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UK Report Suggests Dangers In Cell Phone Use

Posted by timothy on from the cell-phone-drivers-deserve-a-few-tumors dept.

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.

2 of 275 comments (clear)

  1. it won't change anything by mirko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People will keep phoning, then, they'll sue the phone manufacturers in order to force them to build more secure devices.

    --
    Trolling using another account since 2005.
  2. How do mobile phones affect people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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