Is your cell phone a killer?

to talk about a subject that UM is. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say controversial, but I'll definitely go so far as to say there's conflicting information about it. We're gonna be talking about cell phones and environments in which you aren't supposed to use them. Oh that's a not like that. No, No, let's not go there, none of the cutting out stuff. Okay, So ready, I was like, oh now I've been derailed. People send

your email directly to UM. So we're gonna talk about specifically two different environments in which you are at least sometimes told you are not supposed to use your cell phone. That would be hospitals and airplanes, but not not an airplane in a hospital or vice versa. You're not I'm not supposed to use it twice as much there? Uh anyway, alright, So why would anyone tell you that you should not use a cell phone in one of these environments? Do you want to take a stab at it? Chris? Yes?

All right. You know what, we actually have a question of the Day on the site dedicated to this very topic or these very topics, and uh, in short, it's radio interference. Yes, there are a lot of communications that are going on any any given time in these environments and they are concerned that cell phone reception and could interfere with those communications. Right, So when you think about

cell phones, they are radio frequency generators and receivers. I mean, that's that's how they that's how you communicate over a cell phone is through radio frequencies. So this really fits into a larger umbrella of electro magnetic interference, which encompasses everything from radio waves to just about everything else you can imagine that involves electrons. So anything like an integrated

circuit can create electromagnetic interference. Um and depending upon how close you are to UH to sensitive equipment, how well that equipment is shielded, the uh, the kind of antenna that equipment has, how powerful your cell phone is. You may or may not actually affect anything UM to a degree that is actually noticeable, but the possibility is enough

to make people scared. Sorry, no, go ahead. Yeah. By shielding, UM, what we mean here is a lot of electronics, actually virtually everything UM has some kind of shielding in it. If you've ever taken apart um an electronic device and seeing that thin metal uh section in there, and you've gone, what is this for? Doesn't it's flimsy, it doesn't have

anything to do with anything. Well, it's it's shielding, And it's basically the kind of thing that should be in your speakers when you set next your cell phone next to it and make sure your speakers do that little clipping noise that Yeah, yeah, that's that's because your your speakers are have faulty shielding or lousy shielding, cheap cheap shielding, shielding.

There's lots of different adjectives we can throw in there, but yeah, it means that the it's whenever your cell phone is connecting with a cell phone tower, UM, then the that signal is is actually getting picked up by the speaker. Uh. This can happen because of multiple reasons. There's the possibility that your phone is operating on a frequency that is very close to or identical to the

frequency that the that the other devices using. Sometimes it doesn't even need to work work on a on a frequency, it's just the fact that the radio frequencies themselves are interfering. Or it can do this thing called intermodulation. Now, that's when you have one piece of equipment that relies upon radio frequencies to transmit data or receive data, and another gadget in this general vicinity that also uses radio frequencies,

and they're using two different frequencies. So generally you would say that these wouldn't overlap, you know, if you have a lot of different gadgets, but they're all operating on different frequencies. Theoretically, they're not going to really interfere with each other. They're not they're not communicating on the same string, if you want to think of it that way. But

sometimes frequencies can sort of intermingle a little bit. This intermodulation, you'll you'll get little spikes in the the transmission which if you're using something that's really sensitive, um, a very sensitive piece of equipment, that could translate into a faulty reading or a malfunction. Which that's where you start thinking, all right, now, this is a serious problem and basically just bleeds over into those harmonic side bands. Yes, exactly, you know it just it's it's sort of it's not

nice and neat. It doesn't stay in its own lane. It's to swerve out into the other part of traffic. Yeah, anything that's harmonic, we're talking about a frequency that's sort of a multiplier of the main frequency you're talking about. So anything that's related to it on a on a different factor than then you're gonna have some issues with

some harmonic interference. So what does this mean with the hospitals, Well, it means that if you were to have a cell phone and you were near a sensitive piece of equipment and your cell phone then tries to contact the cell tower, that interference could cause that equipment to give out, like I said, of faulty reading or even fail. And of course in the hospitals, there are a lot of pieces of equipment that are uh pretty pivotal to people's survival.

So in general, a lot of hospitals will ban cell phones out right now. I should also add that cell phones have advanced quite a bit since they first hit the scene, and now they're so well tuned that usually the frequencies don't interfere as often. And also a lot of equipment has much better error correction uh software and and hardware, so they don't necessarily pick up rogue frequencies the way they used to, so they're not as big

a threat as they used to be. Yeah, there's this myth about a four year old girl actually went out in a chain email a while back. Um, and I saw this on Snopes when I was doing research for this podcast. And apparently the myth goes that this sway old girl broke her leg and required surgery and everything

was going fine until suddenly she flatlined and died. And when the doctor walked out, he found a woman in the hallway using her cell phone and he smashed it, and uh, you know, there was a brew ha ha between the pain, the doctor, and the person out in the hallway because the doctor had to tell the parents that his that their daughter had died because someone was using a cell phone in a hospital. Um. No, Yeah, I was about to say, I'm assuming there's no actual

support or evidence of that being true. No. No, As a matter of fact, a snows found that there was nothing. Uh you know, there were no reports of anybody dying as the result of cell phone interference with medical equipment, although, um, there is there is some interference that can result from

cell phones on different frequencies. Um. The Mayo Clinic did a study in in two thousand seven in which they said, basically, you don't need to worry about it, um, but there are there are some things that they did find, like um, anti theft technology. You know that you see the big pillars that you see next to the doors your local shopping mall that always stopped me from stealing you know, handfuls of CDs. Those exactly hate those those in the

security cameras. Yeah, anyway, that that hand the technology has been known to interfere with people's pacemakers and defibrillators. Right. And here's here's just a tip just in case you are ever in the incredibly unlikely situation that someone collapses in between these pillars, The first thing you should do, assuming this person hasn't suffered some sort of back injury is move them out of the way, because prolonged exposure

is really what's gonna cause irreparable damage. If you can get them away from the signal, sometimes they can actually recover. There's no actual permanent damage to the pacemaker or other equipment, and the person will be all right within a few minutes. So yeah, that's one of those few times where if

someone does fall down it might be important to move them. Yeah, and it's uh, it doesn't um, well, I don't know, but it is the same kind of thing that you see when you see, uh at your convenience store, the sign in the microwave that say that says if you have a pacemaker, you know, microwave is also a radio frequency, right,

electromagnetic frequency right. Right. So so this study that you were talking about, the Mayo Clinic study back in two thousand seven, they used two different kinds of cellular phones on on different carriers and they tested out with a hundred and ninety two different medical devices and found no significant interference whatsoever, and that everything seems to be fine. However, that very same year, two thousand seven, over at the University of Amsterdam, there was a study which came to

very different conclusions. And in their tests, they tested cell phones near sixty one medical devices, uh that were not hooked up to patients. They thought that might be a bit unethical to test it on actual people. Perhaps perhaps, And out of the sixty one medical devices, they recorded forty eight incidents in twenty six devices. Uh, and they said a third of those incidents were hazardous. So it caused the machine to fail in such a way that it would have been harmful to the patient had that

been hooked up to someone. So we have here two very different studies. Now they're different explanations for what could have gone on to get such different results from different studies. Uh. The first one I can think of is different equipment. Yeah, there's no real I don't have the details on what the equipment was that the Mayo Clinic was testing with or that the University events are Dam was testing with. Also the cell phones, as you were pointing out earlier,

and I totally escaped my my attention. Cell phones in Europe operate on different frequencies and cell phones in the United States. Yeah, I mean this could be attributable to you know, the equipment and the medical equipment and cell phones in the United States versus medical equipment and cell phone overseas. So I mean it, it may just happen to uh be a convergence of technologies. So, as I was pointing out to Chris, the moral of the story is, if you have to go to the hospital, go to

the United States. Don't get sick in Europe. I'm sure that's convenient for everyone. I hope so well, what with our wonderful healthcare industry here. So it seems like it's not it's not likely that it's going to cause a serious problem, but it's one of those situations where I think a lot of people would say better safe than sorry. Yeah, And there are no laws. The FCC doesn't have any laws pertaining to using cell phones inside hospitals. They leave

that up to the individual hospital to decide. So some hospitals may have a ban on cell phone use, but that's just the policy of that particular hospital. Others may not have any policy at all. And you can walk up and down the halls talking on your cell phone as much as you like until you annoy someone enough

for them to kick you out. But there's no there's no legal reason why you can't use a cell phone in a hospital, although you know, if you're talking to your doctor about what's wrong with you and you're on the phone at the same time, that could be Yeah, that's often, like I find that doctor's offices and being in line for fast food are two places you don't want to be on a cell phone because people just think it's so snooty. So well, that's hospitals. Did you

have anything else add on that before we move on airplanes? Okay, so airplanes. Now, if you've ever been on an airplane in the United States, at least you have heard the spiel that includes all cell phones have to be turned off as soon as the the the door is closed. Um. Really, they definitely have to be turned off when you are taking off. That's that's the policy across every major airline in the United States. All right, then, well, how come

Well it's for a very similar reason. We're talking about phones potentially interfering with very sensitive flight uh devices, so everything from navigation equipment to anything that involves operating the plane. The fear is that a cell phone could somehow affect these electronics in such a way as to give false readings or to cause something to malfunction. And therefore put everyone in jeopardy. And it seems not the game show just jumping ahead of you there, but everyone in danger.

How about that? Uh, just so that you can chat with your buddy about the game last night. They think that's probably a little irresponsible. Yeah, if it interferes with landing gear, that would be like a wheel of misfortune. So nice, So we don't want to go down this path. Trust me. What we'll be doing game show references for the rest of the day. And I can. I am fully capable of doing that. People are more capable than I. So I have a question for sure, go ahead. So

why don't they put really fancy shielding on airplanes? Well, surely somebody is is bound to forget that they have their phone turned on. There's a couple of things. First of all, the in general the airplanes do have very good shielding, not necessarily the equipment from each other, but the the cockpit from the passenger section is pretty well shielded. And uh, and there have been several tests. Again I've

seen conflicting reports. Some tests say that really there's virtually no way a cell phone would affect um the the electronics of an airplane to any measurable degree. Others say, no, that's totally wrong. This person turned on his cell phone and it caused the compass to fail. Well that's a pretty big deal, right, Like, come on, you can look out the window. Um, so, well, the sun's over there, so we must be going south. Um No, but that so they are actually pretty well shielded. And when you

think about it, they have to be. It's not just the fact that your your cell phone could potentially cause this plane to malfunction. I mean, if that were as sensitive as planes were, we would never get anyone off the ground because planes are constantly flying around being bombarded by different waves. I mean, radio frequencies are everywhere. You know, it's not just on the Uh. You don't turn your

phone and then magically radio frequency suddenly appear. I mean some are being admitted by your phone, but there are others that are already in the environment. What's the same thing with um turning off your CD player's iPods. Those things are emitting interference and that's why they ask you to turn those things off until you're in the air at a certain altitude and they ask you to turn

them off again. Another another reason for that, but beyond just the interference is simply practical in the sense that you don't want a lot of loose things in the in the cabin when you're taking off in landing, because that's that tends to be the roughest part of any flight unless you hit some really serious turbulence, and that means you just have loose projectiles bouncing around the cabin which could potentially bang into someone's head. And then you've

got a lawsuit on your hands. And uh so that's another reason, you know, I mean, it's it's completely separate from the interference angle, although we also still do have this interference issue. Uh. But you have to ask yourself other questions, like, well, if cell phones are so deadly, why are there satellite phones on planes? I mean, you can use a satellite phone. Well, it's different radio frequency. So you could argue that, well, the cell phone range

of frequencies maybe closer to the planes equipment. That's not really the case, by the way. Uh Another argument you might make if you are on the corporate side of things, is well, this way we can charge people to use the phone and we can monetize that um as opposed to if we let people just use their cell phones, they might be able to use it whenever there's there is one interesting thing I found on the the FCCS

I specifically about this. Let's see if I can, if I can pull up the the specific wording here about about cell phones and why you shouldn't use them. Besides the fact that it affects, it could potentially affect the aircraft's UH systems. Here it goes. The primary concern is a cell phone used while airborne would have a much

greater transmitting range than a land mobile unit. Their use could result in unwanted interference to transmissions at other cell UH other cell locations, since the system uses the same frequency several times within a market or given operating area. Since the cell phone is capable of operating on various cellular frequencies, unwanted interference may also affect cellular systems in

adjacent markets or operating areas. So one of the reasons they don't want to use cell phones is because it can screw up the cell phone network down on the ground. You know that's that's a good because I saw some people basically saying that the reason you can't use your cell phone on a plane is just a web of conspiracy theories because the carriers don't want you messing with

the communications at the tower level. The planes basically don't want to pay to have their equipment shielded more thoroughly because that would be really and I can imagine that would be really expensive. You're outfitting an entire fleet, sure, exactly. Um. And the government, which I think is really funny, Um, the government doesn't want you talking on the phone because basically they're afraid that people are gonna talk too loud and somebody else is gonna fly off the handle and

try and beat their head in on a plane. Sultans, I can understand that. So that you know, the biggest argument I've seen from the average Joe or Jill, if you will, UM, seems to be, hey, no, let's leave these off, because I really don't want everybody around me on the phone. I'm on the plane. It's one of the last places that we have that nobody's talking on

the phone. Yeah, and and for more evidence that the cell phone would not bring the plane down for one thing, I think it's safe to say that there's always gonna be at least one person who purposefully or not leaves his or her cell phone on during any given flight or just forget or just forgets I have. I have forgotten about my cell phone once I thought I had turned it off, and then when we landed, I was thinking, I'll turn my cell phone on and call it. Pull

my cell phone out, and it's on, and I'm thinking wow. Oops. Because I'm I'm a goody two shoes. I follow the rules. I mean, even when the rules are not necessarily maybe they don't make sense, I tend to follow them anyway. I'm not one of those who questions authority and turns my cell phone on and says I'm gonna either crash or I'm gonna prove them wrong. And then that's I'd rather get to where I'm going and not get hit by fine or pepper spray. So because that could happen,

it has happened. Well, not the pepper spray on a plane, but um grand uh fine. Yeah, one guy was hit with the twenty grand fine when he refused to get off the the phone in midflight. Um he said it was a life or death situation. I believe, as I recall it was his father had passed away and so he or was passing away in the process. Of dying, and he had to arrange make final arrangements with the

hospital and he felt that it could not wait. So you know what had happened was he apparently had left his phone on, received a phone call, found out it was the hospital, and then called the hospital a couple more times, and despite the fact that flight attendants told him to stop calling, he continued until they essentially restrained him and slapped him with a fine. I think, yikes, yeah, that's a bad day right there, my friend. But cell phones,

I mean, we've got wireless on lots of flights. Now, yeah, we've got WiFi. So so again, it's clear that obviously these radio frequencies aren't bringing planes down left and right. People are finding ways to monetize it, and suddenly it's okay to use it. I'm not going to get all cynical there. But and the European Union actually is UH has some flights that allow you to use cell phones. They have different arrangements depending on what plane you're on,

like what airline you're on. UH. Some have very special plans that you have to opt into before you can use your cell phone on them, and if you have decided even though they're in the European Union have decided not to allow cell phones because the customers, as you were pointing out, said they don't want it. You don't want to sit next to a chatty catty Cathy all the way from Berlin to l A. Yeah, call, that

would be a very long call. Um. I know some teenagers who could do it, though, So I wonder now the WiFi is allowed on flights. This is another one who's extemporaneous. I just thought of it sort of questions. I wonder if Skype would work a lot of airlines specifically block Skype. Really, yes, they specifically firewall the heck out of Skype because they don't want voice over Internet Protocol calls going out. Um. Again, part of it is money.

You're looking at at a you know, if the plane has the satellite phones where they charge you to use them, you know, you slide your credit card in and suddenly you can make a phone call. Uh. It makes way more sense to force you into using that than to allow you to use some other method. And also they do want to discourage people from just you know, becoming even more compartmentalized and thinking that they are the center of the universe and chatting as loudly as they need

to in order to you know. That's the other thing is that airplanes are allowed, and humans tend to increase the volumes of their voices, uh in loud environments because they figured the person on the other end can't hear them very well, right, I mean, it's just a natural thing. It gets louder you start speaking more loudly. Yeah, of course, nice. I think we probably just hit the top level on that one, so Liz will be pulling that down later. Sorry, Liz,

that wasn't the hay there or anything. And uh, but yeah, I mean, you you tend to do that sort of thing, and you don't necessarily need to do that. When you're on the phone. The microphone picks you up your voice pretty well, so you're shouting your head off at someone who could hear you if you just talked to a normal voice. But because the plane itself is kind of loud, you naturally get louder and louder, and then the whole environment gets louder and louder, and flighting flying just becomes

even less of a pleasure. I actually used to really enjoy flying, not quite as much now, but I used to makes my arms tired. Waca, waca walka. Oh my gosh. We should have accepted that challenge with stuff you should know, because at least then I feel like we were doing this for a reason. Um So, So anyway, that's all I have right now for for cell phones and hospitals

and planes. Again, we're talking about a lot of conflicting information. Yeah, some people feel it it hasn't really been tested that thoroughly, but the FCC in two thousand seven basically decided to close the book on cell phones on planes for right now. So it's I don't think it's going to get turned around,

at least not in the immediate future. Yeah, it's it's one of those things where I think, Um, you know, the tough thing is it's hard to test this stuff without it without testing it in a dangerous, dangerous environment. And so people are saying, well, is it really worth testing this much or could we just go without for

the duration of a flight or a visit at a hospital. Uh, you know, is your life so really important that you are willing to put it at risk and the lives of everyone else around you just so that you can collect and make a you know, complete a call, and most people would say no. I mean, I'm not one of them, because obviously my life is important enough for that. But most people would be reasonable and say no, al right, well that's all I had for that. Yeah, I don't

have anything else either. Well then that means that we are to my favorite segment, a listener mail. Yeah, yeah, I thought you'd appreciate that. This listener mail comes from Kathleen. Kathleen says, hey, guys, I have two requests, but it would be awesome if you guys did either one of them. I would love to hear a Google Wave podcast at some point, either based on the one point five hour long developers demo or later in the year after it

comes out. Ironically, I found out about Google Wave through Marshall Brain's blog, not the Tech Stuff blog, which I thought kind of weird. I have since blogged about Google Wave just so you know, Kathleen, so you coul should go back and check it out. I also think it would be cool to compare the new search engines what do you even call them? If not search engines that are coming out, specifically Wolf from Alpha and Bying, but it's not Google with the Google Search Engine or maybe

even have individual podcasts on each. Now, of course, we talked about Wolf from Alpha. We'll probably talk about Bang and Google at some point, and I've blogged about this as well, so I'm covering all the bass is on this one. But here's the reason why I read Kathleen's email. Finally, here's my Shakespearean sonnet. Since you guys already got two spince arians that I wrote in lieu of studying for my English final, I think since she wrote it instead of studying, we owe it to her to read this.

This is to text stuff and all that you do. Your fans love you dearly. Also, please note a sonnet is harder than a haiku against stuff. You should know you get my vote. Why learn how Thanksgiving works when instead you could learn of seventy inch TVs even listen about the world Wide Web. Tech Stuff is indeed the podcast for me for churning out eight delightful podcasts. My thanks and applause goes to how stuff works, which entertain whenever one broadcasts. Each is amusing and has its own quirks.

I hope John and Chris still live. If it's true that Josh and Chuck really sit next to you, Yeah, they were you do. Actually, Chuck technically sits on the other side of the cubicle wall. Yes, but I can see his feet when I, you know, got my pencil look under the cubicle wall, all right. Sometimes you see his face, which is really unsettling. Yes, I don't know why he does that. I think it has to do with the red beeping thing that has attached to the

underside of my desk. I don't know what that's for. Yeah, So anyway, guys, if you want to learn more about cell phones, airplanes, and hotels, hotels, hospitals, I don't know where the hotels came from. I'm just thinking. I'm just thinking about vacations. I'd rather think about hotels and hospitals, cellphones, airplanes in hospitals. We do have the question of the

day on how stuff Works dot com. You can always write us our email addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and we will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the House stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the Reinvented two thousand, twelve Camry it's ready. Are you