4 ms·

What’s the chemical mechanism causing this? I thought that because these RF photons don’t have enough energy to break any bonds (so-called non-ionizing) that th

by oofbey 5y ago

What’s the chemical mechanism causing this? I thought that because these RF photons don’t have enough energy to break any bonds (so-called non-ionizing) that they should generally be assumed to be safe.

kube-system 5y ago
non-ionizing radiation can still impart heat, likely low risk of any bad effect, but it's something.
sras-me 5y ago
It is not that you don't know that kills you, it is what you know for sure, that just ain't so.
aeternum 5y ago
I'd put my bet on the mechanism being simple heat. That never seems to be controlled-for in these high-energy non-ionizing RF experiments.
- jrapdx3 5y ago
  FWIW the researchers argued against the RF-induced damage being due to thermal effects. However, if not thermally-induced, how RF damages cells apparently is unknown and remains to be determined. But I can't think what else could be involved other than thermal damage. Thinking about it, I also wonder how much thermal stress is required to produce damage. If only a small increment in thermal energy at a micro-level or at particular chemical bonds is what happens, it would be a challenge to detect and measure such tiny, localized changes. Then again if the effect (that is, RF agitating some chemical entity) is small enough maybe calling it "thermal" wouldn't be exactly right. Will be very interesting to see how this line of research develops. In any case, a great question that requires a lot more work to decipher.
  - aeternum 5y ago
    We have plenty of real-world experiments. Military radio operators, research station personnel, air-traffic controllers. Even food-service personnel that work near a frequently in-use Microwave. They all have orders of magnitude more RF exposure than the average person and yet no statistically significant difference in health outcomes has been found. Contrast this with employees who worked closely with leaded gasoline, ionizing radiation, asbestos where the statistical signals are overwhelming.
    - jrapdx3 5y ago
      True that lead, radioactive materials and asbestos are orders of magnitude more hazardous than moderate RF exposure. I think an issue raised by the research is the amount/frequency of RF needed to cause subtle injury to brain neurons and potential delayed effects that could emanate from exposure. For example, the mouse study showed alterations to myelin sheaths. Conceivably there could be long-term implications, as in leading to conditions like multiple sclerosis. Of course this sort of hypothesis remains to be tested. Late-appearing effects are notoriously difficult to establish as consequent to small insults years or decades before. Remains to be seen where this line of research goes. I sure don't expect to see any outcome of it in the near future.
      - kaba0 5y ago
        I believe that with the abundance of people who worked very closely with RF mentioned by OP for a century now, we would see a statistical correspondence at least if the effect would be big enough, and given the MS and alia are quite well researched I think the default assumption of it not having a huge effect is a safe bet.
  - aaron_m04 4y ago
    > But I can't think what else could be involved other than thermal damage. Could cell axons or other structures be acting like (very imperfect) antennas?
georgia_peach 5y ago
Organic chemistry is covalent polar bonds, which don't require ionizing radiation to break. Emag can also effect biochemical processes in ways other than simple bond-breakage[0]. The brain is an electro-chemical system. Persistently nudging the electrons this way instead of that can also have a significant effect[1]. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0924224417307033 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09242... [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/news/brain-magnets-decrease-faith-in-god-religion-immigrants-a6695291.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/news/...
- oofbey 5y ago
  > Organic chemistry is covalent polar bonds, which don't require ionizing radiation to break. This sounds wrong. It's been decades since my last chemistry class, so I sure could be wrong. But IIRC organic covalent bonds aren't particularly weaker than say ionic bonds, which obviously would be subject to ionizing radiation. No argument with the other referenced effects. But AFAIK the key argument about non-ionizing radiation is specifically that it can't break covalent bonds.
  - georgia_peach 5y ago
    Here is an example that didn't require ionizing radiation: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/covalent-bonds-crack-under-the-strain/3001151.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/covalent-bonds-crack-und... And there's always good old oxidation-reduction, where adding a little heat (from non-ionizing radiation) pushes the reaction in one way instead of another. And since with RF this heat will penetrate and concentrate into the places that absorb the given wavelengths (i.e.: average vs max), it isn't quite the same thing as being "just a little warmer." There's also denaturation, where primary structure is intact, but secondary/tertiary/... are altered--which can significantly effect function. I'm not advocating for or against RF here, as much as I'm pointing out that life is complicated, and maybe we should approach it with humility instead of the physics 101 midwittery that plagues this horrible PR board. And if that doesn't satisfy, maybe John von Neumann will get through: “If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.”
throwawayrf 5y ago
It's not for this particular study, but here is a possible mechanism for RF harm that I've been wondering about for a long time, and it drives me up the wall that people think I'm crazy for mentioning it. I'm also tired of the "it's not dangerous unless it's ionizing" dogma. 1) we know DNA is an electrical conductor. This is work by Jackie Barton, et. al, Caltech, she's been talking about it on the talks circuit for about 10 years but the papers are now coming out. 2) it seems like DNA error correcting enzymes use electrical potentials and current (or rather lack of current due to mutations causing geometric disruptions in DNA and "opening the circuit") to reduce the search space and make mutation repair more efficient. 3) high frequency RF can induce current in DNA. 4) it's important to note that this mechanism (RF can jam error correction) does not itself cause mutations so standard tests like the Ames test, blasting mice with RF, or related, will miss the mechanism, especially in well-controlled lab environments. An experiment would need to be set up to directly test error repair. Yeast might be a good model species since there is a comprehensive knockout library so you could see if the relative repair rate is unaffected in repair-deficuent strains. Anyways. It should be a relatively easy Nobel prize if someone wants it. I'm not a scientist anymore, so I don't really have access to what I need to do this.
- krisoft 5y ago
  > It should be a relatively easy Nobel prize if someone wants it. Whether or not someone wants it is not the big question. The big question is if the theory verifies. Sadly they are not giving out Nobel prizes for carefully and painstakingly disproving theories proposed in anonymous HN comments. So whoever embarks on such a series of experiments has to judge the probability of the theory being true in their decision making. Besides it sounds like you are proposing a new and unknown chemistry effect. Why wouldn’t you go and try to investigate that proposed effect in a test tube first? Living things are super complicated. If you can find a chemical reaction which goes differently in the presence of non-ionizing radiation that alone could be interesting. (Of course the experiment better show that the difference is not due to simple heating.)
rleigh 5y ago
I wouldn't think that to be a reasonable general assumption. The heating effects could include: changes to reaction kinetics and equilibria; unfolding and denaturing of proteins; unwinding of DNA and RNA in localised regions ("bubbles"); displacement of inter- and intra-molecular associations through hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces As an example, the unfolding or denaturing of a protein may be transient or permanent, and it will often not have an obvious adverse effect. But if it's e.g. a critical regulatory protein, it may result in a cascade of events which might end up causing cancer. DNA structure is tightly-controlled and is wound up to varying degrees to enable or prevent access to it. If it's transiently unwound by localised heating, it exposes it to the transcription machinery as well as other regulatory proteins. Again, it could have wide-ranging effects. The probability of any one photon doing damage is low, but it penetrates deep and the heating would be very localised. The cumulative effect of exposure could well cause significant problems. Biological systems are very complex, and many of the interactions do not involve bond breaking. The proteins and other molecules interacting within each cell exist in a delicate balance which often involves far weaker forces, including hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces. These are easily disturbed by heating.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Not denying any part of what you said, just adding that Sun light is the exact same “thing” with a very wide frequency range. Sure, we can’t know whether any given frequency won’t have some adverse effect, I’m only mentioning it because I believe based on the widespread use of RF for decades now, as well as the pretty basic extension of a very natural energy “medium” to the less-energy-per-photon direction should generally hint us towards believing it is safe, and there is no reason to over-sweat it, if someone is prone to it. Of course more studies are always welcome.

by oofbey 5y ago

kube-system 5y ago

non-ionizing radiation can still impart heat, likely low risk of any bad effect, but it's something.

sras-me 5y ago

It is not that you don't know that kills you, it is what you know for sure, that just ain't so.

aeternum 5y ago

I'd put my bet on the mechanism being simple heat. That never seems to be controlled-for in these high-energy non-ionizing RF experiments.

jrapdx3 5y ago
FWIW the researchers argued against the RF-induced damage being due to thermal effects. However, if not thermally-induced, how RF damages cells apparently is unknown and remains to be determined. But I can't think what else could be involved other than thermal damage. Thinking about it, I also wonder how much thermal stress is required to produce damage. If only a small increment in thermal energy at a micro-level or at particular chemical bonds is what happens, it would be a challenge to detect and measure such tiny, localized changes. Then again if the effect (that is, RF agitating some chemical entity) is small enough maybe calling it "thermal" wouldn't be exactly right. Will be very interesting to see how this line of research develops. In any case, a great question that requires a lot more work to decipher.
- aeternum 5y ago
  We have plenty of real-world experiments. Military radio operators, research station personnel, air-traffic controllers. Even food-service personnel that work near a frequently in-use Microwave. They all have orders of magnitude more RF exposure than the average person and yet no statistically significant difference in health outcomes has been found. Contrast this with employees who worked closely with leaded gasoline, ionizing radiation, asbestos where the statistical signals are overwhelming.
  - jrapdx3 5y ago
    True that lead, radioactive materials and asbestos are orders of magnitude more hazardous than moderate RF exposure. I think an issue raised by the research is the amount/frequency of RF needed to cause subtle injury to brain neurons and potential delayed effects that could emanate from exposure. For example, the mouse study showed alterations to myelin sheaths. Conceivably there could be long-term implications, as in leading to conditions like multiple sclerosis. Of course this sort of hypothesis remains to be tested. Late-appearing effects are notoriously difficult to establish as consequent to small insults years or decades before. Remains to be seen where this line of research goes. I sure don't expect to see any outcome of it in the near future.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      I believe that with the abundance of people who worked very closely with RF mentioned by OP for a century now, we would see a statistical correspondence at least if the effect would be big enough, and given the MS and alia are quite well researched I think the default assumption of it not having a huge effect is a safe bet.
- aaron_m04 4y ago
  > But I can't think what else could be involved other than thermal damage. Could cell axons or other structures be acting like (very imperfect) antennas?

georgia_peach 5y ago

Organic chemistry is covalent polar bonds, which don't require ionizing radiation to break. Emag can also effect biochemical processes in ways other than simple bond-breakage[0]. The brain is an electro-chemical system. Persistently nudging the electrons this way instead of that can also have a significant effect[1]. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0924224417307033 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09242... [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/news/brain-magnets-decrease-faith-in-god-religion-immigrants-a6695291.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/news/...

oofbey 5y ago
> Organic chemistry is covalent polar bonds, which don't require ionizing radiation to break. This sounds wrong. It's been decades since my last chemistry class, so I sure could be wrong. But IIRC organic covalent bonds aren't particularly weaker than say ionic bonds, which obviously would be subject to ionizing radiation. No argument with the other referenced effects. But AFAIK the key argument about non-ionizing radiation is specifically that it can't break covalent bonds.
- georgia_peach 5y ago
  Here is an example that didn't require ionizing radiation: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/covalent-bonds-crack-under-the-strain/3001151.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/covalent-bonds-crack-und... And there's always good old oxidation-reduction, where adding a little heat (from non-ionizing radiation) pushes the reaction in one way instead of another. And since with RF this heat will penetrate and concentrate into the places that absorb the given wavelengths (i.e.: average vs max), it isn't quite the same thing as being "just a little warmer." There's also denaturation, where primary structure is intact, but secondary/tertiary/... are altered--which can significantly effect function. I'm not advocating for or against RF here, as much as I'm pointing out that life is complicated, and maybe we should approach it with humility instead of the physics 101 midwittery that plagues this horrible PR board. And if that doesn't satisfy, maybe John von Neumann will get through: “If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.”

throwawayrf 5y ago

It's not for this particular study, but here is a possible mechanism for RF harm that I've been wondering about for a long time, and it drives me up the wall that people think I'm crazy for mentioning it. I'm also tired of the "it's not dangerous unless it's ionizing" dogma. 1) we know DNA is an electrical conductor. This is work by Jackie Barton, et. al, Caltech, she's been talking about it on the talks circuit for about 10 years but the papers are now coming out. 2) it seems like DNA error correcting enzymes use electrical potentials and current (or rather lack of current due to mutations causing geometric disruptions in DNA and "opening the circuit") to reduce the search space and make mutation repair more efficient. 3) high frequency RF can induce current in DNA. 4) it's important to note that this mechanism (RF can jam error correction) does not itself cause mutations so standard tests like the Ames test, blasting mice with RF, or related, will miss the mechanism, especially in well-controlled lab environments. An experiment would need to be set up to directly test error repair. Yeast might be a good model species since there is a comprehensive knockout library so you could see if the relative repair rate is unaffected in repair-deficuent strains. Anyways. It should be a relatively easy Nobel prize if someone wants it. I'm not a scientist anymore, so I don't really have access to what I need to do this.

krisoft 5y ago
> It should be a relatively easy Nobel prize if someone wants it. Whether or not someone wants it is not the big question. The big question is if the theory verifies. Sadly they are not giving out Nobel prizes for carefully and painstakingly disproving theories proposed in anonymous HN comments. So whoever embarks on such a series of experiments has to judge the probability of the theory being true in their decision making. Besides it sounds like you are proposing a new and unknown chemistry effect. Why wouldn’t you go and try to investigate that proposed effect in a test tube first? Living things are super complicated. If you can find a chemical reaction which goes differently in the presence of non-ionizing radiation that alone could be interesting. (Of course the experiment better show that the difference is not due to simple heating.)

rleigh 5y ago

I wouldn't think that to be a reasonable general assumption. The heating effects could include: changes to reaction kinetics and equilibria; unfolding and denaturing of proteins; unwinding of DNA and RNA in localised regions ("bubbles"); displacement of inter- and intra-molecular associations through hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces As an example, the unfolding or denaturing of a protein may be transient or permanent, and it will often not have an obvious adverse effect. But if it's e.g. a critical regulatory protein, it may result in a cascade of events which might end up causing cancer. DNA structure is tightly-controlled and is wound up to varying degrees to enable or prevent access to it. If it's transiently unwound by localised heating, it exposes it to the transcription machinery as well as other regulatory proteins. Again, it could have wide-ranging effects. The probability of any one photon doing damage is low, but it penetrates deep and the heating would be very localised. The cumulative effect of exposure could well cause significant problems. Biological systems are very complex, and many of the interactions do not involve bond breaking. The proteins and other molecules interacting within each cell exist in a delicate balance which often involves far weaker forces, including hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces. These are easily disturbed by heating.

kaba0 5y ago
Not denying any part of what you said, just adding that Sun light is the exact same “thing” with a very wide frequency range. Sure, we can’t know whether any given frequency won’t have some adverse effect, I’m only mentioning it because I believe based on the widespread use of RF for decades now, as well as the pretty basic extension of a very natural energy “medium” to the less-energy-per-photon direction should generally hint us towards believing it is safe, and there is no reason to over-sweat it, if someone is prone to it. Of course more studies are always welcome.