French government decides mobiles 'may not be safe'

The French health ministry has issued a statement saying that mobile phones might not be safe, and recommending the use of a hands-free kit at all times to keep the phone away from the body. This will come as a surprise to Air France, which has just started trials of in-flight calling on one of its Airbus A318 aircraft. The …

[Anonymous Coward]

l'exception Française

And since when has any French citizen ever paid any attention to a sign forbidding something they want to do? They'd be stripped of their citizenship immediately, if they hadn't died of shame first. The staff at Roissy/de Gaulle airport stand and smoke under the no smoking signs...

[A J Stiles]

Hmmmm

After reading all the evidence, the only conclusion I can draw is that someone, somewhere actually WANTS mobile phones to be harmful, but reality is being uncooperative.

[John Macintyre]

and the risk...

so far unproved in the rest of the world... I'm guessing that by their assumption hands free bluetooth headsets are safe too?

[Anonymous Coward]

... and the risk indeed!

Smoking was once considered safe, even beneficial to health. Im sure people disagreed and they were met with "Prove that it's dangerous," style nonsense.

MOBILE PHONES CAUSE CANCER

I'm sure you can see that just because mobile phones don't cause people to drop dead on first use doesn't negate the possibility of adverse health effects later on. Mobile phones really haven't been around that long and statistics are not complete enough to prove anything either way.

Looking at the evidence one has to look at research not funded or interfered with by those with a pecuniary interest in doing so. Such as why do Bee's and birds have trouble navigating in the wash of mobile signals?

The risk is that people are far to eager when it suits their cause to make statements such as "The risk is so far unproved in the rest of the world," when instead they should be saying "The SAFETY is so far unproved... anywhere." It seems the general public don't have an appetite for scientific proofs of anything... hence the whole climate change bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you keep yours away from your body?

(a) hang it on a string, and drag it around behind you?

(b) hang it on a stick, and watch the crowds part in front of you?

(c) let someone else carry it for you?

[Ian Ferguson]

Re: ...and the risk indeed!

Following on from your argument; the safety of digital wristwatches is also so far unproved. Has it occurred to you that the electric signals from your watch may be causing leukimeia? I haven't read a SINGLE scientific study which can undoubtedly prove the safety of these death-traps.

On a more serious note, I have a feeling that you and many others are getting confused by double negatives. Scientists are saying that they cannot disprove the dangerous effects of radio signals. They are saying this instead of saying 'there are definitely no dangerous effects' because they are being scientific in their statements because no tests can be 100% conclusive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubbish

"Such as why do Bee's and birds have trouble navigating in the wash of mobile signals?"

Yeah, RF may cause interference. So what?

I have trouble navigating in the dark. Does that mean the dark causes cancer? Of course not, it just means the dark is interfering with my ability to navigate.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How would you keep yours away from your body?

Hello - haven't you been paying attention: wear a tinfoil hat

[Edmond Orignac]

This message just received in Arecibo...

Just before Christmas, the city of Paris has also cut Wi-Fi access from public

libraries (see http://www.liberation.fr/vous/297128.FR.php), after deciding to

provide public WiFi access in october. Of course, since radio waves cannot penetrate

metal, a better solution would have been to offer free tinfoil hats to the public as a protection. For the most

paranoid, a plate armour is a full Faraday cage and is perfect for using a cell phone

without the hands-free kit or a laptop.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Anonymous Nutjob

Kind of following you there - even accepted the use of a BLOCK CAPITAL STATEMENT TO MAKE A POINT - but then you got with the "why do Bee's and birds" nonsense - are mobile phones so bad that they make you forget how to write English? Or are you in fact a Nokia plant, meant to make us think that only the crazy and illiterate are opposed to their technology?

Yours in equally cowardly anonymity.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that

AFAIK, politicians in France are legally liable for decisions they make, in office, for the rest of their lives, so if you don't want to end up in court every time someone gets brain cancer, hence they tell everyone not to use mobiles etc. Now, I, you and they know that mobiles don't give you brain cancer, but they probably also don't fancy ending up in court every time someone does get it and hence the advice.

As an aside, don't use a tin foil hat to repel the mobile signals, there was an Ignoble award a few years back for someone who made a report that showed that they actually directed/intensified signals in the microwave spectrum used for WiFi/Mobe phones, etc.

[Pete]

Re: ...and the risk indeed!

Society never bans things that have a risk attached. They only ban things when the risk outweighs the benefits.

Cars are the classic example (oh god, I wish I hadn't mentioned that). We can even count the number of deaths per year that are caused in motor accidents. However, the benefits are huge, and society as a whole is prepared[1] to accept the cost, both in finacial and social terms.

Phones are similar. The benefits are great and the risks, if they exist at all, are too small to measure. Result: acceptance, see [1]

[1] yes a few individuals don't like 'em. Tough, this is a dicta^H^H^H^H^Hdemocracy, everyone else loves them - live with it.

[Steve]

Re: ...and the risk indeed!

"It seems the general public don't have an appetite for scientific proofs of anything..."

The problem there being that you can't scientifically prove a negative, i.e. "mobile phones are not dangerous".

If you test 100 people with a phone, and 100 without, and 20 of the first group get cancer while 1 of the second group does, you can say with some certainty "the tested phone is dangerous".

If you test 100 people and none gets cancer, you can say "probably safe". If you test 1m people and none gets cancer you can say "very probably safe", but you cannot ever say "no-one will ever get cancer" unless you test everyone for ever, which is impractical if not impossible.

That is why no reputable scientist will ever say it, they have to say "probably very safe", and our scaremongering press translates that as "might be dangerous", in order to sell more tabloids :(

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Edmond

Funny you should mention this... If I understand the physics right, an ungrounded tin foil hat actually induces gain. Just google MIT & Tin foil hat, and you'll see the results. It's actually quite disturbing.

I have to give them credit as they tested several stylish types of head cover: Skull Cap, Roman Centurion helmet and, my personal favorite, a Fez.

[Andy Worth]

Re: ...and the risk indeed!

To be fair, I still haven't seen a scientific study proving that wanking doesn't give you hairy palms/make you go blind - but there you go. I'm sure you're one of these people who believes that mobile phones blow up petrol stations as well just because someone says it does, and there's no absolute proof that it doesn't (many more sparks are caused by clothing static, particularly with man-made fibre like nylon).

It's true, there might "possibly" be a health risk associated with using mobile phones, but then living in a country where only around 1 in 5 people eat a proper diet, with a high proportion of smokers and drinkers, masses of road traffic and about a million other things a day that might kill you, it's really probably not worth shitting your pants over.

[Anonymous Coward]

@How would you keep yours away from your body?

You forgot my favourite method

(d) don't own a mobile phone

All I have to worry about now is secondary radiation

[Ole Juul]

May contain small parts

There's a concern about phones being marketed towards children. I assume then that they are talking about a choking hazard.

[Rob]

RE: May contain small parts

I presume you mean choking whereby I have shoved it down some annoying brats throat because they have been playing their crappy music with crappy compression through the crappy mono speaker of their phone.

[Tim]

Such a shame

Kids shouldn't be deterred from having mobiles. It would deprive us of such wondeful moments as I encountered on an afternoon train from London some 18 months ago. A group of 3 schoolgirls, who I somewhat doubt were from Cheltenham Ladies College, sat down in the next seats to me. They were going away for a girls weekend, which is why they had had already started drinking of course, and their charmingly loud conversation was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a text message ..." aww, I gotta tex' from Rikki already" was announced to the carriage. Then a few moments later "he's missing his mum".

[Paul Rhodes]

Re:.....and the Risk Indeed: Some Perspective

Consider that the average car emits around 200g CO2 per KM (UK current new-builds average 167g and the existing fleet is worse) and drives a nominal 15,000 KM, that's 3000 Kg of CO2 per car (in service only). Traffic kills about 1.2 Million people globally per annum. Someone's been killed on the roads while I've typed this.

The average mobile phone user generates 25Kg (full life-cycle) per annum and only has to avoid driving 125Km in a car to offset this. NO-ONE has yet been proven to have been killed by mobile phone use.

The common flu kills around 20,000 americans each year, Even H5N1 Bird Flu kills around 40 people globally per year.

By the way, the 'scientific' research into Bees-Nest Aversion used a DECT phone, so you'd best avoid any RF if you give this research specific credibility.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mobile phones do carry a risk

I don't know about the modern small phones, but I dropped one of the early "brick" models on my foot and it didn't half hurt.

And if you really want proof that mobiles damage the brain - Paris has one...

[TeeCee]

Important bit!

"......now-redundant non-smoking symbol used to be."

Yay, way to go the French!!!

200 Gauloise and a ticket to Rio please.

[regadpellagru]

real point of this news

There should be a "real point" comment, yes ? :-)

The really interesting things are:

- this was announced by our lovely minister of health (and sports, don't forget that, even if it seems to me a good 50 kg weight reduction is needed, to only try to qualify for any such type of activity), after it's been noticed a LOT of mobile phones were sold to kids during Christmas, some with a GPS

- this was announced one week AFTER Christmas

Source: France Info radio station

PH icon. At least, she CAN do sports and even sell movies showing night sports ;-)

[vincent himpe]

ah well...

If you take everything into account the conclusion is that: life is a disease to which 100% of the patient eventually succumb.

I'd rather use the cell phone once a week next to my ear, than look like a deranged person talking to his self with a 2.4 GHz microwave cooker plugged in his ear ... ( with optional blue flashing light )

coat , please , i'm going back to the outside of the asylum...

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof vs. belief

My brain tumor could not be scientifically attributed to cell phone EMR, but I believe that those hours of consolation phone calls were responsible for my tumor's remission.