Less Radiation

Today’s Mail on Sunday magazine ‘You’ poses the question: ‘Are you sleeping with the enemy?’

Yes, another mainstream magazine dares to link Mobiles, Wifi routers and other electronic devices with poor sleep. In the article Dr Chris Idzikowski, director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, says that, ‘ There’s more than sufficient evidence that mobile phone exposure an hour before bedtime adversely affects deep sleep ‘.

Others in the article report the classic fuzzy-mindedness that over-use of RF emitting gadgets can bring on. The article suggests that you turn off your mobile at bedtime.

While this is good advice, not a single mention is made of the danger from DECT cordless phones. The article states that a Mobile left on the bedside table will talk to the cell tower every ten minutes or so – well in our experience it’s more like every half an hour, for a five second burst. That isn’t going to disrupt your sleep. However, having a DECT cordless phone near your bed almost certainly will.

If you didn’t already know: the DECT cordless phone’s base station – the main docking point, if you have several handsets – gives out a constant pulse of RF, all the time. Even when you’re not talking on the handset. Keeping it a few feet from your head, while trying to sleep, is not such a good idea. Nor should you have a DECT base unit next to the home PC you use for hours at a time. All those hours you spend feet from a DECT cordless docking station really could leave you feeling completely ‘Spaced Out’.

So, while the article in the Sunday Mail is undoubtedly well intentioned, it could have payed more attention to DECT.

Originally published in The Independent newspaper back in January 2008.

Using up all those free minutes before bedtime can seriously disrupt your sleep pattern. This is the conclusion of researchers in Sweden & the USA, in a properly controlled trial.

Critics from the mobile industry were quick to dismiss the effect as ‘no worse than having a coffee at bedtime’. But, up until very recently they insisted that no non-thermal effects existed with mobiles – now it seems that they’ve changed their tune…

Full original article from The Independent.

Dubai based airline Emirates has become the first airline to allow in-flight mobile calls. The specially converted A340 has shielding to prevent interference to the sensitive in-flight systems. This could be a really good money earner for Emirates. Good luck guys…

A New Scientist article this week reports.

Researchers in Helsinki have shown that 10 female volunteers exposed to 900MHz signals for 1 hour all showed altered protein expression in their skin cells. Interestingly, 580 different proteins were tested, and all ten women showed raised levels of one protein and suppressed levels of a second.

While similar results have been previously observed in cultured cells, this is the first study to show this effect on humans. While this doesn’t show any harm being caused it does rather overturn ICNIRP’s constantly repeated assertion that no non-heating effects exist with mobiles.

The author of the report now plans a larger study to identify the actual proteins involved and any ramifications for human health.