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Answer to Question #3257 Submitted to "Ask the Experts"Category: Consumer Products — Electronic: TV, Computers The following question was answered by an expert in the appropriate field: Q
The person in the apartment next to mine has her television up against the wall of my bedroom. Whenever her television is on, it interferes with the AM reception on my clock radio. The interference is worse when the clock radio is next to the wall and not so bad when the clock radio is three feet from the wall. What causes this? Is it some sort of radiation or magnetic field that distorts AM radiowaves? I sleep with my head up against that same wall and I feel like my head is being irradiated while I sleep. Even though you said in Question #1666 that television sets emit very little radiation, I am still curious why the television interferes with my AM signal and why that is not dangerous to my head.
A
What is probably happening is that the television (TV) is interfering with either your radio or with the radiowaves before they can reach your radio. Neither of these possibilities is dangerous or harmful to you. TVs form an image by shooting a stream of electrons towards the screen and they use magnets to bend the electron stream. By doing this, the beam of electrons is scanned back and forth across the screen, one line at a time, and the electrons cause the screen to light up, producing the picture. The magnets that are used to bend the electron beam, however, can interfere with radiowaves that are passing near the TV; magnetic fields can also penetrate through thin walls. So one possibility is that the TV is close enough to your radio so that the radiowaves are simply being deflected by the magnetic field of the TV. Another possibility is that electronic "noise" from all the circuits in the TV are interfering with your radio. This would just be stray electric fields given off by the electronic TV components that may reach your radio, where they can be interpreted (by the radio) as a radio signal. So, on top of the station's signal, you would also be "hearing" the workings of your neighbor's TV. In both cases, these effects should be somewhat short-ranged, so moving your radio should help solve the problem. Maybe you can put it on the other side of the bed, or on the other side of the room, to get it a few yards farther away from the TV set. And, in both cases, you won't see any ill effects on your health or safety from the electric or magnetic fields from your neighbor's television. Andrew Karam, CHP, PhD
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