More warnings about mobile phones

The name of the game in today’s world is modernisation and communication technology. For countries rich and poor alike, developed and underdeveloped the message is “Go this way or be left behind.” So whether it is Houston or Kingston, Croatia or St. Lucia, every nation, every city is trying its best to be at what those in the know call “the cutting edge of technology.”

Where modern communication is concerned, we here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines can hardly complain. Yes, we have struggled to get the call centre right but we now have so many mobile phones that phone cards seem to be selling more than bread! We have Cable and Direct TV, internet connections, Ipods and a host of gadgets that the young strut about with, brandishing proudly.{{more}} But is there a cost, beyond the obvious financial one that is, of this development? Are we damaging ourselves in the process? There are some of the thoughts which came to me last Sunday as I was reading a copy of the British newspaper, “Independent on Sunday.” Indeed the front-page literally screened out at me. Wi-Fi,” it blared, “Children at risk from ‘electronic smog’.” One can hardly pass a headline like that, not when one is talking of “children at risk.” So I read on, and came across the following revelations.

The head of Britain’s Health Protection agency, Sir William Stewart is pressing the British Government to commission a formal investigation into the hazards of using wireless communication networks in schools. The concern expressed is that these networks, known as Wi-Fi, may be damaging the health of children. This is because they emit radiation which kills off brain cells and can lead to serious health problems later in life like cancer, heart disease and premature senility. The particular concern about children is partly because they are more vulnerable since their skulls are thinner and nervous systems still developing but also because they being younger will be exposed over a longer period during their lives.

It follows the concerns already expressed over the effects of prolonged use of mobile phones and the erection of mobile phone masts, particularly near schools. Sir William himself has chaired two official inquiries into the hazards of using mobile phones, the first of which, published in May 2000, made a number of recommendations. Among these were: discouraging children from using mobiles; stopping the phone industry from advertising them to the young; publicizing the levels of radiation emitted by different headsets so that users could choose those with the lowest levels; and stopping the building of masts where the strongest radiation beams fell on schools. However most of these recommendations were never implemented and since then mobile phone use by the young in Britain has doubled. It is not just Britain. A recent authoritative study in Finland found that people who have regularly used mobiles for more than ten years are 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side of the head as they hold their headsets, while similar research in Sweden says the risk is four times as great. In that same country further research claims that the radiation kills off brain cells which could lead to today’s generation going senile in their forties and fifties.

Phone masts emit much less radiation than mobile phones but there have been complaints from people living, or attending school, near to them of a worrying occurrence of headaches, fatique, nausea, dizziness and memory problems. The problem with the Wi-Fi systems, so convenient, is that they take these small versions of these masts into the homes and classrooms since they emit the same kind radiation. Is this just all alarmist stuff, or is there real reason to be concerned? The mounting evidence of possible damage from constant use of these technologies is well documented. The problem is that we are not listening. Mobile phones and wi-fi technology is helping to transform our lives, making communication far easier and enabling us to be more functional and efficient. The studies raising concerns have not said not to use them but have used the results of meticulous research to warn of the dangers and to call for safeguards.

We are now hooked on our mobiles; we use them for even the most trivial reasons. Research like those in Britain, Finland and Sweden is unlikely ever to be done in SVG and we may never know, 15 or 20 years hence whether that cancer or early senility had anything to do with radiation emissions. But we can at least take heed and be cautions in our, mininising dangers especially to children.