Cellular Phones, Public Fears, and a Culture of Precaution

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Summary: Book Offers Understanding of Mobile Phone Scare
Review: Adam Burgess suggests that to understand the official embrace of precaution regarding possible health effects of mobile phone use and exposure to base stations, we have to recognize that the first step in legitimizing a scientifically "marginal concern" happens when authorities and institutions are made insecure by accusations that they failed to protect the public from some earlier danger. In this case, in England they decided they needed to take a mobile phone health threat seriously after they failed to do so with Mad Cow Disease.
The book focuses on Great Britain, but Burgess does discuss the evolution of a mobile phone health scare or lack of it in the USA, Australia, Japan, Scandinavia and elsewhere. The book illustrates how decisions made by British public health officials, politicians, newspaper and television editors on the Mad Cow issue led to a loss of trust in authority in the mobile phone case. He includes some interesting reflections by tabloid and television news editors on their role in the cell phone scare.
Burgess interviewed several scientists involved in cell phone health effects research and the main citizen activists and campaigners who are publicizing the scare. He cites conference proceedings and the peer-reviewed literature to support his views. Overall, Burgess offers a convincing case that "concern about the health effects of cell phone EMF has been shaped by the character of institutional reaction. In many cases, we can see clearly how the institutions of government have fostered and instigated health fears and demands for protection."
The book explains why, without scientific justification for great concern, officials in places like Italy and Great Britain have treated the issue as one "of profound significance." This is unfortunate for public health in general, Burgess concludes, since "there are many other health risks far more tangible and prevalent across even the most advanced societies, which struggle to achieve such a high level of attention."