In the late 1990s a large number of Wellfleetians organized to keep cell phone towers out of our town. A big part of it was aesthetic. We didn’t want them dominating our modest skyline, competing with church steeples.
We didn’t like the prospect of people polluting our pristine experiences at the pond and ocean by talking with cell phone use. As a town that liked thinking of itself as remote and rural, distinctly off-the-grid, we had little use for the on-the-grid convenience of cell phones.
A definite part of our opposition was the health issue. We put a thick file in the library of studies presenting statistical evidence that microwaves are bad for your health.
All of which 15 or more years later looks pretty silly. Who were we to set ourselves up as a speedbump on the interstate of progress? Aesthetic concerns? You’ve got to be kidding. Separate a company from its profits? Good luck with that.
Now I imagine every last member of that group uses cell phones. They are, as the companies didn’t just predict but made sure would happen, simply a part of life. Can’t imagine life without them.
But that doesn’t mean we were wrong about the health risks, as you can see if you google “cell phone cancer.” There are class-action suits against the industry for brain and other cancers. A danger we didn’t even envision back then, is now the well-publicized fact that cell phone use (not just texting) makes the user statistically as dangerous as a drunk driver. Yes, there are laws but neither perps nor police seem to pay much attention to them.
For the most part cell phones have gone into that large sloppy category of “acceptable risk” like dental x-rays or proximity to computer or TV screens ( which used to be much fretted about).
Accompanying pharmaceuticals these days is a statement to the effect that, sure these pills have their risks but the doctor wouldn’t have prescribed them if he didn’t think the quid-pro-quo was reasonable. (This Viagra will make life a lot more fun and men don’t seem to be dropping like flies from it.)
Smoking used to be in the acceptable risk category until the Surgeon General got on its case back in the 1960s with warning labels to the effect that the “quid” seemed unreasonable, a good chance of lung cancer. A recent issue of the “Berkeley Wellness Letter” makes it clearer: “Smoking cuts the average lifespan by about a decade.” They should get that stat onto the warning labels.
We are always hearing stern health warnings about this or that behavior. But they are too vague. Salt (nitrates, red meat, transfats, gluten, couch potato behavior, 20 extra pounds) is bad for you. Yeah, but just how bad? If I don’t cut back on this, or refuse to take this supplement or drag my butt to a gym, how much exactly will that cost me? Probably not 10 years. How much then? 2 years? 2 months? 2 weeks?
If scientists don’t know, that admission should appear on the label. “Warning: we’re pretty sure this will limit your life by some amount but it’s possible only about a day and a half.” Yeah, sort of lacks punch.
Life on Cape Cod could come with a cautionary label based on well known statistics that Cape Codders have a higher risk for various kinds of cancer than the rest of the state. “Warning: life on Cape Cod reduces the average lifespan by some unknown (and probably very small) amount.” Probably wouldn’t cause a mass exodus.
Wellfleetians’ efforts to protect humanity from the menace of cell phones ran afoul of deep -pocketed, determined companies, but also perhaps from an instinctive sense in us that whatever cell phone danger just doesn’t stand out enough from the general riskiness of life to get excited about.
Or, we may just be in a pre-Surgeon General phase of cell phone use.
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