ARE CELLPHONES INJURIOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

In India, currently there are more than 80 crore cell phone subscribers and nearly 4.5 lakh cell phone towers. Cell phone technology has grown rap-idly in the last decade without giving due attention to the associated harmful eff ects of radiation, which are broadly divided into thermal and non-thermal

Thermal effects are similar to that of cooking in the microwave oven, with the difference being that with radiation, it’s your own goose being cooked. Non-thermal effects, on the other hand, are not well defined, but it has been reported that they are three to four times more harmful than thermal effects.

In the US, the maximum SAR limit for cell phones is 1.6W/Kg, which amounts to six minutes usage per day. It has a safety margin of 3 to 4, so even in an extreme case, a person should not use cell phone for more than 18 to 24 minutes per day. In India, the average use is 15 minutes/day and crores of people use cell phones for several hours/day.

An Interphone Study Report in May 2010 mentioned that excessive users of mobile phones (i.e. half-an-hour/day over 8 to 10 years) have doubled to quadrupled the risk of brai

n tumor. The report claims that for an average user, an increase in cancer cases is not significant but this was based on the average use of a cell phone being only two hours/month (only four minutes/day). A reevaluation of the Interphone study by a group of eminent scientists has found that even for average users, an increase in the risk of a brain tumor is significant over greater than 10 years of use.

Apart from cancer, users run the risk of several other health eff ects due to the prolonged use of cell phones. People have experienced that their ear gets warm after about 20 minutes of use of cell phone. This is because microwave radiation from a cell phone heats the blood in the ear lobe, and its temperature increases by nearly 10°C (1.80°F), causing the normal body tem-perature of 98.40°F to rise to 100.20°F. This leads to ear pain, hearing loss and ear tumour

It has been reported that cell phone radiation can drastically aff ect male fertility. In 2006, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine found a direct association between the dura-tion of cell phone usage among men and a decrease in semen quality, sperm count, motility, viability and normal morphology.

People fitted with pace makers, Implantable Cardiovascular Defi bril-lators (ICDs) and Impulse Generators are more vulnerable to cell phone radiation; signals generated by mobile phones cause electromagnetic interference with the device and interfere with its proper functioning.

While the cell has become an additional appendage for most of us, all this, of course, does not mean that we have to stop using cell phones.

Just ensure you take precautions:

* Limit your use
* Talk for short durations
* If possible, use SMS
* Use cell phone with lower SAR value
* Use the speakerphone or wired hands free or Bluetooth, but keep the cell phone at a distance of at least 12 inches from your body
* Use the land-line, when available
* Do not keep cell phones in your hand/pocket for long.
* At home/office, keep the phone away from you