Myths: Plants help to absorb harmful radiation and prevents it from reaching you

The 'factor' inspiring me to write this blog post is when I saw a friend on facebook posting about a new plant she got and said that it helps to block radiation. I know a lot of people out there are afraid of radiation, and there has been much debate about the effects of radiation. I'm doing an internship and I came across an article where con-artist made use of this fear to charge a higher price to help people repaint their homes with a electromagnetic interference shielding paint, supposedly to block out harmful electromagnetic radiation from their homes. The only problem is, if the paint works, your cellphone won't be able to receive any signal too. Plus, radiation still can reach you through any holes or gaps in your house (e.g. your door and window). And electromagnetic radiation is probably the least harmful type of radiation.

I did a quick search on google and it churned out some interesting articles.

Myth #1: Your computer gives out harmful radiation

FALSE!

The only significant radiation emitted by computer monitors is electromagnetic radiation, which is around us all the time (e.g. your cellphone) and is the least harmful radiation. Studies have shown again and again that radiation emitted from monitors is not a health problem under normal circumstances.

Myth #2: Catcus can absorbed radiation from your computer and prevent it from reaching you.

FALSE!

Almost everything blocks electromagnetic radiation to some extent. Water and living tissue are good at it. Cacti do, but so do other plants; metal; plastic; clothes and water. Some of these are much better absorbers than plant tissue. There appears to be no evidence that cacti are better than other plants, for a given plant size. However thicker barriers absorb more than thinner; so cacti, being unusually thick plants, are probably slightly better than other plants (but worse than many other things). However even if this is true it is irrelevant because... Electromagnetic radiation travels only in straight lines. So any kind of radiation shield works only if it is sitting between you and the source of radiation. So even if it were good at absorbing radiation, for a cactus to be effective as a radiation shield it has to be large enough to fill the space between you and the monitor, an approach which would obviously make the monitor unusable. Having a small cactus sitting beside the monitor will do nothing.

From sources: (1) and (2)



I really hope that people do not get the wrong idea that radiation from cellphone and computer and harmful and thus try every way and means to protect themselves from getting it the wrong way. It probably only serve as a psychological comfort, but does nothing in terms of effectiveness...