A lot of those movies used radiation as a plot device to explain why an iguana, or a tarantula or whatever else was on sale in the pet store closest to the studio had grown to enormous size and was now threatening a small town with no minority residents.

As a result of those movies, I think, more than any actual scientific research, the public has developed an unhealthy fear of radiation. Well, my newly grown second head and I are in complete agreement: the threat of radiation is greatly exaggerated, especially when it comes to cellular phones.

Last year, the City of San Francisco passed an ordinance decreeing that all electronics stores post information on the amount of radiation emitted by cell phones.

Unfortunately for the nanny-statists in ‘Frisco, the World Health Organization has said “Current exposure to RF [radiofrequency] fields, such as those emitted by mobile phones and their base stations, is unlikely to induce or promote cancers.”

Cell phones can still be dangerous when you’re driving and holding the thing to your head and Apple products can explode with alarming regularity. But your phone’s radiation isn’t going to give you cancer.

The important thing to know about radiation is its penetrating power, which is tied to its frequency and wavelength. High frequency, short wavelength radiation penetrates the human body more easily than low frequency, long wavelength radiation.

To explain this next bit, I’d like to turn it over to my friend, a sock puppet with cardboard electron orbitals so he looks like Ernest Rutherford’s “solar system” model of the nucleus, Adam the Atom.

Adam: Hello, kiddies! Before I start I just want to make clear that I am in no way similar to any other character who may have been named with the same pun in mind.

Me: There’s no need to be patronizing, Adam, just tell the liberal arts majors the difference between radioactivity and radiation.

Adam: Sure thing! Radioactivity is when an atom like me disintegrates, releasing energy in one of three forms: an alpha particle, which is two protons bound up with neutrons – otherwise known as a helium nucleus, a beta particle, which is just an electron, and gamma rays, which are high energy electromagnetic particles. When a substance decays like that, it’s considered radioactive. Yay!

Me: And those three things are radiation?

Adam: Sure! But radiation isn’t just those three; any form of energy that’s emitted can be considered radiation. Light, heat, microwaves, X-rays – all of them are forms of radiation. The big difference is in how much energy the radiation has. If it has enough energy to knock an electron off an atom, it’s called ionizing radiation.

Me: Thank you, Adam.

Ionizing radiation gets the most attention because it is the most dangerous – it’s high energy, high frequency and short wavelength, so it can penetrate deep into the body and increase the risk of cancer by interfering with DNA.
However, even then, there are so many trillions of atoms in the body and atoms are mostly empty space that the real determining factor is the dose level. The people at Fukushima who keep going back in there to try to bring it under control are giving up their lives for Japan; the guy in Seattle who doesn’t want to eat fish probably doesn’t have a thing to worry about; the Pacific Ocean is pretty big, I’m told.

Cell phones use microwaves for communication. Microwaves have wavelengths between one meter and one millimeter – longer than visible light and much longer than those of “hard” forms of radiation, like gamma rays. Microwaves have been used for various consumer purposes for decades now, especially the ovens, although broadcast television used microwaves and satellite TV still does.

It may be that, as the first mobile-intensive generation we’ll get cancer from cell phones when we are in our 80s, but right now the evidence suggests otherwise. So just remember to stay clear of the gamma rays, recycle old phones properly and watch out for iExplosions.

Matthew M. Robare is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].