Re: Health Hazards

Todd Boyle wrote:

> Finally, it is well established in psychology that biases can appear
> in our thought processes as result of our occupation, our ingroup
> we hang around with, and how the issues affect our pocketbook,


That's why we have government orgs to regulate and track research on 
these matters.
http://www.fcc.gov/oet/rfsafety/background.html
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/radiofrequencyradiation/hazards.html
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/radiofrequencyradiation/healtheffects.html
also see http://www.arrl.org/news/rfsafety/

You can also calculate RF safety specs for yourself:
http://n5xu.ae.utexas.edu/rfsafety/

I looked up the specs on my SonyEricsson GC82 EDGE PC card. At 850MHz it 
operates at 2W and at 1900MHz it operates at 1W. Its antenna probably 
has 1 dBi gain and I'm likely to be sitting at least a foot away from 
it. It looks like I'm operating within the Maximum Permissible Exposure 
guidelines whether I'm getting signal from either an 850 or 1900MHz BTS.

Now let's look up the Proxim AP-700 that I'm using at home. According to 
the specs, the internal antenna has 0 dBi gain for 802.11a and 1 dBi for 
802.11b/g. Try running the stats on these two scenarios:

1. 802.11a operating on channel 58 (5300 MHz) in 36 Mbps mode (18 dBm Tx 
power or ~.063W).
2. 802.11b on channel 11 (2462 MHz) in 11 Mbps mode (20 dBm Tx power or 
~.1W) but with a 15dBi external omni antenna.

It's trivial to find the specs on the hardware you're using. And you can 
use this calculator if your docs list power in dBm instead of watts.
http://www.wirelessguys.com/calculations/watts_to_dBm.php

-Gary

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