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Comment by nolok | Hacker News Reader

90% of the people I know keep their near their head, near the genitals or near their heart when not actively using it. I read the part about them asserting that it's safe, but if they want this to actually sell without a major stigma, especially in the era of social media, they will need to go out of their way to prove it.

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The way to solve this is via the marketing department.

Someone really helped when they renamed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging to MRI

But MRI does not use radioactivity. It's just a huge magnet that swing your hydrogens nuclei and a detector for the tiny light produced by them.

If you want to be scared, CT is beter. They send you a lot of x-rays. The x-ray can produce cancer, so the total dose should be low to be safe, so you can't take a CT everyday.

But PET is better to be scared. They inject you wit a radioctive liquid that produce positrons. Positrons colide with your electrons and produce two gamma photons. The photons are detected and after a lot of calculatons you get an image. Don't take one eveey day.

There are a few more. They have a small risk, but used correctly the benefit outweight the risk. Ask your medical doctor and don't take they just for fun.

100% of the people I know have a 1000W/square meter UV/VIS nuclear generator just hanging above them ...

Only half the time though.

I was about to reply "That depends where you live."

Well, DUH! Obviously if you live in the 'Land of the Midnight Sun', you have to be also living in 'The Land of the Midday Darkness'. I suppose it would pay me to engage my brain before putting my mouth(keyboard) in motion.

Nickel 63 decays to stable copper 63 under beta radiation with 66.9 keV energy. Some centimetres are already enough to stop that, with aluminum a millimeter should probably already be enough.

The real safety issues is if people pry it open and ingest or inhale the radionuclides.

Imagine iPhones with Geiger counters. Nicely aggregated in bite sized daily stats through Apple health

Geiger counters don’t work on Ni-63. It’s a pain to detect, needing liquid scintillation.

They use these in pacemakers.

I'm not saying they're unsafe (I don't know that, but I do trust my national agency if they certify it). I'm saying convincing people who need a peacemaker to not die about a magic device that keep their heart beating is much easier than convincing any random person to have a radioactive phone.

Ni-63 is a pure low energy beta emitter - what that means is your skin is enough to block it penetrating if it were outside the phone. While used as intended it would be safe but it’s a horrible idea for consumer electronics for disposal issues.

Overall it sounds like a terrible idea though due to what happens when the phone reaches end of life or is smashed. Phone can’t be shredded and materials reclaimed without manually removing the battery. Phone releases free radioactive material into the environment if smashed. Terrible terrible idea for consumer electronic.

Wrt to the shredding, isn't this already the case? You can't exactly shred a lipo or li-ion battery and not expect a battery fire.

Nuclear powered pacemakers were definitely a thing. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/degraw2/

It took 50 years for people to realize fat is healthy and sugar loaded bread and grains is bad for you. Because of "science".

iPhones straddling your genitalia is considered "safe"' today. Can't wait to hear from science towards the end of the century.

mad hatters and radium girls

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_as_a_hatter

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

My understanding is that phone near your genitals is not recommended at least for men because the increase in heat affects your testicular production, like any increased heat source would (between the heat of battery usage and the non ionizing radiation from the radio). I remember my science teacher talking about it in high school, and that was pre smartphone era (~2003 or so). I also remember it saying that guys liked wearing boxer and jeans and the increased friction was pushing more heat there anyway.

Now every 6 months we have a study about low and lowering sperm count in males, and between that and food changes and microplastics overabundance and ... It feels like that's a lost cause.

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