Hands-Free Radiation Is A Surprise Addiction
by Paul McGoldrick
If you traverse just about any public place you must be aware of the people apparently talking to themselves but in fact using the latest fad equipment of hands-free phone operation -- the earpiece and the dangling cord with a microphone going down to the waist-secured cellular phone; besides the whole indecency issues of hearing these people making their business so public there is now a surprise for those who think they are having "safe phone."
The Consumers' Association, the UK non-profit equivalent of the U.S. Consumers' Union, has been a vocal tester of cellular phone radiation, publishing their reports in the magazine "Which?" They assumed -- like most of us? -- that hands-off kits would reduce the brain/cranium exposure to RF radiation. The British Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) commissioned tests and found that radiation was reduced with these kits; but it appears that their tests were flawed.
"Which?" tested five phones with two different hands-free kits for each, a total of ten kits. They used a dummy head with a probe internal to it. The emissions were measured first with the phone handset up to the ear, the normal listening position. First surprise: The probe measured maximum radiation not behind the ear but in the cheek and jaw! So much for efficient shielding of the phone products.
Then "Which?" measured the radiation using the hands-free kits; the first tests they had conducted startled them because in some cases they noticed that the measurements increased and that the maximum radiated locations had now moved to behind the ear. Then in this complete testing cycle they did something really smart: They varied the distance between the tip of the cell phone antenna and the earpiece.
The radiation was at a maximum when the distance between the antenna and the ear was between 40 and 47 cm, and then between 58 and 75 cm, depending on the kit. Work it out for 900 MHz and add a few cm for not the antenna tip but the middle of the phone, and a few cm for the proximity of the ground plane (the person?) as an end-effect -- you will whisper "wavelength" to yourself. Yes, the hands-free kits are acting like antennas with nodes and antinodes appearing at the ear depending on the linear distance. Higher readings were measured, compared to the phone directly, between 46 and 259% higher.
The DTI testing used specific absorption rate (SAR) tests but the conditions did not allow for the distance factor to exhibit itself so the anomaly was never caught.
Again, of course, there are other problems. If you have ever seen an autopsy you would probably have been surprised by the way the organs of the human body are really a collective package rather than individual items. Putting the phone on your waist line just guarantees that one or another of the organs will receive a radiation dose that previously went into your cheek or jaw; and, of course, you have the chance of dinging your brain at the same time from the radiation at the earpiece. Oh joy!
By the way you users of these hands-free kits in cars instead of a hardware installed kit -- in most states of the Union that earpiece is illegal.
You may not accept, as I certainly do as an RF engineer, that heavy cell phone use is going to be the "Big Tobacco" villain in twenty years but if you're trying to cut down on your radiation don't assume the hands-free kit is going to do it for you. Cold turkey might be a better bet.
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emfsafe
an excellent overview of the current political/scientific
cellular phone situation by B. Blake Levitt, an expert in the field.
BBC News Article
BBC News Article
BBC News Article