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Guest Blog, from Professor Denis L. Henshaw, on the myth where EMF’s too low energy to break chemical bonds is automatically equaled to ‘no meaningful effects possible’
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Below is the next in a series of Guest Blogs on BRHP. The opinions expressed in this Guest Blog are of Professor Denis L. Henshaw. Publication of these opinions on BRHP blog site does not imply that BRHP automatically agrees with or endorses these opinions.
Publication of this, and other Guest Blogs, facilitates an open debate and free exchange of opinions on wireless technology and health.
Cell phone radio waves have insufficient energy to damage DNA and cause serious illness – an enduring fallacy
Professor Denis L. Henshaw
It is said that unlike X-rays and gamma-rays, the energy of the electromagnetic radiation* (radio waves) used by cell phones is insufficient to ionise atoms or molecules and therefore cannot damage DNA and cause illnesses such as cancer.
This ancient assertion has been put more explicitly: radio waves used by cell phones lack the quantum energy to eject electrons from atoms or molecules and therefore cannot cause cancer.
Both forms of the assertion are a fallacy.
To explain this fallacy, we first need to understand the precise meaning of these statements.
In physics, ionisation refers to the ejection of electrons well away from their parent atom or molecule. The situation is different to that, familiar to chemists, of ions in solution.
X-rays and gamma-rays come in individual wave packets called photons. Each photon has energy, known as its quantum energy. The energy is indeed sufficient to cause ionisation.
Radio waves are ultimately composed of photons and indeed the individual energy of these photons is insufficient to cause ionisation – this is why radio waves are termed non-ionising radiation. There is, however, a crucial difference between radio waves and X- and gamma-rays that I will come on to later.
Most known cancer-causing agents (carcinogens) are non-ionising
Here is a simple question: If cell phone radio waves cannot cause cancer because they are non-ionising, then how do asbestos particles, cancer viruses and carcinogenic chemicals cause cancer because none of these are ionising in the sense of ionising radiation?
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