Hang Up and Listen

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If there's a single symbol of the revolution in modern communication, it's the cell phone -- that ever-tinier, ever-more-multifunctional ear appendage that keeps us in touch with the whole world, wherever we may be. Thanks in large part to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (TCA), the empire of wireless communication is spreading unchecked across our landscape. There are antennas on apartment buildings, church steeples, water towers, and anywhere else a signal made of electromagnetic radiation can be transmitted and received. It's hard to resist the convenience. But a growing body of evidence shows that the microwave radiation from proliferating cell towers -- and cell phones themselves -- poses a significant health risk. And the industry-friendly regulatory system in the United States is failing to address the problem.

Scientists, local governments, and grassroots organizations around the world have long been warning about the health hazards of electromagnetic radiation (EMR). While all electrical devices, from hair dryers to computers, produce EMR, the most hazardous waves are those on the radio frequency (RF) section of the electromagnetic spectrum, including radio, television, and microwave signals. Microwave radiation is considered particularly worrisome.

Certain individuals, like Arthur Firstenberg, are highly sensitive to almost any amount of EMR. As Firstenberg reports in The Ecologist (June 2004), his medical career was derailed by his body's intolerance for electronics in the operating room, as well as computers and other everyday devices. His dilemma spurred him to research the effects on humans of EMR in general and microwaves in particular. In 1996, the first year of massive cell phone expansion, what he found prompted him to create the Cellular Phone Task Force. According to Firstenberg, 'each of dozens of cities recorded a 10 to 25 percent increase in mortality, lasting two to three months, beginning on the day in 1996 or 1997 on which that city's first digital cell phone network began commercial service.' Around the same time, he says, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set public exposure limits for microwave radiation at 'levels at least ten thousand times higher than levels which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, were causing reports of illness from all over the world.'

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