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Is your computer killing you?

Posted on 20 Oct 2010 at 12:38

Wi-Fi radiation, toxic chemicals, stress... Stewart Mitchell investigates the legitimacy of PC health scares

New technology always arouses suspicion, but the number of IT-related health scares has reached epidemic levels in recent years. From “mobile phones fry your brain” headlines to the corporate fears over repetitive strain injury, casual observers might conclude sitting at your PC is roughly akin to smoking 40 a day.

Despite attracting front-page headlines, the impact of technology scares remains largely unproven. This doesn’t mean they don’t exist, just that the jury is out because proving the dangers of technology and the substances used to produce it is often impossible. Here we look at key debates, separate the hype from the scientific facts, and consider why it’s so difficult to prove or disprove a link between technology and illness.

The uncertainty of science

“There’s an interesting phenomenon that says everything is considered dangerous when it first arrives on the scene,” said Carsten Sorensen, senior lecturer in information systems at the London School of Economics. The problem is reading between the lines of initial fear and misinformation.

Take the mobile phone risk. Since the 1920s, scientists have known that radio waves can heat skin and affect cells in the nervous system. It was a logical leap then to suggest that mobile phones – and later Wi-Fi networks – could pose a threat in the same way that X-rays require hospital staff to shelter behind lead screens.

In 2003, a study of 750 people at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute suggested using a mobile phone for more than ten years increased the risk of ear tumours by four times, while further European studies said mobile phones could affect brain function and damage DNA. The UK’s official investigation into the concept did little to pour cold water on the scare.

In 2000, a report by the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones – the Stewart Report – said there was no evidence mobile phones were harmful to adults. Nevertheless, it recommended a “precautionary approach” until further research was carried out, and suggested that children should use mobile phones only in emergencies. Four years later, it completed a further study that drew the same conclusion.

And the current thinking? In May this year – after spending ten years and $24 million researching the mobile phone/brain cancer link – the World Health Organisation reached a verdict: it isn’t really sure. The study involved 13,000 people in 13 countries, and the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) determined that general mobile phone use didn’t lead to an increased risk of either the meningioma or glioma brain cancers.

However, the report did find “suggestions” that using mobile phones for long periods of time on the same side of the head could lead to an increased risk of glioma. “An increased risk of brain cancer is not established,” said IARC director Dr Christopher Wild. “However, observations at the highest level of cumulative call time and the changing patterns of mobile phone use since the period studies, particularly in young people, mean that further investigation of mobile phone use and brain cancer risk is merited.”

If the experts can’t agree whether mobile phones pose a threat, what hope is there for the rest of us? Perhaps the most damning evidence against a real-life risk comes from Sorensen. “Researchers want to prove the existence of a real threat from mobile phone and wireless technology because it would make them extremely famous,” he said. “But they’ve been doing it for 20 years and no-one’s been able to prove a real risk.”