Is your cellphone going to kill you?
The dreadful 1995 film Johnny Mnemonic had few redeeming features, other than Keanu Reeves. It did, however, have one interesting idea: a fictional disease called “nerve attenuation syndrome” which was caused by overexposure to electromagnetic fields.
In the film, people afflicted with “NAS” were subject to uncontrollable seizures, and were denied the cure for their ailment by a sinister corporation. In real life, we have yet to see a widespread plague brought about by technological devices (I’m not so sure about sinister corporations), but perhaps that day isn’t too far away.
Certainly, according to some scientists, the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) created by devices from lamps and hairdryers to mobile phones and wireless laptop are already doing irreparable harm to our collective health, causing cancer, genetic mutations, and a host of other problems.
Other prominent scientists, however, insist that there is insufficient evidence to say that EMFs are a health problem, and accuse their peers of scaremongering. So where does this debate leave us hapless WiFi-, Crackberry- and iPhone-addicted consumers? Should we be unplugging to save our brains, or are the predictions of EMF-naysayers as fictional as “NAS”?
What exactly are EMFs?
Before we make a judgment, let’s start with a crash course in EMFs. EMFs are invisible fields of electromagnetic radiation that are created around anything that uses electricity. The earth is naturally surrounded by EMFs created by the planet’s magnetic poles, the earth’s rotation, and so on (for another great EMF-based scare flick, see the 2003 film The Core). Over the last few hundred years, however, the amount of electromagnetic radiation around us has increased dramatically as technology has evolved.
There are different types of EMFs, classified according to their wavelength. They range from extremely low frequency (ELF) fields, generated by power lines and certain appliances, to intermediate frequency (IF) fields, generated by computer screens, to radiofrequency (RF) fields, generated by cell phones and radio towers, all the way up to high-frequency X-rays and beyond (see chart).
EMFs demonstrably have the ability to affect biological entities. At the one end of the scale, for example, microwaves can heat up biological tissue to the point of explosion (think egg-in-a-microwave-oven), while X-rays are known to cause cancer. However, there’s a lot of debate over whether or not low-frequency EMFs harm biological tissues.
Currently, the opinion of regulators is that the evidence shows no danger from lower-frequency EMFs, and until someone can prove that they are harmful (beyond their thermal, or heating, effects, which are currently strictly regulated), little restriction is necessary. The lack of evidence for effects, in other words, is taken as evidence that there are no effects. The net result is that all of us are, by default, enrolled in a giant, uncontrolled field experiment to see what happens to human bodies as EMFs increase exponentially.
The evidence for and against
As noted above, there is very limited evidence showing that low-frequency EMFs are harming us. Indeed, the World Health Organization has said that, based on a review of the scientific literature, “current evidence does not confirm the existence of any health consequences from exposure to low level electromagnetic fields.”
However, critics argue that much of the increase in mid-range EMFs is relatively recent, dating back to the introduction of mobile phones and WiFi, which makes long-term trends hard to assess. Furthermore, many studies of EMF effects have relied on self-reported exposure measures (asking people how much they used their phones or computers), which are notoriously unreliable, and have been very cross-sectional (they have just taken a snapshot at one time, instead of following people over time), so they could easily have missed effects. What’re needed are comprehensive, long-term panel studies that follow people and accurately measure their exposure and disease profiles – let’s hope these get done.
At any rate, even given current evidence, some scientists think that there’s reason to be much more careful about increasing our exposure to EMFs. A scientific panel that met last year in Seletun in Norway, for example, published a report in a journal saying that, first, there is evidence of negative effects – including increased cancer risk – on children and fetuses, which should lead to stricter standards, and, second, that the lack of definitive evidence for harm is no reason for us to increase exposure uncontrollably, especially given the flaws in existing studies (see a video from the panel here).
The bottom line seems to be that, as of today, there is no evidence to suggest that healthy adults are in danger from low-frequency EMFs. However, the exponential increase in EMFs is relatively new (especially for RF fields) and long-term effects are unclear; many studies have had methodological problems; and there is evidence that children and fetuses can be harmed by certain EMFs.
While we await more research, then, there does seem to be reason to perhaps buy yourself a hands-free kit (not a Bluetooth one, though, since that will create its own EMF).
Is your cellphone going to kill you? << Comments and views
Source: Moneyweb
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