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My grandfather, one of the engineers that worked with the Voyager I and II teams, died of throat cancer. From the late 90s up until his death in 2007 he was war
by davidmurdoch 9y ago
My grandfather, one of the engineers that worked with the Voyager I and II teams, died of throat cancer. From the late 90s up until his death in 2007 he was warning people about the potential harmful effects of cell phone radiation. He would only use corded phones.
His throat cancer was thought to be caused, at least in part, by his increased exposure to radiation from the instruments he worked on while working for the US government. Most of his work was classified and he took almost everything about his work to his grave. My mother told me he'd disappear for weeks at a time and he'd never talk about where he went or what he did.
If anyone knows more about the specifics of what my grandfather, William Henry Fairing, Jr., was working on, that'd be so amazing to learn about!
- rb808 9y ago> My mother told me he'd disappear for weeks at a time and he'd never talk about where he went or what he did. How good is this? Maybe I should try to get away with this in my regular job.
- davidmurdoch 9y agoIt didn't work out well for my grandparents. I don't think many relationships could make it through this much secrecy.
- rdtsc 9y ago> If anyone knows more about the specifics of what my grandfather, William Henry Fairing, Jr., was working on, that'd be so amazing to learn about! You probably thought about it, but wondering if you contacted your representative if they could do anything to help there. Stuff usually gets declassified after a time period, he might have not said anything but by now some of it might be not secret any more.
- davidmurdoch 9y agoI haven't done it, actually. The only mention I have found on him online is a quick "thanks" in this PDF (mentioned as "Bill Fairing"): https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dbf2/9a4eac990f8cfef7bcb7815499a82e5776d3.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dbf2/9a4eac990f8cfef7bcb781..., though I honestly haven't done much digging. I'll look into it the representative route.
- userbinator 9y agoDid he also smoke? Keep in mind that AM radio has historically operated at very high power; e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLW was broadcasting at 500kW(!) --- but to my knowlege, there has been no reports of increased health issues in the population around those areas, despite all that RF power causing lots of other very visible effects like turning various metal structures into ad-hoc radios.
- davidmurdoch 9y agoHe didn't smoke, or at least if he did, he never let kids kids know about it.