May 28, 2006

EVEN GOD CAN'T HIT A ONE IRON:

Why you should have a phone mast as close to your house as possible (Ben Goldacre, May 20, 2006, The Guardian)

The one thing that people who worry about the health risks of mobile phone masts tend to forget is the inverse square law: the power of the signal falls away extremely rapidly as you move away from the mast, much faster than you'd think, exponentially in fact, because the energy is dissipated and spread out in three dimensions like a big, ever-growing sphere.

A bit like the way the skin of a balloon gets thinner, the more you inflate it.

Meanwhile, you are holding a dirty great big transmitter right up next to your brain in the form of your mobile phone.

In fact, because of the inverse square law, the phone gives you a far higher dose of evil rays than the mast.

Go on, press it harder - I can't quite hear you. But mobile phones, very cleverly, preserve their battery life by transmitting a much weaker signal into the air (and therefore also your head) when they detect that a mast is very close by.

If you have a phone, it's in your interests to have it transmit at the lowest power it can manage, which means a strong signal from the mast, which means the mast should be on your street.

I don't expect you all to start campaigning at once.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 28, 2006 10:06 AM
Comments

To be completely safe, let's go back to passing notes back and forth.

Posted by: erp at May 28, 2006 12:21 PM

Ironically, then, the US Army is improving Al Qaeda's health by forcing them to stop using cell phones completely.

Posted by: Bob Hawkins at May 28, 2006 3:22 PM

Just ask Lee Trevino. Yes?

Posted by: Rick T. at May 28, 2006 6:11 PM
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