To think using smartphone A LOT around kids is dangerous,

[Cheekychops84]

feel guilty that if I cud lead to brain tumours like it was once thought? Mayb better to surf Internet on laptop rather then the phone ?

My laptop uses wifi at home, same as my phone so not sure it'd be any different.

No difference if you're using WiFi

YABU www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/resources/8/MSofRadiation_2011.pdf

Another thing to worry about. Great.

I remember when microwave ovens first appeared on the market. My mother, bless her, was terrified and for ages refused to have one in the house.

Then my dad Laid Down The Law and bought one.

She treated it like an unexploded bomb, creeping past the corner of the kitchen where it lurked. My brother (he would!) found a cartoon joke of someone in a radiation suit using a microwave oven and stuck it to the kitchen door.

She wouldn't be without it now. No health problems so far, either.

My mum still wont talk to me in the kitchen if the microwaves on She always tells me to stand well back

Thanks for that link mixedberries.

My mother always turns off the telly when there's a storm. She missed a lot of her favourite programmes on Saturday.

Yeah all the studies that have proven the complete lack of damage these devices do to people due to the minuscule levels of radiation have made me throw all my technology away and move to a small mud hut in the outer Hebrides.

Right I'm off to eat some moss I've been cultivating on my roof.

My mum still tells me off for standing infront of the microwave when it's on.

YAB bonkers

Your mother needs to unplug the TV in a storm too. Just switching it off may not save it if the house gets struck by lightening. This did actually happen to my parents - blew every TV in the house but sadly left their ageing computer fully functioning :)

What do you think smartphones will do that laptops won't?

Wear a tinfoil hat, you'll be grand.

soupdragon I'm not telling her that. I don't want her knowing that all the time we've been ridiculing her she was right.

OP this is my specialist subject. I can tell you confidently that there is no danger whatever. There has been lots of speculation and scare stories, but no serious peer-reviewed study has ever demonstrated damage caused by a cellphone.

The microwave oven is a slightly different issue. An oven in good working order is harmless. It is theoretically possible though that if the door seals become seriously damaged it could leak sufficient radiation to damage sensitive tissues in close proximity. For this reason you should discard an oven in poor condition.

Penis,
There is every difference in the world between smartphones and laptops. Apart from technology differences, laptops are not usually held in close proximity to the brain.

You seem to like introducing tinfoil hats into discussions. Personally I prefer to address serious concerns with serious answers.

If you'll read the post, its querying using smartphones around children in case it damages them. So they are not talking about users of the phone, and in that context there is no difference between using a laptop in the vicinity of children or a smartphone.

Tinfoil hats is shorthand for "this is not a serious concern, but you'll find any number of idiots who will tell you its real"

Sallyingforth
Penis,
There is every difference in the world between smartphones and laptops. Apart from technology differences, laptops are not usually held in close proximity to the brain.

You seem to like introducing tinfoil hats into discussions. Personally I prefer to address serious concerns with serious answers.

OK. What's the penetrative ability of a radio wave at the different frequencies used by smartphones, wifi and your TV? How easily can a radio wave pass through a human skull and the brain?

Sally surely you would not hold a smartphone next to your head while surfing the net either???

flatpack
That's a lot of questions. Generally speaking the higher frequencies are absorbed more by body tissues. So in order it will be FM radio > terrestrial TV broadcast > original cellphones > UMTS phones > WiFi.

Kelly
Yes, you would only be holding the phone to your own head when speaking on it. But when the OP asked about being around kids I was thinking of her using it while feeding or carrying a child, which would put it close to the child's head.

Well, as the OP suggested using a laptop instead I suspect she didn't mean whilst carrying or feeding a child.

sallyingforth

DH is convinced that his friend developed cancer in his femur because he carried his phone clipped to that hip.

I think it was a coincidence but I've no proof do I don't argue. What do you think?

I developed a benign brain tumour by the ear I habitually use for the phone.

The only thing is that when I got it I'd used a mobile no more than five times for less than five minutes at a time and had never used a cordless handset. I'm too weary to point that out to people who tell me that a mobile was definitely the cause and don't wonder why there hasn't been an explosion in the number of brain tumours to match mobile use.

Maybe I'm wrong about that too.

even if you didn't use it there is wifi everywhere now -unless you're in the middle of nowhere with no neighbours and even then there's the btopen wifi which I used on the beach (well in the cabin near the beach)

Limited,
There are now billions of mobile phones in use around the world. Some people have been using them for 30 years. There has been no corresponding increase in cancer, or any other disease for that matter. I reckon that is a pretty good test.
People have always suffered cancer of the brain and other parts, and I strongly suspect that your unfortunate friend would have had his cancer anyway.