seems like you can leave your phones on now. even talk on it. did they get some new technology in hospitals to allow this or what?
remember you had to turn off cellphones in hospital?
- Thread starter SkyRider
- Start date
No, there is no new technology. It has been proven that cell phones aren't the threat that had been suggested.
Remember back in the day the tin foil hat brigade had convinced our government that cell phones caused all sorts of calamities; pace makers would malfunction, gas pumps would explode, brain cancer would kill all cell phone users and monitoring equipment in hospitals would fail. Turns out none if it is true, the engineers had been saying this all along and they were right.
These days you never see the "No cell phones, pacemaker in use" signs.
You do however still see the signs banning cell phones at gas pumps. Of course there is no risk from the cell phone. There is a risk from sliding in and out of the car to answer a call and causing a static discharge, but that's a different issue. Sometimes our government is very slow to undo mistakes.
In the hospital environment there are much larger sources of interference, the radios carried by emergency responders and porters for example. This interference can in fact cause faults on sensitive monitoring equipment but the conditions have to be just right; the radio needs to be within inches of the unshielded probe and it needs to be keyed to transmit. I haven't noticed it, but I wouldn't doubt that care is taken with radios in ICU environments with ongoing monitoring.
There is also the benefit of instant 2 way communication when cell phones are permitted.
BTW, the video of the cell phone pop corn is a hoax.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V94shlqPlSI
Remember back in the day the tin foil hat brigade had convinced our government that cell phones caused all sorts of calamities; pace makers would malfunction, gas pumps would explode, brain cancer would kill all cell phone users and monitoring equipment in hospitals would fail. Turns out none if it is true, the engineers had been saying this all along and they were right.
These days you never see the "No cell phones, pacemaker in use" signs.
You do however still see the signs banning cell phones at gas pumps. Of course there is no risk from the cell phone. There is a risk from sliding in and out of the car to answer a call and causing a static discharge, but that's a different issue. Sometimes our government is very slow to undo mistakes.
In the hospital environment there are much larger sources of interference, the radios carried by emergency responders and porters for example. This interference can in fact cause faults on sensitive monitoring equipment but the conditions have to be just right; the radio needs to be within inches of the unshielded probe and it needs to be keyed to transmit. I haven't noticed it, but I wouldn't doubt that care is taken with radios in ICU environments with ongoing monitoring.
There is also the benefit of instant 2 way communication when cell phones are permitted.
BTW, the video of the cell phone pop corn is a hoax.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V94shlqPlSI
To be fair, there was a brief period of time where cell phones were incendiary devices due to poorly manufactured batteries. You could argue they present a non-zero risk of starting a fire.
It sorta makes sense if you understand how the FAA validates stuff. Cell phones are technically allowed, the airline operator "only" has to validate each cell phone individually for each model of aircraft they operate. So far there have been no takers!
