RF and Consensual Dangers

Radio Frequency Exposure

The world of electricity is wondrous in many ways. While mankind has somewhat grasped the ability to harness the power of electricity, new information and data is being understood to have new developments on how it may be harmful to one's health. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the impacts and qualities of radio-frequency (RF) exposure to human health. This essay will first give background information on the subject to help explain the mysterious nature of both electricity and magnetism that is strongly connected to this possible health risk. The essay will then investigate empirical example and produced a review of literature pertinent to the topic. These studies will be used to help build a case suggesting that dangerous and unhealthy aspects of RF waves and technology related to RF.

Radio Frequency Background Information

To better understand the impacts of radio frequency on the human health system, it is necessary and diligent to examine the principles behind RF and what exactly the concept represents in the larger scheme of science and healing. To understand RF technology one must be clear on the ideas behind electromagnetism and electricity in general.

Simply put radio frequency, isn't a thing in itself. It describes a band or range of energy that vibrates at a certain frequency. This band vibrates the energy between 3 kHz to 300 GHz. According to NASA "Radio waves have the longest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. They range from the length of a football to larger than our planet. Heinrich Hertz proved the existence of radio waves in the late 1880s. He used a spark gap attached to an induction coil and a separate spark gap on a receiving antenna. When waves created by the sparks of the coil transmitter were picked up by the receiving antenna, sparks would jump its gap as well. Hertz showed in his experiments that these signals possessed all the properties of electromagnetic waves. You can tune a radio to a specific wavelength -- or frequency -- and listen to your favorite music. The radio "receives" these electromagnetic radio waves and converts them to mechanical vibrations in the speaker to create the sound waves you can hear."

What is RF Exposure

Electromagnetic radiation basically are waves of electric and magnetic energy. They are without substance, yet hold great power. Radio waves and microwaves that are transmitted from towers or antennas are one way in which electromagnetic energy can be transformed. These can occur in many places where a RF field has been created. An RF field must have two components to its structure: electricity and magnetism. Both of these concepts are barely understood by many and there are only models of how they can be properly applied in a useful and practical manner.

RF waves are invisible and can be characterized by a wavelength and a frequency. The wavelength in is the amount of space or distance covered by one cycle of the wave and the frequency is the number of electromagnetic waves passing through the wave. RF waves may have other qualities that are not currently known or simply cannot be detected. Exposure to RF waves in the volume that is currently being expressed demonstrates the need to determine how and why exposure happens, can happen, and when it does happen what is the real issue behind the problems being exposed.

RF is very useful in communications and broadcasting worlds. "Radio and television broadcasting, cellular telephones, radio communications for police and fire departments, amateur radio, microwave point-to-point links, and satellite communications are just a few of the many telecommunications applications. Microwave ovens are a good example of a noncommunication use of RF energy. Other important noncommunication uses of RF energy are radar and for industrial heating and sealing. " (Classic, 2004).

Literature Review

Verlock et al. (2014) presented the need for assessment in their research study. Their article aimed to explore data that measured RF exposure in differing environments including the home and in school settings. The research was premised on the idea that the growing presence of RF exposure due to growing instances of their use. The time exposed to RF frequency played a large role in their research question which essentially asked how long can we be exposed to RF radiation without realizing the impacts or effects.

The authors stated that "currently, temporal RF-EMF exposure assessment in "sensitive" environments such as schools and homes, where children reside, is missing. The objective of this paper is to assess and characterize temporal exposures with accurate narrowband equipment (spectrum analyzers and measurement probes) during 24-hour in schools and homes where children are present," (p.51). In order to achieve this objective the researcher designed a study that measured the environments of selected children in terms of RF exposure.

The researchers' study data was collected by analyzing 10 environments both school and home based in a primarily urban setting. The schools were selected because they sufficient RF radiation in their locations such as WiFi and school tablets. The homes that were used for this study were all houses, and not apartments etc., and the measurements were taken for the course of 6 months.

The researchers used complex and complicated machinery to collect their data which tends to distract from their findings. The readers of this article must assume that the highly specialized equipment they used are indeed valid and correctly calibrated to the right standards. All science is ultimately dependant the machinery that it uses to model the argument or behavior that is being tested. These researchers ultimately suggested that "For all environments, the variations of broadcasting signals and telecommunication signals are similar and much lower than those of DECT and WiFi. Although our study focused on the temporal variations, we found that field levels in homes were generally the lowest as reported in [17,18]. In schools, more people are simultaneously present and thus use of more sources occurs, (p.54).

This article contributes to the idea that RF does have a measured effect on children in normal situations. Schools and typical homes can expect to be exposed to massive amounts of RF radiation. The article did not comment on the overall impact on their data, as their intent was to merely conduct measurements in an unbiased and scientifically-based manner. RF exposure is tacit and real according to these researchers and implies that more research about the quality of the environment due to these types of exposure is warranted.

Volkow et al. (2011) premised their research on the notion that cell phones may have an impact on brain activity. The objective of their study was to evaluate and determine if cell phone exposure has impacts on the brain glucose metabolism which is an accepted measure of brain activity. According to the article "because exposure to RF-EMFs from cell phones is well localized and is highest in brain regions closest to the antenna, we hypothesized that the effects on brain metabolism would be greatest in inferior and anterior brain regions, the regions that would be exposed to the highest RF-EMF amplitude for the cell phone model used in this study."

The study was conducted over the course of one calendar year in which 48 healthy participants were enrolled recruited from advertisements. These people claimed that they were in good health with no diseases and were not addicted to drugs including nicotine and alcohol. These people's brains were scanned by the experimenters when they were using cell phones. According to the data, "These results provide evidence that the human brain is sensitive to the effects of RF-EMFs from acute cell phone exposures. The findings of increased metabolism in regions closest to the antenna during acute cell phone exposure suggest that brain absorption of RF-EMFs may enhance the excitability of brain tissue. This interpretation is supported by a report of enhanced cortical excitability to short transcranial magnetic stimulation pulses (1 msec) following 40-minute RF-EMF exposures."

This experiment has value but does not lead the reader to suggest that cell phones or dangerous or if increased brain activity is a necessarily a bad or good thing. More importantly this article loses some credence because the act having a conversation, or many other stimuli happening concurrently with the cell phone activation, may be responsible for the brain activity modulation and instability. Regardless, there is a strong inference that suggest that the RF exposure that is measurable in cell phones is being received and processed by people when they are on their cell phone.

Wiart et al. (2008) examined the impact of RF exposure on the head tissues of children and adults in their research findings. The research was premised on the notion that wireless systems are in use everywhere and that a need to protect people from this possible danger is in order. They argued that "Radiation Protection (ICNIRP 1998) or the International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety (ICES) . (Since questions were still open, the World Health Organization (WHO) has set up in 1996 the EMF Project (EMF project 1996) to promote and coordinate the worldwide research. Expert groups have been set up and reports have been issued. In vivo as well as epidemiological studies have been performed, nevertheless there is still a public concern and in particular about the exposure of children to radio frequencies (RF)," (p.3682).

The study aimed to measure many variables in relation to RF exposure. One of the main hurdles of this research project was comparing the measurements between children and adults. This event in itself requires background assumptions regarding child and adult development. The amount of RF radiation measured in this study used standard techniques to detect RF waves and the experiment seemed valid and successful in its methods and practices.

The study ultimately concluded that only children between the ages of 5 -8 had received any noticeable differences in their brain scan measurements. This was attributed to the thickness differences in the skull. In essence this interesting and deep study suggests that the thicker one's skull is the one is more likely to not feel the impacts of RF exposure. The authors in order to enhance their argument, framed this argument in the following way when the concluded "considering the simulations that have been performed the maximum SAR over 10 g estimated in the head models of the adults and children are about the same since the differences are small compared to the standard deviations. The comparisons have also shown that the maximum SAR in 1 g of peripheral brain tissues of child models aged between 8 and 15 is comparable to the maximum SAR in 1 g of peripheral brain tissues of adult models while it is about two times higher for child models aged between 5 and 8. This is certainly due to the smaller thicknesses of pinna, skin and skull," (p.3692).

This study is useful in describing the effects of RF exposure. This study used cell phone radiation as its base line source of RF noise and it had a limited effect on the adults over aged 8. In many ways this could be viewed as the human body being able to adapt and overcome to its environment and that despite the temporary adjustment periods, people can pretty much adapt to any situation. Children appear at risk between the ages of 5-8 due to this special time in one's life when many of the base line behavior patterns and value systems become involved with the child. While this article does not explicitly demonstrate that RF exposure is bad or good, it does suggest that it is limited in its effect on both older children and adults. The comparison has value in many ways and the opportunity to advance the subject on this knowledge is gained by this exploration by these researchers.

Summary

Each study reported in this essay suggested something different on the very wide and encompassing topic that is RF exposure. It many cases, the research suggests that RF radiation in and of itself is harmless. This is a reasonable approach due to the mysterious and somewhat indescribable nature of RF energy itself. The human consciousness cannot detect this RF radiation without the assistance of a machine or translator. This is represented by a phone, computer, TV etc. The amount of RF exposure is essentially consensual in many ways when the person has the option to simply avoiding these machines. Consent is the most important aspect of this idea and when people are unwillingly exposed to TV programming and other communications transmitted through RF, they risk giving up their free will and let that information become one with their mind, a very common occurrence in today's world.