a title is NOT required!
Fantastic article.
That is all.
Tinfoil 'radiation shield' maternity wear hits 'Frisco
A fearmongering company has this week launched its brand of maternity tinfoil, dubbed "Belly Armor", in San Francisco. The makers of Belly Armor claim that it offers "guaranteed protection" for a pregnant wearer's unborn child from the dangers of "everyday radiation", for instance from mobile phones or computers. Pic …
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 14:04 GMT The Indomitable Gall
What did they hire them to do, though...?
I would say the company was independent.
I suspect they were given the fabric and asked "does it block radiation?"
I suspect the answer was "It has an attenuating effect in the range 10MHz-8GHz, but this only accounts for (whatever)% of non-ionising radiation at ground level."
It's quite easy for the company to get rid of everything after the "but" and still be reporting the findings without lying.
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 13:13 GMT petur
Goes a bit too far...
By having a laugh that way you either show you need some lies to do that, or are completely ignorant of how radiation works.
That motion detector is far off your body so there's no harm there. I think the main issue it tries to counter is radiation sources next to your body: 100mW WiFi, mobile phone,...
We all know that little kids are very sensitive to radiation (which is why the normal advisory is to NOT give them a mobile phone), so imagine the effect of radiation on an organism in full development.
So I would not shoot this one off with silly arguments, but rather see some scientific evidence that this protection is crap.
Anyway, I'd never let my wife carry her mobile in her trousers pocket when pregnant. When in doubt, go for the safe side...
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 14:12 GMT Steve X
When in doubt...
...apply common sense. And learn about different kinds of radiation.
Scientific evidence that this protection is crap? You saw it, in the article. We're inundated with radio waves night and day. Inside our houses and outside. We stil manage to live longer and healthier lives than ever before. There is no scientific evidence that any of the radiation stopped by this overpriced scam garment is harmful. It's snake oil, pure and simple.
As for phones in pockets, the major risk is that if you trip up, it hurts when you land on it.
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 14:12 GMT JohnG
Proving a negative
"So I would not shoot this one off with silly arguments, but rather see some scientific evidence that this protection is crap."
We keep on having studies which report that "no correlation has been found between <some type of cancer or other condition> and EM radiation from <mobile phones, WLAN access points, cellular base stations, etc.>" but the tinfoil hat brigade always say something like "just because you haven't found a link yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist".
Nobaody seems to care much about microwave ovens though, despite these having quite high power transmitters of the sort of wavelengths that will warm up your eyeballs.
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 14:12 GMT Lee T
@Goes a bit too far
"We all know that little kids are very sensitive to radiation"
we also all know that the moon is made of cheese. It isn't, and they aren't,
at least not to *non-ionising* radiation.
"see some scientific evidence that this protection is crap"
against wifi/cellphones etc, the "protection" is fine. the point of the article
is, it's protecting against a danger that *simply* *doesn't* *exist*
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 15:47 GMT Alan Johnson
Ignorance and scaremongering
'We all know that little kids are very sensitive to radiation (which is why the normal advisory is to NOT give them a mobile phone), so imagine the effect of radiation on an organism in full development'
Sensitive to what sort of radiation? I do not think your statement is true even for ionising radiation but lower limits are applied as a precaution for pregnant women.
Repeated studies have failed to show any effect fo non-ionising radiation which is all that is blocked by this product. There is advice not to give kids a mobile phone based on the precautionary principle. This a serious mistake because it is seized upon by ignorant F***wits as evidence of danger when in fact it is only evidence of excessive caution.
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Thursday 16th September 2010 08:25 GMT Tim Bates
DER!!!!
"radiation sources next to your body: 100mW WiFi, mobile phone"
Your pregnant wife/girlfriend lets her belly talk on the phone does she?
And show me a laptop that comes with a 100mW wifi card out of the box, please... Most top out at 25mW, or about one metric poof-teenth of what might be harmful.
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Thursday 16th September 2010 08:27 GMT streaky
Please
Stop using the word 'radiation' until you know what it is. The piss taking was completely justified.
As for there's a link but you just haven't found it yet - there's not even an epidemiological link, and the reason it hasn't been disproved is no scientist worthy of the title can be bothered with this stuff. The whole thing stinks of "there is a God because you haven't disproven he exists yet" argument that most sane people got bored of a long time since.
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 15:47 GMT HFoster
Lightning strikes
If the potential difference between ground and the cloud deck is big enough that sparks will jump from cloud to ground, extra metal is neither here-nor-there. Ditto for rubber-soled shoes.
You might want to sit in a car though, as the ones still made of metal will act as Faraday cages, conducting the electricity to ground around (rather than through) you. The plastic ones, I dunno.
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 14:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
thing is
Thing is if the company selling it this way thought "Man I bet stupid people would pay a shit load of cash for this if we said it protected their babies from mobile phones." Then cool, I'm all for exploiting stupid people. Stupid in this case being a relative term, I'm not gonna buy a death ray protecting crotch pad, but I'll buy photocards of Japanese Idols. We're all daft for something, but at least some of us know we're getting screwed over.
However if it's run buy people that really think that a piece of silver stink repelling fabric will save unborn parasties from death ray emmiting technology. Then grrrrrrrr.
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 14:10 GMT Refugee from Windows
Natural screening?
With the youngster immersed in amniotic fluid, which is nicely conductive anyway, this would reduce exposure to electromagnetic fields to minimal anyway. Another product for folk with more brass than sense. Unless of course the mum-to-be is in the habit of sitting next to high power RF sources of course.
Mine's the one with the conductive lining.
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Friday 17th September 2010 00:05 GMT still not sure
Does this follow?
'With the youngster immersed in amniotic fluid, which is nicely conductive anyway, this would reduce exposure to electromagnetic fields to minimal anyway.'
I would have thought that amniotic fluid would heat up quite nicely under the influence of microwaves.
Seems to me like a good idea to put laptops on a table, not on the lap. Once the baby is born, I would put the baby down before picking up a phone and causing it to transmit at close range to said baby.
I don't think that there's any need for multi tasking where babies are concerned.
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 14:13 GMT PerfectBlue
Snake oil?
While this may be just another form of snake oil sold on the back of scaremongering, I would like to point out that there are literally thousands of substances and/or chemicals that scientists assured us were safe, but which were later found to be harmful.
Just look at the number of factories during the 1970s and 80s where the women working on the production lines had a level of miscarriage that was several times higher than the national average rate of children born with birth defects, and it turned out to be the "harmless" materials that they were working with.
I'm filing this particular item of clothing down in the useless draw, but I'm putting my skeptics hat on when it comes to the issue of EM radiation in general.
There are multiple verified cases around the world of people suffering medically verifiable symptoms after spending time near EM sources.
I've got family who worked with radio and EM based navigation equipment and they will tell you that EM burn is no joke. It's like sticking your hand in a microwave.
Admittedly they were working with high powered systems rather than domestic ones, but I there has been minimal actual research done on the long term health effects of low level output devices, and what research there has been has all to often centered on a small number of brand new devices, whereas people in the real world will often be around dozens of different devices at the same time, some of them old and/or malfunctioning and thus outputting on different or unpredictable frequencies.
I'm going to hold off on calling low level EM devices safe for a while.
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Thursday 16th September 2010 08:23 GMT sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
Steve X
"We've had radio for about 100 years*. How much longer are you going to wait?"
Do not assume all radio is safe.
Would you like to stand in front of a MiG-31 with its radar on for a bit?
Less extreme but very much safer : Do you feel very comfortable standing in front of a microwave oven?
While the silver apron is a bit much, really, I would contend we still do not really know what the long term effects of having microwave transmitters in intimate proximity with our anatomy are. I believe most of these are packet transmitters and do pulse, albeit not being very directional and being low in _mean_ power output.
I am less concerned about wireless routers which generally stay a good distance away, than with mobile phones and like personal communication devices.
If you tell me constant bombardment by low energy microwaves do not affect significantly a specified volume of water in a jar, or, say a brick, for example, I'd say fine. But we're talking biological systems here.
We do not know enough, I would contend, while they appear to so far have been 'safe', nobody might know what long term effects are in store for us 10-20 years down perhaps. The effects may be small or less pronounced, and the risk of being affected lower, than say, poor old Marie Curie who didn't know what she was getting herself into, but ... we don't know.
Cigarettes, who'd have thought they were harmful?
Biological systems are tricky.
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 15:15 GMT BristolBachelor
40dB 10MHz - 8GHz ??
Well then, I'd say that their guarantee is false.
10MHz is no good at all. One of the blokes working on long-wave stuff in the 100s kHz got stomach cancer that was attributed to his work.
Also the levels that you normally find are below recommended safe levels. If they are claiming that levels below this are unsafe too, then they should stop ALL of it. Working in EMC, the chambers had to have MORE than 100dB to be called shielding. Also that had to be from about 30kHz - 40GHz.
They could also sell those dowsing rods for detecting land-mines...
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 18:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
More scaremongering
10MHz is no good at all. One of the blokes working on long-wave stuff in the 100s kHz got stomach cancer that was attributed to his work.
Attributed by who? There is no evidence whatsoever of cancer caused by non-ionising radiation let alone such a long wavelength. There is not even a significant heating effetc for sucg long wavelengths.
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Wednesday 15th September 2010 23:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
oh noes they beat me to it....
i was going to bring out a fashion range in TIN-FOIL!
it would be cheap as chips and as no self respecting woman would ever want to be seen in the same dress twice...
it would be ideal as it would recycle itself after the first wearing or even during the first wearing ;p
oh and notice it looks more like the drapes shes wearing ;p
im sure paris would give one a try, gaga did meat last week... they'll do anything to be noticed
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Thursday 16th September 2010 08:22 GMT sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
Microwaves
1. Microwaves are definitely a hazard in certain contexts, but these are usually very obvious.
2. Prolonged exposure to somewhat lower levels - I am not sure there is a firm verdict.
You've all heard stereo speakers go crazy when nearby mobile phones send packets. No doubt the energy contained in a mobile phone battery is limited, but I, not being an engineer, am not sure what the peak power output of such a pulse is, and what really the long term effects of prolonged exposure are.
From what I read of it : no one's really been bold enough to say that mobile phones are categorically 100% safe. On the other hand no one's proven them to be particularly nasty either.
In the long run.
My take: I wouldn't go coating myself with silver, but neither would I be strapping mobile phones, wireless routers and microwave oven all over my balls and other like sensitive tissue. I wouldn't dismiss completely suggestions that low levels over prolonged periods may be harmful.
This is interesting :
http://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/facts/fs226/en/
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Thursday 16th September 2010 09:04 GMT Steve X
Aaarrrghgghhh learn some science, man!
"no one's really been bold enough to say that mobile phones are categorically 100% safe. "
That's because the people who test them are intellifent enough to know that it is a logical impossibility to prove *anything* 100% safe. You can't prove a negative. If I tell you there's no such thing as a pink banana, you only have to produce 1 to prove me wrong, but even if I produce 10 billion bananas that aren't pink, I could never *prove* that no pink one exists, only that the chances of such a thing are negligable.
No reputable engineer will claim that something is 100% safe, because by doing so they would only demonstrate that they don't know how to do their job, therefore destroying the credibility of the statement.
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Thursday 16th September 2010 09:14 GMT Filippo
scientific evidence
The scientific evidence that low-power, non-ionising EM radiation is harmless lies in the fact that we've been using radio for a century and no causal link to adverse health effects has been conclusively proven. It's impossible to prove a negative, but this is as close as you get.
At this point, the weight of proof lies on the OMGRADIATION crowd to show evidence of harm.
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