lsmyer wrote:

This is a link to an article investigating leukemia rates in areas near AM
transmitters.

http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,64579,00.html

I don't doubt that high levels of RF can be dangerous. The first two chief
engineers I worked with both died of cancer in their 50s.

Maybe they got cancer from some other cause (both smoked), but I still feel
like I'm inside a microwave oven anytime I'm around an AM transmitter site.




AM Radio is harmful only if you listen to it.

In article ,
R J Carpenter wrote:

is NOT true that US stations have much lower field strength on AM. AFAIK,
very few foreign stations are directional at any power.

Particularly in Europe, few stations even have vertical radiators.

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every
| generation can invoke its principles in their own
Opinions not those of| search for greater freedom.
MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. ___ (2003)

Buzzygirl wrote:
"Greg and Joan" wrote:
But anyway, IIRC,
somebody's idea was to allow novices voice privileges on 902 Mhz, and it
was not considered seriously , and one of the reasons cited was safety.

There is still no commercially-available equipment for the 902 MHz amateur
band that I am aware of.

Using commercially-available equipment is cheating anyway. What does it
take to modify PCS cellular phone firmware for digital communication on
902? Is it just a matter of firmware or isn't the RF section able to tune
that far out of band?
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In rec.radio.shortwave Frank Dresser wrote:

Right, but often times there are a large number of people living in high
rise buildings near the FM antenna. It's conceivable there are more people
living in a high power FM radiation area than a high power AM radiation
area.

And the government exposure limits are more stringent at the FM
frequencies (30 to 300 MHz).

See:
http://www-training.llnl.gov/wbt/hc/...Standards.html

Art N2AH

It is another one of these cases where there may indeed be a link, but
there is no assurance at all that the link is causative. For example
you can find a link between smoking and cirrosis of the liver. Many
smokers are also significant drinkers. It wasn't the smoking that
caused the problem, but the smoking and other behaviours that are
causative are often seen together. I.E. most high power AM
transmitters are in major cities, and there are significant other
hazards from things like air pollution that exist independent of the
AM broadcast facilities.

Therefore, smoke as many cigarettes as you want to, and if you get lung cancer,
just blame it on the air pollution.

Perhaps when I walk into a fire, the blistering burns all over my skin are caused
from the chemicals in the sun tan lotion I used the day before.

Voting for Nader or Badnarik is somehow taking a vote away from Kerry, but no one
ever suggests Bush and Kerry drop out of the race because they are taking votes
away from the other two. Ridiculous.

Yes, but researchers can also sift through 80 years of public health
records. The people who have, or had, leukemia are known. It shouldn't be
hard to find out who lived near a radio transmitter and for how long. It
might be interesting to ask veterinarians about animal leukemia, since many
transmitters are located in rural areas.

Do you really need to have people smoke cigarettes for 80 years before you agree
that inhaling smoke into your lungs is going to cause health problems?

These are all basic things we should know without having to go through decades
of health records to figure out.

I knew in 1983 that Aspartame was a horror, yet only now are people starting to
figure that out.

Let's not forget that perfectly random chance is going to usually give us
lumpy results. A perfectly smooth map of leukemia cases would be something
like flipping a quarter ten times and getting exactly a h-t-h-t-h-t-h-t-h-t
result. It could happen, but any lumpy combination is just as likely, and
there are more lumpy combinations to go around.

Same with trying to link lung problems with smoking. But can you seriously
say that breathing smoke into your lungs is not going to cause health
problems? Just use common sense.

Random chance alone might give us some leukemia hot spots. Some of those
hot spots might be near AM transmitters. It'll be interesting to see if
other leukemia hot spots are around AM radio transmitters, or if is just one
of those weird number things.

While you do all that, I will just avoid living next to any AM or FM radio
transmitters. I wish I could do the same with Microwave Cellular towers, but
that is getting impossible to avoid today.

I also often wonder what PCs are doing to us all staring at them all day,

LCD screens are obviously much safer and healthier than the CRT screens. Do
we really need studies on that too, or can we all use common sense to figure
that one out as well?

Brother Stair used to say that the Internet was Satan's entryway into the
home.

Satan is make-believe.

Also mobiles may ruin the brain. The consequences could be disastrous.

May?!

Mobiles as cellphones? Yes, there's no need to do studies to observe the
brain damage caused by those evil things.

Exactly.

I don't doubt that high levels of RF can be dangerous. The first two chief
engineers I worked with both died of cancer in their 50s.

Wouldn't FM broadcast antennas be an even greater concern? The height of
most adults would make them resonant somewhere near, or in, the FM broadcast
band.

Comparing wavelengths of "people" based on their height is ridiculous.
Microwaves are a much shorter wavelength and cause much more damage to the human
body, so the wavelength of people based on their height theory needs to be
thrown out right away.

I'd expect energy transfer to be more effiecnt from the FM broadcast
antenna to the human body than it is in the AM broadcast band.

This is like the argument that you should vote for the lesser of two evils,
rather than vote for a good candidate.

Why choose to live near an AM or FM broadcast antenna? I would not want to
live next to either. What is more annoying is how cellular telephone
antennas are getting to be impossible to avoid, and new ones are being put up
every week.

Anyway, there's been over 80 years of kW+ levels of AM broadcasting, and it
seems strange this leukemia concern has gone unnoticed until now.

80 years is only one generation of people. Give it time. Old time radio
commercials have doctors endorsing cigarettes that are healthy and good for you
and your throat.

Cell phones have not been in use long enough for the evidence to exist to
convince those that don't have the radio background to know how dangerous they
are now, without needing to see several generations of people suffer from them
first.

Aspartame is only now starting to get the attention that I was aware of decades
ago.

Now we have Sucralose (not sucrose) and Ace K, and again, we will have to wait
around 20 years or longer before enough people have suffered to start to
consider them a health threat.

On the other hand, the FM signal is radiated from an antenna atop the
tower. Stand at the base of a 300' FM tower, and you're 300' from the
thing that radiates.

This is the same theory in which people claim using their cell phones are safe,
because the power they put out is so low.

They are powerful enough to transmit to cell towers miles away! Now put that
power inches from your head and how more concentrated is that power?

"Truth" wrote in message ...

80 years is only one generation of people. Give it time. Old time
radio
commercials have doctors endorsing cigarettes that are healthy and good
for you
and your throat.


Definition time:

"Generation, interval of time between the birth of parents and the birth of
their offspring. This is usually taken to be approximately 30 years. All
children of one set of parents are members of the same generation although
they may be years apart in age
© 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
Buzzygirl wrote:
"Greg and Joan" wrote:
But anyway, IIRC,
somebody's idea was to allow novices voice privileges on 902 Mhz, and
it
was not considered seriously , and one of the reasons cited was safety.

There is still no commercially-available equipment for the 902 MHz
amateur
band that I am aware of.

Using commercially-available equipment is cheating anyway. What does it
take to modify PCS cellular phone firmware for digital communication on
902? Is it just a matter of firmware or isn't the RF section able to tune
that far out of band?
--scott


could be things have changed without me noticing but i dont think digital
PSC type stuff is allowed for hams... maybe in experimantal bands?
in the poplar comm freqs it just FM, ssb, AM, CW, a little FSK, some packet,
a little SSTV, some full TV (usully in conjuction with emergancy support
operations)

anything encrypted or encoded was a big no-no