Your Cell Phone Could Be Killing You — Here’s How to Practice Safe Tech
Story by:
Jeff Myhre
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Written on:
December 19th, 2013
A while ago, I did something I don’t often do — I read the manual for a
new gadget I had purchased, specifically my new cell phone. What I discovered
in the fine print was troubling. The manufacturer warned that I should keep the
device 5/8 of an inch away from my head. After asking “who the hell does that?”
I did a little digging. The manufacturer’s legal department threw that into the
manual to protect the company from civil claims arising from possible cancers.
A little more digging and I discovered that there are indeed a lot of concerns
about low-level radio waves emitted by our cells and tablets. These concerns
rise as the age of the user drops. Kids are particularly at risk, according to
some of the people who study this kind of thing.
I must admit I have always doubted that low-level radiation could cause
tumors. I had been taught that the energy in these radio waves is too low to
cause the kind of DNA damage that we know causes various cancers. Open and shut
case, I thought. After all, since the arrival of the cell phone in the last
couple of decades, there has been no increase in the occurrence of brain
cancer. What my recent research into the subject shows is that among people in
their 20s (the first generation of kids to have cells) there is an increase in
brain cancer that is masked by lower incidents in older adults in the overall
sample. When the facts change, you need to change your mind.
One of the groups working on cell phone safety is the Environmental
Health Trust, founded by Devra Davis (founding director of the Board on
Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the U.S. National Research Council,
National Academy of Sciences) and the late Ronald Herberman (founding director
of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and the UPMC Cancer Centers
and also a professor of medicine and Biology at Pitt).
The EHT is working to get the FCC to revise its safety guidelines for
cell phone and tablet use, which are 17 years old. When it came out with these
recommendations, the FCC used as its basis a 6’2″, 220-pound man, with an 11-pound
head and presumed phone usage of less than 30 minutes a day. About 3% of the
population meets or exceeds these dimensions; the guidelines are too lax for
the other 97%. These days, 30 minutes of cell phone use is not that uncommon.
In other words, the guidelines are inappropriate.
Children are particularly vulnerable because, quite frankly, they aren’t
just little adults. Their bodies are still growing and changing rapidly. For
instance, their skulls are thinner and possess more absorptive fluid that those
of adults. That means that they get hit harder by RF waves. When you consider
that a cell phone in your pocket emits somewhere between four and seven times
the amount of radiation the FCC considers safe, clearly there is a risk, and
for kids, it’s worse.
The genie is out of the bottle, though, and we aren’t going to uninvent
this technology. Nor are we going to convince our kids to give up their cells
and tablets. So, the EHT offers these safety tips:
• Read the manual to discover the minimum safe distance, which will vary
depending on whether the device is in use or in standby mode.
• If your child is going to play with a tablet or cell, airplane mode is
safer.
• Limit your child’s use of these devices to two hours a day.
• Texting limits exposure far more than making a call, so for quick
exchanges, hit the keyboard.
• For long conversations, use a landline.
• When shopping for a new device, get the one with the lowest Specific
Absorption Rate, which is a measure of the strength of the magnetic field
absorbed by the body.
• When carrying a device, put it in a purse rather than a pocket. Men
should avoid putting a cell phone in their trouser pockets, and women should
keep it away from their breasts.
• If you have to carry a wireless device in your pocket, have the
keyboard face you — that way the majority of the energy will move away from
you. And if you aren’t expecting a call, putting your phone on airplane mode or
off line ends the radio wave emission.
Happy Christmas, and practice safe tech.
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