Filed under: articles, daily life, french laws, games/software/tech, health, kids, news, politics
By now, you’ve probably heard about a correlation between cell phone use and cancer. But geez, you can’t listen to those things because you absolutely love your cell phone. Who doesn’t? You were so freakin’ relieved to find out that those popcorn popping celphones were a hoax. Don’t lie. This love you have for your cute electronic companion has conveniently ousted from your head any negative publicity your mobile beloved has received. You really want to ignore them! Here’s you, “cell phones are dangerous??? NAH….. Don’t be silly! Cancer? Pfff. That is ridiculous. I use mine all the time and I’m fine!”
Do you say that because you don’t WANT it to be true? You can want all you like but just because you don’t want it to be true doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
No one WANTED cigarettes to be the leading cause of death, cancer, heart disease and lung disease (among other things), did they? Many cigarettes smokers said, “they smoked all the time and they were fine!”
No one wanted to believe that the building material called asbestos would kill them. No one wanted to think that anything was wrong with their PVC window frames? Check your hospitals, do they have any PVC? Answer: No. “But the PVC pipes and windows were so cheap,” people say…
Hospitals also don’t allow cell phone use, or wifi for that matter. Do people wonder WHY? I wish they did.
The warnings have been around for a long time but it has been in French news more and more this year. I mean, you can’t let your peeps keep doing harmful things to their bodies, can you France?
French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin also went on France 2 TV and rehashed the well-worn theory connecting cell phone use with cancer.
In the U.S. neurosurgeons can’t admit that cell phones are dangerous and cause brain cancer, but they WILL admit that they NEVER put a cell phone up to their heads. Ever! What do BRAIN SURGEONS know, anyway!??!
Hang on. Aside from being rant-errific, I do have some useful information that might prompt you to reduce the amount of risk to which you subject yourself.
Both Europe and the U.S. have defined safety limits for exposure to radio frequency (RF) energy produced by mobile devices. The SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) or DAS (débit d’absorption spécifique) in France is a measure or index of the rate at which RF energy is absorbed by the body when exposed to radio-frequency electromagnetic field.
In the United States the FCC requires that phones sold have a SAR level at or below 1.6 watts per kilogram (W/kg) taken over a volume of 1 gram of tissue.
In the European Union, the SAR limit is 2 W/kg, averaged over ten grams of tissue. For whole body exposure there is a limit of 0.08 Watt/kg averaged over the whole body.
What you can do: Find out the index of your mobile phone then act accordingly. If it’s too high, get a different phone that is safer. Here’s a chart with a list of phones and their SARs.
As an example, the new 3G iPhone’s SAR (or indice DAS in French) is 1.388 W/kg. The first generation iPhone was 0.974 W/Kg. Other examples: Motorola Razr2 v9 is 0.52. The Samsung SLM is 0.48. As low as some of the phone’s indices are, neurosurgeons STILL won’t put them up to their heads!
What you can do: Like neurosurgeons, DON’T put the cellphone up to your head. Use speaker phone mode. Note: Bluetooth devices and unshielded wired-earphones amplify the signal. In other words, they radiate more, NOT less.
What you can do: Remember that the industries will ALWAYS deny the existence of any dangers. Not only that, they are responsible for those “counter” studies that come out after researchers warn about the dangers of a product. Scientific studies have been suppressed by the cell phone industry and the government to protect their profits. Do not buy that game.
What you can do: Reduce your cell phone use to a bare minimum. Keep conversations short.
What you can do: Don’t let kids use the phone at all if possible. If they must, not for more than a minute at a time. Ideally, they should never use them or use them only for emergency situations.
What you can do: Turn your cell phone off when it isn’t needed and especially when you are driving your car. When driving with your cell phone on, the waves ricochet inside the car because cars are metallic, creating a Faraday Cage.
What you can do: When possible, keep the cell phone as far away from your body as much as possible.
Links: SAR, Get Little Kids Away from the iPhone and iPod Touch, Cell Phone Dangers Revealed, Patents Prove Cell Phone Dangers from Wired, Hidden Dangers of Cell Phone Radiation, Chemical and Cell Phones, Harmful Effects of Cell Phones, Hazards of the Wireless Age, Reduce Risks, Mobile Phones more dangerous than smoking
france, How to Reduce Your Cell Phone Risks, cell phones and cancer, SAR, Indice DAS
6 Comments so far
Leave a comment
If what you write is true, than most of the population of France will die of cancer induced by cell phone use.
Comment by Bob 07.26.08 @ 12:10 pmwe have a friend who has died from a brain tumor. no one can prove it was from his constant cell phone use. who is to know? he was 27.
whatever, dude. i’m not saying that everyone will get cancer. did you not really read the post? i’m saying that people can reduce their risk factor if they pay more attention to the warnings out there then act accordingly.
there are people who smoked 3 packs of cigarettes for 60 years and never got cancer.
we just think it’s a good policy to be safe than sorry.
Comment by ptinfrance 07.26.08 @ 12:24 pmThe NY Times article says that two of the neurosurgeons use ear pieces. You seem to be saying that an earpiece amplifies the radiation. I don’t see how that is possible. Bluetooth, yes, because you are putting a transmitter in your ear but an ordinary ear piece puts distance between you and the phone with a wire. The phone is the transmitter. Where is your source for that fact that earpieces are dangerous?
Comment by Canuck1 07.31.08 @ 9:13 pmunshielded wire headsets can act as an antenna to draw EMR. some say it increases radiation, some say it emits some ambiant EMR. i’m not going to argue whether headsets are safe or not.
the real problem is the dangers of your cell phone EMF radiation, so even using an airtube with your headsets doesn’t protect you completely.
using headsets still does not eliminate risk. You can’t use headsets without a cell phone…
Comment by ptinfrance 08.01.08 @ 2:44 amLeave a comment
E-mail addresses are never displayed - If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting. HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
How about SHIELDED wired earpieces ?
Comment by Fabrice 07.25.08 @ 3:13 pm