Cigarettes and cell phones
07:19PM Jul 28, 2008 in category 
by George W Frink
Some of my social networking peers scoffed when Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, warned more than 3,000 staff to take careful cell phone radiation precautions, especially for children.
Typical of their skepticism was a Plurk friend who responded:
next drinking water will make the list!
That reaction was not unexpected. Nor is it to be sneered at.
More than a decade ago, when scientific data began to indicate brain cancer may be caused by microwave emissions from cellphones, the cellphone industry responded with claims of harmlessness to consumers, and attempts to suppress the research and control it.
Industry reaction to early work done by Henry Lai and Narendra "N.P." Singh at the University of Washington makes the case quite clear. In 2005 the University of Washington Alumni Magazine engineering writer Rob Harrill reported:
As Lai and Singh sought funding to conduct follow-up studies, word of the research began to get out.
According to internal documents that later came to light, Motorola started working behind the scenes to minimize any damage Lai's research might cause.
In a memo and a draft position paper dated Dec. 13, 1994, officials talked about how they had "war-gamed the Lai-Singh issue" and were in the process of lining up experts who would be willing to point out weaknesses in Lai's study and reassure the public.
This was before the study was published in 1995.
The cellphone industry subsequently took substantial control of the process of funding and carrying out studies.
The cellphone industry strategy of denial and control is a variant of one I saw burn through the lives of people around me after the first U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health was issued on Jan. 11, 1957, arriving in the mail as though it were another present honoring my tenth birthday.
I believed that's what it was.
So I opened and read the report with a mixture of astonishment and horror as I walked from the mailbox beside the Honeyhill Road to the farmhouse where I grew up. In the years that followed, an answering campaign of tobacco industry propaganda stalked through my world like a mind poison while lung cancer took away early to the grave one smoker and another whom I knew and loved.
Dr. Herberman is simply arguing that we take the kinds of precautions now that so many have died wishing had been adopted from the outset with tobacco:
Studies in humans do not indicate that cell phones are safe, nor do they yet clearly show that they are dangerous. But, growing evidence indicates that we should reduce exposures, while research continues on this important question.
He argues that the potential effects on children are of special concern, both because they are immediately vulnerable and because the effects spool out across their lives. The illustration below indicates how deeply at varying ages electromagnetic radiation form a cell phone can penetrate the brain:
He recommends ten reasonable measures:
- Do not allow children to use a cell phone except for emergencies. The developing organs of a fetus or child are the most likely to be sensitive to any possible effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields.
- While communicating using your cell phone, try to keep the cell phone away from the body as much as possible. The amplitude of the electromagnetic field is one fourth the strength at a distance of two inches and fifty times lower at three feet. Whenever possible, use the speaker-phone mode or a wireless Bluetooth headset, which has less than 1/100th of the electromagnetic emission of a normal cell phone. Use of a hands-free ear piece attachment may also reduce exposures.
- Avoid using your cell phone in places, like a bus, where you can passively expose others to your phones electromagnetic fields.
- Avoid carrying your cell phone on your body at all times. Do not keep it near your body at night such as under the pillow or on a bedside table, particularly if pregnant. You can also put it on flight or off-line mode, which stops electromagnetic emissions.
- If you must carry your cell phone on you, make sure that the keypad is positioned toward your body and the back is positioned toward the outside so that the transmitted electromagnetic fields move away from your rather than through you.
- Only use your cell phone to establish contact or for conversations lasting a few minutes as the biological effects are directly related to the duration of exposure. For longer conversations, use a land line with a corded phone, not a cordless phone, which uses electromagnetic emitting technology similar to that of cell phones.
- Switch sides regularly while communicating on your cell phone to spread out your exposure. Before putting your cell phone to the ear, wait until your correspondent has picked up. This limits the power of the electromagnetic field emitted near your ear and the duration of your exposure.
- Avoid using your cell phone when the signal is weak or when moving at high speed, such as in a car or train, as this automatically increases power to a maximum as the phone repeatedly attempts to connect to a new relay antenna.
- When possible, communicate via text messaging rather than making a call, limiting the duration of exposure and the proximity to the body.
- Choose a device with the lowest SAR possible (SAR = Specific Absorption Rate, which is a measure of the strength of the magnetic field absorbed by the body). SAR atings of contemporary phones by different for sar ratings cell phones on the internet.
One author has already called the cell phone industry strategy Big Tobacco 2.0? and her characterization has frightening merit. We know how this ends of it goes badly. It need not go badly. The death toll need not climb toward or past 5 million a year, as it has with smoking, before we conclude that action is merited.
We can and if we recover our collective sanity will take control of this issue back from the industry and see to it that the data required to support resonable decisions is accumulated and applied with all deliberate speed.
by George W Frink
