Radioactivity in Hard Drives

As most of you know an HDD is radioactive. A friend of mine is vrey sensitive to all of this including LED screens as well ... a query is to the techies on here if an SSD is less radioactive or would emit less electromagnetic pollution than a regular HDD? Please advice since it could help her. Thank you

 

Are they really radioactive?

(subscribed to thread..)

 

Where exactly did she get that info from?

Hard drives do not contain radioactive materials. They do not emit radiation or ionizing particles. That would be outright crazy.

Mechanical hard drives do not emit a strong electromagnetic field or else it would erase the drive clean. Only the reading head has an electromagnet, which is microscopic size, to write on the platter.

An SSD will definitely have a smaller to no electromagnetic footprint

 

Everything electrical sends out radiation, unless you retreat to a seperate life in the forest there's no escape from it.

 

Everything is radioactive, even your own body, but they are harmless doses. Point a geiger counter to anything and it will crackle a little.

I think he meant electromagnetic radiation like radio waves

 

Indeed, I think the radiation being referred to here is general electromagnetic radiation, not ionizing radiation.

 

wow...comon guys...

Ionizing radiation is a subset of electromagnetic radiation... X-rays are electromagnetic..they are also ionizing. Ionizing just means the waves/photons have a high enough amplitude and the ideal frequency for charging atoms they might collide with, resulting in molecular instability and free radical generation.

Electromagnetic radiation spectrum: radio, infared, visual, UV, microwave, X-ray, gamma ray. (I think thats everything). Anything electronic can generate radio, IR, and even visual light...probably microwaves too, although I dont know for sure off the top of my head.

The OTHER type of radiation that people sometimes get mixed up with is NUCLEAR RADIATION. This is not electromagnetic at all...its subatomic particles being ejected from atomically unstable matter. Many common materials exhibit small amounts of this (1 millionth of what is considered dangerous)...but a HDD no more than most.

You've just been SCIENCED!

 

An HDD is NOT radioctive.

Also, you are sort of mixing things together - radioactivity "contains" gamma radiation which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

But radioactivity is also alpha and beta radiation which is NOT part of any electromagnetic spectrum.

And if your friend thinks he is sensitive to electromagnetic radiation the he needs to live in a cave well away from any humans.

Wires in walls, overhead wires... mobile phone signals...
Wi-Fi - you know, its very interesting you didn't mention wi-fi because that's more powerful than a mobile phone mast...

In that case avoid technology altogether.

Oh, and I'd be surprised if you could actually prove that a HDD uses magnetism unless you take it apart in a lab.
(I.e. when its closed and ideally in a laptop)

Microwaves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum too - fun fact:
Microwaves (the devices) were designed by accident when a technician held hist hand into a radar beam in or shortly after WW2 and noticed that it warmed his hand up.

 

A bit of topic but I read a report in the newspapers a while ago where scientists stated that wireless internet had the same frequencies as microwaves (which is why using a microwave can disturb your signal) and that those frequencies are very unhealthy.

 

A microwave shouldn't disturb the signal as its shielded so that only a small amount can escape - but apparently they can disturb Wi-Fi.

A lot of things work on the 2,4-2,5 GHz spectrum.

Wi-Fi, bluetooth are two...

Mobile phones use 800MHz, 1800MHz, 1900MHz (on GSM) unless I am mistaken and I have no clue about other frequencies...

Healthy/unhealthy - I think it gets debated either way with no clear empiricla evidence either way really.

Another important aspect is intensity of radiation.
In German schools you did get to do experiments with small radioactive samples around 2006 (I was still around there then) - no danger as they were pretty weak and you're not swallowing them anyway.
But you can also lie next to a piece of enriched uranium and get radiation poisoning.

So strength is important - and electromagnetic radiation varies a lot here.
Bluetooth is very weak, Wi-Fi pretty powerful, mobile phones reasonably powerful.
And radar - very powerful.

Basically:
I'd personally not worry too much about it in consumer devices - but I wouldn't necessarily want to live within a radar beam or underneath a mobile phone mast - but that's it.

 

Didn't I say they were?

 

You said this

I was confirming what you said and adding some info.

 

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident

 

Thanks for all the feedback ... yes I think my friend is indeed sensitive to electromagnetic radiation and this increases as technology increases... stronger CPUs RAM etc; will give off more electro smog. Well yes we would love to live in a cage but for work etc not much of a choice... I personally cannot use Cell phone close to my head but OK on speakerphone for a few minutes. I can use Wifi for about 10 minutes before getting strange headaches so I am always plugged in; I only ever use wireless to pick up or send mail, never to browse unless absolutely necessary. I even have problems with wireless Dect phones in the house. Maybe I should get a job as consultant to lead the authorities to sources of unauthorized dumping of electro magnetic material LOL. Back to the query ... so LESS electromagnetic radiation/emission from SSD drives ?

 

A SSD is the same as a thumb drive - but with a much more advanced controller + more space.

You know what you should do.

Get a friend with a mobile Wi-Fi - and sit with your back to him.

Tell him to use/not use Wi-Fi (etc.) and see if you still get the headache.

Some people will only imagine that they feel electromagnetic radiation - I'm not saying that is the case for you, but try to find out.

Interesting read...

Not a Wikipedia friend myself - but it is true that hospitals use radioactivity to treat cancers if I am not mistaken
(High doses should will kill cells)

Some hospitals also have particle accelerators.

Get a new microwave

 

Not saying you're imagining it, but until you double blind test it, I don't believe many claims. Double blind = ABX. If you say "Do you feel a difference" to A or B it introduces placebo. Double blind means you show A, you show B, then you show X. A = on, B = off, X = variable. You have to say if X is A or X is B. It's a far superior method of testing.

 

...and you need someone else to do ABX or it's not going to work.

 

Well look I never knew I was sensitive to many things until it started happening. Headaches but different from normal headaches etc. I have had a mobile phone for many years and from day 1 I felt it, and putting it on speaker helps though I am still holding the phone. The lady friend is sensitive to most laptops but can work on ones that have better shielding; ie aluminum casings like Macbooks and some of the metal alloys that provide better shielding. But she does need laptop for work no other way about it so she does everything possible to get the least electromagnetic radiation. And has noone ever heard you cannot destroy a hard drive yourself because of what inside it ? Some people including myself are sensitive to the frequency of some LED screens and you can find a lot of that on the Net as well ... believe me if I could just un-imagine all these things life would be easier. And for the person with the double blind comments I have had it more than once at a coffee shop where I have my back turned to another table and I turn around since I am getting that familiar headache ... and am staring at someone whose wifi enabled laptop is with a foot or 2 of my body.

 

The radiation emitted from a laptop is far smaller in amplitude than normal radio noise in a city...

If you live within a few km's of a cell phone tower (If you have 5 bars of cell phone reception you do) you are exposed to a ton of radiation (I'd venture to guess at least an order of magnitude higher than that emitted from any laptop/router).

BrightBill is right...double blind test it. I am fairly certain this is just in your head.

 

Wish it were ....

 

Sorry even in forest you still have radioactive Carbon that is how they do Carbon Dating.
Sun do radiation everyday.
I think some people are sensitive to EM-Wave of certain frequency range though there is no evidence of this.
Could be in the mind as well.

 

You cannot destroy a hard drive? You must have missed Western Digital 4.3 GB HD series. I actually had the thing wide open at home when it finally accumulated so many bad sectors that it became useless. It was kind of cool see the head jump around and the disk spin.

There's nothing magical about it (apart from the fact that it's based on quantum mechanics, which is pretty weird), but it has a spinning magnetic disks and a head that can read whether a certain tiny point on the disk (you can imagine it as each point is a tiny little magnet) is pointing up (say north is up, call that 1) or down (south is up, call that 0). The rest is basically electronics.

There are two things to radiation: which type is it -- the usual that we use all around us is EM waves of different frequencies (this is the number in Hertz, MHz, GHz), and how intense is it or how powerful the source that is generating those is (number in Watts, mW, kW, etc.; roughly speaking how many of those waves the source can generate in some amount of time). To put it simply, you can sustain being exposed to a lot (high power) of low frequency radiation, like visible light, and not so much of higher frequency radiation.

In particular, for e.g. iphone the total radiated power is around 20 mW [source: wired.com]. While your microwave is probably around 1kW (roughly, 10 000 - 100 000 times more). In other words, it's perfectly safe. Those tricks with boiling the egg with cell phone? All fake. You'd need like radiation emitters from 10 000 phones very close to each other for that.

 

I think its weird that your lady friends says that she prefers working with laptops with aluminium casings since wireless internet signals tend to reflect on metal objects (which makes the total radiation passing trough your body bigger). You also have to be in a closer range to a router to be able to acces wireles internet due to an aluminium casing, which is probably not healthier at all.

 

Everything is OK !

 

Actually...

Every laptop will have "some cage" to shield the internals from OUTSIDE electromagnetic interference - even my Vaio which is built ot be as light as possible (SZ) has that...

So whether you have an aluminium casing or not doesn't matter - in fact, on an aluminium cases the Wi-Fi card might actually power up to try and get through the farraday cage it's been put it by a designer with no physics degree.

 

Why bother ...

 

BTW I thought WLAN antenna is next to the screen? Wouldn't it be a bad design to dug it inside, the signal would just get weaker.

 

First off, there's no radiation from HDDs. A HDD is a magnet and a few metal platters. None of which emits electromagnetic waves of any measurable magnitude.

Secondly, the science is NOT there. General consensus is that there is no casual link between electromagnetic waves and cancer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/cellphones

If you disagree with this, then you're free to not use Wifi or cellphones, but again, there's nothing in a HDD that emits electromagnetic waves, so you're blaming the wrong thing.

And finally, if you're going to come on the internet and argue that microwaved food is not safe, then yes, you are going to be ridiculed.

 

Why bother ...

 

Even if you don't use cell phones, etc. you are receiving quite a bit of radiation from other things, like natural radiation from the Earth, then I believe there's quite a bit in the milk and there's all the stuff that is coming and hitting you from outer space right now as we speak. In fact, due to the nuclear reactions in the Sun, there are about ~10^10 of particles called neutrinos passing through the surface of your palm every second.

 

Neutrinos don't help they should be theoretically there - but as far as I am aware have not been practically proven.

But technically light is electromagnetic radiation - so you need to sit in a dark room.

 

That is the only semi-correct thing you have stated in this entire thread. Yes, microwaving food can alter the compounds in the food a small bit, including creating carcinogens. However, the levels of carcinogens are extremely minor relative to other ways people come into contact with others on a daily basis. The worst that can realistically happen is slightly altering the taste, and this is usually only after multiple passes where it becomes noticeable.

Wifi is extremely weak and not tuned to interact with organic matter like microwaves are as well as being on the opposite side of the microwave band of EM radiation. Ultraviolet radiation from the sun is a lot stronger than any EM radiation you are going to experience from electronic devices. Anything in the electromagnetic spectrum with a higher wavelength than visible light is pretty harmless unless you are taking some seriously hefty doses which are far from realistic.

Other than that everything you have said is all make believe as there is absolutely no evidence to back any of it up and all evidence actually points to the contrary of what you say. On top of that, you say everything in the most sensationalist and misleading manner. EM radiation cannot possibly act on you or your or little girlfriend any differently than it does on all of us normal people unless our bodies are not composed of the same compounds structured in the same way. Hard drives are radioactive? You are a nut!

And FYI, a lightbulb puts out far more EM radiation than any laptop or anything like that. And your friend is a nincompoop if she thinks that LED screens give her headaches. They put out far less of anything other than visible light, which is why they are so efficient compared to other light sources.

 

Actually not only that they have been found, but it's already known something more about them (like they have a mass). In fact a Nobel prize in 1995 in physics was awarded for the first experimental evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino#Direct_detection_from_induced_beta_decay

And this is the big thing in Japan that can detect it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-Kamiokande . It's actually pretty interesting, they were able to detect these neutrinos as a remnant of a supernova explosion before you could actually see it; that is before the visible light reached you. So although the light travels faster, it interacts with more stuff on the way (so it's not going sort of straight like neutrino) and hence the light signal reaches you after neutrinos arrived. There's some stuff here, sorry for OT but tbh it's not like OP was on topic in the first place.

A dark room, cooled down to 0 degrees Kelvin. But even then there's something called quantum noise, that can't be removed by any means [that is, it's impossible to reach perfect vacuum]. Quite a bit weaker then heat though.

 

Thank you for your help. Much appreciated and take care.

 

Do you want this closed? I have had to weed out a ton of posts already that were off topic.

 

Serendipity played a part in may invention throughout history. But I remember reading they used to sit on them or near the transmitter to keep warm. The first commercial microwave over was nearly the size of a washing machine and produced 1/10 the power of modern microwave ovens. Radarange was aptly applied to the first models produced by Raytheon Corporation in 1954. I watched a great special on them on the History channel's Modern Marvels.

Ah! Too bad.

 

Yes please close it. With radioactive I meant it not in a nuclear sense just in the sensitivity to electro-magnetic fields and different frequencies. In that way there are a number of people with sensitivities though I admit we are talking about a very small percentage of people. I personally have a very measurable intollerance for LED screens of certain frequency. To make things easy I stick to a CCFL screen though they are rapidly vanishing. A lady friend is far more sensitive, and laptops are not an easy thing for her. Now rather than to make fun of people and calling them nutters it may be more constructive to see where one can help with his/her knowledge. Parading one's knowledge to make other people wrong is not necessary at all. In any case you may read the following study that sheds some light on the matter and there are others:

http://www.aehf.com/articles/em_sensitive.html

Also regarding microwaves:

Every microwave oven contains a magnetron, a tube in which electrons are affected by magnetic and electric fields in such a way as to produce micro wavelength radiation at about 2450 Mega Hertz (MHz) or 2.45 Giga Hertz (GHz). This microwave radiation interacts with the molecules in food.

All wave energy changes polarity from positive to negative with each cycle of the wave. In microwaves, these polarity changes happen millions of times every second. Food molecules - especially the molecules of water - have a positive and negative end in the same way a magnet has a north and a south polarity.

In commercial models, the oven has a power input of about 1000 watts of alternating current. As these microwaves generated from the magnetron bombard the food, they cause the polar molecules to rotate at the same frequency millions of times a second.

All this agitation creates molecular "friction", which heats up the food. This unusual type of heating also causes substantial damage to the surrounding molecules, often tearing them apart or forcefully deforming them.

By comparison, microwaves from the sun are based on principles of pulsed direct current (DC) that don't create frictional heat; microwave ovens use alternating current (AC) creating frictional heat.

A microwave oven produces a spiked wavelength of energy with all the power going into only one narrow frequency of the energy spectrum. Energy from the sun operates in a wide frequency spectrum.

AND:

In Comparative Study of Food Prepared Conventionally and in the Microwave Oven, published by Raum & Zelt in 1992, at 3(2): 43, it states

"A basic hypothesis of natural medicine states that the introduction into the human body of molecules and energies, to which it is not accustomed, is much more likely to cause harm than good.

Microwaved food contains both molecules and energies not present in food cooked in the way humans have been cooking food since the discovery of fire. Microwave energy from the sun and other stars is direct current based.

Artificially produced microwaves, including those in ovens, are produced from alternating current and force a billion or more polarity reversals per second in every food molecule they hit.

Production of unnatural molecules is inevitable. Naturally occurring amino acids have been observed to undergo isomeric changes (changes in shape morphing) as well as transformation into toxic forms, under the impact of microwaves produced in ovens.

One short-term study found significant and disturbing changes in the blood of individuals consuming microwaved milk and vegetables. Eight volunteers ate various combinations of the same foods cooked different ways.

All foods that were processed through the microwave ovens caused changes in the blood of the volunteers. Hemoglobin levels decreased and over all white cell levels and cholesterol levels increased. Lymphocytes decreased.

Luminescent (light-emitting) bacteria were employed to detect energetic changes in the blood. Significant increases were found in the luminescence of these bacteria when exposed to blood serum obtained after the consumption of microwaved food."

Anyhow there are a lot of studies that point out that microwaves may not be what you think they are when coming from an oven. Natural microwaves are broad spectrum and do not have the same effects.

Wifi is a microwave technology. Some people will be sensitive to it others will not.

Wether it makes us all nutters is debatable of course. If you consider no sensitivity as normal yes the in fact to you we may seem nutters. From my point of view merely accepting what you are taught and conditioned to believe borders on insanity, but that again is merely a personal opinion.

 

Yeah. Sorry about it, some of those were mine.

I have no idea how else to explain it, but in short there isn't really anything dangereous inside anyone's hard drive. Nor are there any PROVEN negative effects of using your WiFi, wireless mouse, router and any electronics inside your laptop or desktop. We're talking very low energies, as most of the components in your laptop can be powered using a 5V battery. We're talking really very low currents and voltages. Unless you still use a monitor with Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) lol...

In fact, the sensitive thing in this case isn't a person, but your computer! Tiny components inside your computer can burnt relatively easily even with static electricity. The isolation on your laptop serves to protect the LAPTOP from YOU, your greasy fingers, static electricity on you, etc Not the other way around!

 

I completely understand what you're trying to say, and I do thoroughly agree that attacking people because they have a disease is despicable.

However, other than that, what you're saying doesn't make sense.

As I and many others have said, there is no radiation (ionized or not) that emitted from a HDD. Period.

There is no radiation that's emitted from an LED other than visible light, and maybe some insignificant amount in the infrared or ultraviolet spectrum. This is the same for CCFLs. Note that the amount of ultraviolet radiation that you could possibly absorb from an LCD is absolutely insignificant. If you get headaches from your monitor, it is because you're staring at it for too long. If it were because of the ultraviolet light, you would die if you stood out in the sun.

Finally, to borrow from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity

Finally, even if EHS were accepted as a disease, the questions you are asking only act as fearmongering that enhances the placebo effect, which coincidentally, IS a scientifically accepted phenomenon. Your laptop does have one device that emits a measurable quantity of EMF waves, and that is your WIFI card. Everything else only emits light in a significant amount.

 

Incorrect. In fact, your computer is full of potentially harmful materials.

Again, not the whole story. And the jury's still out on the proof. It may take several more decades or even several generations before we begin to see conclusive evidence of long term exposure to electro-magnetic fields on the human body.

Granted, these forces do exist in nature, but the OP makes a valid pointing in stating that our artificial environment may pose additional potential hazards to our health--we just don't know for sure yet.

Indeed. However, you're discounting the cumulative effects that may not be as readily apparent as they should.

CRT's are still very much in use.

Well I wouldn't trust anyone on that one. Especially when the total number of dollars earned ranks higher than a human life.

Still, I don't think many people are going to be giving up using their computers anytime soon. But just look at how many deaths it took before officials would admit that cigarette smoking causes cancer. And remember the Industrial Revolution? There is a price to be paid with every advancement man makes: remember the claim that you could wear extended contacts for weeks?

Nevertheless, this is the life we have chosen. It's just that I'm just not as easily convinced that it doesn't come without consequences as some are. Only time will tell for sure.

True, but you left out the part where people got sick and died first. The safety protocols were considered only after the fact. Another glitch in advancement we had to learn the hard way? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just pointing out that there's two sides to the issue; and that we need to be think about both of them.

 

Decades have passed - radar has been around since WW2.

Some people have suffered from being to close to radar installations - other's haven't.

At the start they were weak and got more powerful with time.

 

No, it is NOT. You post anything you want about how bad microwave ovens are, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the harmfulness of microwave radiation itself. You are confusing microwave ovens with microwave radiation. While microwave ovens use Just because Wifi uses EM radiation in the same arbitrary range of wavelengths called microwaves as does a microwave oven, has absolutely nothing to do with anything. The same article you quoted said that microwave radiation from the sun is completely harmless.

 

You are claiming this based on what?

A computer is as harmful as a wooden chair. It hurts if you smack someone with it. Computer contains micro-electronics, semiconductor devices that operate on energies far below anything even remotely that can harm you. I guess the some graphic cards have very sharp edges, I can give you that. I cut myself when I was as a kid installing Riva TNT graphics.

Umm do you have any idea how long computers existed? Not to mention those were WAY more harmful than these that you use today. Do you have any idea that as we speak there are tons of people studying influence of weak and strong EM fields on living organisms, from the embryo, during the development (I happened to have read about those) and onwards. You are aware that during the evolution, cells have adapted to certain levels of radiation? (DNA repair mechanisms, etc.) And that it is higher than what you get from your cell phone.

There is no evidence supporting it. In fact, the technology behind LCD screens is extremely well understood. And it has been understood by people, who actually bothered to learn about it (!) instead of trolling NBR forums and quoting online crackpot sites. CRT monitors are barely sold anywhere anymore. The ONLY proven thing about monitors, is that intense usage will have some effect to reduce your vision, which doesn't have to do with any other radiation than the visible light.

Then you have to use your glasses to compensate for it. Unless you are worried that the glass itself is also a source of some mystical radiation? That cannot be detected even with the latest technology that is able to detect things such as a gamma ray source billions of light years away. Right.

 

I see my points are mute. Sooner or later maybe a loved one or good friend may have a similar problem for some of you. Maybe then you will take notice. Correct microwaves exist in nature but different spectrum. But even they are getting more intense because of current solar activity apparently. Correct time will tell. Really unless you feel what I call strange headaches with Wifi use you will simply never believe it. That is just human nature. Before the crash most people trusted the banking sector and financial high fliers were somehow admired ... look at it now. Soon people may even discover that fiat currencies have no value at all ... then what? Not to worry if you do not read crackpot sites all is fine ! Anyhow I am digressing. I am ok on my cable connection. Only time will tell what the long term effect of all of it will have and even then it will be debatable. Maybe long before that we will get a massive EMP from outer space and the discussion will be mute forever. Come to think of it maybe I am an alien suffering from human technology?

 

As requested, this thread is closed. Just a quick note to the OP though:

You might want to see a neurologist, an audiologist, or a shrink. Hard drives emit so little radiation in the EM spectrum, and at the wrong frequencies, that there really is nothing to worry about.

I AM NOT A DOCTOR. Brains are quite complex, it is possible that your brain is being disturbed by something else. Blue LEDs, pulsating (PWM) lights, lights at the right frequency, audio signals at the right frequency, etc, etc. Head doctor might be able to help you narrow that down.

I AM NOT A DOCTOR. You might be hearing what essentially amounts to the equivalent of a dog-whistle. High frequency electronics do emit sound waves that are generally higher pitched than most people can hear. You might be hearing them, and an audiologist can help you figure that out.

I AM NOT A DOCTOR. The shrink might also be useful. I'm not calling you crazy. I'm merely suggesting that the power of suggestion can be quite strong.