7 ms·

Don’t Cook Yourself with RF Energy

72 points by zdw 5y ago

silent_speech 5y ago
If your device is hacked at the firmware level, it can be turned into a microwave weapon and used against you. (My hypothesis of the cause of Havana Syndrome: hacked cell transmitters beaming microwave at targets.) Tech Ingredients (YouTube creator) made an instructional video about how microwaves work and how to defend against them: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg_aUOSLuRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg_aUOSLuRo".
- imchillyb 5y ago
  Uh... Millimeter wave communication is radio communication. Radio antenna. Microwaves are not similar nor are cellular radios able to utilize microwave communications. Microwave towers are specifically built at great height and are utilized for long distance communications. One cannot turn a cellular device into a microwave, nor can one utilize microwaves to achieve cellular communications.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kuschku 5y ago
    WiFi is microwave radiation. Just three orders of magnitude less powerful.
    - numlock86 5y ago
      > Just three orders of magnitude less powerful. For FCC that might be the case. CE/RED in Europe goes even as low (or as high, depending on which way you want to see it) as four orders of magnitude.
  - tlb 5y ago
    Microwave ovens run at 2.4 GHz. 4G cellular includes 2.3 and 2.5 GHz bands (among others). So in terms of absorption by tissue, cell towers absolutely have the right frequencies. What they don’t have is the power level to have much effect beyond a few feet.
  - stephen_g 5y ago
    Microwave is a ridiculously broad term. By some definitions it is any signal from about 300MHz to 300GHz, but in the industry we don't really consider it microwave until you get to L-band (1-2GHz), and even then, compared to a lot of stuff we do that's extremely low frequency (I've worked mostly in X, Ka and E-bands - ~7-9, 18-19, 28-31 GHz up to 80-90GHz). But WiFi and cellular are definitely microwave, as are the big point-to-point links you're talking about. Not that I'm agreeing with the parent comment - having worked in the microwave comms industry (and a little bit of radar) for about 10 years, the best explanation I've heard for 'Havana Syndrome' is closer to food poisioning than anything to do with RF. I think the US Government has basically walked back any claims that they were actual attacks recently too.
  - fulafel 5y ago
    Besides things in pointed out in the other replies, I think the main error in this mental model is assuming there's a category difference between radio and microwave. Microwave is just a term for a largish swath of the spectrum that encompasses millimeter wave, and lots of cell phone bands, and frequencies used in point-to-point microwave links, frequencies used by your microwave oven, wifi, etc.
- ericbarrett 5y ago
  That was an interesting video, thank you. Neat to see centimeter wave RF demonstrated so practically.
- wolrah 5y ago
  > If your device is hacked at the firmware level, it can be turned into a microwave weapon and used against you. (My hypothesis of the cause of Havana Syndrome: hacked cell transmitters beaming microwave at targets.) No, no it can't. It is physically impossible for any part of cellular infrastructure, be it the phones or the base stations, to direct enough power at an arbitrary person to cause any effect. Phones simply don't have the power to harm a human and the inverse square law means that even high power base stations are safe from more than a few feet.
  - Gnarl 5y ago
    You may want to consider this: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279863242_Oxidative_mechanisms_of_biological_activity_of_low-intensity_radiofrequency_radiation#read https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279863242_Oxidative... TLDR; 93/100 available studies (2015) confirm that low-intensity RF causes oxidative-stress mediated tissue damage (incl. DNA damage) and is implicated in a wide range of cancer and non-cancer pathologies. TLDR2; its not just about power levels.
    - wolrah 5y ago
      There is a massive gap between "Long term RF exposure can cause cell behaviors that may have subtle effects" from the paper you linked and "Hacked cell infrastructure can be weaponized" as the parent poster was claiming. I'm an IT nerd, not a molecular biologist, so I can't really comment on the paper in detail but a quick skim gives me the impression that whatever effect they're measuring is both subtle and generally not directly linkable to the kind of effects a person would actually notice. Something that could be used to cause targeted injury would have to be multiple orders of magnitude more powerful. The most effective way to weaponize hacked cellular infrastructure would be accessing the data traveling over it, not a fantastical idea of turning it in to a RF blaster.
- numlock86 5y ago
  > If your device is hacked at the firmware level, it can be turned into a microwave weapon and used against you. If anything your RF components go up in smoke. Modern chips are designed to only work at the desired maximum transmission power, sometimes even less to depend on idle times and such to save costs. But yeah, it's a nice entertaining conspiracy that keeps floating around nevertheless.
RachelF 5y ago
Interesting that Russian/Soviet limits on RF radiation exposure are an order of magnitude lower than US/EU ones.
- aaronchall 5y ago
  Sounds like a way for them to pretend to be cautious and safe, relative to the west. How seriously do they take these "limits"?
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    All of western movie history would have us believe that there's the official limit on paper, and then there's the real limit in practice that Grigori, the underfed, overtired engineer-who-probably-shouldn't-be-smoking-around-all-that-stuff, actually has to work with. The current situation makes that stereotype seem more and more plausible by the day.
- lnsru 5y ago
  Makes no sense in country where occupational safety does not exist anyway. Source: born there, seen that.
  - IYasha 5y ago
    Don't extrapolate your own experience to everything else. I've seen quite opposite.
- cies 5y ago
  except the swiss (non EU i know). they also have lower limits than most.
Stratoscope 5y ago
I cooked myself with RF when I was a teenager. Well, it was just my finger, but did it ever hurt! I was setting up a new ham radio transmitter and antenna. I don't remember what I did wrong, but I got a nasty RF burn in my finger. That's "in", not "on". Imagine a bad burn, but one where you can tell it's not just on the surface but goes deep into the tissue. And takes quite some time to heal. I did have a lot of fun with ham radio, that one experience aside.
- dataflow 5y ago
  > And takes quite some time to heal. Damn. How many years(?) did it take to heal? Did it heal fully or do you still have any residual effects?
  - Stratoscope 5y ago
    Oh, it wasn't that long, just longer than a surface burn. And weird too: it didn't look nearly as bad on my skin as a typical blistering burn, but somehow I could feel that it went much deeper. Luckily, I don't think my radio activities left any residual effects. Wait, what did you just say?
  - formerkrogemp 5y ago
    From that day onward, they could receive FM/AM signal directly to their consciousness using their RF empowered finger-antenna, and they swore always to use their powers for the greater good. Nothing could possibly go wrong from there. Jokes aside, I wonder what effect intensive RF bursts could have on tissue compared to UV exposure or a burn?
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      Color blindness is a common injury among incautious radio engineers who stood in front of transmitters too many times. Dish Network's satellite uplink station in Wyoming can "burn" away cloud cover when needed, and unfortunate birds have gotten cooked when they've flown over particularly intense beams.
phendrenad2 5y ago
I don't like being around antennas. Especially when hiking trails take me past one of those microwave horns. Maybe it's a phobia, but I always wonder if hiking trails were taken into account.
- therein 5y ago
  I sometimes feel the same way walking around in SF. There are just way too many buildings and fixtures that are actually antennas that are concealed to not look that way. I measured 20mW/m2 around 2nd and Harrison.
  - strangus 5y ago
    Just curious, how did you measure that? Are you constantly scanning?
    - sytelus 5y ago
      I had bought Extech RF meter for $600. It seems to be the most reliable and accurate.
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    > I measured 20mW/m2 around 2nd and Harrison. For reference, on a sunny day the sun will dump 200+ W/m² on you in SF.
    - Gnarl 5y ago
      Q1: How much ambient RF spectrum intensity has there been during evolution vs. sunlight exposure? Q2: How much has ambient RF spectrum intensity risen today vs. natural background levels? A1: Virtually none. A2: 10^18
      - hypefi 5y ago
        this, it is not just about the intensity, it is that all organism have evolved to around sun exposure, not much around artificial light/Emf exposure...
kuschku 5y ago
Funnily, for permanent hair removal, you actually insert a thin probe/antenna/needle into the tissue, then transmit three times each for 1 second at 13.7MHz at ~180W to destroy the surrounding tissue. Cosmeticians sometimes also use this to destroy certain blemishes.
- na85 5y ago
  Wow. Do they do that in every follicle?
  - kuschku 5y ago
    Yes, it takes a few seconds per follicle, and you’ve got to do it three or four times over half a year on each follicle. It’s obviously expensive and takes quite a while. For most people, IPL or Laser is probably a better option.
    - ladyattis 5y ago
      Only up to blond hairs which then you have to switch over to electrolysis like me. I have red hair which is really a mix of different hair colors such as light brownish red, 'redder', and blond. Like right now I don't have any beard shadow but I do have many blond hairs left over.
- SigmundA 5y ago
  They also use lasers and just intense light and electricity. All of these have very high power levels which cause cell heating and destruction. The thing to keep in mind is the action is thermal and requires much more power than cell phones to have any effect.
EdwardDiego 5y ago
> I don’t understand the reasoning behind this. Just because someone knows there’s an antenna, and has received RF safety training, how does that make their body less susceptible to injury from RF energy? They a) know how to ascertain risk better and b) know what parts of their body are riskier to expose at close range to their antenna. Safe exposure to RF is pretty well studied, and I've not seen a standard that wasn't set in line with prevailing science. But, definitely agree that if you're not certain about the safety, get a certified radio engineer to install your antennae.
colordrops 5y ago
One thing I could never understand is this apparent contradiction: there is this trope that non-ionizing radiation doesn't cause cancer, which is repeated in this article, but it can also heat up and burn tissue, which can definitely cause cancer. So which is it? I understand that non-ionizing radiation doesn't directly create cancer, but can't it indirectly cause cancer?
- andreareina 5y ago
  Any single particle of ionizing radiation can cause damage; there's no threshold. For non-ionizing radiation to cause damage it needs to exceed a threshold.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    Right, that's what I mean by "create" vs "cause".
- asxd 5y ago
  Genuinely curious, can burning tissue really cause cancer? Like if I put my hand over a fire for too long and get a 3rd degree burn?
  - mattkrause 5y ago
    A full-thickness burn is going to cause a lot of problems; an increased risk of cancer down the road is likely to be the least of your problems. That said, inflammation and tumors are surprisingly tightly linked: many tumors co-opt inflammatory pathways, or use them to establish favorable "micro-environments" that allow the cancer to proliferate. Here's a review about the link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803035/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803035/
- jokowueu 5y ago
  According to this it's rare https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18176744 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18176744 And according to the below there is evidence to suggest it can cause protein degradation and also DNA damage. That damage that tends to result simply in outright death rather than mutations which could cause cancer https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19587691/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19587691/
totetsu 5y ago
I worked in a lab testing Mobile network things. I was forever worried that some contractor would leave the radio antenna ports open without attenuators and termination, and unblocked. I considered buying a personal radio exposure warning device, but .. where do I wear it. In the end I guess I complained enough about cables on the floor being tripping hazards I got an assignment where I didn't have to go to the lab anymore.
IYasha 5y ago
An article from 80s? :) >> Unlike x-rays or gamma rays, they can’t cause radiation sickness, genetic damage, or cancer. Rly?? Tell that to radar opertors/maintainers! Oh, and It was confirmed by scientists. Can't find the name of the woman who was a US president advisor on subject and (AFAIR) toxic materials dangers.
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  Well you definitely won't get radiation sickness, and you can't get genetic damage directly from the ionizing radiation (there isn't any). And people argue non-stop about whether you might rarely get cancer from RF exposure, since cooking tissue is damaging and could possibly cause cancer. I think everyone in the know agrees, though, that the threat profile from ionizing radiation and non-ionizing radiation is vastly different.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

72 points by zdw 5y ago

If your device is hacked at the firmware level, it can be turned into a microwave weapon and used against you. (My hypothesis of the cause of Havana Syndrome: hacked cell transmitters beaming microwave at targets.) Tech Ingredients (YouTube creator) made an instructional video about how microwaves work and how to defend against them: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg_aUOSLuRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg_aUOSLuRo".

imchillyb 5y ago
Uh... Millimeter wave communication is radio communication. Radio antenna. Microwaves are not similar nor are cellular radios able to utilize microwave communications. Microwave towers are specifically built at great height and are utilized for long distance communications. One cannot turn a cellular device into a microwave, nor can one utilize microwaves to achieve cellular communications.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kuschku 5y ago
  WiFi is microwave radiation. Just three orders of magnitude less powerful.
  - numlock86 5y ago
    > Just three orders of magnitude less powerful. For FCC that might be the case. CE/RED in Europe goes even as low (or as high, depending on which way you want to see it) as four orders of magnitude.
- tlb 5y ago
  Microwave ovens run at 2.4 GHz. 4G cellular includes 2.3 and 2.5 GHz bands (among others). So in terms of absorption by tissue, cell towers absolutely have the right frequencies. What they don’t have is the power level to have much effect beyond a few feet.
- stephen_g 5y ago
  Microwave is a ridiculously broad term. By some definitions it is any signal from about 300MHz to 300GHz, but in the industry we don't really consider it microwave until you get to L-band (1-2GHz), and even then, compared to a lot of stuff we do that's extremely low frequency (I've worked mostly in X, Ka and E-bands - ~7-9, 18-19, 28-31 GHz up to 80-90GHz). But WiFi and cellular are definitely microwave, as are the big point-to-point links you're talking about. Not that I'm agreeing with the parent comment - having worked in the microwave comms industry (and a little bit of radar) for about 10 years, the best explanation I've heard for 'Havana Syndrome' is closer to food poisioning than anything to do with RF. I think the US Government has basically walked back any claims that they were actual attacks recently too.
- fulafel 5y ago
  Besides things in pointed out in the other replies, I think the main error in this mental model is assuming there's a category difference between radio and microwave. Microwave is just a term for a largish swath of the spectrum that encompasses millimeter wave, and lots of cell phone bands, and frequencies used in point-to-point microwave links, frequencies used by your microwave oven, wifi, etc.
ericbarrett 5y ago
That was an interesting video, thank you. Neat to see centimeter wave RF demonstrated so practically.
wolrah 5y ago
> If your device is hacked at the firmware level, it can be turned into a microwave weapon and used against you. (My hypothesis of the cause of Havana Syndrome: hacked cell transmitters beaming microwave at targets.) No, no it can't. It is physically impossible for any part of cellular infrastructure, be it the phones or the base stations, to direct enough power at an arbitrary person to cause any effect. Phones simply don't have the power to harm a human and the inverse square law means that even high power base stations are safe from more than a few feet.
- Gnarl 5y ago
  You may want to consider this: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279863242_Oxidative_mechanisms_of_biological_activity_of_low-intensity_radiofrequency_radiation#read https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279863242_Oxidative... TLDR; 93/100 available studies (2015) confirm that low-intensity RF causes oxidative-stress mediated tissue damage (incl. DNA damage) and is implicated in a wide range of cancer and non-cancer pathologies. TLDR2; its not just about power levels.
  - wolrah 5y ago
    There is a massive gap between "Long term RF exposure can cause cell behaviors that may have subtle effects" from the paper you linked and "Hacked cell infrastructure can be weaponized" as the parent poster was claiming. I'm an IT nerd, not a molecular biologist, so I can't really comment on the paper in detail but a quick skim gives me the impression that whatever effect they're measuring is both subtle and generally not directly linkable to the kind of effects a person would actually notice. Something that could be used to cause targeted injury would have to be multiple orders of magnitude more powerful. The most effective way to weaponize hacked cellular infrastructure would be accessing the data traveling over it, not a fantastical idea of turning it in to a RF blaster.
numlock86 5y ago
> If your device is hacked at the firmware level, it can be turned into a microwave weapon and used against you. If anything your RF components go up in smoke. Modern chips are designed to only work at the desired maximum transmission power, sometimes even less to depend on idle times and such to save costs. But yeah, it's a nice entertaining conspiracy that keeps floating around nevertheless.

RachelF 5y ago

Interesting that Russian/Soviet limits on RF radiation exposure are an order of magnitude lower than US/EU ones.

aaronchall 5y ago
Sounds like a way for them to pretend to be cautious and safe, relative to the west. How seriously do they take these "limits"?
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  All of western movie history would have us believe that there's the official limit on paper, and then there's the real limit in practice that Grigori, the underfed, overtired engineer-who-probably-shouldn't-be-smoking-around-all-that-stuff, actually has to work with. The current situation makes that stereotype seem more and more plausible by the day.
lnsru 5y ago
Makes no sense in country where occupational safety does not exist anyway. Source: born there, seen that.
- IYasha 5y ago
  Don't extrapolate your own experience to everything else. I've seen quite opposite.
cies 5y ago
except the swiss (non EU i know). they also have lower limits than most.

Stratoscope 5y ago

I cooked myself with RF when I was a teenager. Well, it was just my finger, but did it ever hurt! I was setting up a new ham radio transmitter and antenna. I don't remember what I did wrong, but I got a nasty RF burn in my finger. That's "in", not "on". Imagine a bad burn, but one where you can tell it's not just on the surface but goes deep into the tissue. And takes quite some time to heal. I did have a lot of fun with ham radio, that one experience aside.

dataflow 5y ago
> And takes quite some time to heal. Damn. How many years(?) did it take to heal? Did it heal fully or do you still have any residual effects?
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  Oh, it wasn't that long, just longer than a surface burn. And weird too: it didn't look nearly as bad on my skin as a typical blistering burn, but somehow I could feel that it went much deeper. Luckily, I don't think my radio activities left any residual effects. Wait, what did you just say?
- formerkrogemp 5y ago
  From that day onward, they could receive FM/AM signal directly to their consciousness using their RF empowered finger-antenna, and they swore always to use their powers for the greater good. Nothing could possibly go wrong from there. Jokes aside, I wonder what effect intensive RF bursts could have on tissue compared to UV exposure or a burn?
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Color blindness is a common injury among incautious radio engineers who stood in front of transmitters too many times. Dish Network's satellite uplink station in Wyoming can "burn" away cloud cover when needed, and unfortunate birds have gotten cooked when they've flown over particularly intense beams.

phendrenad2 5y ago

I don't like being around antennas. Especially when hiking trails take me past one of those microwave horns. Maybe it's a phobia, but I always wonder if hiking trails were taken into account.

therein 5y ago
I sometimes feel the same way walking around in SF. There are just way too many buildings and fixtures that are actually antennas that are concealed to not look that way. I measured 20mW/m2 around 2nd and Harrison.
- strangus 5y ago
  Just curious, how did you measure that? Are you constantly scanning?
  - sytelus 5y ago
    I had bought Extech RF meter for $600. It seems to be the most reliable and accurate.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  > I measured 20mW/m2 around 2nd and Harrison. For reference, on a sunny day the sun will dump 200+ W/m² on you in SF.
  - Gnarl 5y ago
    Q1: How much ambient RF spectrum intensity has there been during evolution vs. sunlight exposure? Q2: How much has ambient RF spectrum intensity risen today vs. natural background levels? A1: Virtually none. A2: 10^18
    - hypefi 5y ago
      this, it is not just about the intensity, it is that all organism have evolved to around sun exposure, not much around artificial light/Emf exposure...

kuschku 5y ago

Funnily, for permanent hair removal, you actually insert a thin probe/antenna/needle into the tissue, then transmit three times each for 1 second at 13.7MHz at ~180W to destroy the surrounding tissue. Cosmeticians sometimes also use this to destroy certain blemishes.

na85 5y ago
Wow. Do they do that in every follicle?
- kuschku 5y ago
  Yes, it takes a few seconds per follicle, and you’ve got to do it three or four times over half a year on each follicle. It’s obviously expensive and takes quite a while. For most people, IPL or Laser is probably a better option.
  - ladyattis 5y ago
    Only up to blond hairs which then you have to switch over to electrolysis like me. I have red hair which is really a mix of different hair colors such as light brownish red, 'redder', and blond. Like right now I don't have any beard shadow but I do have many blond hairs left over.
SigmundA 5y ago
They also use lasers and just intense light and electricity. All of these have very high power levels which cause cell heating and destruction. The thing to keep in mind is the action is thermal and requires much more power than cell phones to have any effect.

EdwardDiego 5y ago

> I don’t understand the reasoning behind this. Just because someone knows there’s an antenna, and has received RF safety training, how does that make their body less susceptible to injury from RF energy? They a) know how to ascertain risk better and b) know what parts of their body are riskier to expose at close range to their antenna. Safe exposure to RF is pretty well studied, and I've not seen a standard that wasn't set in line with prevailing science. But, definitely agree that if you're not certain about the safety, get a certified radio engineer to install your antennae.

colordrops 5y ago

One thing I could never understand is this apparent contradiction: there is this trope that non-ionizing radiation doesn't cause cancer, which is repeated in this article, but it can also heat up and burn tissue, which can definitely cause cancer. So which is it? I understand that non-ionizing radiation doesn't directly create cancer, but can't it indirectly cause cancer?

andreareina 5y ago
Any single particle of ionizing radiation can cause damage; there's no threshold. For non-ionizing radiation to cause damage it needs to exceed a threshold.
- colordrops 5y ago
  Right, that's what I mean by "create" vs "cause".
asxd 5y ago
Genuinely curious, can burning tissue really cause cancer? Like if I put my hand over a fire for too long and get a 3rd degree burn?
- mattkrause 5y ago
  A full-thickness burn is going to cause a lot of problems; an increased risk of cancer down the road is likely to be the least of your problems. That said, inflammation and tumors are surprisingly tightly linked: many tumors co-opt inflammatory pathways, or use them to establish favorable "micro-environments" that allow the cancer to proliferate. Here's a review about the link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803035/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803035/
jokowueu 5y ago
According to this it's rare https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18176744 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18176744 And according to the below there is evidence to suggest it can cause protein degradation and also DNA damage. That damage that tends to result simply in outright death rather than mutations which could cause cancer https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19587691/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19587691/

totetsu 5y ago

I worked in a lab testing Mobile network things. I was forever worried that some contractor would leave the radio antenna ports open without attenuators and termination, and unblocked. I considered buying a personal radio exposure warning device, but .. where do I wear it. In the end I guess I complained enough about cables on the floor being tripping hazards I got an assignment where I didn't have to go to the lab anymore.

IYasha 5y ago

An article from 80s? :) >> Unlike x-rays or gamma rays, they can’t cause radiation sickness, genetic damage, or cancer. Rly?? Tell that to radar opertors/maintainers! Oh, and It was confirmed by scientists. Can't find the name of the woman who was a US president advisor on subject and (AFAIR) toxic materials dangers.

BenjiWiebe 5y ago
Well you definitely won't get radiation sickness, and you can't get genetic damage directly from the ionizing radiation (there isn't any). And people argue non-stop about whether you might rarely get cancer from RF exposure, since cooking tissue is damaging and could possibly cause cancer. I think everyone in the know agrees, though, that the threat profile from ionizing radiation and non-ionizing radiation is vastly different.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]