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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (6684)	12/23/1997 7:58:00 PM
From: Caxton Rhodes	Respond to of 152472

Maurice, we are in agreement, my argument was against the "mini nuke" tomato theory in that 1) they're not made radioactive and 2) after radiation they have the same chemical and atomic content they started with. As an NE, I am only familiar with changes due to radiation exposure, and not chemical exposure or chemical changes caused by heating. I am curious why you say its obvious cellphones cause cancer though. I guess you assume that even the small emf field causes some type of cell mutation? or heat? What evidence is there that shows or hints this to be the case? No charged particles are being emitted by the phone and there are no significant photons being emitted or attracted by cell phones. Caxton

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (6684)	12/23/1997 9:12:00 PM
From: John Cuthbertson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Hi Maurice, On the subject of photons causing mutations: a 1900 MHz photon carries about 8 micro-electron-Volts of energy. That is way, way below the energy needed to affect a chemical bond by itself (on the order of 1 electron-Volt). It probably isn't even enough to cause a molecule to vibrate internally. So single photon effects are just completely unimportant at these frequencies. But, you might have lots of photons coming through, in which case you could heat things up, and this is where you might cause a problem. So it is really back to your worry about cooking things! ;-) You're right that understanding causal relationships is much nicer than epidemiology. And that is why people are able to be so certain about the lack of risk from power lines. The physics of electromagnetic waves and fields is very well understood. Photons from 60 Hz em waves from power lines are just not going to penetrate your body, so there is no mechanism to cause you any harm. It doesn't seem obvious at all to me that cell phones cause cancer. It seems possible, but not obvious. I agree completely with Caxton that the biggest risk is from driving accidents. You're probably right about people not being willing to trust the experts, and that's a real problem. Especially when they are so willing at the same time to trust complete crackpots! If we are going to have a technological society, we really have to have some way to decide which risks are likely big enough to worry about.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (6684)	12/24/1997 2:33:00 AM
From: jweiner	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

i've lurked for a while (at least as long as ive been selling puts and accumulating for the long haul) and two things have it so that i cannot hold my tongue. item 1: a motorola salesman hung around one of the ucla clinics for an hour and a half to close a sale of one startac7000 to the hapless physician in attendance. when i asked if the buyer was familiar with cdma and qcom, the motorep assured them that cdma was "20 year old technology and that the gsm startac was state of the art". after he left i suggested that they try the other brand and return the gsm phone if not up to snuff. i had no idea that moto had to invest such resources to sell a phone these days... item 2: the main problem with irradiated food is transport and disposal of nuclear waste. the benefit of the tech is spurious-it does not make food any fresher and does not fundamentally improve on existing tech for extending shelf life. All the radiation in the world will not improve food handling practice throughout the distribution chain. All it does is give a last gasp of hope to those desperate planners of low level waste dumps and transport services. but i digress james w