Pseudoscience Ascendant

I just returned from 8 days in my hometown, Cupertino, California.  Cell phone and cellular data reception there continues to be terrible, and if I use my phone much, the battery dies in a fraction of the time it does in more sensible places.   The home of Apple, HP and countless other high tech innovators, has very few cell towers, and these companies have been forced to implement their own private cell networks.  Here's the reason.  They have it exactly backwards.

The WHO report cited is essentially a sop, admitting that it's remotely possible that this could be a problem, just to get these nincompoops off their back.   There is no credible evidence that low level gigahertz radio causes cancer.  None.  Very high power, tuned and focused radiation can cook things though.  Microwave ovens are tuned to the frequency of water. They're shielded, but by staying a few feet away, even if there's a breakdown, you can stay safe. Powerful radars have been known to kill bugs and birds that flew too close.  Not by cancer though, by boiling the water in them.

But let's pretend that there was a problem.  Digital cell phones adjust their power output based on how far they are from the cell tower.  If they're far, they increase power, if they're near, they reduce it.  This has a bunch of advantages.  First of all, it saves a lot of battery power if they don't have to use it.  More significantly, it increases network capacity.    Each logical channel is only used up for as big an area as the power being used can reach.  The same channel can be used by another tower/phone pair if they're out of range.

But the notowerinschoools folks have this exactly backwards.  By keeping the towers far from the students, they are FORCING all cell communications to occur at high power.  The transmitter that matters is not the one in the tower.  The inverse square law makes it of little consequence to anyone more than a few dozen feet away.  The transmitter that matters is the one the kid is holding up to their ear.  If the tower 5 miles away, it's transmitting at high power.  It's unlikely to cause cancer, but it might be boiling the kids brains a little bit.  From less than an inch away.   The closer the cell tower is, the less power the mobile phone needs to use to transmit.  Unless you ban the cell phones completely, you are achieving exactly the thing you were trying to prevent.  I wonder how a cell phone ban would go down in the schools of Cupertino...not.

Idiots.

Addenda 3 Jan 2017

 There's a new cell tower in Cupertino near city hall that went on line in the spring. Cellular is now /much/ better there.