Portable phone

One out of two Japanese has come to carry potable phones. The number of subscribers has drastically risen since the handy phones were thrown into market. No sooner the phones became available reasonably than the Japanese following all new fashions had jumped on them. It’s an unbelievable speed to reach certain point of penetration. It had taken almost three-quarter of a century to spread normal telephone. Contrarily, the penetration rate of portable phones has just reached the 50%-line only in a decade.

One of the reasons for spreading quickly is the function. Needless to say, the main function of portable phones is talking to someone any time we want. We can even talk while we are walking. Only this fundamental function has been attracting Japanese people. Attractive is not only for individual usage but also for business. Particularly portable phones are indispensable for salespersons. Another reason is that the Japanese portable phones have some additional values. Games, for example, are providing a lot of pleasure with the users who want to kill time. Do you remember Tamagochi? It was a potable game whose users enjoy while bringing up digital pets in the small gadget. The game had brought about crossing-border hits. The additional function of games has lead to the success of the portable phone in the Japanese markets.

I stop explaining the widely-prevalent phone so far. Let’s get down to the main subject. The risks related to portable phone seem to turn to the people around users rather than the users themselves. As you can hear the announcement in trains by conductors, "Please switch off the power of portable phone’(in Japanese)", portable phones could affect pace-makers for heart troubles. More specifically, the radio wave faintly emitted in power ill-operate the electronic circuits built-in the pace-makers. Even though you switch to so-called manner mode, which erases the arrival sounds, as long as the power is on, the radio wave always gives off.

According to a research conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare between 1995 and 1996, it was found that there were no portable phones among 228 items to affect pace-makers in the case that the portable phones were kept away 15 cm from pace-makers. From this experiment, the ministry announced that portable phone should be in use more than 22 cm away pace-makers in 1997. Despite the official guidelines and conductors’ warnings in train, there are many Japanese who still use portable phones in the places where people gather such as in trains or elevators. For the people who build in pace-makers, the risk of the ill-operations increases in proportion to the growing number of the subscribers. Especially the foreigners carrying the lifeline always with them should be more careful because of a lack of knowledge about Japan.

On the side of users, what risks are there? Here are two outstanding reports about the user's risks of portable phones. One is a British report compiled by a group of English scientists. The other is a Japanese official paper released by a committee within the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications. The former is so-called Situate Report. The British government requested the scientist Dr. Situate in 1999. The report said that although there was no outstanding risks in portable phones, it was impossible to say definitely that they would not harm human bodies in the future. The latter paper also said that there was no evidence of affecting badly human health. But both of the reports gave some warnings.

The risk of carrying portable phones seems to be lower than that of not carrying them. Namely, salespersons would miss business chances because they could not response quickly or school students might face the risk of being excluded from groups without portable phones. While there seem be no apparent risks in portable phone, some consumers are concerned about the risk of low electromagnet waves. Therefore, it's natural to think that there are similar risks in portable phones. The essence of risk is uncertainty. It's better not to talk on portable phones if unnecessary, not only for yourselves just added precautions, but also for the people around you.