Then you'll get those who will say "clipping the radio to your belt and transmitting from there will leave you open to frying your internal organs with radiation, leading to all sorts of cancers". When a person lives in fear, they'll always find something to panic about.
Well... those radio basics should also include coax transmission lines and the inverse square law. Based on exposure limits, the safe distance for 10W is 1.18ft. 50W is 2.6ft. Those inverse squares are important! Really leaky coax might emit -50dB from the signal on the center conductor, but well shielded stuff might be over a hundred dB down. If you're coax is leaking watts, then they aren't making it to the antenna. Plus, lead shielding would only be necessary to stop ionizing radiation and radioactive emissions (x-rays, alpha particles, etc). Any decently conductive metal is plenty for our pedestrian frequencies.
