Ed, Jeff, and Mike Discuss Electro Magnet Fields, Cancer, and Radios

Ed: One of these days we'll have to go into the dangers of the Electro Magnetc Fields (EMFs) emitted from the clock radios on our night tables a foot or two from our brains. I have a meter especially made to measures such fields. You wouldn't believe how strongly some radios radiate.

Jeff: What are the dangers? Are we talking brain cancer?

Ed: I don't want to feed anyone's paranoia, but I kept fields away from my wife while she was pregnant and while my son was young (esp. whwere they slept in bed). Most studies will say "results have been mixed" but tis better to be safe than sorry.
Ex: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/risk/magnetic-fields

Jeff: So do all radios create these magnetic fields or just clock radios? And what about my Sangean portable with the earbuds? Are we talking the same risk as cell phones?

Ed: Well, a clock radio has at least the clock circuit/display on all the time. And we spend about 8 hours a night near it. That adds up. The power transformer produces a big field, so sets that outboard it to a wall-wart are theoretically "safer", as are battery-only sets.

Earbuds produce a very low field; only time will tell, but they produce nowhere near the power emitted by a cell phone, and cells have only been in heavy use for the last 10-15 years. Cellphone dangers are another issue. They are RF generators...more powerful than low-freq EMF devices like power lines and clock radios...more like a microwave oven in fact. And we slap them right up against our heads. Limit your time on them, and dont let kids under 10 use them.

Jeff: I've got my clock radio on all night. Am I in some kind of trouble?
Should I switch to my C.Crane CSW in my bedroom?

Ed: No. Just make sure your clock radio is at least 12" away from your head and you'll be alright.

Jeff: My Boston Acoustics Horizon Solo is about 18'' away from my head but I still don't feel completely safe.

[This discussion resulted in the following between Ed and Mike]

Mike: I got paranoid about EMF fields from my radios, work CRT's, and other appliances a number of years ago after reading Dr. Andrew Weil's opinion of them. He suggested playing it safe by not having bedside clock radios, etc. near one's head at night, but pointed out that the evidence was inconclusive.

I bought a little gaussmeter back then. Turned out the head of my bed had strong EMF's from the wiring in the wall even w/o extra gadgets, and I experimented with the meter for a while. LED's are stronger than LCD's and I have preferred backlit LCD radios ever since. I returned my otherwise excellent BAR because I felt the EMF was too strong to be near my head all night. Battery-driven radios usually have minimal EMF's, another reason I like them.

Here's a more recent post from Dr. Weil :

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA400236

Ed: Thanks, Mike. This whole matter is complicated by the fact that some cancers take 10 to 20 years to develop. Plus, there's so much money at stake in the cellphone business and the elctric utilities have so much existing infrastructure. But hey, if we weren't awash in milions of invisible magnetic fields we'd have no radio hobby to have fun with!

Jeff: So I should probably get rid of my beloved Boston Acoustics Horizon Solo and get a radio with a wall wart adapter or, better yet, one that runs strictly on batteries. Man, it's hard to be too safe in this world. 

Ed: Jeff, I measured my BA Duo with an EMF meter and it has very low emissions, on or off, and six inches away there is nothing. I'm assuming the Solo is of similar construction, so it's OK to have it on your night table. In fact, I measured older radios and they were much worse...it seems newer radios are built with better shielding and newer parts, ie LCD displays, which are low-EMF. You can borrow my EMF meter if you want to check out your rooms and radios.

Comments

[Mike W]

Ed, just wait till they get a wireless broadband protocol like WiMax fully implemented, we'll be in even more of an EM jungle. Maybe the tinfoil hat crowd has it right.

Jeff, that Solo seems like a good radio, I didn't mean to dissuade you. Perhaps you could just make sure it's 12" or more from your head. Wall warts may be a little further from one's head but are powerful EM sources themselves, and unlike internal power supplies, are always on.

[jeffrey McMahon]

Mike, the discussion prompted me to move my Solo from the bedroom to the workout room and the PR-D5 from the guest bathroom into my bedroom.

Do you think the PR-D5 is safer than the Solo in the sense that it emits less wave strength?

[Mike W]

I have not had a Solo yet, but apparently it uses more power than the PR-D5 and uses a mains connection rather than a wall wart, so the Solo probably emits a stronger EMF.

Whether that makes the PR-D5 safer goes back to the whole question of whether EMF's pose a health risk. There was a study about clusters of childhood leukemia near power lines done a number of years ago, I think on Long Island, which alleged cause-and-effect. Other people came along later and said that study in effect was employing a statistical fallacy and that there was no proven connection between EMF's and cancers.

My knowledge of this is slight and perhaps I should not be posting about it, but apparently, there may be a slight long-term risk from EMF's, but it hasn't been proven and isn't like smoking cigarettes or something. You may wish to look around the web more and ask your doctor about it during your next visit.

[kr]

guys, you can go down a rat hole on this. personally, i don't trust too many things made by man to not have negative side-effects, but there is not much you can do about it. do you have internet wi-fi in your house? a cell phone? well that's constant microwave bath. you also have BPA in all the plastic you eat off of, flame retardent chemicals in your milk, gasoline additive MMT in your water, tri-halomethanes in your indoor pools and showers, mercury leaching out of your fillings, dna damage from phosphoric acid and sodium benzoate in your cokes and root beers, benzene, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter from car and diesel exhaust, what's a little more EMF to the front lobe while you are listening to conspiracy theories on SW in the middle of the night?

[Ed S.]

Jeff, I measured my BA Duo with an EMF meter and it has very low emissions, on or off, and six inches away there is nothing. I'm assuming the Solo is of similar construction, so it's OK to have it on your night table. In fact, I measured older radios and they were much worse...it seems newer radios are built with better shielding and newer parts, ie LCD displays, which are low-EMF. You can borrow my EMF meter if you want to check out your rooms and radios.

[jeffrey McMahon]

Ed, that's great info: I'll post it. Thanks. Jeff

[Michael S]

Has anyone tested the EMF on any of the Tivoli radios?

Thanks.

[jeffrey McMahon]

I haven't tested them and to my knowledge Ed, who has an EMF meter, does not have a Tivoli. I have 2. Perhaps one day I'll take them to Ed's house for a test. Perhaps one day Ed and I will compile a list from least to greatest of EMF levels.

[Tom Welch]

Interestingly, I came across this link today: http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/23/technology/cell_phone_cancer.ap/index.htm

[Ed S.]

Wow Tom, could it be the MainStream Media reads "Herculodge"? (yeah, right!) It just seems like this concern about cellphones and cancer pops up about once every year, usually in the Summer...I think media types call this "the silly season."

[jeffrey McMahon]

One good thing came out of my concern at least: I learned that my PR-D5 in many ways performs better as a "clock radio" than my Solo.

[gerald johnson]

a little ag runoff in the water system, nightly doses of emf's and fruit fly larvae hatching from your fresh fruit makes us all better americans.

[Cyril]

Maybe somebody can confirm this, but I would expect EMF to decrease as the square (or is that the cube) of the distance to the source. At any rate, this means the field at a typical radio listening distance (even clock radio) would be vanishingly small compared to what it is when the device is held right next to your brain.

Controversies around cell phones are due to either holding these right against your ear, or to the much stronger signals of cell phone towers (which have to reach over several km). In some places it is forbiden to build those towers on the roof of schools, for example.

As for fruit fly larvae, the idea of eating those may be repulsive, but I doubt their ingestion may cause any significant harm (at least for non vegetarians).

[Cyril]

Maybe somebody can confirm this, but I would expect EMF to decrease as the square (or is that the cube) of the distance to the source. At any rate, this means the field at a typical radio listening distance (even clock radio) would be vanishingly small compared to what it is when the device is held right next to your brain.

Controversies around cell phones are due to either holding these right against your ear, or to the much stronger signals of cell phone towers (which have to reach over several km). In some places it is forbiden to build those towers on the roof of schools, for example.

As for fruit fly larvae, the idea of eating those may be repulsive, but I doubt their ingestion may cause any significant harm (at least for non vegetarians).

[Ed S.]

Cyril, You are correct about the inverse-square law. But another factor that comes into play in determining risk is Duration of exposure. While the field from a clock radio 6 inches from your head may be very weak, it is there an average of 7 or 8 hours a night, 365 days a year. Some research shows field exposure, like radiation or sunlight exposure, is cumulative. So a few strong but brief doses of RF from a cellphone might in fact be less risky than years'worth of weak-field accumulation from a radio. We don't know yet.