Dark truth about wireless earphones

sigma79

The tablet.

Thats where the 3rd stand were and I thought it might be in loft.

Anyway.

Taped the tablet to a book.

You cant see angles properly but its a Fallout 4 design computer.

Who would buy a Fallout 4 looking computer ( almost Fischer Price ) Instead of sleek laptops ?

The book would need a shutter rail, like shop windows or blinds.

The folding stand would make tablet flush with keys.

It does look better in a Fallout 4 way if screen is smaller than keyboard.

sigma79

Apple Mac ( Logic Pro )

2045.

sigma79

That dosent help ( the Conspiracy side of us )

Pain written on book.

Didnt know it were doing so.

The covered word is Painting with Marker pens.

I thought it could mean Carpel Syndrome. Which the book would be good for.

SevenSystems

@tja said:
I always only ever wear my trusty Sennheiser HD590, cabled of course, they run any number of years without charging and are extremely comfortable.

Earbuds?
I have some, for rare use-cases - also cabled of course.

I guess I can see the potential benefit of headphones being wireless, I mean I often scream at the tangled mess I pull out of my pocket and then spending 5 minutes trying to untangle them 😂 but it's not enough for me to justify the RF exposure, latency, and indeed the battery / charging issue.

Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr

@Slush said:
Maybe not the right topic for here, sorry in advance, but I happen to came across this info some weeks ago and now I bump on the same kind of info on Instagram (took a screenshot, can’t copy text). In case you are working with wireless headphones/earpods this might be something to be concerned about..

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6ttWBaNpbo/?igsh=bmFtanpsYnd2bmMy

One cannot help but speculate as to that guys' position on windmills.

yellow_eyez

Forgive the basic premise but if you are using Bluetooth headphones wired, they still are using power, so is there a signal emitted still? Or is it attenuated ? Or just stopped once wired goes on?

(Using Beats studio pro)

Blipsford_Baubie

@sigma79 said:
My bro gave me wireless headphones and use for a usbc tablet.

Watching movies is better than tangled in cable.

Yes, it kills the moment when my wrist starts yanking at the cable.

sigma79

@Blipsford_Baubie said:

@sigma79 said:
My bro gave me wireless headphones and use for a usbc tablet.

Watching movies is better than tangled in cable.

Yes, it kills the moment when my wrist starts yanking at the cable.

lol

rs2000

@Tarekith said:
The bigger concern is using the wrong tip size on wireless earbuds and having them fall into your brain. I still have a Gen 1 AirPod floating around my cranium after I mistakenly used a small tip size on the left one and medium on the right one.

Really kicking myself for listening to the Titanic Soundtrack when it happened, been listening to that shit for years now with no way to pause.

Yes! 😂

@McD said:

@mjm1138 said:
Think about all the electromagnetic radiation being generated by the voice coils of your ATH-M50's! RIGHT NEXT TO YOUR BRAIN!

Is there a physics major in the house? Doesn’t the power levels of wireless transmission and the high frequency stimulation of cells do more damage than the low frequency massage of our sonic creations?

After listening to most music my brain says “Thank you, human overlord”. It doesn’t realize it’s in charge. Brains actually have very primitive operating systems called the Lizard Works.

I've heard stories of people whose bodies exploded in MRI scanners but never got that confirmed...

garden

I bask in the sea of electromagnetic flux.

SevenSystems

@yellow_eyez said:
Forgive the basic premise but if you are using Bluetooth headphones wired, they still are using power, so is there a signal emitted still? Or is it attenuated ? Or just stopped once wired goes on?

It should be stopped as there is no need for Bluetooth communication if you're only using them wired. But who knows, maybe they're still advertising their presence even while used wired. If they still appear on your iPhone as an available Bluetooth device when it's in discovery mode, then yes, they're still transmitting.

(According to GPT, discoverable Bluetooth devices constantly emit a "beacon" signal, which is weird, but apparently true. Of course it would be much more logical for them to only LISTEN for a special "I'm looking for devices" packet from a device that is in discovery mode, like a phone, and only then respond with their ID etc... would save power and avoid the RF... anyway)

Mountain_Hamlet

As an added thought there would be significant Bluetooth transmission if the earbuds are being used for phone calls as well as for just listening purposes…

I still don’t understand how more of bluetooth ones aren’t lost. My wired ones never seem to stay in my ears properly as they are so I don’t really feel that confident about having the wireless kind just dangling in there and staying where they should.

wim

@Mountain_Hamlet said:
As an added thought there would be significant Bluetooth transmission if the earbuds are being used for phone calls as well as for just listening purposes…

I still don’t understand how more of bluetooth ones aren’t lost. My wired ones never seem to stay in my ears properly as they are so I don’t really feel that confident about having the wireless kind just dangling in there and staying where they should.

I've lost a few, for sure. That's why I stick to only cheap ones. Wired weren't an option for the work I was doing when I needed to be able to handle phone calls while hustling to make deliveries.

knewspeak

@SevenSystems said:
While I'm generally fine with using wireless technology when it makes sense and actually improves my life, I would indeed never use wireless earbuds.

The reason for this is simple: the extreme proximity to the brain (i.e., almost "inside").

The field strength of electromagnetic radiation in 3D space falls off with the inverse square of the distance, which also means that it increases squared when the source of RF gets closer.

Example:

The maximum transmission power of WiFi is 1000 mW. Let's just call the field strength in your brain, with your laptop at a distance of 0.5 meters to your head, "1".

The wireless earbuds in your head have a maximum transmission power of 100 mW, so 1/10th of that. However, their distance to your brain is roughly 0.01 meters, or 50 times closer than the laptop. As the field strength increases squared, with the same amount of emitted power, the field strength would be 2500 times higher.
Taking into account that the earphones (Bluetooth) only emit at 1/10th the power of WiFi, we still get 250 times higher exposure of your brain with wireless Bluetooth earplugs than with the WiFi in your laptop on your lap.

Just some food for thought!

Corrections welcome, I'm sure my logic may be a bit over-simplified.

EDIT: This is "squarely" 😂 about the enourmous field strength that wireless earbuds generate in your brain compared to other sources of RF. I make no assumptions about whether these are dangerous or not. I'm just pointing out that if RF turned out to have detrimental health effects, those of the earbuds would likely be 250 times worse than of most other everyday RF sources.

I’m not sure you can increase the field strength beyond it’s maximum, unless you can direct and condense
or magnify that field in some way.

wim

What really pisses me off is when the Bluetooth waves set up sympathetic vibrations in this damn probe they put up my nose. It's fun to think about how mad some of the shit I listen to must drive them. Unless I end up triggering an invasion. Apologies in advance in that case, I guess.

Slush

Besides the usual comments like ‘got me brain fried already in high school’, @SevenSystems is actually giving some very interesting and intelligent input here.

From what I know, in my country (Netherlands) (quote) “already since 2005, grid managers have been advised to avoid, as far as possible, situations where children spend long periods of time in areas where the annual average magnetic field is higher than 0.4 microtesla. That advice was based in part on a 2000 advisory by the Health Council (GR), which had found that children living near an overhead power line were twice as likely to develop leukemia as other children. Every year, about 135 of the 2.8 million Dutch children between the ages of 0 and 15 develop leukemia. Taking into account how many children lived near a high-voltage power line, one case of childhood leukemia every two years would be associated with the presence of an overhead power line.”

Our bodies are electric, and it’s too simple to flush concerns about all these matters as nonsense. Do we really know what (abnormal) high levels of field strength so close to our brain will do in the long term?

sigma79

I remember having to go on a tall building in London ( for aerial installation ) We were told to call Orange to turn off a transmitter. Must have been on roof. It did make you feel like you were going mad. Behind a wall, inside the door at the roof, kind of gave some shielding but not much.

Saying that. I used to feel like I were going mad ( probably same feeling ) With echoing phones or phones on loudspeaker.

LinearLineman

I heard oxygen is a corrosive poisonous gas. Lies, lies, all lies!

SevenSystems

@knewspeak said:

@SevenSystems said:
While I'm generally fine with using wireless technology when it makes sense and actually improves my life, I would indeed never use wireless earbuds.

The reason for this is simple: the extreme proximity to the brain (i.e., almost "inside").

The field strength of electromagnetic radiation in 3D space falls off with the inverse square of the distance, which also means that it increases squared when the source of RF gets closer.

Example:

The maximum transmission power of WiFi is 1000 mW. Let's just call the field strength in your brain, with your laptop at a distance of 0.5 meters to your head, "1".

The wireless earbuds in your head have a maximum transmission power of 100 mW, so 1/10th of that. However, their distance to your brain is roughly 0.01 meters, or 50 times closer than the laptop. As the field strength increases squared, with the same amount of emitted power, the field strength would be 2500 times higher.
Taking into account that the earphones (Bluetooth) only emit at 1/10th the power of WiFi, we still get 250 times higher exposure of your brain with wireless Bluetooth earplugs than with the WiFi in your laptop on your lap.

Just some food for thought!

Corrections welcome, I'm sure my logic may be a bit over-simplified.

EDIT: This is "squarely" 😂 about the enourmous field strength that wireless earbuds generate in your brain compared to other sources of RF. I make no assumptions about whether these are dangerous or not. I'm just pointing out that if RF turned out to have detrimental health effects, those of the earbuds would likely be 250 times worse than of most other everyday RF sources.

I’m not sure you can increase the field strength beyond it’s maximum, unless you can direct and condense
or magnify that field in some way.

Ah I didn't mean that the field strength somehow magically increases by itself 🙂 just that the closer you move the source (in this case, earbuds) to something (in this case, the brain), the field strength at that site increases squared. i.e. move source twice as close, field strength increases 4-fold.

SevenSystems

@Slush said:
Besides the usual comments like ‘got me brain fried already in high school’, @SevenSystems is actually giving some very interesting and intelligent input here.

From what I know, in my country (Netherlands) (quote) “already since 2005, grid managers have been advised to avoid, as far as possible, situations where children spend long periods of time in areas where the annual average magnetic field is higher than 0.4 microtesla. That advice was based in part on a 2000 advisory by the Health Council (GR), which had found that children living near an overhead power line were twice as likely to develop leukemia as other children. Every year, about 135 of the 2.8 million Dutch children between the ages of 0 and 15 develop leukemia. Taking into account how many children lived near a high-voltage power line, one case of childhood leukemia every two years would be associated with the presence of an overhead power line.”

Our bodies are electric, and it’s too simple to flush concerns about all these matters as nonsense. Do we really know what (abnormal) high levels of field strength so close to our brain will do in the long term?

Yes I've noticed a general, slightly frustrating tendency, especially in the past few years, to brush away any kind of even the slightest critical or inquisitive comment as "conspiracy theories" and the "perpetrators" as "nutters" etc... I'm not sure it makes me feel very comfortable. I mean, when people say the earth is flat or the moon landings haven't happened, that I would also say is pretty far-fetched and maybe ridicule is justified. But it should be "allowed" to call into question things where even the official science isn't 100% established. Which definitely applies to the effects of RF on biological tissues.

Again it's simple -- I'm not saying that 100 mW of microwave RF right next to the brain does cause health issues. But if it's easily avoided with a 5% penalty on convenience, then I'll rather err on the side of caution! It's not like I'm a "nutter" and I don't use Wi-Fi and wear the proverbial tinfoil hat to shield myself from all RF around me 😉 (although to be honest, if I lived in a city in an apartment block with the absolutely ludicrous amount of wireless technology around me from all directions, I would consider it!)

wim

@SevenSystems said:
Ah I didn't mean that the field strength somehow magically increases by itself 🙂 just that the closer you move the source (in this case, earbuds) to something (in this case, the brain), the field strength at that site increases squared. i.e. move source twice as close, field strength increases 4-fold.

Does it go to infinity if embedded in the brain?

gusgranite

Here’s the real issue to watch with headphones https://www.who.int/news/item/02-03-2022-who-releases-new-standard-to-tackle-rising-threat-of-hearing-loss

wim

@gusgranite said:
Here’s the real issue to watch with headphones https://www.who.int/news/item/02-03-2022-who-releases-new-standard-to-tackle-rising-threat-of-hearing-loss

Oh goody. I can't wait until some government entity makes it law. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Seriously though, good read. Thanks for that.

mjm1138

We have a solid 20 years of millions of people using bluetooth headsets (remember when everyone had the little Lt. Uhuru Jawbone headsets?) and closer to 30 years with millions of people holding cell phones up to their ears. If there was a correlation with either of those activities and cancer, we would know it. Instead we have theorizing and citations involving completely different phenomena.

Again, if it was dangerous, we would know it by now. One can claim that the science isn’t 100% settled, but no, that does not mean that spreading completely unsourced assertions cut and pasted from Instagram, of all places to get your scientific/medical information, doesn’t deserve to be criticized or “brushed aside”. Frankly a lot more of the type of “information” that shows up in places like Insta, Facebook and Xitter should be brushed aside. Assertions like that with no evidence don’t deserve oxygen.

gusgranite

@wim said:

@gusgranite said:
Here’s the real issue to watch with headphones https://www.who.int/news/item/02-03-2022-who-releases-new-standard-to-tackle-rising-threat-of-hearing-loss

Oh goody. I can't wait until some government entity makes it law. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Seriously though, good read. Thanks for that.

Ha. Let me play my damn music LOUD!

gusgranite

@mjm1138 said:
We have a solid 20 years of millions of people using bluetooth headsets (remember when everyone had the little Lt. Uhuru Jawbone headsets?) and closer to 30 years with millions of people holding cell phones up to their ears. If there was a correlation with either of those activities and cancer, we would know it. Instead we have theorizing and citations involving completely different phenomena.

Again, if it was dangerous, we would know it by now. One can claim that the science isn’t 100% settled, but no, that does mean spreading completely unsourced assertions cut and pasted from Instagram, of all places to get your scientific/medical information, doesn’t deserve to be criticized or “brushed aside”. Frankly a lot more of the type of “information” that shows up in places like Insta, Facebook and Xitter should be brushed aside. Assertions like that with no evidence don’t deserve oxygen.

^ This ^

Blipsford_Baubie

I sometimes wonder if I’m the only person who occasionally feels a phantom vibration on my upper leg above the knee, where my phone would be in my pocket. It startled me the first time I experienced this, because I went to grab my phone thinking my wife was texting, but my phone wasn’t even near me. Lol?

SevenSystems

@mjm1138 said:
We have a solid 20 years of millions of people using bluetooth headsets (remember when everyone had the little Lt. Uhuru Jawbone headsets?) and closer to 30 years with millions of people holding cell phones up to their ears. If there was a correlation with either of those activities and cancer, we would know it.

I wasn't specifically referring to cancer. How about induced currents in neurons / synapses? How about thermal effects? As far as I know, the research is "inconclusive". I know and have seen first hand that an active mobile phone can induce havoc in electronic devices nearby. Granted, the brain works on an electro-chemical basis, but still. Why take the risk when not needed?

Also, I've once taken an actual mechanical Millivoltmeter, bridged its terminals with a diode, and the actual needle moved when I started using a mobile phone nearby! Trust me, after you've once seen the RF energy from a mobile phone ACTUALLY MECHANICALLY MOVE A NEEDLE, you're traumatized 😂

Assertions like that with no evidence don’t deserve oxygen.

I don't like the tone of that.

Anyway, I'm out of this now with my pseudo-scientific BS 😂 (BTW, as there's been some conflation... I haven't sourced anything from Instagram nor would I recommend getting scientific or medical information from there. My recommendation is always: Get information from as many sources as possible (as long as they appear at least somewhat reasonable), then use your common sense to filter them!)

tom_ward

@Blipsford_Baubie said:
I sometimes wonder if I’m the only person who occasionally feels a phantom vibration on my upper leg above the knee, where my phone would be in my pocket. It startled me the first time I experienced this, because I went to grab my phone thinking my wife was texting, but my phone wasn’t even near me. Lol?

You aren't the only person who has experienced phantom vibrations. I started removing my phone from my pocket as often as possible...and after a period of time the phantom signals did stop. I know a lot of people who have experienced this, coming from many years of constant communications via text/slack for work. The joys of being on call 24/7 for live software.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6149296/

To the point of the discussion:
RF must have an effect on living tissue. Whether it's a negative effect or not, is another question. We've only recently become highly interested in understanding the harm of microplastics, which we've been creating much longer than we've been using cellphones. It'll be interesting to see what continuing research finds. That is not an endorsement of social media "information"...I genuinely think we will learn more, beyond "does it cause cancer", and I find it interesting.

mjm1138

@SevenSystems said:

@mjm1138 said:
We have a solid 20 years of millions of people using bluetooth headsets (remember when everyone had the little Lt. Uhuru Jawbone headsets?) and closer to 30 years with millions of people holding cell phones up to their ears. If there was a correlation with either of those activities and cancer, we would know it.

I wasn't specifically referring to cancer. How about induced currents in neurons / synapses? How about thermal effects? As far as I know, the research is "inconclusive". I know and have seen first hand that an active mobile phone can induce havoc in electronic devices nearby. Granted, the brain works on an electro-chemical basis, but still. Why take the risk when not needed?

Also, I've once taken an actual mechanical Millivoltmeter, bridged its terminals with a diode, and the actual needle moved when I started using a mobile phone nearby! Trust me, after you've once seen the RF energy from a mobile phone ACTUALLY MECHANICALLY MOVE A NEEDLE, you're traumatized 😂

Assertions like that with no evidence don’t deserve oxygen.

I don't like the tone of that.

Anyway, I'm out of this now with my pseudo-scientific BS 😂 (BTW, as there's been some conflation... I haven't sourced anything from Instagram nor would I recommend getting scientific or medical information from there. My recommendation is always: Get information from as many sources as possible (as long as they appear at least somewhat reasonable), then use your common sense to filter them!)

This thread started with a literal screenshot from Instagram. And “research is inconclusive” is another way of saying that no connection has been found, i.e. it’s just speculation, lacking evidence. An anecdote about a millivolt meter isn’t really evidence of anything. Sources of electromagnetism can mechanically move the needle of a compass. Is that bad? Human bodies are exposed to external sources of electrical energy constantly, even in the absence of technology.

You don’t like my tone. Okay. I don’t like the open sewer of disinformation and BS that social media has become, and it saddens me to see it spreading to forums like this. Again, I reference the post that started the thread. Maybe my tone is a bigger problem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯