-Cell phone usages and Radiation - Essay Example

The technology of cell phone has eliminated the factor of geographical distances and made the general population more socially connected. The acceptance rate of the cell phone technology can be realized by the fact that from the year 1990 up till 2011, the worldwide cell phone subscriptions raised from 12.4 million to over 6 billion, penetrating nearly 87% of the world population (MobiThinking). Cell phone technology may not be all that safe. Amidst the life of convenience offered by cell phones, the potential threat the cell phone technology may have to the health of humans can get ignored.

On October 19, 2012, the Supreme Court in Rome (Italy) gave a ruling wherein a “causal link” was found to exist between the mobile phone and the illness of an Italian Company’s Director Innocente Marcolini, 60 (Routers, 2012). Marcolini was diagnosed to have developed a tumor (neurinoma affecting a cranial nerve) on the side of the head that he held his mobile phone to for 5-6 hours a day for 12 years. Cell phone technology works by emitting radiations. Whether these radiations are harmful to human health or not is a debate that has been pursued by many medical and environment bodies.

This paper presents an overview of the radiations emitted by the cell phones and the safety standards set by the agencies. The possible impact on these radiations on human health and some safety tips to avoid the possible threats are also presented in the paper. Cell phones use a type of electromagnetic energy called radiofrequency (or simply RF) energy for communication. RF are the radio waves and microwaves. On the electromagnetic spectrum (shown in Figure 1), where the energy ranges from ones that have extremely low frequencies with long wavelengths to those that have extremely high frequencies with short wavelengths, the radio waves and microwaves lie between the two extremes.

In the RF region, the frequencies are in the range of 3KHz to 300GHz.