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Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (46094)	2/26/2000 8:40:00 AM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 94695

slow the tech rally?: Week of Feb. 12, 2000; Vol. 157, No. 7 Researchers Probe Cell-Phone Effects By J. Raloff Scientists are investigating perplexing biological effects of cell-phone use. Cell phones are hot. Some 85 million U.S. residents?30 percent of the population?have joined the mobile-phone revolution. Still, Americans have been relatively slow to go wireless. Even a decade ago, when U.S. cell-phone use was a rarity, 10 percent of Swedes had taken the wireless plunge, says Maria Feychting of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Today, Nordic countries remain Western leaders, with 40 percent of Danes, half of Norwegians and Swedes, and almost 60 percent of Finns using cell phones. Many of these people are also reporting side effects, observes Monica Sandstr”m of the Swedish National Institute for Working Life in Ume†. Last week at a Bioelectromagnetics Society symposium in Washington, D.C., she unveiled data from her agency's new survey of cell-phone users?5,000 in Norway and another 12,000 in Sweden. One-quarter of the Norwegian users, she noted, feel warmth on or behind the ear when they use their phones. More troubling, she said, 20 percent also linked frequent headaches and recurring fatigue to cell-phone use. Her agency saw the same trends in Sweden, though the overall rates were somewhat lower, Sandstr”m notes. At least one of the symptoms noted, which include dizziness, concentration difficulties, memory loss, and a burning sensation, showed up in 47 percent of people who reported using these wireless devices an hour or more daily. Cellular phones, which send and receive radiofrequency (RF) signals via their attached antennas, come in digital and analog varieties. The newer, digital phones broadcast their communications in discrete bursts of energy, whereas analog devices employ continuous signals. Being energy hogs, analog phones also beam eight times as much energy into the user's head as digital phones do. Overall, "people using analog phones reported more symptoms and more sensations of all kinds," Sandstr”m says. However, she's quick to add, "we didn't measure RF emissions." Any headaches or other complaints might therefore trace to factors such as occupational stress, ergonomic issues, and even the warmth given off by a phone's battery. Yet cell phones' RF emissions clearly can affect the brain, (cont) sciencenews.org