Bernard Leikind | Searcharxiv

arXiv2011

An Assessment of "What does photon energy tell us about cellphone safety" by Dr. William Bruno

Dr. William Bruno asserts the well-known fact that cell phones radiate microwaves in the classical regime. This, he says, means that the photon energy is not relevant to assessing safety. Citing optical tweezers as an example of biologically relevant non-thermal effects of electromagnetic radiation, Bruno concludes that all other reports of non-thermal effects from microwaves are likely valid. He seeks safety thresholds based upon requiring that cell phone energy density be less than kBT. This proposal and related ideas produce thresholds many orders of magnitude below present values. While Dr. Bruno is correct that cell phone microwave radiation is generally in the classical regime, he uses peculiar estimates (number of photons per cubic wavelength) that overstate the circumstance by more than 20 factors of ten. He misunderstands the operation of optical tweezers and ignores their significant thermal effects. He credulously accepts poorly supported claims of non-thermal effects. He mistakenly believes that kBT is the average thermal energy (per cubic wavelength or per cell) in materials. It is not. It is twice the average energy per molecule per degree of freedom in the material. The thermal energy density is (1/2)kBT X (average number of degrees of freedom of the molecules) X (Avogadro's number). (Avogadro's number is 6 X 1026 molecules/mole.) Thus, Bruno's proposed safety thresholds are more than 1025 too low. Using the correct value for the average thermal energy would place the thresholds close to today's standards. Throughout his analysis he neglects the index of refraction of living tissue, n \cong 9, or the absorption length, α \cong 1 cm-1, in the microwave region.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2010

Do Cell Phones Cause Cancer?

Do cell phones, household electrical power wiring or appliance, or high voltage power lines cause cancer? Fuggedaboudit! No way! When pigs fly! When I'm the Pope! Don't text while you're driving, however, or eat your cell phone. All organisms absorb microwave radiation directly as thermal energy. In living organisms, the organisms' thermal control systems, including the blood flow, and various cooling mechanisms, such as sweating in humans, that work to maintain a stable body temperature rapidly transfer the absorbed energy to the environment. Any temperature rise is small or even unobserved. Any proposed mechanism by which cell phone radiation might cause cancer must begin with this fact. But the amount of radiation absorbed from a cell phone is less than that produced by normal metabolic processes, and much less than that produced by, for example, exercise. None of these normal metabolic processes cause cancer. Therefore, the much smaller amounts of energy from cell phones doesn't cause cancer either. All forms of electromagnetic energy that are known carcinogens are ionizing; ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays. Microwave radiation cannot ionize any physiological molecule. In fact, microwave radiation cannot directly break or modify any chemical bond, covalent or weak. Therefore, microwaves cannot initiate any process leading to cancer, unless it does so through thermal mechanisms. All chemical bonds that act in physiological processes must operate correctly in the thermal environment of the cells at body temperature. All of them have bond energy that is greater than that arising from the thermal jostling, vibrating, and rotating of the cytoplasm. Energy added by microwave radiation is more than a thousand times weaker than that present in the normal thermal jiggling. Since the normal thermal environment does not cause cancer, neither does any absorbed microwave radiation.

physics.pop-ph↗