cellphones (Page 2)

New fuel has been added to the long-burning question about whether cellphone use causes car accidents. Harvard researchers have researched government figures for auto accidents, and report that drivers talking on their cellphones are responsible for about 6% of U.S. auto accidents each year, killing an estimated 2,600 people and injuring 330,000 others. The Harvard study found that a cell-phone user has about 13 chances in 1 million of being killed in an accident while making a call, which compares with 49 in 1 million for driving without a seat belt.
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Scientists now think it depends on whether you use an older, analog phone or a newer digital model. They?ve decided that the main danger of cellphone use lies with long-term users of first generation analog cell phones, who have up to 80 percent greater risk of developing brain tumors than non-cellphone users. A study of 1,617 Swedish patients diagnosed with brain tumors between 1997 and 2000, compared with a control group without brain tumors, found that those who had used Nordic analog cellphones had a 30 percent higher risk of developing brain tumors than people who hadn?t used them, particularly on the side of the brain that was used during calls. For people using analog phones for more than 10 years, the risk was 80 percent greater.
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Passengers on packed trains could be exposed to electromagnetic fields far higher than those recommended under international guidelines when large numbers of commuters all using their mobile phones at the same time. This can happen in buses, subway cars and elevators, and in other closed environments, such as offices, as well.

Tsuyoshi Hondou, a physicist from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, says Japanese commuter trains are often packed with people surfing the web on their cellphones. He decided to find out what effect this has on the electromagnetic radiation in a train car.
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Talking on a mobile phone while driving is more dangerous than being over the legal alcohol limit, even if you?re using a hands-free phone. Driving simulator experiments by researchers at the Transport Research Laboratory in the U.K. found that drivers talking on cellphones had 30 per cent slower reaction times than those who had been drinking, and 50 per cent slower times than sober drivers.

?In addition,? the TRL report says, ?drivers using mobile phones missed significantly more road warning signs than when drunk. The distraction caused by making or receiving a call can be visual, auditory, mental (cognitive), or physical (biomechanical). A hand-held mobile phone call could involve all four forms of distraction at the same time.?
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