I’ve blogged before about my suspicions that the ban on electronic devices on airplanes is the product of a regulator with an overactive imagination, which is an opinion that upsets a lot of blog readers, so let’s take it another direction.
Everyone knows you shouldn’t use cell phones in hospitals for fear of disrupting life-save hospital equipment. Right?
According to the Survival of the Sickest blog, looks like that fear was imaginary as well, as demonstrated by a new Mayo Clinic study. By the way, if you like the Freakonomics blog, you might like the Survival of the Sickest blog also. It is by the author of a recent book Survival of the Sickest, which brings an evolutionary perspective to medicine, trying to make sense of how diseases manage to survive even when they hurt the people who carry them. The questions include “Can a person rust to death?” and “Why do we need to pee when we are cold?”
I don’t always believe evolutionary explanations since there are so many “degrees of freedom” available to help explain what we see evolutionarily (e.g. the peacock’s tail is so big because it helps the peacock reproduce; the manx cat’s tail is so small because it helps the manx reproduce, etc.). One thing is for sure, though: the issues discussed in this book are fascinating.
16 Comments
Now can we cross off that no cell phone while pumping gas rule?
I have not heard of one documented case where a cell phone has actually caused a problem (http://www.snopes.com/autos/hazards/gasvapor.asp)
It appears that the real threat is from fuzzy sweaters (http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=19779), but hating cell phones is so much more in vogue than wool.
— Toast1185Mythbusters did an episode about cell phones on airplanes. If I recall correctly, the reason pilots don’t want them is not because they will bring down an airplane (that would be silly), but that it’s possible they could interfere with equipment. More of a nuisance than a hazard I guess.
— mgrovesWho cares about the validity of cell phones interfering with an airplanes communications systems…who wants to sit next to someone for a cross country flight while they are talking on their cell phone? I don’t. If there is no technical reason, let’s at least keep the ban in place for our own sanity.
— JonSmgroves, the truth is that studies done by the NTSB and the FAA has found that at least one person leaves their phone on accidentally (or not) on the average flight. So, that nuisance already exists. Likewise, more and more notebook computer users have WiFi on all the time, so they are also getting lots of signals around 2.4GHz, although most notebooks shut off the radio when you close the lid (takeoff and landing).
— pkimelmaThe cell phone companies do not like cell phones on planes because base stations would get flooded in areas that cannot handle the load (and the hand-off is a problem given the speed and angle).
I think JonS may have the valid point here. But the real problem is that people think they have to shout into a cell phone to be heard. How many times have you been talking to a person in a normal voice when suddenly he answers his cell phone and begins talking loudly into it?
I think cell phone manufactures should adjust their feedback into the ear piece so that it’s louder than the microphone. That way maybe you would think that you are speaking too loud and would lower your voice.
I don’t know. But there must be some trick they could pull to solve the problem.
— egretmanWhen flying in my own plane over the U.S. at relatively low altitudes (below 10,000 ft) last year, I noticed that my cell phone rarely had coverage any more, even when flying over a large city (I leave the phone on in case of emergencies).
I think that the U.S. telcos must be in the process of modifying their towers so that they won’t transmit and receive at high angles — that would probably mesh well with plans to install mini-cells in the airliners themselves. As soon as I cross the border into Canada, my bars come back again.
— dpmCell phones in hospitals, most equipment now has had shielding added. I have seen on old ventilators and monitors where the wave forms would breakup when a cellphone was within 1-3 feet. Cell phones have also gotten better, they do not give out as much interference. Walky talkies used to be very bad.
— ossianderCellphone operation on aircraft is banned by the FCC, not the FAA or NTSB. The system is designed for phones within “line of sight” of an antenna or cell site. On the ground, one phone may be near more than one antenna and the system easily decided which one gives the best signal and uses it.
When the phone is in the air, it can easily “see” tens of ground cell sites with a strong signal. The system can’t easily handle this type of problem plus it slightly reduces the total capacity of the whole system — instead of tying up one channel on two or three cell sites the phone does so on 20 or 30. Or more.
— speedAs for “the peacock’s tail is so big because it helps the peacock reproduce…” I think it’s the other way around, peacocks didn’t grow tails because they needed to reproduce, they grew a tail (by accident perhaps) and it helped them reproduce.
— marianovskyI think the earlier, analog phones probably would have posed some sort of a threat to equipment. The digital phones should be much less of an issue.
Still, the fact is that cell phones seem to turn more than a few people into oblivious, rude idiots, and I greatly appreciate the ban during flying. Flying is my time to disconnect from the world for a bit.
— makfanAhh–then perhaps God created the peacock’s tail that way because it’s so doggone beautiful!
— CNanneryPS I heard a news report the other day that said cell phones were going to be allowed on airplanes. Anyone else hear that one?
— CNanneryI asked my girlfriend (who is a Pediatric ICU nurse) about why cellphones were banned in the hospital. Her explanation was that since most hospitals use either a pager or a cellphone system to keep in contact with doctors and nurses the hospital didn’t want other phones ringing that would add further confusion to what can already be a chaotic scene.
Plus, since her hospital gives a cellphone to every nurse for the duration of their shift it can’t be a health hazard.
— t3arlachGet this, I was in the surgical waiting room during my dad’s surgery. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to use my cell phone. But, I had my laptop with me and was able to get on-line thru the use of a wireless network from a hotel several hundred yards across the street.
Now tell me if my cell phone is an issue, why is not that wireless network??
— BlueNumber2My first recollection of this type of issue was the prohibition on use of the old style 2-way radios near sites where rock blasting with dynamite (or equivalent) was going on.
Most of the prohibitions are overblown but not completely without merit.
Here are two electric/electronic interference issues I have experienced in 2007.
My mobile phone is GSM technology (Cingular and T-Mobile) and it does interfere with the speakers on my PC a couple times a day for a few seconds.
Range: about 2-3
I have a newly introduced medical device which I wear a few hours a day. It turned out to be sensitive to static electricity. Changing the sheets on the bed while wearing it this past winter a static discharge zapped it. Fortunately taking the battery out reset the problem. Other users had theirs die.
— JRipRange: 0 to 1/4 inches or so.
The economist had a good article a few months back about it. The phone companies don’t want it because the networks couldn’t keep up with it. They can handle a call made in a car doing 60, but a plane doing 500 is a LITTLE harder to work with. The network has to move you from tower to tower and it’s too fast. Plus stuff about angles and other stuff I can’t remember.
The are allowing them on planes now where the plane has its own transmitter so as to stop phones overloading the network below.
So now I have one question, does phone sex get you into the mile high club?
— Dave