Garth RattrayCELLULITIS IS the "Inflammation of cellular or connective tissue", but in today's context perhaps it should also mean "The frequent or injudicious use of cellular telephones".
I know a household helper who was fired because she rudely insisted on accepting some 20 to 40 cell phone calls daily from her friends while working. Cell phones ring and are answered during church services and even at funerals all the time. People are so addicted to their cell phones that they distract themselves and chat while at the wheel and refuse to turn them off at the movies, in lectures, hospitals, in doctor's examination rooms, anywhere.
The seriousness of the situation really hit me when I saw a traffic policeman, fiddling with his, totally oblivious of a driver trying desperately to exit a dangerously concealed roadway right beside him.
CONCEPTUALISED
Bell Labs conceptualised the mobile telephone in 1947 but Dr. Martin Cooper (formerly of Motorola) is considered to be the inventor of the first modern portable handset. He made the first call on a portable cell phone in April 1973. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) temporarily hindered further development of the system because it limited the number of radio-spectrum frequencies, but in 1968 it reconsidered its position and increased the frequency allocation. AT&T and Bell Labs then put forward a system of utilising many small, low-powered broadcast towers, each covering one "cell" (an area of a few miles in radius). Each broadcast tower would use only a few frequencies assigned to the system. Calls would be passed from tower to tower as the phone-user travelled from cell to cell (hence the name "cellular" telephone). This resulted in coverage of enormous areas utilising relatively few radio frequencies (RF).
Cell phone misuse and the microwaves radiated by hand-held devices and powerful transmission towers evoke health concerns. The Gleaner Editorial (Friday, March 12, 2004) revealed that 54 per cent of Jamaicans already own a total of nearly 2 million cell phones. Although towers are everywhere and cause some anxiety to residents nearby, after ten weeks of inquiry, no one at the Spectrum Management Authority (Jamaica's sole RF licensing authority) can tell me how many transmission towers are in Jamaica.
NEWER DIGITAL CELL PHONES
The newer digital cell phones broadcast in discrete bursts and therefore transmit only one-eighth the amount of energy that the older models used to send into the user's head. However, some scientists still worry that microwaves may disrupt DNA and if long-term exposure microwave causes complications, it may take years to become evident, by then it may be too late for many.
The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) advised that concerned individuals should limit conversations on hand-held cellphones to necessary calls only. Epidemiologic evidence between RF radiation and cancer is tenuous. A 13-country study of brain and other head and neck cancers in cell phone users should have begun in the summer of 2000. Until the data emerge it is prudent to make greater use of telephones with vehicle-mounted antennas, or wireless microphone/speaker devices.
STATUS SYMBOL
Many people treat the cell phone as a status symbol and obligatory fashion accessory. Others use it for hours of idle, casual or romantic conversation. Businessmen use it for telecommuting, opting to carry the office wherever they go. Bicyclists, motorcyclists, drivers of cars, trucks and even large public transport vehicles often chat away on phones while manoeuvring through our already precarious roads. It's especially scary to see drivers approach stop signs, go through signalled intersections, swing around corners and weave through traffic with a distant look in their eyes, totally engrossed in their cell phone conversations.
Like New York and several other states, we also need to establish laws governing the in-traffic use of cell phones since we know that using the handset while driving is just as dangerous as driving legally drunk! Our tiny country now has four cell phone service providers. As Digicel, Cable and Wireless, Oceanic Digital and now AT&T battle for supremacy, more and more cell phones will be sold. It's time that we take the sensible approach to this device and use it as it was intended, safely and for important calls only.
Dr. Garth Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice.
