Limit mobile phone use, cancer expert tells staff....
...is the headline for this Guardian report. We hope to talk to will hear from Dr Ronald Herberman tonight. You can read more here.
Jump to more content from this blog
About this blog
The blog for the afternoon news and current affairs programme presented by Eddie Mair.
Subscribe to PM
You can stay up to date with PM via these feeds.
PM Feed(RSS)
PM Feed(ATOM)
If you aren't sure what RSS is you'll find our beginner's guide to RSS useful.
Listen to PM
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~58~RS~)
Comments
Sign in or register to comment.
I seem to remember expert after expert coming onto news programmes to say that mobile phone use was perfectly safe (though advising limiting the use for children). It didn't sound convincing then, and it doesn't convince me now.
Finally the experts are facing up to the fact that the use of this technology is too new for us to be sure, and that we should all treat it with caution.
I don't want to be right on this one, but I do fear that there is a timebomb ticking out there ....
Complain about this comment
Oh yes please ban them,
especially when I'm on the train,
and all I can hear is
yes,
yes,
really,
he didn't
no really
so what did you do,
no
well you did the right thing
yes, I would have cut them off
.
for 45 minutes
Complain about this comment
I used to wear a hands-free handset in the car, but I started to get odd pains - which went away when I stopped wearing it (other than to answer a call).
I'm not saying that I was affected by anything in particular, and have found the mobile phone a great help in my life, but sticking a transmitter by your ear?
Complain about this comment
DT - How did you wear a hands-free handset? Was it an earpiece-type thing or a car kit?
Vainly Here
Complain about this comment
I used to go hands free,
but a slap from the missus usually fixes that...
Complain about this comment
Oh? Putting a source of radiation next to a hole in your skull *isn't* safe? Well, I never.
No, really. I never use a mobile telephone. I'm not going to get my brains cooked just for the sake of constantly talking to someone else. Unlike many people I see and hear on the train and on the street, I can go a whole five minutes or even more without talking to someone.
Complain about this comment
Cat: So can I ;o)
I do own a mobile phone, but I manage to keep usage down to about one hour total per year. It always makes me smile when people ask me for my mobile number. As I tell them, the phone is so rarely switched on, they'd do better sending me a message by carrier pigeon.
Complain about this comment
I was never worried about cancer. However, I got into the habit of putting the phone in my jeans pocket. It was after a year back in civilization I realized I was getting a twitch in my leg muscle. So I carried the phone in my coat pocket and the twitch stopped. They talk about macro effects like heating and cancer, but what about the simple disruption to synapses and individual nerves.
What would if it be like to have a twitch in your brain? Or is that my problem!
Complain about this comment
Please Mr Eddie don't take my mobile phone away. I listen to the pm programme on it while I'm walking to the station and waiting for the train.
I rarely use it for phone calls, it's much more fun using it as a radio.
Complain about this comment
Stop Press
Supermarkets report panic buying of aluminium foil.
Customers observed wrapping it around their heads.
Customers inverviewed mumbled something about "Electronic smog".
Complain about this comment
VH (4),
Earpiece type, with Bluetooth - another type of transmitter...
Complain about this comment
Well, as I've lost the home charger for my mobile, it spends most of its life sitting between the the passenger seat and handbrake of my car. At work it tends to sit in my jacket pocket on a coat stand several feet away from where I work. So it's only when I'm out and about casually that it tends to spend any time near my body, in my jeans pocket. I'm single, so haven't determined any possible impact yet...
Complain about this comment
SSC 6, Your computer screen will get you.
Complain about this comment
David (13):
Possibly, but if I remember my basic physics correctly, doesn't the power of an EM field fall off by the inverse square rule? If so, I'll be fine as long as I don't stick it up against my ear, nose or mouth...
Complain about this comment
SSC 13, I didn't take physics. Stick a deckchair up your nose. No radiation involved.
Complain about this comment
Why should we be worried about mobile phone tumours. We have been sitting in front of our TV's for fifty years that have been spitting out X-rays which are many many times worse than the exudations of mobile phones.
Dr. Ron from Saculina.
Complain about this comment
SScat, are we still in the era of 'screens are dangerous an you shouldn't use them if you're pregnant'?
Is this still true? Was it a scare?
(Nervously) Even now? And are flat screens as bad as the old ones with the large backsides?
You'll note I have mastery of the techie speak.
I have absolutely no idea. But I do spend a fair amount of time on my 'puter.
Anyone with any serious scientific answers to these?
Complain about this comment
Frances O (17):
The fat-bottomed TVs (was that a Queen song?) or Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs) were quite nasty in that they spat out erm... cathode rays also known as beta particles or high-energy electrons. (Not X-Rays, Dr. Ron.)
The three types of common radiation are:
Alpha particles - the heavy bits of atoms. Being heavy they're easily stopped by a bit of paper.
Beta particles - the light bits of atoms which are therefore about 100 times more penetrating than alphas. long exposure to skin penetrating betas can be damaging.
Gamma rays - not particles, but energy*. Very nasty. This is what comes off what we typically think of as radiation sources. Zaps through most things short of lead, but causes damage to tissue as it goes.
Now, I'm not sure that LCD screens emit no beta particles, but they certainly don't have a huge gun firing them towards the viewer at high energies like CRTs did. More likely to cause damage to you is the electro-magnetic field emitted by the screen and everything else with a current passing through it. If you're worried about that, I'd suggest living in a cave so that you don't have wires running through all your walls...
* Yes, quantum physics gets a bit fuzzy about what's energy and what's a particle, but if you knew that why aren't you explaining this to Frances O?
Complain about this comment
Frances_O 17
The old CRT screens were more dangerous especially if you dropped one on your foot. I still use one because it is too heavy to lift of the desk.
As for X-Rays, if you lower your chair or raise the screen they would only fry your brain and not the baby's.
Complain about this comment
Big Sister 7
I'm with you on this one. I don't understand the mobile phone thing. Nice to have if the car breaks down late and night (althought I have had it 13 years and it hasn't done so yet) or you are stuck on Ben Nevis in a snow storm in August.
Anyway, it is just so rude. Your employer goes to all the trouble of putting a phone on your desk and paying for the calls so it is positively churlish not to use it.
You are sitting on the train trying to read your book and some young man near to you is having a girlie conversation with a male friend he has just left 5 minutes before about a female in the group and what she meant by ....
I think the radiation leads to hormonal changes.
[There are other brands of men and women. Not all relationships damage your health]
Complain about this comment
Cat 18
The huge big gun on LCD screens are usually firing photons, increasing now from LEDs. If that worries you you had better become nocturnal as there is an even bigger gun firing them at you during the day.
Complain about this comment
SSC (18),
Cathode rays are indeed electrons in flight, as are beta rays (but from entirely different sources). However, a CRT tube is designed to have the electrons stopped, and in doing so, excite a phosphor which then emits light, through a glass layer (screen). We perceive the collective of that as a picture on the TV screen.
The same basic layout ("gun", "accelerator", "target") is also used for medical X-ray generators. Different target, and probably different amount of acceleration. I don't know if a TV CRT actually puts out X-rays, but it would not surprise me if they put out radiation (other than visible light) from a variety of possible mechanisms.
Complain about this comment
Smugness abounds.
I would find it extremely difficult to do my job and maintain any kind of 'life' (as opposed to 'work') unless I had a mobile phone. Try finding a public phone between Bearsden and Aberfoyle without an OS map and a compass....
Complain about this comment
Thanks, Deepthought. It's been longer than I care to remember since I did physics officially, so I'm happy to be corrected.
As for the CRT thing, I was indeed taught at school that the phosphor/glass was enough to stop (virtually) all of the electrons, but then in the 80's/90's came the research (or maybe tabloid hype) that plenty were getting through and mutating babies... yes, sounds tabloid now I think of it...
UptheTrossachs (23):
Fair enough, but the last time I had to 'phone anyone from somewhere other than home or the office was around 2003. I know I may not have a typical life, but the gap between my lifestyle and the hoardes in the town centre with the 'phone either clamped to their heads or held out in front of them in both paws like a divining tool seems amazing.
Complain about this comment
Think Tobacco Industry.
They bamboozled us for decades to protect their profits in the denial of risk....Even though the scientific medical community banged on about the dangers for years.....
Truth will out.
Fumors Fumors Fumors,
Tumors Tumors Tumors,
Rumors Rumors -Rumors.
Bloomers Bloomers Bloomers.
Complain about this comment
A I understand it the explanation by The Stainless Steel Cat, is the most complete, except the Cat omits to mention that the X-rays that are emitted by the electrons when they are stopped are the very reason why Cathode ray tube monitors inparticular are so damn heavy is that the glass, at least the glass at the front [where the image is] is very thick and very heavily doped with lead. This is why monitors and TVs with CRTs need to be properly recycled. Lead is very toxic [especially to children] and accumulates in the body and the EU is trying to reduce exposure to it as much as possible.
I think it unlikely that any Cathode rays could make it through a modern CRT with all that lead.
PS I hope the Stainless Steel Cat doesn't eat birds, bats or Herps [frogs, newts, snakes & lizards].
Complain about this comment
View these comments in RSS