The Pros And Cons Of Ionizing Radiation

Distinction must be drawn at this point between ionizing and nonionizing radiation especially with regard to their interaction with biological systems. Ionizing radiation has the ability to damage components of cells. Nonionizing radiation, on the other hand, such as radio waves and microwaves do not have similar capabilities and can at best cause heating of tissues. This claim though has been seriously doubted after a thorough scientific scrutiny, as we shall see later.

Electric fields are easily shielded or weakened by walls and other objects, whereas magnetic fields can pass through buildings, living things, and most other materials. Consequently, magnetic fields are the component of ELF-EMFs that are more relevant with regard to health.

man-made sources is that the former is non-polarized whereas the latter is polarized. This is important because this characteristic is extremely relevant to interaction between electromagnetic noise and biological tissues, apart from other characteristics such as power, frequency, continuous vs. pulsed and modulation. Man-made electromagnetic waves can be generated by oscillation circuits through induction of oscillations of electric charge in one direction. This is why they are called linearly polarized.
Natural fields are mostly DC (direct current) static fields produced by oscillation of atoms or molecules in all directions and are thus non-polarized. Cells in our bodies recognize them since the beginning of evolution. If you use polarized sunglasses while driving, non-polarized light is converted into polarized light thus removing glare from oncoming traffic. Polarized waves are more likely to interfere with organic material such as biological tissues as the latter contain charged polar molecules. The interference occurs in the form of inducing forced vibrations in the charged/polar molecules of living tissues. Schumann resonances are at 7.83 Hz. Human heart beats at 1 to 1.5 Hz. Human brain vibrates at 7.8 Hz when in harmony. Mobile phone electromagnetic emission is polarized and pulsed and at millions of Hertz. In people who have photosensitive epilepsy a light flashing at a frequency as low as 15 Hz can induce an attack.

This complicates comparison of their relative strengths. For example if you consider a bandwidth of 1 MHz, man-made fields are stronger than background natural ones, whereas if you consider entire range of 300 GHz, natural fields may be stronger than man made ones. While estimating exposure from an emitter e.g. a mobile phone, there are several considerations such as frequency of incident wave, distance from the emitter, angular direction, environmental modifiers such as reflection, diffraction, shielding etc. all of which can modify the fields. By the time the specific energy gets absorbed into body tissues, actual dose is fairly