I have had a bit of a look around at possible health issues with DECT phones – can anyone point me in the direction of any sensible opinions as to the issues please?

RF power is less than a mobile (significantly), do you carry a mobile or work around anyone with mobiles? Although it’s not on the same wavelength, but not too far off.

It’s a possible work issue as we use DECT phones.

The ones we have in the office only have about 30 minutes battery life, which may be a problem, and they randomly fail to pick up calls whilst ringing. Despite, or rather, because of this, we have discovered that they are remarkably resilient to being thrown…

Their peak power output is ~250mW, your mobile is ~2W in a similar range. Since mobiles have been pretty well shown to be harmless (well, plenty of studies have shown there’s no effect, put it that way) I suspect they’ll fall into the same category. Though if you’re sat with it next to your ear for 8 hours – who knows.

Better safe than sorry.

Thanks Cougar, I’d like to say that was really helpful….

Portrait of a man about to have his face ripped off with extreme prejudice.

Thanks Cougar, I’d like to say that was really helpful….

And, I’d like to think it was.

The point I was making, in an irreverent and idiomatic manner, is that there’s no “issues” with DECT phones for any sort of practical purposes.

I’m sure there’s many half-baked conspiracy theories, and I’ll put money on it that the Daily Mail has said they cause cancer at some point, but look at it this way:

Point the first, the further you are from the base station, the higher the power required to tx/rx signals; so if DECT phones were an issue, it wouldn’t be an issue, because we’d all have had our brains cooked by TV and FM transmissions by now. Arguably, plenty of people have had their brains cooked by television, but that’s not really an electromagnetic issue.

Point the second, regulatory bodies tend to err on the side of caution. Granted, they’re also lining their pockets, but they’re not lead-lining them. If there was any evidence of a real health risk then they wouldn’t be in the homes (and certainly wouldn’t be in the workplace). Sure, mistakes can be made; but DECT isn’t a new technology, it’s been around for twenty years.

The Daily Wail regularly give lots of space to scaremongers who maintain that having a mains-powered alarm clock by your bed can cause brain cancer and pretty much any other devise like your TV or microwave should be inside a Faraday cage, so a DECT phone is almost a Satanic tool as far as PowerWatch are concerned.
Personally I think they’re nuts.

I have an employee that is complaining about headaches caused by our DECT phones, so I wondered if any of the stw-errati might have anything helpful to say. I have looked at some of the issues – both sensible and ludicrous – that have been published, and whilst I’m aware that in the UK/US any form of wireless communication is seen as the best thing since sliced bread, other cultures take different viewpoints and limit exposure in certain circumstances. Russian thinking, for example, suggests that comms on similar frequencies is not considered favourably.
I’m basically attempting to find a suitable response for my colleague who has a tendency for fixating on particular issues and stirring the pot in the office.

Let me guess. It’s a largely telephone based job, and you’ve got a work shy slacker saying that the phone is giving them headaches so that they don’t have to use the phone. What would Jeremy Clarkson say about such a person I wonder?

cheesyfeet – haha! but no, she’s a green warrior

You may need an occupational health advisor. But the answer is there is no issue.

Amazing the number of people who need to blame something…

does she have a mobile phone? blame that 😉