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Wireless Networking Hardware

Can Cell Phones Damage Our Eyes? 429

Posted by Hemos from the ruination-and-damnation dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "I'm sure you've read dozens of stories about how our cell phones could be dangerous to our health, causing brain tumors for example. But so far, there is not a definitive answer. But now, according to IsraCast, a team of Israeli researchers has discovered that the microwave radiation used by our cell phones could destroy our eyes by causing two kinds of damages to our visual system, including an irreversible one. If the researchers are right, and even if you only occasionally use your cell phone, the lenses in your eyes can suffer from microscopic damages that won't heal themselves over time. As this study has not been not done -- yet -- on humans, I guess the controversy can begin and that another scientific team will soon tell us that this study is not correct. In the mean time, read more for other details and references. And whether you think that cell phones can damage our eyes or not, feel free to post your comments below."
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Can Cell Phones Damage Our Eyes? More

Can Cell Phones Damage Our Eyes?

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  • Everybody hurts (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:25PM (#13182350) Homepage
    There are so many researches and studies in the last 20 years, to the point that I'm starting to ignore all but a few obvious ones (like how you could get AIDS).

    In my opinion, anything you do will cause damage to your body, even reading Slashdot everyday is enough to damage my eyes to a certain degree in the next 5-10 years, this is not including hitting F5 every 2 seconds, god knows how much damage that will do!

    So this frying cell phone theory is rather pointless to me. If I have to make a phone call, I would use it, because I might just get run over by a car while trying to use that public phone booth across the street, or maybe cause a minor but irrepairable damage to my knees because of the extra travelling?

    • Re:Everybody hurts (Score:4, Funny)

      by phoenix.bam! ( 642635 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:40PM (#13182434)
      Or pick up a disease from the phone! Don't forget that most pulbic fones are covered in feces.

    • That attitude is pretty stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:47PM (#13182489)
      I'm not saying cell phones are dangerous, or that they're safe. I don;t know. I have one so I hope they're safe.

      But taking that attitude towards any potential bad news is just self reassuring stupidity.

      Cell phones do vary widly in the amount of radiation they emit. They all emit quite a lot at the point of the antenna, and some emit far more than others.

      The decay of the radiation is obviously cubic over distance, but where most are held, right next to the eyes and brain, the radiation is quite strong. At certain times such as call initialization it's very strong, strong enough to light batteryless LED accessories popular on some phones.

      The notion that holding these close to our eyes and brains without worry of damage is pretty stupid, especially the sorts of damage which may take a decade or more to materialize in a serious manner, when cell phones have only been really popular for about a decade or less.

      People should be concerned and not take for granted that new technologies are just automagically safe. Environmental effects of new technologies are increasing exponentially and we have absolutly no experience in human history to compare it with or assume it will be safe.

      To do so is simply an unproven and rather stupid assumption.

      • Re:That attitude is pretty stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

        by steelfood ( 895457 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @10:12PM (#13182631)
        Don't forget that cellphones operate in an area of the electromagnetic spectrum that's in between radio waves that go through human skin but do not have enough energy to do anything to our molecules, and infrared/visible light, waves that have enough energy to affect our molecules, but cannot penetrate our skin due to the reflective property of melanin. Effectively, it's in the same range as microwaves, which do in fact penetrate our skin and do have enough power to mess with out molecules.

        The only reason why cellphones haven't been literally cooking our brains is because they aren't powerful enough to produce any immediate noticeable effects, even after a prolonged period of use. Basically, they don't have enough power to boil the water molecules in our body. This we know for sure, and is the basis of most studies claiming no link between cell phones and physiological maladies. However, what we don't know is what the long-term effects are, and these results I wouldn't expect for at least another hundred years (massively overdosing a few rats like we do with medicine and industrial chemicals won't work in this case).

        I pretty much agree with you. What we don't know we shouldn't ignore, but attempt to find out. Nor should we be afraid of technology, but we certainly should exercise reasonable caution. The exact meaning of "reasonable" will vary from person to person, and should be debated.
        • The only reason why cellphones haven't been literally cooking our brains is because they aren't powerful enough to produce any immediate noticeable effects

          Well, that and the fact that there's a thick skull plate in the way. Radiation decreases by the inverse square of the distance, but it can also be shielded against by thick and/or dense materials. The more molecules you throw in the way, the more likely the radiation will be stopped.
      • She always said I'd fry my eyes if I stared at the microwave watching the burrito spin around.

        For what it's worth, I don't know anyone who's genuinely gone blind after birth, and most people I know use cell phones. It seems, at least, that the damage, if real, does not happen very quickly. Regardless, I'm a skeptic.

      • Re:That attitude is pretty stupid (Score:5, Interesting)

        by NormalVisual ( 565491 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @10:49PM (#13182821)
        The decay of the radiation is obviously cubic over distance, but where most are held, right next to the eyes and brain, the radiation is quite strong. At certain times such as call initialization it's very strong, strong enough to light batteryless LED accessories popular on some phones.

        It's strong enough such that when I have my cell phone within a foot or so of my old-school CRT display, I can tell when it's going to ring several seconds in advance because of the substantial disturbance of the monitor image.

        I'm wondering why this is news though - it's been known for decades that RF is *not* good for your eyes and can contribute greatly to cataracts (that's why waveguides generally have all kinds of warnings about not looking into them), so I think a little common sense would probably go a long way here.
        • a little common sense would probably go a long way here

          Quite possibly, but completely irrelevant.

          A survey I did a few years back, shows conclusively that radiation from mobile phones utterly destroys common sense at 30 paces, unless you are wearing a tin-foil hat! This explains the connection between mobile phone usage and car accidents, according to Police Officer Dibble, and the Local Inquirer.

      • There is no need for speculation. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @01:54AM (#13183547) Homepage

        You are speculating, and speculating intelligently, but there is no need for speculation. It is possible to calculate the expected effect of microwave radiation on surrounding material.

        Suppose you wanted to fry something on purpose. How much microwave energy would you need? The amount of energy in each photon is related to Planck's constant, which is a very small number: 6.62606891 x 10**-34 joule-seconds, with an uncertainty of 89 parts per billion.

        The energy of each photon is equal to Planck's constant times the frequency of the radiation. The frequency of cell phone communications is centered around 850, 900, 1800, or 1900 MHz, or millions of cycles per second, in the case of GSM phones, which are the most common. 1,000 MegaHertz is 10**9 cycles per second, or Hertz.

        The frequency of red laser light, or red LED lights, is about 4 x 10**14 Hertz. So, each unit of electromagnetic cellular phone radio energy is somewhere near 1/400,000th of the energy of one photon of red laser light.

        Heat is electromagnetic energy, too. The numbers are such that the energy of cell phone radiation after it spreads as it travels toward your head is small compared to the energy of the heat in the room and your body.

        The result is that there is no manner presently known to physics in which the energy of the phone radiation could interact sufficiently to make a difference in the chemistry of your body. Cell phone radiation cannot affect the chemistry of your body by heating the tissue, for example. Microwave ovens achieve heating using at least 600 watts focused in one direction.

        There are many, many very well-educated people in the world who would love to discover a new way that electromagnetic energy interacts with matter. Such a discovery would make any physicist or chemist instantly famous, and almost certainly earn him or her a Nobel Prize. The motivation to make such a discovery is enormous for people working in those fields. The fact that no such discovery of a new kind of interaction has been made is indicative that at least it is not easy.

        Over the years I've read several articles by people who claim to have discovered biological damage by cellular phone radiation. For example, there was a previous Slashdot story in which such damage was claimed. All the articles I've seen are examples of fraud, not physics or chemistry. Generally what the "researchers" are doing is applying enough concentrated energy that they get local heating.

        Generally the fraud in these reports is not in the reports themselves, which just detail the laboratory measurements. The fraud is in knowing that people will generalize information in the report to cell phone use, and not warning them of the incorrectness of such an conclusion. It's fraud, done for the temporary fame.

        There are many people who know more about this than I. Someone else may want give a more complete or better explanation. For example, someone may want to show how to calculate the amount of local heating caused by cell phone radiation. I did that once with a physicist friend, and the amount of heating was insignificant. Walking from the shade into the sun will heat your body much more. Standing in the sun absorbing the high-energy ultraviolet radiation is truly damaging; severe exposure can cause sores and even eventually skin cancer. The photons of ultraviolet light are more than a million times more energetic than cell phone radiation, and the sun emits far, far more energy than a cell phone.
      • if you hold your cellphone next to your eyes then you either are severely deformed, wierd, or have a very strange cellphone.

        everyone I see holds their cellphone with the antenna placed about 3 cm BEHIND their ear towards the back of their head.

        Now cellphones can be very dangerous to your eyes, when someone throws one at your head that antenna can poke your eye out.

        seriousally though, most of these tests by researchers are really off. when they show their conclusions and spread their FUD they failed to ment

    • Maybe you'd like to buy my... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Maybe you'd like to buy my plutonium table settings. I've been trying to get rid of them for years. The market really dried up. And the nice thing is they clean themselves!

    • Re:Everybody hurts (Score:5, Funny)

      by magarity ( 164372 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:55PM (#13182539)
      because I might just get run over by a car while trying to use that public phone booth across the street
       
      Fortunately for you, there aren't many public phones any more because if you were to cross the street to use one, you'd get hit by a car driven by someone yakking on a cell phone.

    • Re:Everybody hurts (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cagle_.25 ( 715952 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @10:00PM (#13182564) Journal
      Pointless or not, here are the numbers:

      According to the FDA [goaegis.com], typical cellphone exposure @ 900 MHz is around 1.3W/kg of body weight, which would be around 13mW for a 10-g calf eye.

      These eyes got 2mW @ 1.1GHz, for the equivalent of 20hrs per day. The net result was significant, irreversible damage after 4 days -- 80 hours -- of exposure.

      Seems like a study worth pursuing to me.

      Slashdot doesn't damage your eyes, BTW; it only sucks one year of your life away, although one day it might go as high as five ...*





      *Princess Bride reference for the humor-impaired.

      • Re:Everybody hurts (Score:4, Interesting)

        by anagama ( 611277 ) <obamaisaneocon@nothingchanged.org> on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @10:24PM (#13182703) Homepage
        I recently built a cantenna and as you can imagine, spent a lot of time googling. I did find this, from here [netscum.com], to be a bit disturbing ... but plowed ahead anyway:
        As if this was not yet enough to keep you from messing around with fast flying electrons, I have received many emails from folks who are very involved with HAM radio and other professions and hobbies that involve work with high frequency microwave radiation. They warn that 2.4 GHz just happens to also be the resonant frequency of plain old water. This is why a microwave oven works. The energy of an 802.11b device is the same kind of energy that cooks your food, but on a much smaller scale. This is important considering that we as humans are 98% made of water. I have been warned that exposure to even as little as a 1/4 watt amplified with a 14db antenna, such as described here, could lead to severe vision problems and possibly other health issues.

        After spending yesterday at work with only my perscription sunglasses (forgot my clear ones at home), and becoming increasingly frustrated throughout the day from my inability to see (either too dark but crisp, or bright enough but blurry), I'm considering further precautions.

        • Re:Everybody hurts (Score:3, Informative)

          by fatboy ( 6851 )
          As I understand it, water is resonant in the infra-red portion of the EM spectrum. Microwave ovens use 2.4GHz because at that frequency RF energy is absorbed by water, but not my plastics and ceramics.

          BTW, I am a radio amateur as well. DE KE4PJW
        • Tinfoil hat, and Silver shades http://www.sspectra.com/designs/TransMetal.html [sspectra.com]

          see that spike? that's the visible spectrum that gets through a 500 nm coating of tranparent silver coating...

          yup, all you need is to wear some cool looking silver shades, and make a helmet plated with silver, and wear it all the time, and use a remote earpiece/mic..

          Remember we're already being bombarded by microwave energy every day, from satelites, and wifi, and long range telelcomunications arrays, not to mention aircraft radar

        • Re:Everybody hurts (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @11:10PM (#13182932) Homepage
          The energy of an 802.11b device is the same kind of energy that cooks your food, but on a much smaller scale. This is important considering that we as humans are 98% made of water.

          FWIW, it's fairly irrelevant that the human body is 98% water. Microwaves only heat water-- they don't transform it into Horrible Eye Poison or anything. Most of the human body can handle a little microwave heating. It's really only the eyes that can't handle it, essentially cooking like the whites of an egg.

        • Re:Everybody hurts (Score:4, Informative)

          by modecx ( 130548 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @11:22PM (#13183013)
          The thing is, 2.4GHz isn't anywhere close to the resonant frequency of the bonds in water, which IIRC is around 8-10GHz, but is almost unmeasurable because it varies rapidly, so it's a ballpark figure.

          The fact is: if you put energy into a system, the stuff in the system gets hotter. It dosen't really matter if it's 10Ghz, 10Mhz or anywhere in between.

          As long as it gets absorbed, it makes the object hotter. 2.4 Ghz was chosen because it's in the unliscensed band and microwaves used to leak quit a bit of RF, and also because it will penetrate food well enough to heat something largish. It's sort of a sweet spot. Higher frequency waves would be absorbed nearer the surface, and lower frequencies were in demand for communications, though they'd work about as well, apparently.

          So, there you have it.
    • even reading Slashdot everyday is enough to damage my eyes to a certain degree in the next 5-10 years,

      To say nothing of the mental damage done by reading Slashdot everyday

    • So... F5 = Reload

      You learn something everyday.

      (Never bothered pressing it.)

  • It's true! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I can't see! Help!

    • Re:It's true! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Didn't your mother tell you that if you didn't stop doing that you would go blind?

  • Well... (Score:5, Funny)

    by DanielNS84 ( 847393 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `48SNleinaD'> on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:26PM (#13182358) Homepage
    They should add warning labels...those work great on smokers. ;)

  • Somebody call Congress (Score:3, Funny)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:27PM (#13182361) Homepage
    But now, according to IsraCast, a team of Israeli researchers has discovered that the microwave radiation used by our cell phones could destroy our eyes by causing two kinds of damages to our visual system, including an irreversible one.

    Well, the solution is clear: ban microwaves. It's a matter of national security.

  • What about Wi-Fi networks? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Teckla ( 630646 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:30PM (#13182376)

    I'm exposed to an 802.11b network all day at work, and exposed to another 802.11b network all night at home.

    Should I be worried? Does anyone know if being exposed to 2.4 GHz emissions might also be harmful?

  • "As this study has not been not done -- yet -- on humans"

    what the hell is that supposed to me? it Has been done? :|

  • Nice find, but... (Score:3, Funny)

    by qw0ntum ( 831414 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:33PM (#13182394) Journal
    Well, yeah, I'm sure microwaves can cause some damage to the eyes. But honestly, what do you think is more important to the average person, the long term health of their eyes, or their next phone call?

    • Re:Nice find, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hzero ( 894267 )
      But honestly, what do you think is more important to the average person, the long term health of their eyes, or their next phone call?

      None of then. The phone games are most important!
  • I believe that the UW study was on the affects of cellular radiation on mice, and the results were equally disturbing. The exposed mice were invariably stricken with cancer while the unexposed mice remained at the norm.

    But that study also showed that such effects were only engendered when the amount of radiation was both high and prolonged. The bovine lenses in this article were exposed to cellular radiation for 22 hours a day. If the exposure intensity is to be believed, then the transmitting antennas were placed right against the eyeball.

    Neither of those situations is remotely near what normal cellular phone usage patterns resemble (unless you are a teenage girl, I suppose, but even then you aren't sticking the phone in your eye) (are you?).

    So more study is necessary. The edge cases like the ones in the article and the UW study are very important to know, but the results of real-world testing ought to be examined as well. If we see a huge increase in the number of cancer and scratched lens cases in the coming years, there may be some validity to these studies.

    I'll continue using my cellular phone, though. The convenience is just too great to pass up.

  • Better question (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:36PM (#13182408)
    Can reading Roland Piquepaille's blog damage your eyes?

    • Roland's Adblog? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @10:24PM (#13182710)
      The one where he posts a link to some article - any article, it doesn't really matter what - on his ad-laden page, then e-mails his Slashdot editor business partners, who then add a link to his page full'o'links in a bogus "story" on their page, and then they all sit back and count the cash rolling in...

  • WTF?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:36PM (#13182415)

    And whether you think that cell phones can damage our eyes or not, feel free to post your comments below.

    Whew, thanks. I don't think I can sit in silence any longer!

    Personally the thought of holding a microwave transmitter next to my head freaks me out. My powerbook's wifi is as far as I'll go. At least that's only bathing my testicles in rich creamy radiofrequency energy, not my brain. Given a choice between lower earning potential at work, and my future kids being deformed and shriveled, I'll go with the special olympians.

  • This sticker also blocks microwaves [yahoo.com]. Do it for the children.

  • Missing parameter (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Muerte23 ( 178626 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:40PM (#13182435) Journal
    They say they exposed the eye tissue to 2.2 mW of radiation at 1.1 GHz. But 2.2 mW over what area? the room? One micron? The ~100cm^2 device in their setup? The important unit is *intensity*.

    How much energy per area hits my eye from my cell phone in comparison? They don't say. That's a very important free parameter that they can vary to cause sensationalism where there may indeed be no danger.

    It would be more useful if someone calculated this in burnt Libraries of Congress per century per square cubit.

    Also, looking back at the article, they have the eye tissue sample in some sort of transmission line resonator. They don't go into specifics, but such a device could increase the power density of the microwaves by several orders of magnitude over that of a point emitter.

    m

    • Re:Missing parameter (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cagle_.25 ( 715952 )
      The FDA [fda.gov] measures the radiation as a "Specific Absorption Rate", SAR = W/kg of body weight, averaged over the mass of a typical head. So if you have a large enough head, you can talk all you want.

  • No, but Roland Piquepaille articles can (Score:4, Insightful)

    by terrymaster69 ( 792830 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:41PM (#13182443)
    Unless you enjoy what he has to say, stop feeding money to this guy.

  • My cell phone probably caused less damage (Score:5, Insightful)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:43PM (#13182458) Homepage
    My cell phone probably caused less damage than four pints of Guinness and six shots of Vodka I've downed last Saturday. And I'm not even beginning to mention the harm caused by the food I ate this week.

    It's like saying "obese people run a higher risk of having high blood pressure and heart disease" and not mentioning their usually sedentary lifestyle, that, you know, may in itself cause higher blood pressure and heart disease.

    Same here - OMG cell phone will fry your blinkers, while at the same time disregarding that these very blinkers are used to look at the computer screen for hours on end, and they weren't designed for that. How do you tell exactly what damages one's eyes when there are so many variables at play?
    • How do you tell exactly what damages one's eyes when there are so many variables at play?

      With a controlled study.

      Perhaps staring at the monitor is damaging AND the cell phone radiation is damaging. The damage doesn't cancel out, and the fact that one or the other is indeed damaging doesn't mean we should all 'give up and just do nothing.'

  • Clinically Irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Geancanach ( 652302 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:45PM (#13182480)
    Even if this is a real finding (the data given on the linked article were a little vague), it's very far from being meaningful in a medical sense.

    The bovine lenses were taken out of the animals, then given almost constant radiation for 2 weeks. And they showed more damage than the control lenses that got no irradiation. So what? What are the odds that this compares in any way to a few minutes of cell phone use a day over many years, in a living animal? We don't know, and this study doesn't really help us in answering that.

    • Those are of course important questions. But it doesn't mean the results are necessarily irrelevant. It appears that the type of damage may be proportional only to the total duration of exposure. If the fissures don't heal by themselves, then it doesn't matter if the radiation is constant or not. And don't underestimate the total time people spend on cellphones - according to my phone's timers, I've already spent 17 hours total call time and I only bought the phone four months ago. And I'm not a heavy user

    • I disagree, the data in the linked study didn't seem at all vague to me. The study may not be conclusive, but it is a very useful data point. Very low levels of cell phone type radiation can cause irreversible lens damage. Even if this is not normal cell phone usage it does provide a data point and a basis to continue onwards with a longer term experiment.

      Then again, if you are a Hollywood agent with two phones strapped to your head 24/7 then this study might be pretty relevant to you...

  • My Tinfoil hat protects my eyes from Cell Phones (Score:3, Funny)

    by GrpA ( 691294 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:47PM (#13182488)
    Although it does make it a little hard to see where I am going...

    But it has the added benefit of keeping out the mind control rays...

    GrpA

  • Thermal? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tgibbs ( 83782 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:47PM (#13182491)
    I'd need to be convinced that this is relevant to lenses in an animal. It sounds a lot like thermal damage, so we need information about the temperature reached in the chamber and how the thermal conductivity of the chamber compares to the body. If you continually pump microwave energy, no matter how low in intensity, into a sufficiently well insulated chamber, you'll eventually manage to heat it up enough to cook a lens.

  • Cripes (Score:4, Funny)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:49PM (#13182501) Homepage Journal
    I read/post on /. using my HP h6315 PDA phone using GPRS.

    Between small fonts and this, I'm screwed!

  • All danger is relative (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @09:51PM (#13182513) Homepage
    Is it possible the study is right? Well, yes, we do know radiation causes biological changes, and depending on the frequency can do so at fairly low intensity levels, so it's at least certainly possible.

    Is it a large risk? Very unlikely. If there wasa substantial risk of damage, we'd seen epidemological alarms spring up already. If there is a risk, it's small.

    Do we need to actually care in practice? No.

    Why? Because we always, at every turn, balance risks with benefits. Probably the single most dangerous activity we all do is move in automobile traffic. There are many, many well-known health risks - from accidents to the exposure of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals to hearing loss - but we decide that the very substantial benefits outweigh the risks.

    Arguably, mobile communications are not quite as beneficial as car transportation - though I could certainly see a case for disputing that - but then the risk downsides are also very very much smaller, this study or not.

    • There is still value in doing studies like this though, because it's important to understand what kinds of risks we are facing, so that one can make decisions over whether or not to change systems. Every time an article like this comes up, you get the predictable slew of responses on slashdot "well everything we do has risks but we just have to put up with it, what are we supposed to, get rid of technology?". That's a dumb strawman - nobody is saying we should get rid of cellphones even if it does turn out

      • Consider when the commercial airline industry was younger and after a number of aircraft crashed, they discovered metal fatigue. If slashdot had been around then I'm sure half of the slashdotters would have spewed the usual "what are we supposed to do, get rid of aircraft technology" crap. But fortunately nobody in the real world did that - instead, they simply figured out a way to build aircraft from better materials, and made safer aircraft. Thanks to the studies that helped us understand the metal fatigu
  • Reading shitty media coverage of science like this is doing more to hurt my eyes than cell phones.
  • sometimes, I get this point of "light" in the middle of my field of vision, which expands into a lightning shaped halo, for lack of a better description, until it goes in all directions beyond my field of vision completely... I'm pretty sure this "signal" is not coming from any of my eyes, because wherever I look, it's always in the same spot.

    I can still see but the presence of this phenomenon is so distracting, I can't do anything until it's gone.

    Thank goodness it doesn't happen very often... does anyone h
    • If I had to hazard a guess, I would think retinal detachment or machular degeneration. Go see an optometrist (and not an optician).

      I went in for getting small flashes in the corner or my vision and found out that my retina is thinning, which is not really a good thing.

      Whenever you see anything like flashes of light that aren't from the room, or new floaters in your vision, you should see your optometrist.

      Here's a tip that I learned recently. Don't rub your eyes if you have high myopia (extreme near sighte
    • Jesus, Dude, don't f*** around with your vision. If you're having symptoms like that, go see an opthalmologist. It may be something minor, or it could be like the other poster said -- a detached retina. Or maybe it's a tumor pressing on your vision centers in your brain. Not trying to scare you, maybe it's something simple, but vision anomolies should always be checked out, even if it "goes away by itself".

      Whatever it is, you don't want to wait until it comes back and doesn't go away again.

  • Considering how small cellphones are these days...
  • Can Cell Phones Damage Our Eyes?

    Given sufficient speed and/or thermal energy, most definitely yes.

  • I'm Asking Nicely (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pete-classic ( 75983 ) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @10:25PM (#13182714) Homepage Journal
    Roland Piquepaille writes "[. . .] feel free to post your comments below."


    Who can argue with magnanimity like that?

    Anyway, I'm begging here: Can't we please have a Roland Piquepaille section so we can filter this stuff out? I'm not saying anything negative. I'm sure he's a wonderful guy and has a tremendous singing voice. I just don't want to read his blog.

    Look, it's for your own good here guys. Do you honestly believe slashdot would still exist if we hadn't been able to un-check Jon Katz's section?

    Do it for the team, guys!

    -Peter
    • Hear, hear. PLEASE give this hack a section!

    • Re:I'm Asking Nicely (Score:2, Informative)

      by Osty ( 16825 )

      Anyway, I'm begging here: Can't we please have a Roland Piquepaille section so we can filter this stuff out? I'm not saying anything negative. I'm sure he's a wonderful guy and has a tremendous singing voice. I just don't want to read his blog.

      The Slashdot editors are slow (in more ways than one). Do it yourself [daishar.com] (requires Greasemonkey [mozdev.org] for Firefox or Turnabout [reifysoft.com] for IE (be sure to get the advanced installer so you can add new scripts), and may be compatible with Opera 8).

      And yes, I use my own script. I

  • Cool! (Score:3, Funny)

    by azav ( 469988 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @10:41PM (#13182780) Homepage Journal
    Now with my continual multi cell phone use and twice daily Viagra and grain alcohol habit, I should be able to go blind faster than ever!

    Isn't technology Great!

  • Yeah, great (Score:3, Funny)

    by fritter ( 27792 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @10:52PM (#13182836)
    And whether you think that cell phones can damage our eyes or not, feel free to post your comments below.

    Yes, please, weigh in with your opinions. I'm dying to get medical advice from high school WoW players and unemployed PHP programmers.

  • Had me worried until I read... (Score:3, Informative)

    by aztektum ( 170569 ) on Wednesday July 27, 2005 @11:40PM (#13183102)
    As this study has not been not done -- yet -- on humans...

    Seeing as how the study has been conducted on humans and I haven't heard anything bad, I breath a sigh of relief. However if it said the study has not been done on humans, I might be slightly concerned.

    What...? You don't say.

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