Echo dot/radiation exposure for kids

[Stormy900]

AIBU to be worried about this?
10 year old and 12 year d DC would both love one for Christmas, for their bedrooms.
They want it for music, asking questions, audible stories, etc.
If they were radiation free I'd get them without hesitation.
But I'm honestly genuinely worried about increasing their exposure to radiation when using these on top of already being exposed to high levels from our Internet WiFi.
I read online that an echo dot should be used several meters away from the child at all times to minimise risks from radiation exposure, but the distance given on the echo dot small print safety info is bigger than the size of our house, let along the size of their rooms!
Yet everyone I know seems to have one and noone seems to care about the radiation.
So AIBU???
Any experts on this out there?

Radio frequency radiation is non-ionising. High intensity causes the bodies cells to heat up (microwaves) but the technology you are referring to does not produce microwaves. One way to check if your microwave oven is safe is to put your phone in it and see if it rings when you call it. You need to worry big time if it does. Incidentally if you have cars with keyless entry you can store your key fobs in a microwave. They are just a big Faraday box.

Ionising radiation is the stuff you need to worry about. Just to give you an example an hour sitting in the sun will provide the same dose as a small dental X-ray.
If you fly frequently you will be exposed to much higher levels of ionising radiation than staying at home. The nearer you get to the sun the greater the dose you receive, and airplanes provide very little protection from radiation levels at high altitude.
Modern TVs are unlikely to emit significant levels of ionising radiation unlike the old style TVs. I use to wear radiation detection badge to measure accumulative dose due to using X-ray equipment. The only time it recorded a significant dose was when I left it on top of the TV for three months. I thought I’d lost it but it was in a small box on the TV.

I doubt the low energy radiowaves emitted by wifi gadgets will cause damage. You obviously have a wifi hub emitting electro magnetic and radiowaves around your house, if you are worried about its affects maybe you should consider going tech free. No tv no computers and no phones, add to that no wifi hub no smart gadgets (wireless thermostats). No electrical gadgets at all in fact, the electrical cabling around you house will be emitting background electrical field. I could go on but it gets pretty boring listing all the sources of non-ionising radiation. The same goes for ionising radiation.

gift it with a year’s supply of bacofoil.

Clearly of a similar vintage to me, @DejaVoodoo .

Yes @CoatOfArms and sadly, it's not a recent one!

🤣I missed the EMF reference. Brilliant!

So did I

OP, I wouldn't worry about EMFs, the real danger is dihydrogen monoxide https://www.dhmo.org/

It's everywhere and it kills thousands of people every year and yet nothing is done to protect people from it. It's in our homes, our schools and they even pump it into the sea.

If you read the site's disclaimers, it has this in it:

Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing paragraph, EMF Academy does not warrant that:
the medical information on this website will be constantly available, or available at all; or
the medical information on this website is complete, true, accurate, up-to-date, or non-misleading.

Basically they are full of shit. I wouldn't be massively concerned about radiation from an echo dot.

No, salt is for ghosts. And maybe demons? I should pay more attention to Supernatural

Your home is already a sea of rf radiation, a little more makes no differance.

Im not going to make an arsy comment about avoiding cell/mobile phone towers but your concerns are groundless in this case, so get them ordered up before they are sold out 😊

Saw the EMF unbelievable' comment and still sat there thinking 'what was that song EMF did?'
🤦🏻‍♀️

You are surrounded by emf’s. TVs, computers, mobile phones, cars, microwaves, watching machines, dryers, radios etc.

Don Stress on it.

😂😂😂

I don’t think you’re a boring family at all op. Don’t under sell yourself. I think we would all be happy to see you sitting on your sofa in your tin foil hat.

in a serious note, give over. It’s fine. 😂

OP, in my line of work I have come against these types of ‘experts’ when it comes to this topic. They are scaremongers with an axe to grind.

Typically their claims are easily disproved with facts from reputable sources.

I think you can add this website to the ‘don’t believe without corroborating evidence’ pile.

Bravo 😂 I doth my proverbial cap.

I think it’s a pity some people are so dismissive of the OP’s concerns. While the “solutions” to “electro smog” offered on websites selling (very expensive) “shielding” tech are mainly preposterous snakeoil, it is not in unreasonable to be somewhat cautious about filling our domestic environments with wireless tech. IARC rated radio frequency EMF a class 2b possible carcinogen with good reason. The WHO will soon publish a set of systematic reviews of various reported effects on biological systems as an update on that earlier classification.

To the OP: I would recommend a good dose scepticism with every website you read that claims to have the definitive answers on this. If you already have wifi and equivalent using it, a cellphone, a microwave, then the EMF dose increase associated with one additional device is likely to be very small indeed. If you are still concerned, just make sure they aren’t sitting with their heads right up against it.

as others have already said, I’d be more concerned about a device listening in on my kids than the EMF dose.

What do you miss about it?

Sigh. What were we supposed to do, nod sagely and sympathise about how concerned we are too? It's a scam/ brain dead conspiracy theory and OP needs some basic information which she's been given.
People have been a lot nicer than I'd be.

No, people could politely and factually explain why this needn't be a concern. The OP didn't seem like a conspiracy theorist, she sounded like someone asking a genuine question to a bunch of cunts on a purportedly helpful website.

And her question was answered.

Wow you’re not at all condescending and smug… maybe you should be put in a cage

I won't lie, I'm relieved to read this responses to this post! I had a moment of 'oh shit! I'm the worst mum in the world' after reading the OP! Do the Alexa instructions really say to keep them 7 metres away from sleeping children??

I agree.

Briefly: RF radiation is non-ionising. Ionising radiation is things like X rays and gamma rays used in medical treatments and diagnosis. IR can be dangerous because basically it can damage your DNA and hence kill or damage cells. NIR cannot do this.

The ONLY effect of RF radiation is heating. So if you had a high level of RF near your body, the only effect would be a slight warming up. The levels emitted by mobile phones etc are far too low to do this.

Your home Wi-Fi absolutely does not emit high levels of anything.

There are recent and current studies on the health effects of things like Wi-Fi and mobiles, e.g. the SCAMP and COSMOS studies. None have found any detrimental effects on health.

There are regulations on non-ionising radiation in the workplace. I work in a university. The only equipment of any concern at all are a few pieces of specialised research equipment that emit very high magnetic fields. Nothing else. All the Wi-Fi, mobile phones, electromagnetic folds from electrical installations, emit levels far, far too low to be of concern. And as I mentioned before, the only biological effect of electromagnetic fields is heating, and you’d know if you were being warmed up! A very very powerful MRI scanner would heat you up. Such scanners exist for research, but medical MRI scanners are of lower power.

https://www.hse.gov.uk/radiation/nonionising/index.htm

I don’t think so, it just says 8 inches?