Cell phone towers are lurking everywhere
Ontario should have voted through a bill to require warning labels be posted on cell phones to create a better awareness that these devices do pose a health risk. Unfortunately they didn’t. Not that I hate cell phones, I love mine. I was an early adopter as well, buying my first cell phone in the early 90’s, an analog Nokia 101 “Brick”, man, what a phone ;-) Over the years however, as more and more information trickled out about the effects of cellphone use on our health, I began to look at my favorite means of communication in a different light.
The facts are pretty concrete, the electro-magnetic radiation (EMR) emitted from you cell phone and the towers/antennas they communicate with cause genetic deformities in your cells DNA, which can lead to a whole host of problems. What is still up for debate is exactly how bad they (the EMR) are for you. You see, the issue is, it is hard to say with 100% certainty that person X developed a brain tumor or ear cancer (or decreased sperm quality, or … ) because of their cell phone, and that is the argument the cell phone industry has been using to cloud the debate, oh and cloud the debate they have. Big Tobacco used the same strategy in the 70’s and early 80’s when they used to argue smoking didn’t cause lung cancer, because the evidence wasn’t 100% conclusive.
Now this is big business, VERY BIG BUSINESS; the latest stats from the International Telecommunication Union say there will be over 5 billion cell phone subscriptions by the end of 2010. And with big business comes big money, and you know what that means, big government lobby and big corruption. We all know its true. So when a study comes out warning of the health effects of your cell phone, the “industry” is quick to react with a contradictory study of their own – a biased study, of course, conducted by a cell phone industry sponsored “think tank”. Bad publicity for the cell phone industry is bad for the bottom line of some very large corporations the world over, so they are going to fight tooth-&-nail on every front to suppress and muddle the facts on cell phone safety.
In this case here, in Ontario, the cell phone lobby was hard at work and pressured the government enough to turn down the private member’s bill, introduced by MPP France Gélinas. This bill would have required cell phone retailers to disclose the amount of EMR emitted (and the SAR of the device, which is a measure of how the body absorbs the radiation) by each phone they offered, providing the consumer with the option to choose a phone with the lowest SAR rating. And contrary to what you might think, the SAR ratings very wildly from device to device. As an example the lowest rated phone right now for the U.S. market is the Beyond E-Tech Duet D8, which has an SAR of 0.109, while the phone with the highest is the Motorola V195s with an SAR of 1.6, that’s an over 1400% difference. With SAR spreads of over 1400% you can see quite quickly why it is in your best interest to know what your device is emitting.
For all you iphone users out there, the 3Gs has an SAR rating of 0.79 and the 4G is rated at 1.17. For all other brands and models you can find your phone’s SAR at the Cell Phone Radiation Level section at cNET.
What can you do?
Well as I said above, I love my phone and am not ready to give it up, but there are things I do to *hopefully* mitigate my exposure.
1. First thing I do is use my bluetooth earpiece as much as possible. Yes, Bluetooth is a form of radiation as well, but the levels are extremely low when compared to your cell phone. And no, I don’t walk around with my earpiece in all the time, as that’s just crazy. I do use my earpiece when at home, in the car and in my office though, which accounts for most of my ‘talk time’ on the phone.
2. Secondly I keep my phone as far away from me as possible at all times. The further away the better. I have read many times a good rule of thumb is about a metre away. So that means whenever I can, I get the phone out of my pocket. In my car I put it on the passenger seat, the far side. At home it stays on the mantel, and no I do not sleep with it beside my head, or even in my bedroom for that matter. In the office it stays on my window sill which is a good distance away. And even when out at restaurants I take it out of my pocket and place it a fair distance away. Sounds crazy, but it is a very simple way to limit my exposure of and more specifically my ‘little swimmers’ exposure to unnecessary radiation. And it is, after all, a very easy habit to get used to.
3. Thirdly, keep the phones away from children. Studies show they are way more susceptible to the effects of this radiation than adults due to their still evolving brain. Although experts don’t all agree on whether or not cell phones pose a risk to human health, they tend to agree that, if there is such a risk, kids are more vulnerable, due to the ongoing development of their brain at that early age. A British commission of experts recently pointed out that kids were likely to be more at risk than adults, and urged parents to limit kids’ use and exposure to mobile phones. If there are games (or videos etc) you children want to play on your phone, put your it on airplane mode before handing the device over, which will turn off all the antenna’s.
4. And lastly, buy a phone with a low SAR rating. If everyone did this the manufacturer’s would get the hint and start producing phones with less radiation. It’s that simple.
And of course educate others, spread the word.
Oh, and one last thing, very important too! Don’t move beside a cell tower (or under it). A new study by the National Research Council warns of the health effects of cell towers and recommends they be installed no closer than 450 metres from people. Seriously. They are quite concerned about Wifi and WiMax as well.