3 ms·
The possibility of non-ionizing radiation having a significant biological effect beyond simple heating used to be dismissed… but that came from not knowing much
by _yb2s 3y ago
The possibility of non-ionizing radiation having a significant biological effect beyond simple heating used to be dismissed… but that came from not knowing much about molecular biology.
Electric fields can rotate charged molecules, e.g. switching proteins between states which can alter signaling cascades, open ion channels, etc. This provides a pretty well understood mechanism for negative effects.
- jcims 3y agoIt's even used to actually treat cancer: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5035531/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5035531/
- space_fountain 3y agoThese are electric fields not RF right? That strikes me as a big difference. The paper discusses using electrodes pretty early on so one would think if just radio waves worked they’d use them?
- 0xbadc0de5 3y agoElectric fields in this context are different from the RF associated with cellular phone technology. The RF frequencies and power levels use by cell phones are not able to penetrate the human body more than one or two millimeters.