Are cell phone waves harmful?
By Dharmishta Rood
April 7, 2008 11:27 p.m.
In Los Angeles, we have a lot of air pollution to worry about, and cell phones may be causing air pollution that doesn’t gather in the sky the same way.
There is no doubt that cell phones emit a small amount of electromagnetic radiation, but whether it is enough to be harmful or absorbed by your tissue is another issue.
Cell phones emit a very low level of electromagnetic frequency.
This is generally between 0 and 300 gigahertz, and according to the Food and Drug Administration, it is not dangerous. These frequencies are radio waves; in a sense they are the same waves that cook food in a microwave or send non-satellite radio to your car.
More extreme cases of these waves, X-rays and gamma rays are found to cause ionization, or the removal of electrons from human tissue, but there is no ionization in cell phone use.
Many people turn to hands-free technology such as cordless Bluetooth devices or headsets. These limit the actual physical contact of the phone to the head while emitting radio frequencies.
Henry Phan, a second-year civil engineering student, said he finds his hands-free cumbersome. To him, the hassle of using outweighs the benefits.
Maybe the speaker built into iPhone headsets is the answer to our aesthetic and convenience concerns with other hands-free devices.
I know from personal experience that I get headaches if I use a cell phone for a long period of time without a Bluetooth or other headset. This could be from any number of factors, but I have my suspicions about the waves.
According to the FDA, large amounts of radio-frequency energy can heat cell tissue. I’m starting to wonder whether my cell phone gets so hot for this reason.
With the growing number of cell phones in the world, this issue is beginning to be a concern. According to the blog of Bruno Giussani, the European director of the Technology Entertainment Design Conferences, there are 30 countries where cell phone subscriptions outnumber their populations.
It is important to start considering the various types of impact they have on our lives because they are becoming more and more common.
Anahita Malek, a fourth-year biology student, does not use a hands-free device of any kind. She does use speakerphone, but only for safety while driving.
“Any kind of waves that go through your body are bad,” Malek said. “(But) the waves from the cell phone are really minimal.”
According to a congressional report from 2001 Research and Regulatory Efforts on Mobile Phone Health Issues, the FDA, World Health Organization and other leading health agencies concluded that the research does not show harmful effects from radio frequencies emitted from cell phones. However, they also concluded that there is not enough information to determine that there is no potential risk.
The risks are still being assessed. Now it’s our choice how much we want to expose ourselves to these dangers.
“I don’t think that it’s any worse than living in L.A. for a few years and breathing the air,” said Nicholas Panarella, a fourth-year global studies student.
According to the Federal Communication Commission Web site the specific absorption rate, or SAR, is the relative amount of radio-wave energy absorbed in the head of a cell phone user. There are numerous ways to look up the SAR of your particular cell phone. U.S. FCC requirement is that phones have a SAR level below 1.6 watts per kilogram. It’s fairly easy to become aware of the media that surround you; I for one, take my headaches as a warning and choose to keep the SAR rate for my brain down to 0.
