Mobile Phones - Toxic Talk
Did you know: Moving the mobile phone aerial eight inches from the head, instead of one inch, would dramatically reduce exposure
- the dose falls to 1/64th as the square of the distance.
Mobile phones (mobile, cell, handie) were once limited to a prosperous few. Now they have rocket into ubiquity, and have become an integral part of modern telecommunications and are fast becoming a social lifestyle. In 1992, less than 1 percent of people worldwide had mobile phones and only one third of all countries had cellular networks. Ten years later, 18 percent of people (1.14 billion) had mobile phones - more than the number with conventional phone lines - over 90 percent of countries had networks. In some parts of the world, they are the most reliable or only phones available. In others, mobile phones are very popular because they allow people to maintain continuous communication without hampering freedom of movement.
Did you know: More Europeans now send and receive short text messages with their mobile phones than use the Internet from personal computers.
With the increasing number of mobile phone users, increasing numbers of mobile base stations have had to be installed. Base stations are low-powered multi-channel two-way radio antennae that communicate with users' handsets. Mobile phones and their base stations produce radiofrequency (RF) radiation (EMF - Electromagnetic Fields) to communicate with each other, and therefore people near base stationsa are exposed to RF radiation. Exposure to EMF has been shown to have negative health impacts.
Life cycle assessment of mobile phones
When we adopt a life cycle assessment of mobile phones as a measure of their ecological impacts we see that they have a huge impact. In this approach we take into account the raw materials and processing, the manufacture and assembly of components, the distribution, the use (including service and repair), and the end-of-life components of collection and transport, battery processing, handset processing, and accessory processing.
Did you know: In Africa, mobile phones outnumber fixed lines
at a higher ratio than on any other continent. Entrepreneurs selling
the use of their cell phones now bring service to villagers who
previously had to walk hours to place a call.
Like computers, mobile phones are short-lived products that present the clearest threat to humans and the environment when they are being created or destroyed, as they contain semiconductor chips that contain toxins. The biggest hazards are the phone's chip-containing circuit board, liquid crystal display and batteries. Consumers have stockpiled approximately 500 million used cell phones that are likely to end up in landfill, where they could leach as much as 142 tons of lead. The plastic casing is difficult to recycle and poses a hazard in manufacture and disposal. Mobile phones represent a waste disposal nightmare.