Slashdot Mirror
UK Report Suggests Dangers In Cell Phone Use
The next shot has been fired in the battle over whether cell phone use is harmful: yorktimsson writes "The Times Online is reporting (along with most UK press) that 'Professor Sir William Stewart, chairman of the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), said that evidence of potentially harmful effects had become more persuasive over the past five years.'" In particular, the NRPB's report lists four studies suggesting negative consequences of cell phone use, from tumors to reduced cognitive function.
Sir William actually stated that while there was no proof, usage should be limited as a precautionary measure. It's the same message as ever, and still total BS.
An interesting story to find on slashdot just after I hear NPR's bit on the crackberry.
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CHILDREN under the age of eight should not use mobile phones, parents were advised last night after an authoritative report linked heavy use to ear and brain tumours and concluded that the risks had been underestimated by most scientists.
This study is applicable to children. The results may or may not be applicable to adults.
Timothy, please stop being so sensational.
The RF phase modulator is tuned at a slightly different phase angle in GSM based handsets, resulting in wavelengths that have more difficulty penetrating the epidermis.
Duh!
In France they have made a law about 2 years ago to prohibit putting GSM antennas in direct line of sight of the school windows. Apparently it's more dangerous do have an antenna in front of your window then on your roof above your head. Since my grandfather died of "juvenile leukemia" at the age of 75, in 6 months and he had one of these antennas in front of his living room window about 20m away on the roof of the next building I'd tend to be VERY careful about the antennas. Maybe someone has a link that would give the emission power of an antenna compared to a phone and the effects of the distance between the phone and you Vs the antenna and you.
Um... if those covers really did reduce the amount of radiation, they'd make the phone STOP WORKING.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Non-ionising electromagnetic radiation (that's light , infra red and radio waves) is dangerous when it is neither too strongly nor too weakly absorbed by our bodies. Radio waves basically go straight through us. Light basically gets absorbed in the top fraction of mm of skin (but strong IR or light will damage you: its called 'a burn' i.e. cells are killed by heating). Microwaves used by mobile phones(about 1 GHz are potentially dangerous because they are totally absorbed by our bodies within a few cm of the surface. Thus exposing yourself to this radiation you are heating the inside of your brain. There are two key safety questions 1. How much is this heating effect (the SAR figure) and 2. Are there any other non-thermal effects of the radiation.
The answer to 1. is provided by the SAR figure of the phone. Typically a phone will have 1 W/kg. i.e. on average it dumps one watt of power into 1 kg of nearby brain matter. This is not alot (think of holding a small torch by your ear and think about the heating effect of that) but one the other hand brains are uniquely sensitive organs. Temperature rises are probably hundredths of a degree celsius, but its hard to measure.
The answer to 2. is that no non-thermal effects have survived double blind testing.
The SAR dose from Masts is many orders of magnitude lower than that from handsets.
All the best
Michael
I do take your point though, and I have (seriously) stopped carrying my phone in my fron trouser pocket. Of course I have it out of my pocket while making calls. The downside is that the vibrate function is less fun.
The reason people pick on mobile phones is because they (sometimes) use a relatively large amount of electromagnetic power to communicate with the base station (perhaps several hundred metres away). This is in contrast to cordless phones which have a range of a few metres, so use far less power (also, you probably don't carry your cordless around all day).
You have to remember that mobile phones change the power they use to transmit depending on signal strength. Ironically, if you live near a base station, your phone will be less harmful to you (although of course, one could argue the base station will be beaming it's rays into you far more strongly). Also, newer phones are far, far better than old ones. The extended battery life of new phones is not all down to the batteries, it's also down to the reduced use of the transmitter (old analogue phones are really nasty, and sent some of the BT engineers bonkers within a couple of years - aledgedly).
Something else to know: the frequencies used by mobile phones are only slightly different from microwave ovens. Given oven manufacturers have been researching using a whole raft of frequencies besides the one generally used, it would suggest that more or less any frequency would cook food (albeit with different penetration and other characteristics). So it would be reasonable to assume that the mobile phone frequency would also cook food (or your brain, skin, sperm, whatever).
Conversely, one also has to remember that you're unlikely to be able to cook your Pot Noodle with a phone, because the power it uses is broadcast in all directions, rather than concentrated at the food (and is far lower power than a microwave oven). However, prolonged phone use, within millimetres of your brain could be construed as the same thing.
Last bit of wisdom from me: A phone on standby uses fractions of the power used for talking. Text messaging uses a bit more power than standby, but of course only for a short period of time. A phone with no signal will keep trying to get a base station, so will be transmitting periodically (sort bursts, regularly). In other words, being asked to carry a phone (by werk, for example) is not likely to be too bad for you. Of course, once they actually call you, you're in trouble. Get a pager - being receive only they're far safer.
Remember kids: Using your phone makes your ear get hot. Think about why that might be...?
Are these people actually trying to say that occasional cell phone use puts out more radiation than that new 3.2 GHz Pentium
Radiation intensity is inversly proportional to the square of distance from the source. If your Pentium is 30 times farther from your brain than your cell phone, your brain is getting around 1000 times smaller proportion of the Pentium's radiation than that of the cell phone.
(I wonder if any physics is being taught at schools any more? Or would that put too much pressure on the self-esteem of the little ones.)