Some believe that devices' radiation harms brain tissue

Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, January 14, 2007
 
The hoopla over last week's Macworld Conference & Expo -- symbolized by media coverage that portrayed the new iPhone as a kind of manna from heaven -- was lost on Arthur Firstenberg, a leading activist in what amounts to a war against cell phones and cellular technologies.

Firstenberg says the millions of people who are expected to buy Apple's iPhone should consider this first: Mobile phones emit radiation, cause damage to brain tissue, and produce the kind of cancer that kills rats in laboratory experiments. Surfing the Internet on BART, listening to your favorite iPod song and texting a message to your lover -- all at the same time -- may seem like the ultimate in 21st-century bohemia, but it's really a new form of self-torture, say Firstenberg and others who have spent years worrying about the effects of electromagnetic radiation.

"Nobody wants to think they're putting a harmful thing next to their head," says Firstenberg in a phone interview from Santa Fe, N.M., where he moved after living for several years in Mendocino. "This radiation is not confined to your cell phone -- it goes everywhere, and everyone is being affected, whether they know it or not."