Living with risk

 

Every season seems to bring another scary story about potential dangers of new technologies, like the one revealing the possible links between mobile phone radiation and brain damage. Mobile use may cause premature Alzheimer’s, though the study in question looked at the effects of electromagnetic radiation on rats, not people.

None of those stories has dented the popularity of mobile handsets. Instead, what’s freaking Europeans out is the idea of electromagnetic radiation from phone masts. The rage over masts is strange. Mobile phone users tend to be exposed to much higher levels of radiation from the handsets than they are from masts, because they are so much closer to the source.

But that hasn’t stopped 320 million Europeans from buying mobile phones or activists from organising to prevent the installation of transmitters.

But why all the fuss? According to the French Environmental Health and Safety Agency’s report, no health risk can be linked to mobile phones or base stations. On the other hand, the Scientific Committee on magnetic Fields published a report stating that antennas could cause sleep disturbance and headaches and weaken the immune system. However, the independent experts who signed the first report called for more research into the effect of mobile phone radiation on children and admitted that other effects had yet to be sufficiently explored.

We can’t wait for a final safety verdict. We need to decide now whether the convenience of a mobile phone is worth the potential hazard, we must make some kind of analysis of the cost and the benefit. And we need ways to make the risk feel acceptable, because there’s no such thing as total proof, no such thing as zero risk.

 (Adapted from James Geary article for TIME Magazine July 28, 2003)

Decide if the following statements are true (T) or false (F).

1. A study of the effects of electromagnetic radiation on people has shown that mobile use may cause premature Alzheimer’s.

2. Europeans are worried more about electromagnetic radiation from phone masts.

3. Mobile phone users are exposed to much higher levels of radiation from masts.

4. Antennas could cause sleep disturbance and headaches.

5. Other effects of mobile phone radiation on people have to be studied.

6. We must decide whether we are going to use mobile phones more or less in the future.

7. We must wait to hear what scientists have to say.

8. There is not going to be a total proof that the use of mobile phones is harmless.