NONFICTION: TECHNOLOGY
Zapped: Why Your Cell Phone Shouldn’t Be Your Alarm Clock and 1,268 Ways to Outsmart the Hazards of Electronic Pollution by Ann Louise Gittleman
Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family by Devra Davis
Like many Americans, I am never too far from my BlackBerry. Though I turn it off when I go to bed, I check it for messages as soon as I wake up, and for the rest of the day it serves as my connection to colleagues, loved ones and total strangers across the globe.
It is also an endless source of fascination for my 1 1/2-year-old son, and I devote a considerable amount of energy to keeping it out of his tiny hands. I’ve seen enough scientific reports about the potential hazards associated with cellphones to make me concerned about his exposure, but also enough contradictory studies to leave me confused.
Two new books — Ann Louise Gittleman’s “Zapped” and Devra Davis’ “Disconnect” — promise to settle the debate about whether mobile devices are bad for you.
They don’t. But they raise significant questions about our constant exposure to the electronic radiation that flows from the devices into our homes, workplaces and public spaces, questions serious enough to make me change my behavior.
In “Zapped,” Gittleman tries to make a blunt case for alarm. The book is littered with grim anecdotes about people who find themselves battling unexplained ailments, from brain tumors to intense headaches, circulatory problems and severe fatigue. In each case, including her own — five years ago, Gittleman developed a benign tumor in one of her salivary glands — the author connects these maladies to electronic radiation.
Gittleman provides some basic science, describing how electromagnetic fields can disrupt basic human cell processes. But her account of the research into electronic radiation is one-sided.
She takes pains to cite every study that chronicles the potential dangers of cellphones — altered genetic material, lowered sperm count, increased vulnerability among children — but skips over those that cast doubt on these findings.
Davis, a Ph.D. scientist with a master’s degree in public health, offers a far more thoughtful and better-written account than Gittleman’s. While Davis cannot resolve the fundamental questions about the potential dangers of extensive electronic radiation, she deftly navigates the history of the cellphone and the scientific studies surrounding its use.
Davis makes a compelling case for U.S. authorities to update their standards, especially in light of how much we now use our devices and the number of teenagers who now have them. Even the National Cancer Institute, which says there is no consistent link between cellphones and cancer, notes that children may be at a greater risk because their nervous systems are still developing at the time of exposure.
But scientists have had a hard time keeping up with the rapid changes in the devices. A large international analysis known as the Interphone study, which involved 13 countries and released its findings in May, did not take third-generation technology into account, even though that is what many customers across the globe now use.
As Davis writes, “Because cell phone use has grown so fast and technologies change every year, it is as if we are trying to study the car in which we are driving.”
