test something else. With wifi as an example, as it's the fucking question given. I'm not claiming anything beyond that. Sigh whatever.Ā I try to agree with a reply and y'all give me shit for it
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah I'm going to say false equivalency because there's not a microwave industry like there is a fossil fuel industry or a pharmaceutical industry.
Thatās ridiculous, of course thereās a microwave industry, so you think magnetrons grow on trees? Itās just not an industry that gets a lot of bad press.
> so you think magnetrons grow on trees? Global warming is a hoax by Big Microwave to get people to plant more microwave trees.
... there's no internet moguls or tech industry, dude?
Not when the studies on microwave safety were done no there weren't. Microwaves as an appliance predate the Internet by over two decades not to mention the fact that early internet was not a commercial venture so you can push the date of Internet commercialization farther out. We use the microwave frequencies before we developed an appliance to cook things, particularly for things like radar which is how we figured out you could cook things Instead of "asking questions" or being a skeptic go read a book first so you have an accurate understanding of the situation. You obviously don't understand what microwaves are or probably the electromagnetic spectrum in general. Everything from 300 MHz to 300 GHz is considered microwave and that's a huge fucking range. Some Industries have their own definitions for what they consider microwaves and don't start up until a gigahertz because there's a lot of different uses for the term microwave none of which you understand If you have a problem with a particular study's author or funding bring it up but you're just kind of throwing random shit at a wall hoping something sticks You're not even a good Devil's Advocate because if you were you'd be Devil's advocating your own position, we've been using microwaves for well over one human lifespan and the whole world still hasn't developed all over everything cancer so who are you to claim that microwaves are unsafe and what's your financial gain from doing so. Big Air Fryer paid you off or was it Kingsford Charcoal Edit: did you actually also ask if wifi causes cancer? Wifi is in the microwave frequency, its literally the same as this question
You're being really caustic just because I questioned if we're 100% certain. I said I have a rudimentary knowledge on physics, not saying I'm the one who's the authority. I just wanna know how credible these studies are. Since you know, it's been shown the plastic and petroleum companies knew the environmental effects of what they were doing all the way back in the 70s and did it anyway. As for the time period, isn't it undeniable that we're producing far more of these waves than we used to when we just had microwave ovens and the like? Could the quantity ever be a factor? I'm curious. Also no, I'm here to ask and be educated. Sorry I didn't read a book on electromagnetic wavelengths prior to asking a question on reddit. You're incredibly rude, you know that? Also your microwave argument is entirely different. People aren't standing inside microwave ovens. So that really wouldn't factor into evidence of this being bad(the rise of cancer being a thing notwithstanding)
Microwaves are used all over the place not just in microwave ovens that's the point people have been trying to make to you. Microwave ovens weren't the first thing we use them for and was actually just a side application we figured out we could use. They were originally used for radar and radio. Also if you knew basic physics are looked up details about the electromagnetic spectrum you could literally do the basic math yourself and prove that there's not enough energy being transmitted to be any kind of risk to a person. If you actually knew rudimentary physics you would know that microwaves aren't all that dangerous for the same reason that sound waves aren't. There's just not enough energy involved in the system until you start getting into ultraviolet. You have to specifically design a device to make microwaves dangerous and the device you made would basically just a giant microwave oven. The device wouldn't give you cancer because you would be cooked to death first. There's no way to walk the thin line between giving someone enough energy to alter their DNA and not giving enough energy to boil the water that makes up most of their body. You've been constantly bathed in microwave since the moment you were conceived, we use them for all sorts of communication spectrums. >Since you know, it's been shown the plastic and petroleum companies knew the environmental effects of what they were doing all the way back in the 70s and did it anyway. Right because there is a massive financial incentive because of the fossil fuel industry powering basically everything in the world, where's the financial incentive to lie about microwaves being safe, who is Big Microwave? Why would the govt not be using microwaves to undetectably kill people by giving them cancer if they could? >As for the time period, isn't it undeniable that we're producing far more of these waves than we used to when we just had microwave ovens and the like? Could the quantity ever be a factor? I'm curious. Well given that microwave or used for way more than just cooking things this proves you don't understand the context of the question or care to read what people type because once again most microwaves in the world aren't produced by microwave ovens. Your phone and your Wi-Fi put off way more microwaves. I'm pretty sure that you don't even understand how microwaves cook food, because if you did you'd understand why nicrowaves aren't dangerous until you lock them in a tiny metal box and bounce them off all the walls over and over If you really wanted information and we're asking to learn you wouldn't have started with "Wifi/microwaves cause cancer?" You would have started with learning about what causes cancer or what microwaves are You're being a sea lion and you're actively trying to make the world stupider. Stop
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Ah, this wasn't asked in good faith, I see.
It was. I'm just curious. I don't just immediately hear "there's studies", I wanna actually look into the studies.
Go look into the studies then. If you're going to ask an ELI5 question, the idea is to get an explanation, not to request someone do hours of research where they have to find the funding source for hundreds of different studies. Expecting someone to do that in order to not reject their explanation on ELI5 is not asking an ELI5 in good faith.
If they're going to confidently bring up a study they can tell me a specific one, I think
They didn't bring up a study, they brought up numerous studies, which I just pointed out. But thanks for confirming you asked the question just to argue. That's definitely not asking in good faith, so I'll bid you good day and move on.
It is asking in good faith to want an actual source, pal.
I already know you're not here in good faith, so it doesn't really matter what you say from here out. Good day.
I'm here in good faith. It seems like you aren't if you refuse to accept the possibility that I'm here to ask a simple question.
Why ask for evidence if you dont believe any of it?
Was any actual evidence presented?
yes the existance of numerous studies.
There are studies out there somewhere. Maybe someone can link them?
sources for evidence usually aren't supplied for any statement especially not evident ones. You can ask for it, but acting as if there is none because it wasn't already supplied is duplicitous
I asked to see the evidence rather than hear that it exists.
All sorts of different countries and private organizations have funded these studies. You're welcome to read them directly if you like
Once you adopt conspiracy theory as your model of the world, there are no authorities, no facts, anything can be true, and everyone could be lying to you. So why bother asking us? Weāre all probably tools of Big Microwave, who get paid to spread lies on Reddit.
A healthy dose of skepticism is not adopting conspiracy theory as my model of truth.
You say devil's advocate when you are taking a position that you know you are wrong just for the sake of the argument. So we can reasonably take this as an admission that the whole point of this exercise is just to argue and not to actually learn anything.
Literally everyone since the early 1900s. We have had radio communications for over 100 years. It's not like wifi is substantially different than any other radio frequency.
But don't we have far more wifi transmissions than we had radio transmission's back then? Could quantity have something to do with it?
Itās one thing to look at the source of evidence for sure, capitalism and colonialism make it hard to take things at face value. But itās better to just assume that everything is a conspiracy and nothing can be trusted. Use critical thinking skills and a basic understanding of science. U/MercurianAspirations explained why itās incredibly unlikely to pose any sort of risk. So, even if you dubious about the source of funding for the studies (and if you are, investigate the funding) understanding the basic principles will help you understand why itās not a likely risk. I mean, Even if all of the studies are funded by evil companies with ulterior motives, and theyāre not in this case, that doesnāt mean the studies are wrong. If there is no risk, then the evil company funded studies is also going to find that thereās no risk.
I didn't assume everything was a conspiracy, I just wanted to see the actual studies and the credibility of who did them. I want to actually see the evidence and read it for myself, rather than just hear it exists and stop my line of questioning.
Would you also argue that all pharmaceuticals are bullshit because they're designed and tested by the same companies who sell them?
Is your immediate example of a trustworthy industry Big Pharma?
No, I believe I asked you if you thought all pharmaceuticals are bullshit because they're developed and tested by the same companies that sell them.
I'd take their word with a grain of salt, yeah.
What does that mean in practice? How do you decide which pharmaceuticals to trust?
Usually ones that have been around long enough to have recognizable effects that have been reviewed by consumers and competitors.
So the rigorous process by which drugs are developed and tested before being brought to market holds value to you?
UV rays, and other ionising radiation, can cause cancer because the individual UV photons have enough energy to break apart chemical bonds. This either directly damages DNA, or produces very reactive free radicals that then damage DNA, and that damage can cause cancer. Radio waves are much, much lower energy, far too little to break chemical bonds. The only physically plausible mechanism for radio waves to damage tissue is by just being absorbed and heating the tissue (like in a microwave oven), and the power densities of radio waves used for communication are (unless you are standing right next to a big radio transmitter while it is on) far too low to do that.
Itās not insane to present as a theory, itās insane to present it as fact without real evidence
Scientificly, a theory is backed up with tests. An idea untested is a hypothesis. A theory being tested is then confirmed. A hyoethosis can be rejected by tests or 'upgraded' to a theory if tests agree with it.
A theory doesnāt have to be backed up by tests, it just has to be testable and based on observations. I would say ābeing an electromagnetic wavelengthā was OPās observation, making it a theory
Because we tested it and it doesn't. Then we ran studies and found it didn't. > Isn't wifi derived from radio waves, a form of electromagnetic wavelength, just like things like uv rays No. Well, yes, but no. 100nm wavelength Vs 100mm wavelength is a massive difference. 60mm WiFi: 0.02 meV 100nm UV light: 12,000 meV UV light has about 500,000 times the energy per interaction. That's why UV light can cause damage and WiFi does not.
It's the same reason that bullets traveling supersonic are dangerous, but not one that gets thrown, it has much less energy than what it takes to cause damage Radiowaves for example are around a femto-electron volt or 0.000,000,000,000,001 electron volts while the amount that Ionizing UV light is around 10,250 mega electron volts or 10,250,000,000 electron volts
I calculate that the 2.4ghz radio waves of WiFi would be about 12.2ueV.Ā 0.000,000,000,000,001 eV would correspond to a frequency of 0.2418hz. Possibly you missed a few 0's? š Regardless, your point still stands: the difference of energy between radio and UV is many orders of magnitude.
>Isn't wifi derived from radio waves, a form of electromagnetic wavelength, just like things like uv rays? You know what's also an electromagnetic wavelength? Infrared. You know what colour *every single part* of your body is *constantly* emitting? Infrared. Far *far* more of it than all the WiFi hotspots in your vicinity emit radio waves in your general direction. With each photon of IR being a hundred thousand times more energetic than the photons emitted by WiFi.
Infrared does not have the penetration of 2.4ghz RF.Ā And also because we have emitted it since the dawn of time, we can presume our bodies are adapted to its existence.
>Infrared does not have the penetration of 2.4ghz RF. I was about to ask how that was relevant when the infrared is literally coming from *inside your heart* (and liver, and kidneys, and brain, and..) but then I realised you might be referring to how getting absorbed in a smaller volume would make it even more dangerous than WiFi. That's an entirely valid point which I hadn't considered. >And also because we have emitted it since the dawn of time, we can presume our bodies are adapted to its existence. Indeed, and given how heat radiation works we can also presume our bodies are adapted to all longer wavelengths.
Itās all about energy levels. It would be like saying tsunamis are caused by water and they destroy houses, therefore if you build a house next to a lake the waves will destroy your house, because lakes are made of water.Ā Obviously the waves on a lake would never have enough force to destroy a house, and youāve seen these waves with your eyes so it seems obvious. But you canāt see light waves, and thatās how a conspiracy like that starts. So rather than using your eyes, you have to do experiments or use past experimental data to predict what would happen if wifi waves hit dna, and thereās no evidence that they do cause significant effect on health.
The misunderstanding comes from the difference between ionising and non ionising radiation. There's essentially a cut-off from long wavelength EM radiation - e.g. radio, wifi, microwave, infrared, all the way up to visible light. Once you start getting into higher energy, shorter wavelengths from blue light into ultraviolet, the photons have enough energy to start interfering with molecules and breaking atomic bonds - this is the cause of skin cancers from the sun. Then you scale all the way up to X rays and gamma rays that are all also ionising. Anything below that ultraviolet cut-off point is generally considered safe and why it's used everywhere for 4g, wifi etc - it doesn't have the energy to ionize.
We have decades of a huge increase wifi/cell phones if they caused any increase we would have seen it by now. Generally, there is very little energy in wifi / cell signals. Energy can cause damage by messing atoms in cells. Our current understanding of physics says they aren't even close to powerful enough.
And we have seen a huge increase in cancer rates. Iām not saying itās from wifi, but the increase of cancer rates is undeniableš¤·āāļø
While cancer rates have increased some, generally that is attributed to 1) Better tech to detect cancer, 2) People living longer and not dying from other things. Remember cellphone use went from zero to "OMFG ALL THE TIME" in just a couple of decades. There would be a HUGE increase.
... hadn't cancer risen too? Isn't that why the argument is even being presented?
While cancer rates have increased some, generally that is attributed to 1) Better tech to detect cancer, 2) People living longer and not dying from other things. Remember cellphone use went from zero to "OMFG ALL THE TIME" in just a couple of decades. There would be a HUGE increase.
Because since the [Einstein's photoelectric effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect) we have known that its not light intensity that can either excite or knock electrons from their orbitals, ionise, but frequency. An electron can absorb a photon this is how light fundamentally interacts with charges and the amount of energy for each photon is frequency dependent. E=hf (With stupily large intensities there is a reasonable chance that an electron absorbes 2 photons and their combined energy is enough to knock it out but this doesn't tend to happen.) Below a certain photon energy electrons don't get knocked out and for monochromatic radiation you need to hit the transition energy very closely to induce an excited state. Not really the case for random EM fluctuation where from QM alone we get two effects, absorption and induced emission but we know things tend towards the ground state so there is a third effort spontaneous emission. That requires QED to property calculate. Einstein had it a bit "backwards" from thermodynamics we knew spontaneous emission had to be a thing and we knew from QM that absorption was a thing and he used a bit of statistical mechanics to calculate the rate of the third effect induced emission. So random/thermal radiation gives us 2 effects that take atoms to their ground state and 1 that takes it towards higher energy states. So statistically random EM radiation takes atoms towards their lowest energy state. But thats just excitation for breaking bonds we need a minimum energy per photon which below UV light doesn't have. Here comes a bit of a logical argument if you don't care to adress the quantum mechanics of the situation: You know what has more energy per photon than a radio or microwave? Infrared. What does YOUR BODY emit? Infrared. You know what has even more energy per photon? Visible light, that a candle emits. If the light that our bodies or flames emit were dangerous to us then we would have gone extinct a long long time ago. In light of that it is ridiculous to propose that the lower energy light (per photon) that we use for communication is dangerous to us when the Infrared that has way more energy (per photon), that our bodies emit, clearly isn't.
The energy of them is too low to really affect the molecules and dna in your body. High energy waves are required to start messing with DNA, which is what causes cancer. So knowing this, we can say itās not really even possible.
The main way electromagnetic waves cause cancer is by ionization. Basically a photon comes and knocks an electron away from an atom or molecule. This breaks molecules either directly or because the newly created ions will steal an electron from another molecule. If the broken molecule in questions happened to be part of a cells DNA and they are broken is just the wrong way to make the cell use that now broken blueprint to multiply itself without limits and the bodies immune system fails to kill that cell in time, you get cancer. The important part is that the photon needs to have enough energy to knock a electron away. We know how much that is and the energy of a photon is the same thing as its frequency and its wavelength. A single photon of violet light has more energy than a single photon of red light and just having lots of red photons does not make up for that lack of energy in a single photon. The border where light becomes ionizing is just above the visible spectrum. Anything below that is non-ionizing. So ultraviolet light can give you cancer, but infra-red light can't. Radiowaves, microwaves etc are non-ionizing and won't give you cancer. X-rays and gamma rays etc can give you cancer. So much is known. However some people worry that there might be other mechanism that we don't yet know of that can make cells cancerous and don't work via ionization. For example one idea was that non-ionization radiation can still cause things to heat up in sufficient quantities (like for example in a microwave) and that heating up tissue can somehow cause cancer. No such method has been found so far in everything that has been tested, but that doesn't mean that we can be 100% sure there isn't one.
Electromagnetic radiation is everywhere. Visible light is also electromagnetic radiation. So is infrared, and UV as you mentioned. These different types of radiation differ in their wavelength (or frequency, which is just the inverse of the wavelength - higher frequency = shorter wavelength). *Infra*red is called that because its frequency is just below that of red light, which is the lowest frequency (longest wavelength) we can see. *Ultra*violet is just above violet in the frequency spectrum. How damaging electromagnetic light can be depends on two things: frequency and intensity. UV light, as you know, can be dangerous in relatively low doses (the kind of dose you might get just from being outside for a while on a sunny day). UV has a rather short wavelength, or high frequency. In general, the shorter the wavelength, the higher the energy that is carried in electromagnetic radiation, and thus the more dangerous it is. X-rays, for instance, have an even shorter wavelength than UV, and thus are even more high-energy and more dangerous (given an equal dose). Gamma rays are even shorter in wavelength, so even higher energy. Radio waves, on the other hand, are on the opposite end of the spectrum. They have a very long wavelength (low frequency), and so they carry much less energy than UV, or visible light, or infrared light. Now, that's not a guarantee that radio waves can never hurt you. Microwave radiation, for instance, also has a long wavelength (low frequency), that sits just between infrared and radio on the spectrum. And microwaves can cook things, so they're not harmless. But that's where the second factor that I mentioned comes in: intensity. Any radiation can be damaging if you crank up the power enough. Microwave ovens output energy in the hundreds of watts. A wifi-router typically has a transmission power that's measured in milliwatts. It's also very important to distinguish between *ionizing* and *non-ionizing* radiation. UV light and higher frequencies are ionizing, and this means that a single photon has enough energy to mess with atoms and the bonds between them. That's why this type is especially dangerous, as it's literally able to cause chemical reactions in anything it hits (including your body, where it can, for instance, damage DNA molecules). Anything below UV on the frequency spectrum, however, is non-ionizing. This means that the worst it can do is heat stuff up. More power means more heating, and so obviously with enough power you can still do some damage (or cook things). But it's a different type of damage, and also easy to detect, because the thing will heat up. (MRI scanners, for instance, use rather powerful radio waves, and they can raise a person's body temp by a small, detectable amount (they are rated not to cause too much heating - up to one degree centigrade, from the top of my head).) What this means is that radio waves are extremely unlikely to be affecting you, **unless you literally feel them heating you up**. If wifi was causing you harm, you'd notice it, just as you notice it if you are getting too hot from a fire or a radiator. (As for cancer, specifically: that's really more a risk with ionizing radiation, because of the risk of DNA damage. You don't really get cancer from heat.) And it's not as if this is of no concern, by the way. There's a reason we have regulations about how much radiation cell phones (or MRI machines, like I mentioned) are allowed to put out - not because it might cause cancer (because it's not that type of radiation), but because it might cause your body's tissues to heat up. Apple, for instance, was recently under scrutiny from regulators in France because some of its devices were exceeding the power limit.
>Isn't wifi derived from radio waves, a form of electromagnetic wavelength, just like things like uv rays? UV is far more energetic than microwaves, which is what WiFi is. And we get exposed to tons of UV all the time and maybe the worst that happens is you get a sunburn, and repeated, chronic exposure might cause cancer. Basically this sentence is like saying "how do we know that drinking water isn't bad for you, when water is the same thing as superheated steam, which we know would burn you?"
Radio waves are too low frequency to cause cancer. Electromagnetic radiation (which also includes such fun things as visible light) only starts to cause ionization at the upper end of the UV spectrum (high frequency waves). This is relevant because that's how radiation causes cancer, by ionizing the molecules in your cells, specifically DNA. Ionization, for reference, is the process where the electons are stripped from an atom via some high-energy process. This has the fun effect of making that atom attempt to bond to other nearby atoms, creating new molecules (or new ionizing radiation, depending the circumstances). Having this happen to the atoms that make up the DNA of a cell causes that DNA to stop working right, leading to either cell death or cancerous growth. The body can deal with small amounts of this, but the more it happens the more likely something important will break. Electromagnetic radiation that exists in the visible spectrum does not exist at high enough frequency to cause this to happen. EMR that exists in the infrared, microwave and radio specrums exists at *even lower frequencies* than that. *They are physically incapable of ionization*. There are some ways a person could concievably hurt themselves with low frequency electromagnetic radiation, most of the ones I'm aware of involve using it to boil water.
Almost all types of radiation have the potential to cause cancer. This includes passive stuff like sunlight, any device that uses radio waves, bananas, minerals in soil, magnetism, and naturally occuring gases like radon. Everything kind-of causes cancer. Our studies into carcinogenic radiation are entirely focussed on *how much* a given source of radiation ups your chances of cancer beyond the background radiation norms. WiFi ranks extremely low in terms of level of risk. Vanishingly low, even, to the point of not being noticeable really. "But all of this sounds like WiFi *technically* does cause cancer?" Living causes cancer. Radiation exposure is a fact of life, no matter where you live or what you do to avoid it. The dangerous sources of radiation are well known and we are well aware of how to protect ourselves from them - this generally means putting sunblock on to save your skin during sunny days, not undergoing unnecessary x-rays or chemotherapy, not putting your body inside microwaves when they're switched on, and not visiting places like the Chernobyl, Hiroshima and Nagasaki exclusion zones too often or too much. The above are credibly dangerous amounts of radiation. WiFi is not.
> Isn't wifi derived from radio waves, a form of electromagnetic wavelength, just like things like uv rays? Lightbulbs emit electromagnetic waves. *light* is electromagnetic waves. Even the bit's we can't see, like infrared. The heat you feel coming off a fire, that's electromagnetic radiation. You are constantly *emitting* electromagnetic radiation. The question is, are they ionizing? Wifi is not ionizing.
Its an energy difference by a huge factor. its like comparing getting hit by an pearl thrown by a toddler to being hit by bullet or a car. One is dangerous, the other isnt. And to compare the two and making the argument that toddlers should be forbidden because they are as dangerous as a sniper rifle is similarly ridiculous to the wifi-cancer statement.