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The debate over the
safety of mobile phones has little to do with science Do mobile phones cause explosions at petrol stations? That
question has just been exhaustively answered by Adam Burgess, a researcher at
the University of Kent, in England. Oddly, however, Dr Burgess is not a
physicist, but a sociologist. For the concern rests not on scientific evidence
of any danger, but is instead the result of sociological factors: it is an urban
myth, supported and propagated by official sources, but no less a myth for that.
Dr Burgess presented his findings this week at the annual conference of the
British Sociological Association. Mobile phones started to become widespread in the late
1980s, when the oil industry was in the middle of a concerted safety drive, Dr
Burgess notes. This was, in large part, a response to the Piper Alpha disaster
in 1988, when 167 people died in an explosion on an oil platform off the
Scottish coast. The safety drive did not apply merely to offshore operations:
employees at some British oil-company offices are now required to use handrails
while walking up and down stairs, for example. So nobody questioned the
precautionary ban on the use of mobile phones at petrol stations. The worry was
that an electrical spark might ignite explosive fumes. By the late 1990s, however, phonemakers—having conducted
their own research—realised that there was no danger of phones causing
explosions since they could not generate the required sparks. But it was too
late. The myth had taken hold. One problem, says Dr Burgess, is that the number of
petrol-station fires increased in the late 1990s, just as mobile phones were
proliferating. Richard Coates, BP's fire-safety adviser, investigated many of
the 243 such fires that occurred around the world between 1993 and 2004. He
concluded that most were indeed caused by sparks igniting petrol vapour, but the
sparks themselves were the result of static electricity, not electrical
equipment. Most drivers will have experienced a mild electric shock when
climbing out of their vehicles. It is caused by friction between driver and
seat, with the result that both end up electrically charged. When the driver
touches the metal frame of the vehicle, the result is sometimes a spark. This
seems to have become more common as plastic car interiors, synthetic garments
and rubber-soled shoes have proliferated. A further complication was the rise of the internet, where
hoax memos, many claiming to originate from oil companies, warned of the danger
of using mobile phones in petrol stations. One e-mail contained fictitious
examples of such explosions said to have happened in Indonesia and Australia.
Another, supposedly sent out by Shell, found its way on to an internal website
at Exxon, says Dr Burgess, where it was treated as authoritative by employees.
Such memos generally explain static fires quite accurately, but mistakenly
attribute them to mobile phones. Official denials, says Dr Burgess, simply
inflame the suspicions of conspiracy theorists. Despite the lack of evidence that mobile phones can cause
explosions, bans remain in place around the world, though the rules vary widely.
Warning signs abound in Britain, America, Canada and Australia. The city of São
Paulo, in Brazil, introduced a ban last year. And, earlier this month, a member
of Connecticut's senate proposed making the use of mobile phones in petrol
stations in that state punishable by a $250 fine. For Dr Burgess, such concerns are part of a broader pattern of unease about mobile phones. There is a curious discrepancy, he notes, between the way that such phones have become indispensable, and the fact that they are also vaguely considered to be dangerous. This is particularly noticeable in Britain. The country that led the way in banning mobile phones at petrol stations is also the country that has taken the strongest line on the safety of mobile-phone use by children. In January, Sir William Stewart, the government's expert on the subject, warned that while there is no evidence that mobile phones are unsafe, as a precautionary measure children should use them only when absolutely necessary. The safety of mobile phones would appear to be not so much the province of the hard science of physics, as of the soft science of sociology. Reprinted from The Economist Mar 23rd 2005 |
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