Cell Phones

I am offering you the ability to hold an electromagnetic transmitter to your head for 500 minutes per month. What? 500 minutes isn't enough?!1 You say you want to hold an electromagnetic transmitter to your head for UNLIMITED minutes each month? Heh heh. Be my guest, just make sure you pay me $100 per month for the privilege! Don't worry, the transmitter has flashy colors, just like you like them. There there, you go talk to your friends.

An article on Information Week today highlighted an increased risk of a type of cancer for frequent cell phone users. I am known as a bit of a crackpot when it comes to cell phones. I don't talk on one unless I absolutely have to as part of my job, and if I am on a call, I will minimize the time I am on as much as possible. If I am sitting at my desk and my cell phone rings, I may not answer if I can see the caller ID and immediately ring them back from my desk phone. If I do answer, I will find a land line phone nearby and try to end the call and call the person back. I aim for less than 1 minute at a time on the cell phone. If I am sitting down and I don't need to have my phone clipped to my waist, it goes on the other side of my desk or in a metal drawer so I don't get residual radiation. Crazy, right? I used to own a cell phone, then I quit, now I have one for my job as a government employee. When I am done with this job, I will not take a job that requires me to carry a cell phone, much less converse regularly on one. I don't need a study to tell me that cell phones are dangerous to your body, my reasons are based on science and common sense.

Cell phones are an electromagnetic transmitter. They radiate information via an omnidirectional antenna which means that when you talk on one, your brain is directly in the path of that radiation. Three variables govern the effect of radiation on living organisms, they are: time, distance, and shielding. The goal is to maximize distance and shielding, while minimizing time. Shielding counts when an object that does not permit electromagnetic radiation (i.e. lead) from passing through is placed between you and the transmitter. Unless you wear a lead hat, much of that radiation is passing right through your skull and into your brain. Distance speaks to the space between the source of radiation and the living organism. Talking on a cell phone places the transmitter and receiver is places as close as it can get to the most critical body organ you have, your brain. Time refers to the duration of exposure to radiation. Judging by the people I know who use cell phones, time is generally maximized whenever practicable. Cell phones, therefore, maximize time, and minimize distance and shielding.

Even when the cell phone is not actively being used for a call, it is still radiating, maintaining contact with the cell phone towers to ensure constant connectivity. While it is doing so, it is usually located next to another highly critical portion of the body, the waist area, if you catch my meaning. If you don't think cell phones emit much radiation, you are correct, the level is relatively low, but it is the cumulative effect of all of that radiation on your cells that is debilitating. Once cigarette won't kill you either, but smoke a pack a day for a few years and see how you are doing. If you like, put your cell phone near your computer speakers your radio and you can hear the radiation when you make or receive a call as interference on your speakers.

Overexposure to radiation of any type is dangerous and cell phones are no exception to this rule. Radiation has a distinctly negative effect on the human body, but because you cannot taste, see, hear, or even feel it, its effects often ignored and are not noticeable until it is too late. Overzealous sunbathers can feel the short-term effects of overexposure in the form of a sunburn, and in the long term, as an increased risk of skin cancer. Nuclear workers can find themselves at increased risk for cancer if their exposure to nuclear radiation in the form of radioactive decay is not strictly regulated. Cell phone radiation different in terms of the frequencies involved, but it is included in electromagnetic spectrum just like sunlight and radioactive nuclear decay.

As a staunch libertarian, I will not tell you that you cannot use your cell phone all you want, nor should legislation be passed to restrict their use in any way. I won't use one, and if you think about it, neither should you, not unless you have to.