More than 250 scientists have signed a petition urging the United Nations and World Health Organization to develop stronger guidelines regarding the potential cancer risk and other health effects caused by non-ionizing electromagnetic fields, or EMFs. They say that devices such as Apple’s AirPods may cause cancer, reports TheBlaze.
The petition warns against all types of radio frequency radiation, including WiFi, cellular data, and Bluetooth devices. Last year, Apple sold more than 28 million pairs of AirPods and more than 16 million in 2017, according to the Daily Mail.
So are Bluetooth devices dangerous? Depends on which research you believe.
Bluetooth technology communicates to a cellular device that’s usually not more than a few feet away, which means that,”it’s transmitting at quite a low power level,” University of Pennsylvania bioengineering professor Kenneth Foster told the Los Angeles Times in a 2016 interview about wireless headphones. A person’s exposure to EMF radiation is “absolutely minimal – smaller by a huge amount that the exposure of putting a phone to your ear,” he added.
On the other hand, in 2002 and 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified EMF and ELF (extremely low frequency) fields as possibly carcinogenic.