What I meant to say was: amount of damage isn’t correlated to frequency alone. There are other, usually more important factors that play a role.

To the opoponax: Going by the 1/500th figure, you’d have to be stuck on the bluetooth device for 500 times longer to have the same effect. Going by your case: 5 minutes per day of cellphone radiation is equal to 2500 minutes bluetooth radiation. If you sleep 7 hours a day, and keep your bluetooth device on your head for the remaining 17 hours, that is still 1020 minutes. Thus, 17 hours of bluetooth device stuck to your head is still only 40% of the radiation power you would receive from just 5 minutes of the cellphone next to your head. Of course, I am not recommending you (or anyone) stay on your headset for 17 hours - the point I am making is that even if you did, you would still get less radiation than 5 minutes of cellphone usage.

In my case, I probably use the phone for 20 minutes a day - and I might be walking down the street, or in the subway, or driving, or in the grocery store, or hiking during those 20 minutes. I suspect that if I do get a headset, I will use it no more than (and this might be a vast exaggeration - I can’t really predict my usage pattern until I get it) 8 hours a day. For me, 20 minutes of cellphone radiation would be almost 20 times more than 8 hours of bluetooth radiation (going purely by the power metric). So, it makes sense for me.

On the positive side, I hate the cel phone with a passion and use it as little as possible. Unfortunately I need it for work.

if you’re not worried about the tons of 2.4GHz microwave radiation that you’re bombarded with constantly, then why worry about cell phones, which operate at lower frequencies of 0.8 GHz and 1.9 GHz?

I could understand being worried about both, or about bluetooth but not cell phones. I can’t understand being worried about cell phones but not bluetooth.

(not a physicist or engineer, honest question)

Do people really not speak to each other these days? I don’t live in a major city (medium sized midwestern city here) and I grew up in a rural area, so it’s pretty normal to me to strike up conversations with random strangers at places like the grocery store, waiting in lines, etc. I really, really hope I’m not coming off as creepy when I do that.

ks, I live in one of those midsized midwest cities too. I do the same thing, and I notice that plenty of other folks do too. Sounds like you’re just normal out here.

While I get that the overall radiation power is lower on a bluetooth, doesn’t it eventually equal out because you’re wearing it stuck to the side of your face all the time?

I may not be the average user, but I talk on my cell like 5 minutes a day, tops, and the rest of the time it is generally far away from my body (on my desk, in my bag, in the pocket of a jacket hanging on a coat rack on the other side of the room).

Of course, if you’re on your cell all day (usually for work purposes, unless maybe you’re a 13 year old girl), that might make a difference, and in those situations bluetooth is perfectly appropriate. I fully get why people who spend all day on the phone need headsets, and even why said people might leave it on for the sake of convenience when they’re not physically in their office.

But it seems kind of silly to say “I’m worried about radiation from electronic devices. I should totally wear one strapped to the side of my head all the time!”

Bluetooth, by design, has much lower powered electromagnetic radiation. It operates at the 2.4Ghz spectrum (unlicensed spectrum - of which we have plenty radiation around us anyway) and consumes low power (60 milliWatts current during use, 0.6mW when not in use - and that’s for the entire decide, not just the radiation part of it). A regular cellphone has two signal strengths - 0.6 Watts when not in use, 3 Watts when in use. The “not in use” power radiation strength of a cellphone, therefore is almost a 1000 times the radiation strength of a bluetooth headset. The “in use” radiation strength of the phone is 500 times the headset.

I’d much rather have a low-powered electromagnetic device next to my head than a higher powered one, thank you very much.

It’s basically the same reason we get annoyed at people who hog 2 or more seats on the subway, don’t exit at the back of the bus, stop to look for their metrocard or send a text message at the top of the subway stairs, walk slowly in the middle of the sidewalk, or park their buggy right in the middle of a grocery store aisle. The vast majority of the 8 million people in New York manage to put personal idiosyncrasies aside and make space for their fellow humans. Those who don’t are considered douchebags by default.

My thought process goes something like this, “Oh, look, another one of those wheelie backpack losers hogging up sidewalk space because they can’t be bothered to use their pwethious muscles to carry their own stuff around… Oh, wait, maybe he has a back problem and can’t carry things easily. Maybe I should lay off?”

You could skip right to the end, knowing where that leads, saving time–but then you wouldn’t get to feel self-righteous and smug that you won another round of Inside the Head Spot the Douchebag Final Challenge Round! And then what fun is that?

I mean, there’s no other logical explanation for rising into operatic umbrage at people who chat in public on cellphones while not actually touching the phone with their hands. It’s like some high-tech version of Emily Post’s evil twin howling in rage that you used the ice cream spoon but not the ice cream fork. FFS, don’t you have less petty things over which to get outraged?