Wireless Technology - Environmental Impacts - Coursework Example

Wireless technology Environmental impacts of affiliation 0. IntroductionFor most people, wireless technology presents a means of making life more convenient, comfortable, and effective. However, this does not mean that wireless technology does not have its share of negative impacts on people’s lives. Scientists and human health activists continually raise concerns over the mostly neglected negative impacts of wireless technology. Wireless technologies’ penetration to the remotest parts of the world today has made wireless technology impact the lives of humans both intentionally and unintentionally. While most of the impacts on human lives have been positive, considerable hazards have also been associated to wireless technology particularly on the environment. Compared to the positive impacts, negative impacts of wireless technology on the environment are dependent on prolonged exposure linked to long-term use in moving people and goods, offering public services, powering the future, and nourishing people. In addition, wireless technology has made way into home, workplaces, and schools increasing concerns over the impacts on the environment in all these areas. This section focuses on both the negative and positive impacts that wireless technology has on the environment. The areas of study include hazards to humans, resources depletion, inventions’ discovery, and impact on wildlife, pollution of air and water, and short-lived and long-lived waste disposal impacts. Other areas of study include endangering of species, spotted owl and deforestation, and positive impacts like the case of Alaskan pipeline. 1.1. Negative impacts on humans In terms of public health, mobile phones and other wireless telecommunication devices involve information transmission using radio waves. Radio frequency waves are non-ionizing and this implies that they are not as strong to affect the atomic structures that they contact (U.S environmental Protection Agency, 2014). This is to say that RF waves neither break any chemical bond within human body nor cause any human atom to charge negatively or positively. Radio frequency waves linked to wireless technology arise from fixed network of antennas or base stations, industrial sources like cell towers, personal and domestic appliances, commercial surveillance systems, WLAN, WiFi, and WiMAX networks. According to Sage & Carpenter (2009), RF waves form the main element of wireless communications and have the capacity to increase the information volume transferred with time. As a result, multiple frequency bands are in use for wireless communication. However, RF is electromagnetic fields and prolonged exposure to EMF result to adverse health consequences. 1.1.1. Short-term impacts When humans are exposed to high RF levels, heat creation is possible and this could heat human tissue quickly analogous to the principle of microwave ovens heating food (U.S environmental Protection Agency, 2014). During mobile use, most RF energy is absorbed into the human skin among other superficial tissues causing negligible increment in brain temperature or other organs (World Health Organization, 2011). 1.1.2. Long-term impacts The two primary long-termed impacts of exposure to RF include brain tumours and cancers. Sage & Carpenter (2009) highlight that malignant brain tumours or cancer link to prolonged exposure to RF waves particularly individuals who have used mobile phones for over 10 years. Additionally, prolonged exposure to ELF and RF waves result to DNA damage for both single and double stranded DNAs resulting to mutations inherited to cause cancer in future generations. Further, Sage & Carpenter (2009) reveal that exposure to ELF and RF results to the development of stress proteins in form of heat shock proteins that alert the cell of present physiological stress. Other impacts include sleep, cognitive function, and performance decrease. 1.2. Wireless technology and natural resources Critical Friends of Technology (2003), highlight that with the manufacture of volumes of wireless devices, the level of toxicity to the environment increases. Some of the toxic chemicals include Arsenic, lead, antimony, copper, beryllium, nickel, cadmium, and zinc. These chemicals are found in wireless device’s components and batteries. Additionally, the plastic components in mobile devices include bromated flame retardants are toxic. With the high volumes of production of wireless devices, it is clear that toxic garbage is massive and this is a threat to natural resources like water, air, and wild animals. This is particularly the case in developing countries that have fewer infrastructures to promote recovery and recycling programs. With electronic waste from the wireless devices on the rise, the environment suffers from e-waste landfills from laptops, mobile phones, and smart phones and iPods. In the landfills, toxic chemicals find their way into the soil and underground water resources. Consequently, intoxicated water reservoirs cause deaths to aquatic life making the reservoirs inhabitable. Further, the formation of most wireless devices call for minerals as raw materials hence involve mining. Mining minerals like gold, Tin, Tungsten, and titanium cause deforestation, land dilapidation, and disturbance of the ecosystem. Gold is used to coat interior cabling of computerized devices, while the vibration function of the phone depends on tungsten (Buxbaum, 2013). In order to have wireless devices powered using batteries that store charge after unplugging from electrical sources, Titanium is the metal used. Finally, mobile phone circuit boards use tin solder. For instance, Democratic Republic of Congo that is a source of these minerals suffers deforestation that has displaced wildlife and birds while stirring war as people conflict for resources. (Buxbaum, 2013). Other examples of negative impacts of deforestation are the dislodgment and deaths of huge gorilla populations since conflicting sides underestimate the impacts of their mining on wildlife. At Tennessee in the United States, environment protection reinforcement is through the Endangered Species Act or ESA that prevented the formation of Tellico Dam along the river to protect the Darter Snail fish that could only survive in muddy shallow water and not deep water of the dam. US multinationals do not observe such environmental protection regulations with mineral interests in nations like Congo resulting to striping soil off nutrients, over-mining, and loss of habitats. After mining, the workers in processing factories work under exposure to toxic solvents, and flame retardants that cause miscarriages in pregnant women working in chip manufacturing. Further, e-waste management involving burning results to the production of vaporized solvents like barium, lead, and cadmium that when breathed impact human health. For nations like US, the volume of e-waste is high and illegal channels are used to get such waste into nations like Vietnam and China as well as African nations causing landfill. As people make a living by dismantling such waste for informal recycling, heavy toxic metals contaminate the environment. 1.3. Positive impact of technology The discussion focuses on three positive impacts of wireless technology g that include saving of fossil fuels, little or no impact on the environment, and environment enhancement. When compared to travelling, delivery of information using wireless technology has resulted to reduction of the dependence on fossil fuel as a raw material for vehicles used for travelling from one place to the other (Toffel & Horvath, 2004). Additionally, wireless devices like mobile phones reduced the carbon dioxide emission given that one only has to call regardless of the geographical locations of the sender and recipient. The impact to the environment is reduced through reduced dependence on fossil fuel. When people adapt technologies like iPADs as a means of reading e-newspapers, the impact is reduced dependence on papers and other raw materials to produce newspapers (Toffel & Horvath, 2004). The Alaskan pipeline is an example of positive impacts of wireless technology on the environment. With the construction of the pipeline, the populations located along the above-the-ground pipeline like Caribou, have enjoyed numerous benefits including healthier populations due to shade from the pipeline in summer and warmth from the pipeline during winter. Additionally, the caribou population experiences fewer bites from flies, while their females suffer from less stress. 1.4. Conclusion Although most users of wireless technologies are not aware of the existing negative impacts, it is crucial that manufacturers of wireless technologies observed defined rules and regulations to protect the environment. Environment protection should begin from attainment of raw materials to the recycling of wireless technology devices in the safest way possible. References Buxbaum, M. (2013, May). Behind the Screens: Conflict Minerals and Toxic Waste. Retrieved from Inspiration Green: http://www.inspirationgreen.com/minerals-that-cause-war.html Critical Friends of Technology. (2003). A social Ecology of Wireless Technology. First Monday, 8(8), xxx-xxx. Sage, C., & Carpenter, O. D. (2009). Public Health Implications of Wireless technologies. Pathophysiology, 603, 1-14. Toffel, M. W., & Horvath, A. (2004). Environmental Implications of Wireles Techologies: News Delivery and Business meetings. Environmental Science and Technology, xx(xx), A-I. U.S environmental Protection Agency. (2014, August 06). Wireless Technology. Retrieved from U.S environmental Protection Agency: http://www.epa.gov/radtown/wireless-tech.html World Health Organization. (2011, June). Electromagnetic Fields and Public Health: Mobile Phones. Retrieved from World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs193/en/ Read More