LYING WITH NUMBERS: Across instagram and other platforms, a number of influencers, wellness gurus and 'biohackers' have generated views and panics by scaremongering about Bluetooth and WiFi exposure. The trope is very simple - take some apparent radio-frequency meter seemingly showing some scary looking numbers, and convince people they're getting high exposure. WHY IT'S NONSENSE: Firstly as I've delved into before, radio-frequency is non ionising, much less energetic than even visible light, and not a health hazard. But that aside, these videos pivot on the inability of their makers to read the meters they bought. 1 mW is one-thousandth of a watt; one uW is a millionth of a Watt. Many tiny units is still typically tiny. These folks interchange between them because they're either incompetent, dishonest, or both. The scaremongering also defies basic physics too - Bluetooth devices cannot give out more power than they consume. A hugely emitting airpod or headphone would be a daft design, as it would rapidly exhaust its battery and interfere with other signal. Also, signal from light sources (of which Bluetooth sources are one, as radio-frequency is very low energy light) tend to fall off to an inverse square rule, so in practice their intensity falls rapidly with source distance. The most powerful type of Bluetooth, class 1, has a maximum power output of 100mW, or 0.1W - the scary claims in these videos are just ridiculous when you put them in context. THE LESSON: Context matters - numbers out of context without scale are likely to mislead us, and a big sounding number may not be big at all. Be wary of anyone trying to instil fear - they might be misleading you. #airpods #bluetooth #health #misinformation #radiofrequency #wellness #brain #radiation #wireless #physics #biohacking #scaremongering #fearmongering