Are we cooking our brains?
Published: 12 May 2000 15:43 BST
The thing that ties all these pertinent themes together is their answer: "I don't have a clue".
Nobody has an answer to any one of these questions that conclusively proves that our mobile world represents a health hazard. Just as we don't know what the damage done by low frequency noise to children living in roadside properties is, or whether all those 70s truckers fried their brains when they were exchanging handles and warnings about Smokey Bear...
Not that an absence of knowledge ever stopped fear uncertainly and doubt clouding the debate about an issue. And now that a) the mobile phone companies have been seem to be rich enough to cough up over£22bn and b) the government has a war chest of £22 billion sitting in its coffers, the rest of the UK is starting to get really stroppy about the issues.
This growing concern was neatly concentrated recently by the publication of a government funded report (presumely costing somewhat less than £22bn) known as the Stewart Inquiry. This report outlines the findings of an expert group headed by Sir William Stewart and involving a wide range of experts from technical, environmental and business backgrounds. Sir William also gathered opinions from public meetings.
But far from clarifying the debate and providing us with some clear guidelines, the report has contributed to the confusion with no new data, no absolute findings, but plenty of inferences, talk of risks and 'suggested' courses of action. Am I being unreasonable? Maybe. But I can't see the point of a report, commissioned to clarify the position, which fails to achieve this objective.
Not that this is an easy issue to untangle. In the UK legislation to protect us against harmful radio waves concentrates on the heating effect of high frequency radio waves - the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), which contributed to the report, has concentrated its efforts on defining and limiting this heating effect. Power limits are defined by what power at what frequency is required to heat body tissue by under one degree Celsius for up to six minutes.
Now I don't like the idea of cooking my brain however lightly, but clearly we are subject to heating radiation in our ordinary lives. Indeed most of us pay hundreds of pounds for two weeks exposure to it on a beach in Greece or Spain. And the temperature changes and durations are far in excess of these defined maxima. So what's the problem?
Well the problem, as I've already suggested, is the unknown. Some users fear cancer or something they can only imagine may happen to them. Sir William does confirm or squash these concerns. But the truth is that we are being exposed to much higher levels of radiation from many sources already. Few people outside California wear total sunblock, wide floppy hats and refrigeration suits to protect themselves against the sun even though it heats up our body tissue.
One of the Stewart inquiry's recommendations is an adherence to the slightly more stringent ICNIRP (International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection) European guidelines. Having said that existing NRPB limits cannot be proved inadequate, Stewart's enquiry suggests that we should work with new and tougher guidelines anyway (he's not in favour of legislation, and that's because everything here is based upon guesswork not hard fact). Just to be on the safe side.
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