Get off that mobile phone , expert tells children

January 13, 2005

The British press has given a lot of ink to the Stewart report, with many interviews with Sir William. In one of the most detailed of these he tells Nic Fleming of the Daily Telegraph that he is “more concerned“ about possible health risks today than he was five years when his panel first called for children to be discouraged from using mobile phones. Sir William tells the Telegraph that, “When it comes to suggesting that mobile phones should be available to three- to eight-year-olds, I can’t believe for a moment that can be justified. It seems to me ludicrous.” He explains: “They should not have them because children’s skulls are not fully thickened, their nervous systems are not fully developed and the radiation penetrates further into their brains.” Not everyone agrees with Stewart. The editorial writers at the Telegraph called him a “Professional Fusspot”, arguing that “all human activity carries risks, and we have quite enough to worry about these days, without getting into a flap about dangers that may or may not exist.” Even some of those who work with him at the NRPB appear to a bit uneasy. (We doubt that the NRPB has yet gotten comfortable with having an activist as its chairman.) In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, published today, Michael Clark, of the NRPB’s press office tried to moderate Sir William’s warnings. “Our chairman felt very strongly that parents ought to be aware of the risk of a risk. But we found no hard evidence of a risk,” Clark said. The Journal also quotes David Heim, the deputy editor of Consumer Reports, who also downplays possible concerns. He discounts recent studies pointing to possible hazards —for instance, the recent Karolinska report of an increased incidence of acoustic neuromas among those who had used cell phones for more than ten years. Heim’s reasoning is that ten years ago everyone was using analog phones, which have now been replaced by digital phones. “Analog phones use considerably more power than digital phones and their emission patterns are different,” he told the Journal. Heim is right, but he neglects to mention that pulsed radiation, like the signals from many digital phones, is more biologically active than the continuous wave (CW) radiation associated with analog phones. At this point, no one has any idea whether the added biological activity might compensate for the weaker signals. More importantly, Heim is disregarding a much more important issue. According to the current paradigm, even the analog signals from cell phones are incapable of causing any health effects. So, if the Karolinska study turns out to reflect a true tumor risk, all bets on which signals present a health hazard would be off. Another question which we have asked in the past (see MWN, J/F02) is why Consumers Union and its magazine, Consumer Reports, is so gung ho about discounting cell phone risks —to the point of sounding more like industry spokesmen than advocates for the public welfare. As we argued in our recent commentary on EMFs and the precautionary principle, the reason the EMF controversy does not ever move forward toward a resolution is that those who traditionally speak out on behalf of public health remain strangely silent when it comes to electromagnetic health risks. Finally, we should give credit to the Journal for covering this story. It is essentially the only newspaper in America to do so. The Financial Times had an item in the UK news, but, perhaps because it well understands the US market, it did not bother to run the news in its US edition.

As expected, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences today released its report on the possible health impacts of the US Air Force’s PAVE PAWS radar. The investigating committee found that, “There is no evidence of adverse health effects to Cape Cod residents from long-term exposure to radiofrequency energy from [the] nearby U.S. Air Force radar installation," the press release states. You can download a free summary. You can also read the report page-by-page, but you cannot download a full copy. The published report will be available for purchase later this winter from the National Academy Press.

On the lighter side, a friend asked us today why we don’t have any fun stuff on our Web site and he sent along a “radiation puzzle” from the “kids’ corner” of the National Safety Council’s Web site. So, for a change of pace, here it is.

To read more, visit www.microwavenews.com