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Do Cell Phones
Need Warnings?
Time
Journalist: John Greenwald
October 09, 2000
Any cell-phone shopper who
walks into one of the 120 Metrocall stores across the U.S. these days should
be ready for a shock. The clerk, instead of delivering a hard sell, will
whip out a one-page health-and-safety bulletin that warns of the possible
dangers of using a cell phone. The leaflet cautions parents who want phones
for their children to consider pagers instead, to avoid exposing the
youngsters to any risks. "We try not to take sides in the argument about
cell-phone safety," says Mike Scanlon, Metrocall's senior vice president for
marketing. "But at least we can make our customers aware of the debate."
Metrocall may be a maverick in confronting the sensitive issue of potential
cell-phone health hazards, but the rest of the U.S. will soon catch up.
Soon, Motorola, Nokia and all other cell-phone makers will bow to mounting
concerns about safety by disclosing just how much radiation their phones
emit. The once hard-to-find data--measured in "specific absorption rates,"
or SAR's--will come packaged with the latest models, some of which could hit
stores by Christmas. That is likely to launch a scramble by concerned
shoppers to find the cell phones that put out the lowest levels of
radiation.
Such a beauty contest is precisely what phone makers are eager to avoid.
"There has been huge concern that this could be used for comparison
shopping," says Norm Sandler, a spokesman for Motorola, the No. 2 cellular
manufacturer after Nokia. To discourage what they call misleading
comparisons, the companies will place a statement in boxes that declares all
phones that emit radiation below the U.S. Federal Communications Commission
SAR ceiling of 1.6 are equally safe. (An SAR measures the energy in watts
per kilogram that one gram of body tissue absorbs from a cell phone.)
"There's no evidence that any number below the threshold is safer than any
other," says Chuck Eger, Motorola's director of strategic and regulatory
policy for personal-communications products.
Nor does anyone expect the release of radiation figures to slow the
phenomenal growth of the $50 billion cell-phone industry. More than 400
million mobile phones are in use worldwide, and manufacturers expect to sell
another 400 million units this year. In the U.S., cell-phone users spend an
average of 150 min. a month yakking into their beloved mobile phones. "This
is the most popular product known to man," says Ed Snyder, who follows
wireless technologies for the Chase H&Q investment firm. "More cell phones
will be sold this year than all the computers, TVs, personal digital
assistants and pagers combined."
Nonetheless, a comparison of the radiation levels for phones now in stores
hints at the choices that consumers will soon face. The data first appeared
on an obscure FCC website in June and has since become available on a more
consumer-friendly Internet venue (www.sardata.com/sardata.htm). According to
these figures, users of an Ericsson T28 World digital phone absorb an SAR of
1.49, while owners of a Motorola StarTAC 7860 get just 0.24. "Numbers
without context do not help any consumer," says Mikael Westmark, a
health-and-safety spokesman for Ericsson. Concurs William Plummer, Nokia's
vice president for government and industry affairs: "All these phones on the
market have passed a government safety standard."
The big problem is that scientists still haven't reached any definitive
conclusions about cell-phone radiation. Given that, consumers may grasp at
whatever data are available when deciding what to buy. That will be true
especially for purchases made for children, whose developing brains absorb
more radiation than adult brains and who could be exposed to potential harm
for decades to come. That prospect has led parents like Gilbert Yablon to
just say no. "I don't let my [eight-year-old] daughter talk on the cell
phone," says Yablon, who runs a movie-graphics company just outside Los
Angeles. "I'll take the risk for myself, but I don't want her exposed to
it."
Short of throwing away that cell phone or ignoring health issues altogether,
how should concerned consumers use these icons of 21st century life? In
England a blue-ribbon panel of experts recently called for "a precautionary
approach" that includes discouraging children from making nonessential calls
and using headsets to keep radiation away from the brain. The bottom line?
"Don't use a mobile phone more than you have to," says physicist Lawrence
Challis, vice chairman of the British group. "If there is a choice, use a
landline phone. If you do have to use a mobile phone, you should seriously
look into a hands-free extension" to minimize the risk. As such advice
spreads, manufacturers could find themselves marketing their phones on the
basis of safety as much as on styling or battery life
What Science Says: Mixed Message
Can your cell phone really give you cancer? The best answer science can
offer so far is maybe. Researchers have discovered that cell-phone radiation
can cause subtle, short-term biological effects in humans--including changes
in brain-wave patterns during sleep--but their full significance remains to
be determined. Given that uncertainty and the fact that everyone from the
National Cancer Institute to the World Health Organization is investigating
cell-phone radiation, many experts caution that it is far too early to give
the phones a clean bill of health.
Cell phones work by transmitting radio waves to base stations that plug
calls into a network. The waves are a form of non-ionizing
radiation--unlike, say, X rays, which have the power to change the atoms in
human cells to potentially hazardous ions by scattering their electrons.
Non-ionizing radiation can also be dangerous. At the high levels found in
radar or inside microwave ovens, it can
heat and severely damage tissue. The question for scientists is whether the
low-energy (and low-heat) signals from cell phones can do harm. "What this
debate is really about," says Microwave News editor Louis Slesin, "is
whether cell phones have non-thermal health effects."
Cancer studies have been inconclusive since 1993, when a Florida man brought
an unsuccessful lawsuit that blamed his wife's fatal brain tumor on her use
of a cell phone. In a frequently cited 1997 report, Australian researchers
exposed mice bred with a predisposition to lymphomas to two daily 30-min.
doses of cell-phone radiation for up to 18 months. The mice developed tumors
at twice the rate of animals that were radiation-free. But the results
haven't been duplicated, and some scientists question their relevance.
The most outspoken cell-phone critic is George Carlo, whom the cellular
industry hired to investigate the issue in the wake of the 1993 case. Backed
by a $25 million grant, Carlo launched a series of studies that ended last
year, including one that he claims shows a link between cell-phone use and a
rare type of brain tumor. That report's principal author has said the
correlation could be due to chance, but Carlo is undaunted. "No one study
allows you to make a definitive determination about public health," he says.
"It's how all the pieces fit together that counts." For now, the best advice
science can offer about cell phones is handle with care.
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