Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Humans can't detect cellphone tower emissions:
Roughly 4% of Britons claim to be affected by radio waves from sources such as telephone transmitters and other electrical equipment.

...When told that the transmitter was switched on for 50 minutes, 'sensitive' individuals reported higher anxiety, discomfort and tension. But when asked to tell whether the transmitter was on or off, only two of the 44 'sensitive' volunteers were correct six times out of six. Five of the controls were equally successful.

And the severity of symptoms reported by the volunteers, as well as their heart rate and levels of sweating, did not depend on whether the transmitter was switched on or off, the researchers report...

...The results suggest that the many health problems attributed to mobile phone transmitters -- including nausea, headache and flu-like symptoms -- are probably caused by something else, says Elaine Fox, a psychologist at the University of Essex in Colchester, who led the research. She suggests that the problems may well be psychological.
This is a nice bit of science.