March 10th, 2005
Big Cellcos: Big tobacco repeating itself?
Over on Anchordesk, my colleague and CNET senior editor Molly Wood has reopened the debate over the dangers of cell phone use by citing some disturbing parallels — including whistleblowing and attempts to supress relevant evidence — between the cell phone and tobacco industries. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I read it, and in a moment, you’ll know why.
While there haven’t been any new earthshattering revelations since the most recent cell phone radiation studies (which demonstrate DNA damage that scientists aren’t yet concerned about), Wood cites an article published this month by University of Washington engineering writer Rob Harrill that paints a picture of a cell phone industry that’s more interested in discrediting revenue-threatening research than finding the truth. Referring to researchers doing research on the subject matter,Harrill wrote:
Then, in describing how funding-leverage was applied to the same researchers by a group that’s backed by the CTIA (an industry consortium), Harrill writes:
A couple of years later, Lai got money from Wireless Technology Research (WTR), a group organized by CTIA to administer $25 million in industry research funding, to do some follow-up studies. But the conditions that came with the funding were restrictive. So much so that Lai and Singh wrote an open letter to Microwave News recounting their experience. The letter, published in 1999, cited irregularities in processes and procedures that the two called “highly suspicious….“In the 20 years or so that we have conducted experiments, for a variety of funding agencies, we have never encountered anything like this in the management of a scientific contract,” the two wrote.
The WTR threatened the University of Washington, where the researchers worked, with legal action (which makes me wonder what might have happened had the blogosphere been active at the time).
Obviously, none of this is enough to justify any definitive conclusions about whether cell phones do or do not pose health risks. But, in addition to providing a scary look behind the scenes of university-level research when big industry gets involved, it does raise an important question for all of us. As a society, we’ve gotten much better about investigating the saftey records of certain cars and car manufacturers before making any investments. While the same sort of track record data isn’t available for cell phones, all cell phones do come with specific absorption rate or SAR ratings that give you some idea of how much radiation a phone puts out. When was the last time you checked out a SAR rating before buying a phone or double-checked the SAR rating of the one you have?
I knew about SAR ratings but completely blanked on the issue when I saw and took opportunity to get paid $50 to take a Motorola v265 picture phone from Verizon Wireless. Now that I see, at a SAR rating of 155, that my new v265 is tied for the worst SAR rating of all cell phones from all manufacturers, I’m not so proud of my purchase. (I also suspect that’s why I got such a great deal.) While I’m mad at Amazon (where I purchased two of these phones — one for me, one for my wife) for not putting a neon SAR sign on the ad for v265 that it sent me to from its home page, I’m also mad at myself and trying to figure out what to do next.
Of course, the cell phone industry will tell you it doesn’t matter — that they’re all safe. Sorry, it’s no consolation to me to know that I equipped my wife with the worst-rated phone of the bunch. I don’t think I’ll stop using cell phones, but if I’m going to use one, I’d rather use one that has one of the lowest SAR ratings of all phones than one of the highest (at .12, the Audiovox PPC6601 PocketPC-based smartphone has the lowest SAR rating of all US phones). So, do yourself a favor. Learn from my mistake.
