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by dxhdr 1544 days ago
Would it be big news? Forgive me for asking but why does UVA/UVB radiation cause skin cancer if it's non-ionizing? Especially from controlled sources like tanning beds. There has to be some pathway of mitochondrial dsyregulation/dysfunction induced by non-ionizing radiation that leads to DNA damage that leads to cancer that we don't fully understand.

We don't understand what causes many types of cancers so I don't get the chemistry-knows-all stance.

1 comments

UVBA/UVB are near ionizing, UVB is right at the transition point, they have enough energy to cause photochemical reactions that damage DNA but not enough to cause full ionization. The key concept is that it is based on the energy of the photons and that above a certain energy chemical reactions occur which can damage DNA.

Radio waves are way way below this level of energy so for them to cause a non thermal effect would mean some new effect we have never seen before anywhere. No one is ruling it out completely but it is very unlikely with no plausible mechanism or data to back it up while UVA/UVB is well understood with respect to photon energy which is related to the ionizing threshold.

> for them to cause a non thermal effect would mean some new effect we have never seen before anywhere

100% false. Practically everything that goes on in your body involves, one way or another, motion of ions in solution. Varying E-M fields induce electrical currents carried by such ions. Where and how matters.

It is always a grave mistake to confuse your entire lack of knowledge of a topic with certainty about it.

There is absolutely no proof that cellphone levels of power induce ion motion as you have described, I can find some theoretical work at much higher power levels that proposes it as a mechanism but is not definitive.

You need to do better than saying someone is wrong before proclaiming radical new information.

Here is what I found: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-69561-3

Either there is evidence, or there isn't. With entire absence if evidence, your protestations of impossibility are exposed as threadbare wishful thinking.