Cell Phone Radiation: Overview

My purpose is to provide information on cell phone radiation, the risks that can be caused by cell phone radiation, and the potential health problems that could result from this. Details of the topic: I am going to talk about the arguments about how cell phone radiation can affect our lives and whether these arguments are accurate or not. Cell phone radiation is a type of electromagnetic radiation that has the ability to cause health issues.

The radiation from this device can cause serious brain tumours, according to one study by Anna Lahkola of the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Finland, which found that people who use their cell phone for more than 2000 hours have a higher chance of getting a brain tumour. The chance of getting a brain tumour increased from 40 to 270 percent and most of the users that might experience this side effect would be teenagers to people in their twenties.

This is because it is people in this age group who are most likely to use cell phones/smart phones and they are also most likely to use the phones most frequently. There are several other health issues or risks out there that are linked to the usage of cell phones such cancer, headaches, Alzheimer’s disease, fatigue and Parkinson’s disease. But it still has not been proved with 100 percent accuracy because so far every scientist is getting different results. There is no consensus among scientists about the risks that associated with cell phone/smart phone radiation.

A famous neurosurgeon Vini Khurana argued that if you use a cell phone for more than ten years you are very likely to get brain cancer. His conclusion seems more believable because he did a long study about this and he mentions that other scientists have only done short term research on this matter. He states that a brain tumour can take up to 10 years to develop, so studies on the effect of cell phone/smart phone radiation should last at least that long or longer.

However, most scientists do not do studies that last long enough in his opinion. Relevance: A while back group 11 did their presentation on “the history of radiation”, where they discussed the two types of radiation, ionizing and non-ionizing. Cell phones/smart phones would be in the non-ionizing category because they use a low to mid frequency. In this diagram you can see the frequency for cell phones/smart phones is in the range from 0 to 10?? in hertz (Hz).

Furthermore the group also mentioned that, even though the frequency for non-ionizing radiation is less dangerous, it is still possible to have side effects that may affect to our personal lives. There was a class where at the end we had a very brief discussion about radiation from electronics and the topic of cell phones/smart phones was brought up by few students when they were asked about their opinion or personal experience. Some side effects they mentioned from using their cell phones/smart phones constantly were having problems falling asleep along with minor headaches.

Reflection: This voluntary assignment helps me because it provides some very interesting facts and debates about the side effects of cell phone/smart phone radiation. In this course we have covered many different kinds of radiation, but we have not talked a lot about the radiation from technology. We presume this kind of radiation is too low to have serious effects on us. However, I remember that I actually had some problems when I used my IPhone (smart phone) two years ago.

For instance, I started out with a headache that turned into a very serious migraine and lasted for one week. I’m not sure if it is because I had just got my first phone and so I was using it a lot, but after doing this research into cell phone/smart phone radiation. I’m starting to think that this might be the problem that causes my headaches and migraines. Just recently when I moved to my new apartment, because I didn’t have a small table next to my bed, I put the phone under my pillow for about one month and I was getting frequent headaches.

So I believe in headaches as a potential side effect of cell phone/smart phone radiation. In fact, I’m a little bit worried about brain tumours, even though most research and debates are not official. However what I have experienced makes it seem like the potential side effects could be true. Our use of technology is growing and we take technology for granted, so that we very rarely stop to consider the radiation that is associated with our technology. This is something I think we should know more about, even if the risks are minimal.

Conclusion: Because of doing this assignment, I have found out that there’s a lot of debate about the risks that are associated with cell phone/smart phone radiation. Even though most scientists believe there are few to no risks from this type of radiation, I believe this issue hasn’t been studied enough for us to determine what the real risks are. However I intend to be more careful from now in how I use my phone. I definitely won’t be sleeping with my phone under my pillow anymore.