Dear Editor,
Studies of possible harms to the brain from cell phone use by the Wireless Technology Research Group, meant to be a definitive, industrywide effort, focus on cancer and genetic damage but miss other, more likely, harmful effects.
If I bring my cell phone within a foot-and-a-half of an answering machine, the answering machine starts buzzing. If its radiation has such an effect on the electrical circuits of an answering machine, one can imagine the effects on the far more delicate and vulnerable electrical circuits of the brain, which is essentially a bundle of trillions of electrical circuits. The buzzing of the answering machine at one-and-a-half feet is just one, rather gross, effect observed.
Significant, possibly devastating and permanent, disruptions of the functioning of the brain’s electrical circuits could occur at much larger distances. These disruptions could keep an Einstein from producing a Theory of Relativity or produce subtle and not-so-subtle effects on memory and a myriad of other brain functions. Use of a cell phone with a headset, with an ear piece and a microphone, which has been pronounced safe by the project’s head, George Carlo, in a press interview (Boston Globe, Oct. 4) keeps the cell phone’s antenna just about a foot-and-a-half from the head.
The project head’s statement in the press interview above that radiation from cell phones penetrates two to two-and-a-half inches inside the skull and so keeping the cell phone more than two inches away from the head would be safe shows utter ignorance of basic electrical principles. One is aghast at the fact that for six years this scientist has headed a $27 million research effort of a consortium, overseen by scientists at Harvard University, on possible harms of cell-phone use.
I had been determined never to use a cell phone even if the phone and the service were free and I was given a stipend to use it but, a few days ago, decided to give it a try, with a headset, but soon switched it off and will use it, if at all, very sparingly.
Satish Chandra
