Cecil, W5DXP wrote:
"They rushed the guy on the toof to the hospital in an ambulance."

I`ve always thought the only effect if RF on humans to be heat and
burns from my personal experience of extreme exposure throughout my long
life. I`ve spent years with a megawatt all around me. Recently i`ve read
the defense department has a nonlethal highpower pulsed micrlwave weapon
which incapacitates anyone in its beam. It is also said the military has
little interest in nonlethal weapons.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

"Richard Harrison" wrote in message
...
I`ve always thought the only effect if RF on humans to be heat
and burns from my personal experience of extreme exposure
throughout my long life. I`ve spent years with a megawatt all
around me. Recently i`ve read the defense department has a
nonlethal highpower pulsed micrlwave weapon which incapacitates
anyone in its beam. It is also said the military has little
interest in nonlethal weapons.

The ONLY effect that radio frequencies can do to humans is thermal.
You have to increase the frequencies to the upper visible region
(blue since we are talking frequency rather than wavelength) before
there is any ionizing radiation. Note, however, that thermal effects
can be damaging.

I have two books on industrial applications of microwaves that
describe where the early Litton devices were first used in
restaurants (but the books are in Tennessee and I am in SC so I
cannot provide references). It was found that at many restaurants,
the doors were taken off the units and the ovens were operated
continuously. Litton soon provided interlocks on the doors!
People would place food into the cavity without turning off the
microwaves. Other than a few thermal burns, no one was seriously
hurt by the ovens — with one exception. In fact, I would be quite
willing to place a hand into an operating home microwave oven for
several seconds at a time. With reasonable blood flow, the thermal
energy is quickly spread out to the rest of the body. But the
exception is quite serious. The cornea and lens of the eye have
essentially no blood flow, so any heat generated there builds up.
This can produce cataracts. The effect was seen among many early
experimenters with microwaves and many members of the military.
working with high power radars. So while the new weapon Richard
talks about is non-lethal, it can easily cause blindness. This may
be why the military is not so interested.

--
73, Dr. Barry L. Ornitz WA4VZQ

Dr. Barry L. Ornitz wrote:
This can produce cataracts. The effect was seen among many early
experimenters with microwaves and many members of the military.
working with high power radars. So while the new weapon Richard
talks about is non-lethal, it can easily cause blindness. This may
be why the military is not so interested.


I have seen demonstrations of one of these devices on one or another
cable channel. I believe they mentioned a frequency in the 60GHz range.
They also mentioned the penetration depth on skin was something like a
mm. The effect is supposed to feel like instant extremely severe
sunburn. You WILL leave the area immediately. They tested it on one of
the hosts of the show. He moved out of the area of the effect very quickly.

Given the desire of the subjects to get the hell out of Dodge when the
system was pointed at them, I doubt cataracts would be an issue.

Don't take any numbers I stated here as correct, it was a while ago.

tom
K0TAR

"Tom Ring" wrote in message
. net...
Dr. Barry L. Ornitz wrote:
This can produce cataracts. The effect was seen among many early
experimenters with microwaves and many members of the military.
working with high power radars. So while the new weapon Richard
talks about is non-lethal, it can easily cause blindness. This may
be why the military is not so interested.


I have seen demonstrations of one of these devices on one or another
cable channel. I believe they mentioned a frequency in the 60GHz
range. They also mentioned the penetration depth on skin was something
like a mm. The effect is supposed to feel like instant extremely
severe sunburn. You WILL leave the area immediately. They tested it
on one of the hosts of the show. He moved out of the area of the
effect very quickly.

Given the desire of the subjects to get the hell out of Dodge when the
system was pointed at them, I doubt cataracts would be an issue.

Don't take any numbers I stated here as correct, it was a while ago.


Tom,

I have seen the video too. But 1 millimeter penetration depth is still
enough to do serious damage to the eye. I doubt if this weapon ever
makes it into production. Is anyone familiar with the Hague Conventions
in relation to this?

--
73, Dr. Barry L. Ornitz WA4VZQ

"Dr. Barry L. Ornitz" wrote in message
...

[Thread meandered to non-lethal weapons, specifically the 60 GHz
crowd-control weapon.]

snip

Is anyone familiar with the Hague Conventions
in relation to this?


Article 23(e) of the 1907 Hague Convention prohibits the use of "arms,
projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering."

Great ... now define "unnecessary."

"Sal"

On Fri, 22 May 2009 20:01:10 -0400, "Dr. Barry L. Ornitz"
wrote:

The ONLY effect that radio frequencies can do to humans is thermal.

Well, not exactly. Pulsed RF can be "heard". The original 1962
article:
http://www.raven1.net/frey.htm
Military applications:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14250-microwave-ray-gun-controls-crowds-with-noise.html

There's also some research into resonant vibrational effects of the
modulation frequency (i.e. GSM 217Hz buzz) on various cellular
structures. I don't recall the results (and am too lazy to find
them). Light reading:

Biological Effects Research:
http://www.bioelectromagnetics.org/pubs.php
http://www.bioelectromagnetics.org/resources.php

The FCC position:
http://www.fcc.gov/oet/rfsafety/
http://www.fcc.gov/oet/info/documents/bulletins/#56
http://www.fcc.gov/oet/info/documents/bulletins/#56

Handbook of Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields:
http://books.google.com/books?id=PZd_2UJrwdwC

Google searches for papers on the topic.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=radio+frequency+biological+effects
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=biological+effects+of+electromagnetic+fi elds

Suggestions for furthur research:
1. Why does expsosure to RF seem to cause a compulsion for beginning
hams to upgrade their licenses?
2. Does the presence of RF cause cell phone users to yell into the
handset, while non-RF POTS phone users show now such tendencies?


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

"Dr. Barry L. Ornitz" wrote in message
...


snip

It was found that at many restaurants,
the doors were taken off the units and the ovens were operated
continuously. Litton soon provided interlocks on the doors!
People would place food into the cavity without turning off the
microwaves. Other than a few thermal burns, no one was seriously
hurt by the ovens - with one exception.

I installed a 10-foot TVRO at home in 1985 and read an inordinate amount of
material on the subject in the 1980's. I read a "don't let this happen to
you" story about an experimenter who supposedly used a microwave oven
magnetron as a local oscillator for his own TVRO. He didn't shield it
properly and received fatal heating injuries to his internal organs.

Possibly BS, possibly accurate. I tried finding some reference to it on the
Internet but was unsuccessful. Anybody remember the story?

The LO for a C-band TVRO is 5150 MHz, nowhere near a Microwave oven freq
(2450) but its second harmonic, 4900, is a candidate for block
downconversion of some of the channels.

"Sal

Dr. Barry L. Ornitz wrote:

The ONLY effect that radio frequencies can do to humans is thermal.
You have to increase the frequencies to the upper visible region
(blue since we are talking frequency rather than wavelength) before
there is any ionizing radiation. Note, however, that thermal effects
can be damaging.

I had posted some links here some months back about the other effects of
rf. Seems there is a little more than just heating going on. I have
noticed that the heating effect I "feel" on extended cell phone use is
not actual heat.

Interestingly, most cell phone fear is based on cancer. It's not hardly
likely, for the reasons already outlined.

The biggest danger to cell phone towers is if one falls on you.

I'll not go so far as to say that there are no effects however. I
suspect something is happening that we might not know about at this time
- and there is some tantalizing evidence showing in some of the research.

- 73 de Mike N3LI -

"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
...
Dr. Barry L. Ornitz wrote:

The ONLY effect that radio frequencies can do to humans is thermal.
You have to increase the frequencies to the upper visible region
(blue since we are talking frequency rather than wavelength) before
there is any ionizing radiation. Note, however, that thermal effects
can be damaging.

I had posted some links here some months back about the other effects
of rf. Seems there is a little more than just heating going on. I have
noticed that the heating effect I "feel" on extended cell phone use is
not actual heat.

How do you know the effects were not thermal? The "malaise" some people
feel when exposed to strong RF fields is very similar to the effects felt
during a mild fever. My statement was based on how radio frequency
fields interact with atoms and molecules. How the body "interprets" the
molecular heating is an entirely different matter.

To go back to Jeff's references, any nonlinearity can detect amplitude
modulation. Nerve firing potentials are quite nonlinear, of course. The
cilia in the human ear have mechanical resonances from typically 20 Hz to
20 kHz (unless you listen to rock music or are as old as I am). These
same cilia have thermal time constants in the fractional millisecond
range too. It seems to me that RF modulated at audio frequencies could
easily be "heard" even though the effect might still be caused by
heating.

Interestingly, most cell phone fear is based on cancer. It's not hardly
likely, for the reasons already outlined.

The biggest danger to cell phone towers is if one falls on you.

And the biggest danger from cell phone use is letting it distract someone
who is driving a car (or train or subway).

I'll not go so far as to say that there are no effects however. I
suspect something is happening that we might not know about at this
time - and there is some tantalizing evidence showing in some of the
research.

Unfortunately, many of the researchers do not understand radio frequency
fields enough to design their experiments properly. Until they do, we
will always be stuck with correlation confused with causation.

73, Barry WA4VZQ

"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
...
Dr. Barry L. Ornitz wrote:

The ONLY effect that radio frequencies can do to humans is
thermal. You have to increase the frequencies to the upper
visible region (blue since we are talking frequency rather than
wavelength) before there is any ionizing radiation. Note,
however, that thermal effects can be quite damaging too.

I had posted some links here some months back about the other
effects of rf. Seems there is a little more than just heating
going on. I have noticed that the heating effect I "feel" on
extended cell phone use is not actual heat.

How do you know the effects were not thermal? The "malaise" some
people feel when exposed to strong RF fields is very similar to the
effects felt during a mild fever. My statement was based on how
radio frequency fields interact with atoms and molecules. How the
body "interprets" the molecular heating is an entirely different
matter.

To go back to Jeff's references, any nonlinearity can detect
amplitude modulation. Nerve firing potentials are quite nonlinear,
of course. The cilia in the human ear have mechanical resonances
from typically 20 Hz to 20 kHz (unless you listen to rock music or
are as old as I am). These same cilia have thermal time constants
in the fractional millisecond range too. It seems to me that RF
modulated at audio frequencies could easily be "heard" even though
the effect might still be caused by heating. Then too, the RF must
be in the microwave region for much of the energy to couple into the
ear. This corresponds to experimental evidence shown in the first
article.

Interestingly, most cell phone fear is based on cancer. It's not
hardly likely, for the reasons already outlined.

The biggest danger to cell phone towers is if one falls on you.

And the biggest danger from cell phone use is letting it distract
someone who is driving a car (or train or subway).

I'll not go so far as to say that there are no effects however. I
suspect something is happening that we might not know about at
this time - and there is some tantalizing evidence showing in some
of the research.

Unfortunately, many of the researchers do not understand radio
frequency fields enough to design their experiments properly. Until
they do, we will always be stuck with correlation confused with
causation.

One of the better examples of this was explained by a Japanese
professor who taught my first statistics course. He said that the
average height of Japanese males dropped several inches in the years
following WWII. This could easily be correlated with the dropping
of two atomic bombs on Japan. But the real cause was the fact that
the Japanese army had drafted the taller men first, and many of
these taller men were killed in combat.

Another problem is that in working with human populations, a
correlation coefficient of 0.2 is often considered good. But in
the physical sciences, good correlation is usually over 0.9 and
excellent correlation is usually over 0.99. When working with such
research as cancer studies, extremely large populations must be used
for their results to be meaningful.

73, Barry WA4VZQ

Sorry for the delay in this post. Charter's NNTP server has been down
for over two days.