Fatal Conveniences by Darin Olien

Author:Darin Olien [Olien, Darin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Fatal Convenience: Bluetooth

The tenth-century Danish king Harald Gormsson supposedly had a dead tooth that turned blue-gray, which led to his colorful nickname: Bluetooth. He was also famous for uniting Scandinavia, which was why his name was chosen—originally only as a placeholder—until a proper one could be found by the combine of Nokia, Intel, and Ericsson for the short-range wireless connection technology they developed.

The name Bluetooth stuck, and it’s now everywhere, literally—all around us, connecting everything, emitting radiation everywhere it goes. By now the list of devices depending on Bluetooth is endless and keeps getting longer, meaning we’re constantly filling the atmosphere with more radiation. That’s the main thing to keep in mind, especially if you’re concerned—as you should be—about how all that radiation is affecting your health.

Just think: Fitbits, smart watches, video game controllers, Google glasses, home thermostats, VR headsets, video sunglasses, your car, your refrigerator, your headphones, your sex toys, and a whole lot more, plus all those body function monitors that track your REM sleep, perform EKGs and automatically send the results to your online medical record, and measure your blood pressure, respiration, and any other bodily function that can be observed, quantified, and stored somewhere.

It’s the so-called Internet of Things—except that “things” now includes you and me.

Insider Intelligence forecasts 3.74 billion mobile connections worldwide by 2025 and more than 64 billion connected devices by 2026. What does that mean for us? Lots more radiation flying around, creating an even bigger, broader electromagnetic field for us to inhabit whether we want to or not. How harmful is all that?

It could be worse. Bluetooth headphone exposures fall anywhere between one-tenth and one-four-hundredth what we get from our cell phones, according to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Dr. David Kozono. “I would therefore expect it would be more difficult to observe an association between Bluetooth headphone use and cancer,” he said. But then he added, “Data are lacking however to conclude with certainty that there is or is not a risk of increased cancer.”

See what I mean? We’re the guinea pigs in somebody’s real-world lab experiments.

Consumer Reports has done a terrific job of reporting on this stuff. Its staff interviewed Jerry Phillips, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, who said that research has yet to determine how low radiation has to be before it can be considered harmless. They also spoke with David Carpenter, a physician and director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany−State University of New York. He said that being near a single router might be harmless, but often we’re in the presence of many computers and routers, as in schools and apartment buildings.

In 2016, the Maryland State Department of Education recommended that schools use wired networks instead of Wi-Fi, turn off routers when not being used, and keep them as far as possible from kids. France has banned Wi-Fi from nursery schools. Now, that is a good idea!

For household appliances and other devices used in the

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