The only real danger a cellular phone poses is to the motorist "trying to drive while talking on one."
"Since a 1979 report suggested that electromagnetic fields from power lines might increase the risk of childhood cancer, sporadic scares have developed over the health effects of a wide variety of electrical appliances -- devices ranging from electric blankets to computer terminals and from electric razors to alarm clocks," reports Adam Lieberman of the American Council on Science and Health. "Subsequent studies have shown methodological errors in the 1979 report," he continues. "It failed to account for other carcinogenic factors, and studies of occupational exposure among electrical workers and others exposed to high levels of electromagnetic fields have given conflicting data. Scientists have also pointed out that such electromagnetic fields are far too weak to affect human tissue by any of the known mechanisms. . . ."
In a special report called Facts Versus Fears, Lieberman points out that "the most publicized health scare involving an electromagnetic field was based on no scientific data at all." He relates the story of a Florida man whose wife died of a brain tumor two years after receiving her first cellular phone. The bereaved husband sued the manufacturer, "alleging that electromagnetic energy from the phone's antenna had caused the cancer."
He took his case to the court of public opinion too, appearing on CNN's Larry King Show early in 1993. "Sales of the phones, which had been growing at rates of from 20 to 70 percent a year since 1982, fell off sharply," Lieberman reports. "Stock prices of the three largest cellular companies dropped about 10 percent during the week following the King broadcast."
Congress, the FDA, the National Cancer Institute, and the EPA all weighed in on the controversy, but found no substance to the allegations. "Cellular trade associations promised to spend $25 million for research into cellular safety,"Adam Lieberman recalls. "An independent research entity was organized to implement a research program, including laboratory and epidemiology studies. Within months, however, the scare was largely forgotten," says Lieberman. "By mid 1993 sales of cellular phones were up 30 percent over the previous year, stock prices had recovered, and consumers had apparently lost concern."
In Facts Versus Fears, Lieberman reviews "the twenty greatest unfounded health scares of recent times," including those associated with DDT, cyclamates and saccharin, nitrites, Alar, and asbestos. Many of the scares, he observes, "involved the extrapolation of effects in laboratory animals exposed to extremely high doses of the agent in question." Lieberman concludes that "the American public has been manipulated repeatedly by certain segments of the media, by a handful of scientists outside the scientific mainstream, and by a large coterie of activists and government regulators, all of whom have frightened the public over hypothetical risks." He warns that fear mongers undermine our ability to respond to real crises: "Repeated scares that focus on trivial or nonexistent risks -- and the media blitzes and public panics that follow -- may actually divert scarce resources away from real, significant public health risks."
