Cordless phones or Dect phones (Digitally enhanced cordless telephones) have become common in homes and offices and the convenience of being able to move around while taking a call is obvious but unfortunately this comes at a price. The technology used to communicate without the use of wires uses microwave transmission around 1.8 Ghz. Research has shown that they cause headaches, fatigue, heart palpatations and sleep problems. Top cancer researcher Dr. Lennart Hardell, Dept of Oncology, University Hospital Orebro, Sweden says that Dect phones are much like mobile phones but they haven’t been researched as much because people thought they operated like landline phones. His studies show that habitual users of dect phones have a threefold risk of acoustic neuroma (a tumor between ear and brain) and a fourfold risk of malignant brain tumor. Other researchers dispute these claims but isn’t it best to ere on the side of caution.

The cradle that the phone sits in while charging acts like a mini mobile phone base station emitting microwaves throughout your home 24 hours a day. Emissions can be about 6 V/m within a metre of the base unit, for as long as it is plugged in. Older base stations emit their radiation even when the phone is not in use. The base station is often in a room where you spend a large amount of time, here the signal is stronger and as such does more health damage for example in a living room or in a bedroom.

Note: DECT phones are now being manufactured and available in Germany, and now in the UK that only transmit from the base when the handset is lifted. Of course, these are not sold as a ‘safer’ variety, but as ‘lower emission’. Lower emissions matter to the more wary manufacturers, who nevertheless claim that there is not much demand. They are safer – to everyone. But don’t be deceived, the handset is still a GSM mobile phone.