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Can cell phones really kill you?
By Alice Hill, ZDNN
August 7, 2000 8:57 AM PT
URL: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2612424,00.html
I am no Chicken Little when it comes to technology danger.
The jaded part of me chalks up a good consumer health scare as some marketer's slam dunk way of selling "safer" but more expensive products, like super low radiation monitors and "green PCs". Maybe it came from being told not to sit too close to the TV as a child and finding the concept preposterously paranoid. And yet, I do sit in front of a huge monitor all day and stick a cell phone next to my brain a lot. A girl gets to wondering...
While the jury is still out on whether or not cell phones cause brain tumors and other scary cancer-related problems, the scientific community has come up with a few logical ways to get an idea of the overall situation. This month, in response to growing consumer concern about cell phone safety, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) will release a set of guidelines on measuring radiation emission levels. (Hint: when a huge organization associated in any way with technology is involved, you know what comes next -- a 3 letter acronym!) The "SAR" or Specific Absorption Rate is a new scale designed by CTIA to measure the rate of radiation absorbed by the body while making a cell phone call.
To get truly technical, think of the SAR rating as the high water mark for your phone's emissions. In other words, your phone's particular SAR rating addresses the maximum amount of radiation the phone will crank out, rather than the constant amount, which could be far less. Using your phone when there's a particularly weak signal for example, will blast far more radiation into your head than when the signal is strong. The SAR is like the worst case scenario captured and measured by phone manufacturer and model.
The battle right now is in how to report these ratings. Manufacturers want to imprint their phones with a code that a user could look up on the FCC's Web site to find out the rating, but CTIA is pushing for a pamphlet in every box explaining the SAR scale and listing the particular unit's rating. My guess is that once a manufacturer develops a phone with the lowest rating, you can expect to see the number emblazoned on the box and in every ad (with an accompanying higher price tag), and then *BOOM* -- the whole competitive rating thing will drive down overall numbers and hopefully prices.
OK, so in about six months we'll have a rating number to check but no proven understanding if any number is actually safe or deadly. Without getting into a hysterical fit, what else is known so far?
95 million American own a cell phone, and over 400 million phones will be sold this year world-wide. That's a whole lot of talking going on.
Some studies have found no link between cell phone emissions and cancer, while a recent Australian study from the University of Adelaide, determined that mice who had pre-dispositions to some types of cancer would develop cancers twice as fast as mice not exposed to cell phone radiation. However, the study I find more compelling is one that just came from England's Consumer Association. The Consumer Association concluded that some hands-free headsets actually transmit three times the radiation to your brain than the actual phone.
If waiting for an answer makes your nervous, there is a company called Lone Star Telecom, Inc. that has come up with a product that will allegedly block 99.9% of a phone's radiation emissions. The Eversafe Radiation Protection Shield is a thin stick-on shield you paste onto your cell phone. It will also work with 900MHz cordless phones (who knew we had to worry about those too!)
Whether or not shielding is the way to go, I expect that if the solution is that simple, shields will be built into all phones going forward, although I'm wondering what they do to signal quality and interference. I have to say that the Eversafe Web site is pretty cheesy looking, but hey, if a $19.95 stick-on product is the ticket to a happy head, then the joke's on all of us. It also may be about as useful as spray on hair for bald men. Let me know what you think. Just don't call me!
Bio: Alice Hill was the VP of Development and Editorial Director for CNET, and is EVP of Cornerhardware.com. She covers technology every other week for ZDNN, pondering everything from the Wireless Web, Why Geeks Love Motor Scooters, and The End of the LCD Screen. She welcomes your comments.