How Green is Your Smartphone?. Richard Maxwell
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up to billionaires and Jurassic politicians, telling them to their faces to cut the bullshit and act on the science (Wearden and Carrington, 2019). A generation born in an era of peak disaster from global warming will not tolerate the craven politics of world leaders beholden to barons of industry and finance, fossil-fuel giants, and technology moguls. Tens of thousands of Western European school pupils went on strike in the winter of 2019 with the slogans #FridaysForFuture and “There’s no Planet B” (“Children’s Climate,” 2019). Hence also women deciding to #BirthStrike because they feel unable to guarantee climate security to future generations (Doherty, 2019), and the efforts of Extinction Rebellion.5 Their task is huge – UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns that the political will to combat climate change is “fading” (quoted in “Political Will,” 2019). Public support for action to stem our eco-crisis remains a work in progress, building slowly as people come to grasp the urgency of a planetary problem. But there are signs of a new citizenry ready to act on their environmental commitments. Nature and the British Medical Journal alike drew inspiration from #FridaysForFuture (Fisher, 2019; Stott et al., 2019).
The Book You Hold in Your Hands
How Green Is Your Smartphone? is informed by the logic and research of climate and environmental science and political-economic and ethnographic social science, the ethical and political commitments of environmental movements, and young activists’ zero tolerance for the status quo as they seek new economic arrangements and green environments for work, rest, and play.
We’ve been teaching about these issues in several countries for over a decade, and have not always found it easy to narrow the gap between scientific and public knowledge, especially when questioning cellphones. They have become part of people’s very senses of self. Hence a polemical volume that takes a side in this elemental struggle, at the same time as it strives to communicate the current state of academic agreement and disagreement, alongside the work of governments, activists, and the media.
Of course, many people don’t think about the fate of the Earth. We didn’t write this book for them. They might pick it up just the same: like most people, they own a cellphone. Those who do so will discover that a crucial, pocket-sized part of their electronic lives is connected to a whole world in need of help. For we hope that this wee polemic will show that even the smallest changes to how we think about our digital world can contribute to a new understanding of the good life – one that prioritizes the biosphere, ecology, and a balance between human existence and the Earth’s lifesupport systems.
We remain some distance from that goal. In the early twenty-first century, the good life continues to be defined by material growth based on consumerism. The smartphone stands out in that seductive laissez-faire fable as a symbol of progress and plenitude. By contrast, this book examines the material reality and social impact of these digital technologies, with a particular focus on environmental risks linked to cellphones and similar devices.
We’re not interested in shaming users, or returning society to a time prior to mobile communication. We want to explain the environmental risks associated with these devices in a social context, and how they can be reduced. Our aim is to delineate a role for the smartphone in a greener communications system. Understanding the material characteristics of smartphones helps us identify guidelines to make them greener, on personal and planetary scales alike.
The chapters that follow urge readers to:
Outsmart your smartphone
Acknowledge that the greenest smartphone is the one you already own; and
Call bullshit on anti-science propaganda
Outsmart Your Smartphone
Mobile cellular communication relies on network connections. Radiofrequency radiation bounces back and forth from our phones to cell towers and wireless transmitters. Exposure to this radiation has been linked to potential health risks, including cancer. We can reduce such possibilities, even without clear guidance from the industry or its regulators.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which certifies cellphone safety in the US, says “no scientific evidence currently establishes a definite link between wireless device use and cancer or other illnesses” (Federal Communications Commission, 2018). If this is true, why does it issue guidelines that limit public exposure to radiofrequency radiation? Cellular telephones must not surpass radiation levels of 1.6 watts per kilogram (W/kg), which is an average of energy absorbed by one gram of tissue according to the US testing standard (Federal Communications Commission, n.d.). This is known as the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR).
Be aware that the manufacturers themselves decide the safe distance between phone and human tissue to meet SAR guidelines; the government does not handle this for us. Apple says you’re safe in exceeding 1.6 W/kg of exposure if you hold a phone five centimeters from your head; Samsung says fifteen centimeters is safe; other manufacturers recommend ten centimeters. It’s up to them. That’s a problem for cellphone users, and another good reason we need to outsmart our phones.
SAR levels matter. Most people hold phones against their heads and bodies. Studies of exposure to radio-frequency radiation at zero distance show SAR levels twice as high as the regulatory limit, and in some tests, three to four times higher. In 2017, France’s Agence nationale des fréquences (ANFR) [National Frequency Agency] found that most “phones exceed government radiation limits when tested the way they are used, next to the body” (Environmental Health Trust, 2018b). The ANFR’s study has been likened to “dieselgate,” the revelation that Volkswagen lied for years about emissions from its diesel-engine cars, which the company had rigged to emit atypically low levels in controlled conditions. “Phonegate,” as some have called it, sheds a critical light on the mendacity of the telecommunications industry.
If SAR is so important a guideline for the safe use of a cellphone, why don’t most of us know about it?
You might be surprised to learn that your phone includes instructions about SAR levels; you just haven’t been told where to find them. In the US, the FCC requires phone manufacturers to inform consumers if their products meet regulatory guidelines for exposure levels. They comply, but in a sneaky way. Most phones have a legal notice about “RF exposure” buried in their settings. It takes five steps to find them on a typical iPhone, or you can review them on Apple’s website.6 Other manufacturers make it equally hard, or more difficult, to locate instructions for safe use; it’s as if they designed a feature to make smartphones stupid about this topic. Compare that to health warnings on cigarette packets, with their alarming words and graphic images.
A study conducted for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation found that 81 percent of Canadians did not know their government’s guidelines on cellphone use, or that phones themselves explained how to lessen radiation exposure (Mission Research, 2017; The Secret, 2017). We assume the lack of public knowledge elsewhere is similar. If the industry is required to tell us about possible health risks, but effectively conceals that information, we must ask: What else is it hiding? One way to answer that question is to review legislation around the world that compels phone manufacturers to put explicit health warnings on their packaging. France and Israel have passed such laws. But where other countries have tried, the telecommunications industry has lobbied to oppose explicit labelling. In the US and Canada, bills were proposed, then shot down under pressure from industry groups (Environmental Health Trust, 2018a).
That leads us to a third point about personal health. A chorus of concerns has arisen around cellphone addiction. These have largely centered on children and families, with corresponding remedies that are highly individual. We review those anxieties, as well as public concerns that smartphone distraction has become a key factor in traffic injuries and deaths. Finally, we examine the possible diseases caused by exposure to