To the Editor,
Use of mobile phones is strictly prohibited in hospitals, planes and other specific areas because they may interfere with the normal functioning of the electronic or magnetic equipment due to radiation of electromagnetic waves.
Owners manuals provided by manufacturers of various mobile phones do not make mention of any precaution that must be adhered to by users with or without pacemakers, or whether a mobile phone be used at close proximity to a person with a pacemaker.This subject must be brought to light.
It has been estimated that at the turn of the century, the use of mobile phones will be double what it is today. AT&T Corp. has provided solutions for people with hearing disabilities. The industry cannot be indifferent to the mobile phone user who is dependent on a pacemaker. It is time to discuss more on the above subject through the opinion column of your esteemed weekly newspaper published for the wireless communications industry. As a communications specialist of one of the nation’s most popular personal communications providers, I will be more confident in discussing this subject, with or without a pacemaker, with enhanced knowledge of this subject.
Sunil (Neil) Chatterjee
Skokie, Ill.
Editor’s note: The wireless industry has done research into the area of pacemaker interference with wireless phones. According to an RCR article in 1998, follow-up research examining the interaction between cardiac pacemakers and certain wireless phones found that an adverse interaction only occurred when the devices were less than three inches apart from each other. This is half the previously recommended distance.
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma’s Wireless Electromagnetic Compatibility Center focused on the planar, or vertical, separation distance between pacemaker models and wireless phones that experienced interaction in the original study.
Six pacemakers were tested in different combinations with the following technologies: Code Division Multiple Access, personal communications service 1900 MHz, and Time Division Multiple Access at various frequencies.
