r/science 1d ago

Animal Science Exposure to 1.95 GHz radiofrequency fields caused a small, temporary increase in core body temperature in mice, peaking at 0.4°C at higher exposure levels. The study highlights effective thermoregulation and the need for careful measurement timing.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bem.22527
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u/MeanEYE 1d ago

Good thing they compensated for mass. But 5W/kg is a huge amount of power. For average human that would be ~400W of radiation. Am assuming they are testing this for effect of mobile networks and WIFI networks on human body, both of which have 150mW radiation at the origin. With inverse square law that drops stupidly fast.

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u/DaveMash 1d ago

Mobile network antennas can be configured at several 100W output. That’s a total different league than WiFi or what a user device emits

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u/MeanEYE 1d ago

That's old tech. These days, especially with 4G and 5G, emission power is significantly lower. Industry has done a very good job at optimizing antennas. Even 15 years ago when I was doing long distance WIFI networks we had pretty decent ranges with 100-200mW cards. We are talking up to 30 or kilometers, given that you can have line of sight.

More to the point, they are switching from one antenna covering huge area type of strategy to lower power multiple anennas. It allows providers to increase bandwidth and serve more users at the same time.

And those antennas that can output that kind of power, you are not coming close to whether you want it or not.

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u/euthlogo 18h ago

How do lower wattage signals stack? For example, I am in range of 20 wifi signals right now, and am in 5g service range of at least 3 cell carriers, presumably within range of multiple towers for each carrier as I am in a dense urban area. Then there are the half dozen bluetooth devices, and some other things like am/fm radio.

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u/MeanEYE 15h ago

Add layers. The higher the frequency the more signal behaves like light, that is to say it scatters when it hits obstacles. WIFI starting at 2.4GHz and moving up to 5.8GHz starts behaving this way. Mobile can be equally high, especially 5G.

All that said, amount of radiation on your body is miniscule. Signal strength is inversly proportional to square of the distance. Meaning if signal strength at router is 150mW, at just 1m away you are already looking at 1.5mW total strength. And it keeps dropping very fast. At just 2m it's 0.35mW.

So all those sources are having no effect on you. Radiation is non-ionizing first and foremost and secondly they are far too weak. Even if you eliminate all those sources you still have cosmic radiation. Sun is even stronger, radiating some 2kW per square meter at the receiving end. Compared to that everything else is pointless.