WASHINGTON-Even as the nation’s first broadband personal communications services system began commercial operations here last week, questions continue to be raised in the United States and abroad about the potential public health risk from highly popular pocket telephones.
The Canadian government earlier this month alerted cardiologists of electromagnetic interference (EMI) to cardiac pacemakers from digital cellular telephones.
Canada said research conducted by Health Protection Branch laboratories confirmed similar findings by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami.
However, Canadian Assistant Deputy Minister Kent R. Foster said, “The chances that EMI from digital cellular phones will result in a life-threatening situation are low.”
Physicians were advised to tell patients with implanted cardiac pacemakers to be aware that putting a digital pocket phone very close to pacemaker could cause it to malfunction and that patients therefore should avoid carrying one in a shirt or jacket pocket directly over the pacemaker.
In addition, it was recommended cardiac patients hold phones to the ear opposite from the side of the body where the pacemaker is located.
The Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. counterpart to Canada’s Health Protection Branch, has drawn up a similar advisory to be issued to the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology and the public. Both countries are examining how pacemakers can be designed to better shield EMI from wireless emissions.
“WTR concurs with the recommendations of both governments that patients with pacemakers exercise caution when using wireless communication technology such as digital cellular telephones and that patients with further questions should consult doctors,” said Dr. George Carlo, chairman of Wireless Technology Research, an organization set up by the cellular industry to oversee scientific work on wireless health-related issues. EMI research is expected to yield initial findings early next year, said Carlo.
In England, The Sunday Telegraph’s lead story Oct. 29 was headlined, “Car phones face ban for causing brake failures.” Airbags, according to the article, also have been found to be susceptible to activation by digital cell phones and there is a government investigation underway on interference by phones to hearing aids, wheelchairs and breathing machines.
Here in the United States, the government and wireless telecommunications industry are struggling with how EMI can be curbed, controlled and managed without heavy-handed regulation or economic hardship.
There are loud and angry complaints, though, that digital pocket phones based on the European Global Service for Mobile communication interfere with hearing aids.
The 4 million hearing-aid users in the nation are demanding that digital wireless phones be hearing-aid compatible. They don’t want to repeat the European experience of being responsible for solving interference problems once wireless systems are built.
Congress and the Federal Communications Commission are brow-beating the wireless telecommunications industry to work with the hearing impaired community, audiologists and hearing aid manufacturers to develop short- and long-term solutions to hearing aid interference.
An inter-industry summit to move that process forward will be held here the middle of next month.
However, in a Nov. 2 letter FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Sens. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, (a hearing-aid wearer) and Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., said that should industry fail to identify solutions to interference and compatibility problems “we urge the Commission to move expeditiously to see that all four million Americans who wear hearing aids have the ability to operate PCS equipment.”
Even before the EMI issue came to light, the wireless industry was busy dealing lawsuits alleging that first-generation analog cellular phones cause brain cancer. To date, no court has awarded damages to any plaintiff.
The California Public Utilities Commission has directed cellular companies to be mindful of public concerns about potential health problems from electromagnetic field and radio frequency exposure in siting and constructing wireless telecom towers.
