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Mobile phone radiation scares: snake-oil alert!

Fears of phone radiation, may, just may, one day, turn out to be justified. But no product on the market today is capable of reducing the dangers. Beware snake-oil!

A friend died last month, of a brain cancer.

Before he died, he was utterly convinced, beyond doubt, beyond debate, that it was his mobile phone which caused it. The question is, how would he know?

Around him, a room full of people sat listening - every one of whom uses a mobile phone every day. None of them has a tumour.

Every day, dentists and other medical staff expose themseves to X-Ray machines in the course of their work. And X-Rays are known to be seriously, dangerously carcinogenic; and yet, medical staff no longer show any great statistical predisposition to X-Ray induced cancer. Every day, smokers expose themselves to tobacco products, which are known to be serioiusly, dangerously carcinogenic; and every day, the people who die of lung and throat cancer are predominantly smokers.

The latest "scandal" to hit the phone radiation headlines, is the disclosure that the amount of radiation you get from a phone can be reduced by using some kinds of phone screen. And according to the Department of Trade and Industry, some kinds of radiation shield can significantly reduce mobile phone exposure for the user, but only at the cost of reducing the radiation the phone puts out: but according to The Inquirer, this isn't quite true; and some devices can decrease the amount of radiation you absorb "by as much as 20 per cent without inhibiting performance."

We keep having these arguments, because that's all we can argue about. What we can't argue about is the number of people with brain tumours who were phone users, compared with those who weren't - because there are no statistics to analyse.

The X-Ray example is a good one. Before the statistics were analysed, people operated X-Ray machines, and went home feeling fine. But statistically, it became clear that they were accumulating exposure to ionizing radiation, and that this was causing cancer; medical workers who worked near X-Ray machines had more cancers than others.

The industry responded by building radiation shelters for X-Ray machine operators, by measuring the amount of radiation they threw out, working out how far away you had to go to be safe; and codes of practice have been established. Now, medical workers don't show up on the stats any more.

We can't do that with phones. We haven't had phones for long enough. The first mobile phones went into common use 15 years ago; they were mostly car-phones, with external antennae. The arrival of the mass-market mobile wasn't until around 1990; and the expansion of the market to the point where more than half the population had access to a mobile wasn't for another five years. At best, if you were analysing the data, you'd have five years of statistics to look at.

Take cigarettes as a contrast. If you smoked heavily for five years, what would your chances of developing lung cancer be? Pretty damn slight. Most heavy smokers, after five years, can give up the habit, and within a year or so, they'll have lost their cough, which will probably be the only symptom they have, and within another five years, will be (statistically) at the same risk of lung cancer as someone who never smoked at all.

That's the scary bit. If you used a phone for five years, and had no symptoms, that would prove absolutely nothing at all. It would leave open the frightening possibility that phones were as dangerous as cigarettes.

So fear rules the debate. There is no knowledge that can be pulled from the stats. And that will remain true until the stats start showing data - which may be in another year, or another ten years, or another thirty years, or, quite possibly, never. Because it remains quite possible that phone frequencies have no long-term dangerous effects on humans.

Let me be clear on this: I don't expect the stats to show anything up. I think that the primary effects of microwave radiation on human tissue are already known, that they are not carcinogenic, and that they aren't cumulative.

But I also know that this is simply my own opinion; and that if the stats did show something in another decade, then I would have been wrong. And you'd be daft to take my opinion as any sort of scientific guide to your own behaviour! - and the sensible approach would be to say: "At least, we know that the statistics after five years of mass market use of phones don't show any more danger than cigarettes show; and so there's a good chance that they are a lot less damaging."

And here's the bit that annoys me: the DTI report is, possibly, slightly optimistic in its assessment of the amount of SAR exposure. It is, possibly, the case that some "buttons" will reduce SAR (the specific absorption rate) by which mobile phones are judged - by "as much as" 20%.

And so damn what? If you reduced your cigarette intake by 20%, would you expect this to affect your health by any measurable amount?

Let's get real. If mobile phone radiation is even as dangerous as cigarettes, then wearing phone shields is about as helpful as a 20-a-day smoker smoking four fewer fags a day. Or, to put it another way, no damn use whatever.

If you are afraid of mobile phone radiation, don't just give up your phone. Move to an isolated corner of the Hebrides, out of the range of communications towers using microwave, out of the range of radar, and do all your cooking over a peat fire. Otherwise, you're the equivalent of a heavy smoker, sitting all day in an unventillated pub, and solemnly turning down four or five cigarettes.

The DTI's report is available at Sartest.com in Adobe Acrobat format.

And you might like to look at the radar frequency spectrum listed here.

I'm not saying that mobile phones and WiFi radiation is guaranteed good for you. But I am saying that anybody who sells you a phone radiation "protection" device which is good for you, is selling snake-oil.