Radiation penetrates our bodies 24/7. Most is natural, with background cosmic ray dose proportional to your home’s elevation. Specifically, you get only ten millirems annually if you live in New Paltz or Kingston, but 70 a year if you somehow have a home atop one of the taller local mountains.
But before really considering the bad stuff, let’s tidy up the smartphone microwave business. Since cell phones are ubiquitous, it’s a worthy topic anyone can easily research. A search of “cell phone risks” will take you there, if you limit yourself to valid science websites.
In a nutshell, two European studies found modestly increased rates of brain cancer among the heaviest cell phone users. However, a number of larger studies here and in Europe found no ill effects at all. If you’re concerned, use a headset instead of holding the phone up against your head, since the microwave flux essentially drops to zero when its antenna distance changes from an inch to a foot.
Electromagnetic waves closer together have more energy. Thus, infrared light is more powerful than radio waves or microwaves. But they’re still incapable of producing the slightest chromosome damage. Still, infrared is not always benign. Before every solar eclipse, people are warned not to stare at the sun, since IR can cause retinal lesions by heating tissue, though UV is the greater villain. The literature shows a case of eye damage after someone had sun-stared for just 30 seconds.
The story gets much more perilous with waves shorter than visible light, such as ultraviolet, and especially x-rays and gamma rays.
Two percent of the sun’s energy is released as ultraviolet. Our atmosphere blocks most of it, and what remains is more healthful than harmful. But here’s where intensity enters the picture. When struck by UV, our skin creates natural vitamin D, a potent anticancer agent. Therefore, it’s a bad idea to excessively avoid the sun. Physicians on the vitamin D council tell me that people should get as much sunlight as they can without burning. It is true that many of the 8000 annual US melanoma deaths were caused by childhood sunburns. Yet, an estimated 100,000 other cancer deaths could have been prevented if people had spent more time in the sun.
When it comes to even shorter wavelength rays, plus radiation in the form of subatomic particles like neutrons, nuance and degree again play a key role. A single full body CT scan can deliver as much radiation as was received by Hiroshima residents a mile from ground zero. If you can convince your physician to order an X-ray instead, you’d get only 1/100th the radiation dose. But since either such scan might save your life, we’re back to balancing pros and cons.
Misleading stuff pervades the internet. Anti-banana crusaders could tell you, and be perfectly correct, that a single banana with its natural radioactive potassium — 40 gives you more radiation than living next door to a nuclear power plant for an entire year. Or point out that smoke alarms with their ionizing Americium emit radiation that some epidemiologists think may result in one cancer death per 40,000,000 people. (Other experts believe such alarms pose zero danger, while still others believe in hormesis — that such very low radiation doses are actually protective and reduce one’s odds of a future cancer.).
Pacific tuna became slightly radioactive following the Fukushima accident. Should you avoid that fish? Turns out, a serving of such seafood contains less radioactivity than a banana. You’d get eight times more radiation from a single flight to California. So eat it, or not?
Again, the degree of exposure is all-important. Our region presents only two significant everyday hazards. One is household radon (test basement air with an inexpensive kit and ameliorate it with a venting fan if necessary). And avoid unnecessary CT scans. Everything else is truly minor.
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