Are my cell phones going to kill me?

Factual Questions
1

For years, my wife and I have had Nokia 5100 series cellular phones. In October, we acquired brand new SonyEricsson T226 cellular phones. Since then, strange things have been happening. At home, my cell phone lives next to a small TV in the kitchen. At random intervals, the speakers on the TV emit a stacatto rhythm (datada datada datada). This happens maybe once each day. The TV doesn’t have to be turned on, though the sound is louder when the TV is on. My wife’s phone lives next to our telephone answering machine. Sometimes, though less often than the TV, the speaker on the answering machine gives off the same rhythm. At work, I was showing a video to my class. I was standing next to the TV with the cell phone on its belt clip near the TV. This same sound came from the TV. My wife reports that this sound comes from her computer speakers at work. She keeps her purse (with its cell phone) near the speakers.

This morning, though was even weirder. The clock/radio next to my bed made this same sound. The cell phones were not in the room. The closest phone was downstairs. However, it was in the room directly below our bedroom. I estimate that the phone was about twenty feet away from the clock/radio, through a ceiling, floor, carpet, and a table.

So now I’m wondering if it’s safe to carry this phone in my pocket or clipped to my belt. I’ve got some delicate equipment in that vicinity, after all. What radiation could this new phone be eminating that is interferring with our electronics?

What do y’all think?

2

From the sound of it, it’s NOT your phones causing this sound in the speakers. Cell phones do not emit enough power to drive an unpowered speaker from several feet away. In any case, there are no reputable studies linking cell phone radiation with any health risks, so I wouldn’t be too concerned. Each and every one of us is constantly subjected to far more RF power than any cell phone alone is capable of emitting. Chances are the sound you are hearing is being caused by another, stonger source in your area, perhaps an illegally overpowered CB or some such.

3

No, I think it is caused by the phones. Cell phones occasionally communicate with the base station, and the power they put out is enough to make a sound if the signal is picked up and then amplified. When I’m on my head set at work and my cell phone is about to ring, there is so much noise on the head set that I can’t carry on a conversation. I agree that you couldn’t hear it unless it was amplified, so there must be something about this equipment that amplifies the signal even when it’s not turned on. But the symptom - the occasional pulsed noise, is exactly what I would expect from a cell phone.

To answer the OP, there’s a big difference between putting out a signal that can be picked up by sensitive electronics, and one that’s strong enough to cause damage to your tissue. To damage your tissue, the RF would have to heat you up enough that the heat would cook you, and I think you would notice this.

4

I disagree with Q.E.D. - it is definitely the phone that causes these noises. The “dat-datta-dat-datta-dat” sound is the signal of the phone communicating with the nearest mast.

However, don’t worry about keeping the phone in your pocket. These signals are not all that powerful, and they are not on all the time. Remember - radios are meant to react to electromagnetic waves. Your tackle is not.

5

I can confirm the C.B. possibility. My shut-off speakers would often pick up signals from a neighbour’s C.B. It would be quite startling to be awakened in the middle of the night by C.B. chatter.

6

Try moving the celphone away from the TV or answering machine more (put it in your car?) and see if the sound repeats. Then move it closer and see if the distance has any effect. I think it is a good candidate, in spite of what Q.E.D. says.

Years ago I had a similar problem with a tiny wireless alarm transmitter mounted on the window. Only when the window was open, I would hear a barely-audible “deadle-deadle-deadle” sound from the hifi on the desk every 30 seconds. It took me a while to find the source, believe me!

Now, a wireless alarm transmitter doesn’t share much in terms of frequencies and signal types with a celphone, fersure; I only mention it as something that didn’t seem likely to interfere that did. And celphones periodically send out a “here I am” signal. That’s how the nationwide celphone network knows where your handset is. Whenever you get an incoming call, it has to route it to the nearest tower, defined as the one where the last “here I am” signal came from.

As far as the TV not being turned on when you hear the noise, it may only be in “sleep” mode, especially if it responds to a remote control.

7

Although, this page does seem to have a slant towards the dangers of cellphones, I do not dismiss all of it.

http://www.brainspeed.net/Cell_Phone_Radiation/cell_phone_radiation.html

Cell phones can interfere with electronics, that’s why they are prohibited from use in hospitals.

8

It’s the phone! It’s a well documented fact!

9

Devilsknew, on the page you linked to there is not a single link to any scientific studies supporting their claim of brain damage. But there is a link to the author’s page, where he tries to sell you a $16.95 book. No credentials are given anywhere, either. It’s just another of a zillion sites trying to worry you and get you to buy stuff.

In contrast, on this page from the Medical College of Wisconsin is a long list of hundreds of links to scientific studies that suggest that there is nothing harmful about celphone handsets, towers or other EMF radiation caused by power lines.

Oddly enough, both links originate in the same city (Milwaukee, WI).

Who ya gonna believe?

10

Excerpts from devilsknew’s link:

“You can detect for yourself the effect of cell phone radiation upon your brain by measuring changes in brain speed.”

“Males (especially post-puberty males) will get stronger testing results than females, because the electrical system in a male generates more electrical current then in a female.”

“The palm of your hand is a very sensitive responder to EM radiation, and even though it is a foot away from the phone, the phones energy can still penetrate your body at this distance and slow down nerve conduction.”

“If this concentration exercise goes slower when your body is being radiated by the cell phone, this means you are electrosensitive.”

“The electrical system in your brain is every bit as sensitive as medical electronic devices, so therefore it is not surprising that a cell phone can interfere with the brain’s delicate electrical system.”

“When a person carries a cell phone or uses a cell phone, the radiation from this device intensifies the electrical energy encircling his or her body. It increases the voltage in the body’s energy field. This unnaturally high voltage creates electrostress. Electrostress slows down the body’s vital bio-electrical processes, and this slowdown could harm your immune system’s ability…”

I gotta stop now - my sides are hurting.

11

For a definitive answer, contact your local FBI office, supplying your cell phone numbers and proof that you are the user of those numbers.

We all know that the Department of Homeland Security has increasing Federal monitoring of cell phone communications, but there has been less media coverage of the incriminating communications prosecuted under RICO [Radio Interference and Conspiracies against Owners] Act.

In Nov. 1999, J. Rutherford Baitworm of Birmingham reported the first case like yours, Drum God. Like yourself, he had declared himself a deity (Thor, in his case, IIRC), and reported that his clock radio had informed him that his cellphones were plotting his death. A digital recorder was placed in the cell tower nearest his home, but before the tones and chirps could be decoded at the FBI’s hush-hush R2D2 Intra-Digital Intelligent Objects Telecommunications branch, this loyal patriot was struck down by a freak electrical discharge (transmitted by his beloved Mjollnir. as he performed a Norse ritaul in a rainstorm). Thus far, it has not been possible to prove that his electronic devices arranged for his death, but it’s pretty obvious what happened - electricity is electricity, after all.

By April 1 2000, employees of Reynolds Aluminum were reportedly already hard at work developing an inexpensive, widely deployable EM shield to protect the American public from the cell phones they reoutinely placed against their heads. The early design, based on a design formerly available only to VIPs and celebrities [e.g. a pair of conical metal shields publicly used by Madonna Louise Ciccione, aka “Madonna” as early as the 1980s] was very promising, but was cancelled in a scandal over their use of uninformed human test subjects. They had tried to obscure their testing by misrepresenting themselves to urban subjects as R.J. Reynolds Tobacco employees working on the now famous “Project SCUM” marketing campaign, but the subjects believed their ‘cover’ all too much and used their shields as if they were tobacco products. Loud complaints that the new silver cigarettes were tasteless and had the draw of a concrete block, combined with puzzling hospital X-rays of mysterious soft aluminum ‘projectiles’ in patients with no apparent entry wounds, eventually brought the project to light, and it was killed.

Having said this, it is important to remember that most Electronic-Americans are hard-working, law-abiding citizens, more sinned against than sinning. Hollywood delights in protrayals of the dark underworld of Multifrequency Analog PHone Interference with Appliances, but most cell phones are like the rest of us. They only want a roof over their heads, three square recharges a day, and a chance to raise their gameboys and calculators to be become home theaters and PCs, in the honored tradition of the American Dream