I am on a process of deciding to go with Zig-bee and Z-wave, I know all differences like range, possible hops, battery consumption, frequency, interference with other home equipment etc.
My main concern is about RF Radiation. Do you think that having 20+ RF transmitters within one 150sqm home is harmful for health? I have read about that high frequency (such as zigbee 2.4ghz) more harmful because it is heats up remote element more than mhz ones.
Please let me know your thought as this is very important factor so we all use them at home and dont`t need any 0.0001% of harm from them, as they would be with us for most of our lives.
The radio power of Z-Wave and Zigbee are similar, something like 0.025 watts vs 0.016. Zigbee runs at the same frequency of a microwave oven, which works by vibrating (thereby heating) water which humans also have a lot of. So everything equal Z-Wave is probably “safer” even though it is higher power.
But if you ever use a cellular phone you are directly exposing your brain to something like over 2.0 watts. Unless you live far off in the countryside you also have many other strong radio waves passing through you right now too.
Additionally just stepping outside in the sun you are being exposed to far higher levels of RF energy and radiation than you would ever be exposed to by a low power RF protocol.
Phones, Wifi, sun RF etc. are all temporary and gets dissapear sometimes. Sun is available only at outside, wifi is available only when you enable, phone is when you use it talk to it etc. but these zwave
devices constantly transmits and receive data through mhz or ghz level frequencies. I agree that on short time measurement they are very weak to harm anything but in constant use like 5 year 20 zwave protocols in 150sqm space seems more powerful for me to damage human or organic tissue(
This is my opinion and may be phobia I just like to know your ideas, thanks for all your detailed explanations.
Mobile Phone to the face is maybe the extreme part of this two sided connection.
But a radio tower is emitting radiation all the time and depending on where you live, sometimes more than all your devices combined.
There are studys that show a lot of radiation from devices like phones, wifi and co can have negative side effects. What those studies often times don’t show is that most of those persons that are tested are also stress prone because of their usage of radiation emitting devices.
But not mainly because of the radiation…think about it…which people use their phone all day or are in constant vicinity of radiation emitting devices? Managers, CR, City People. There are a lot of other factors.
I wouldn’t mind those few devices. The power at which they operate is so low, that you should rather decide by features or supported devices.
Crazy People Story:
A service provider in our country built a big ass radio tower near a little one horse town. After that people complained about headache, heartproblems and even hallucinations and demanded that the tower had to be removed. Turned out, the provider didn’t even plug it in…
Mass nocebo effect…
Not that i want to call you crazy, it is always good to think about such things, but don’t overdo it. Because thats the people who don’t vaccinate their kids or strap themselves to a self built rocket to proof that earth is flat.
It can be broken down to an equation. A person can produce/experience something to we can ascribe a value of X, after living on the planet for time t. The time t is reduced by a factor i, which may be proportional to the total microwave energy absorbed by the body over time t (more or less…bare with me here). X(t) is non linear, but regardless has a unique solution that maximizes X.
In other words, if we really do go down the path of logic and reason in arguing what radio devices we should or shouldn’t be around, we may find that said devices add to the potential productivity of a human throughout their lifespan… despite the side effect of having a shorter lifespan (which some may actually view as a benefit).
After going through said exercise, I have expended some amount of my time t, and added stress that also reduces both t and X independently… more thought required here.
Sarcasm aside… we have authorities on these matters with experts in labs examining the risks. If 2.4 devices were found to cause appreciable risks, like asbestos, lead, etc., we would have studies that clearly point in one direction and government (in the US anyways) would be compelled to act upon it. I am talking about peer reviewed legit science, not some editorial article or unofficial posting based on some schill lab results. We already have enough regulations based on bogus science lol.
What do you want to say? Just because non-ionizing radiation doesn’t rip electrons out of the atoms and molecules my body is made of, that it doesn’t have any effects?
A microwave also uses non-ionizing radiation to heat up your food or create nice special effects with CD’s
On water and water containing things the radiation has thermic effects (heats up).
On higly conductive materials like a circuit board or metal it creates high voltage spikes.
The concern of most people investing time and effort into researching effects of of non-ionizing radiation on the human body, is that we’re mostly made of water and our brain uses electric signals to do most things.
But fact is, it not only depends on frequency but also and mostly on the power thats behind it.
A microwave outputs about 10MW as far as i remember. Here in Germany my Wifi can only output about 100mW if my math is right thats about 1/100.000.000 of the microwave.
Thats a pretty bad comparison btw. don’t take it too serious.
Thats why i’m not concerned not because of the frequency but because of the outputted power.
Yep, we get a heaping spoonful of radiation from a ton of other sources we are surrounded by that most folks don’t even know exist (think of all the towers and antennae we’re surrounded by… some of which are several orders more powerful than anything found in a typical home… aviation, civil dispatch, point-to-point, and yes cell towers too).
Also, when we discuss exposure levels, it’s not all about the concentration of the energy (ie watts). Our health is also sensitive to frequency… you don’t want to see even a tiny amount of gamma rays, right? That 800W microwave energy OTOH, may do more to warm water in our cells than mutate our DNA… unlike shorter wavelengths (X, gamma, etc…) that are well proven to cause cancer.
Here’s a copy/paste from the conclusion, good for casual users who want a better understanding of their exposure risks:
Table 4 indicates that Z-Wave, EnOcean,
and Thread wireless technologies do not exceed the
maximum allowable SAR level regardless of
frequency band. ZigBee, WavenIs, and Insteon
technologies could be considered safe as long as the
number of wireless devices is less than 50 or if the
distance of these devices from the human body is
greater than 30 cm. The technologies that pose the
greatest health risk with respect to SAR values are
NFC, DET-ULE, WI-FI and Bluetooth; SAR values
exceed 0.4 W/Kg if the number of devices is greater
than 10 and the distance is less than 40 cm. Generally
speaking, 20 cm is the closest distance after which
SAR values indicate a potentially elevated risk for
human health.
In addition, table 4 shows that for the same
technology, as the operating frequency increased the
number of devices can be increased and the distance
can be decreased.
That phone near our heads… inverse square law is a PITA!
A little ionizing radiation isn’t a big deal wither. We are constantly hit by gamma rays from many sources. The sun, natural radioactivity from decaying elements like uranium, man made sources, etc. And for that matter, alpha and beta too. Some of this source is our own bodies as we take up unstable isotopes of common elements like potassium. Near other people? Slightly higher radiation dose than being alone. Flying? Higher radiation dose. Live in a brick house? Radiation from decaying thorium, uranium, etc. in the bricks. We’re hit by neutrinos from space, we eat radioactive foods like bananas and nuts, almost everyone has a smoke detector (Americium-241). Have any yellowish-green glass? Colour comes from uranium. There are so many sources of ionizing radiation in every day life it is always funny to hear people worry about a few mW of RF.
We live in a radiation filled environment and are very adapt and handling constant exposure.
I just like to know your ideas, thanks for all your detailed explanations.
