OUMH2203

FACULTY OF APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES

OUMH2203
ENGLISH FOR WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION

MOBILE PHONE AND ITS EFFECTS

Semester: May 2013

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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Social problem 1: Increase In Crime......................................................................................5
Social problem 2: Excessive Mobility Affects the Social Interaction....................................6
Health problem 1: Clinical Effects.........................................................................................8
Health problem 2: Biological and Physiological Effects.....................................................11
Conclusion................................................................................................................................13
Recommendation......................................................................................................................13
Social problem 1..................................................................................................................13
Social problem 2..................................................................................................................13
Health problem 1..................................................................................................................13
Health problem 2..................................................................................................................13
References................................................................................................................................15

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Introduction
A mobile phone is a devise that can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link
while moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network
provide such as celcom, maxis and digi in malaysia for example. Mobile phone do support
with variety of services such as text messaging, MMS, email, internet access, short-range
wireless communication (infrared, Bluetooth), business applications, gaming and
photography. Mobile phone with those capabilities are reffered as smartphone.
No one can deny the positive effects of mobile phone. Mobile phone have not only
give us the power to talk wirelessly, but also provided us with many highly usable
functionalities like taking pictures and videos, listening to music, playing games, accessing to
internet and much more. Keeping the entertainment in mind, all the mobile manufacturing
brought some powerful gadgets into competitive market.
Mobiles phones have become an almost essential part of daily life since their rapid
growth in popularity in the late 1990s. A nationwide survey conducted in 2007 shows that
mobile phones are the most necessary medium of communication for adolescents. When
respondents were asked about the medium of communication that they regarded as a
necessity, 40.0% of those aged 13 to 18 years chose mobile phones, while 22.9% chose TVs
and 10.3% chose PCs.
However, research say that excessive use of mobile phones may cause serious health
and social problems for anybody. It may appear shocking but an entire society will
experienced the effects of the mobile phones. Mobile phones have been in extensive use for a
relatively short period of time, and their technology has progressively changed, from
analogue to digital systems. Mobile phones and base stations emit radio frequency or
microwave radiation. Exposure to such a radiation could affect health directly. The use of

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mobile phones also results in indirect effects, such as car accidents and interference with
health equipment.
Next is the discussion on the problem arising from the use of the mobile phone.
Beside that I also have provide several past study of the effect and the mobile phone and
provide the recommendation to it.

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The effects of the mobile phones
Social problem 1: Increase In Crime
Every year about more than 1000 adolescent get involve in rape and other crime
through dating service sites. Violent and obsence images are only a couple of clicks away.
The government is very particular in the uses of the mobile phones among community.
Therefore, some policy makers even seek to enact a law regulating the use of mobile phones
among the society (Asahi Shimbun, 2008). Such criticism is widely supported by the general
public.
The uses of mobile phones nowadays seem to be one of the threat to the societies.
Many crimes happen because of the mobile phones. Example of the crime that still using
mobile phones as their ways to do crime is kidnapping and cheating. This crime become the
trend all around the world. The metro newspaper reported that one man have lost up to
RM30000 due to the cheating by using the mobile phones as medium of communication. The
person were pretending to be the wife of the husband by calling him through mobile phone to
get the man to transfers the money to her.
Not only that the uses of mobile phones also contribute to the rape crime. Whereby
the suspect was using mobile phone to get the intention of the victim. After that they will
invite the victim to their house and rape her. This problem also need to be solve immediately.
The use of mobile phone not only give the benefits but also it can harm us as a user of it.

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Social problem 2: Excessive Mobility Affects the Social Interaction
Mobility is a new paradigm that outlines the vision of communication media today.
Kats and Aakhus (2002) used the term apparatgeist to describe the development of personal
communication technologies in our society according to them, mobility has become one of
the most important aspects of contemporary medium. Paradoxically, if mobile media means
an instrument that accompanies physical travel, the mobile phone is not very mobile. In fact,
a time diary survey shows that users send text messages via mobile phones most often (56%)
when they are at home (Ishii,2004).
Contextual mobility is a key to understanding the social consequences of the
introduction of the mobile phone into our society. Context is one of the most important
factors accounting for interpersonal behaviours. In face-to-face interactions among people,
communicators need to conform to contextual aspects, which continuously reframe their and
mutual recognition. Mobile media sometimes enables free communication in specific context
but sometimes it also jeopardize the face-to-face communication. This is because I believe
that face-to0face communication have much more benefit as compared to communication
through mobile phones.
Ervin goffman developed a theory of social interaction processes, the so called
dramaturgical model (Goffman, 1973). People may or may not do things while sustaining
their performance before an audiences. In order to sustain the projected image of the self as a
performer, people try to exclude those persons from the audience, who see them giving an
inconsistent presentation when backstage. For example, if one uses a wired phone at home or
in the workplace, it will sometimes be difficult to ensure privacy from family members or
colleaugues. Since wired phones are mostly shared with family members at homes, their use
closely linked with familial context. Evidence from many studies worldwide reveals that one
of the most common reason that the societies use mobile phones is to feel liberated from the

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grasp of their family. For example in japan, mobile phones are recognized as a technology
that gives people a sense of freedom from their family.
Therefore here we can conclude that mobile phones can affects the social interaction in the
office and also in home.

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Health problem 1: Clinical Effects
Within human population studies, epidemiological studies provide the most direct
information on the long-term effects on health of any potential harmful agent. To assess the
adverse effects on health that may result from the use of mobile phones, research with a
specific focus on cancer has been carried out. By the end of the 1990s, the number of studies
was small and the works presented major methodological limitations, the most outstanding
one being the lack of enough people with an exposure time long enough to accurately assess
the potential adverse late effects on health of mobile phone use.
The majority of those studies suggested the need for additional, high-quality research. As
a result of these recommendations, a series of multinational case-control studies, coordinated
by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), were set up after a detailed
feasibility study was carried out in 1998 and 1999. Overall, these studies are named the
INTERPHONE Study (8), and their primary objective is to assess whether exposure to RF or
microwave radiation from mobile phones is associated with a risk of cancer. Priority is given to
epidemiological studies of the relationship between the use of mobile phones and the incidence of:

brain tumours;
salivary gland tumours, acoustic neuromas and other head and neck tumours; and
Leukaemia and lymphomas.

If the risk of developing a brain tumour exists at all, the wider use of mobile phones and the expected
number of people who will develop a brain tumour will be sufficient to detect a potential 1.5-fold
increase in risk 510 years from the start of use.
Participant countries, with the longest and highest use of mobile phones, are Australia,
Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and
the United Kingdom. Initially, the study expected to find about 6000 cases of glioma and meningoma
(both benign and malignant), 1000 cases of acoustic neuroma, 600 cases of parotid gland tumour and
their respective controls. The first results of the INTERPHONE Study were available in 2004 (9, 10)
and, since then, four additional papers have been published (1114). It should also be noted that these
studies evaluated the impact on health of exposure to RF and microwave radiation emitted by mobile

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phones, and not by antennas and base stations. With regard to brain tumours, most of the studies
yielded negative results, although a few of them suggested an increased risk for mobile phone users.
Because of these results, it is not possible to establish an association between the use of mobile
phones and an increased risk of brain tumours.
With regard to acoustic neuroma a rare, benign tumour on the auditory nerve the studies
available reported inconsistent results, except for the most recent ones, which found an association
between an increase in the risk of this type of tumour and 10 years or more of mobile phone use;
moreover, the increased risk is confined to the side of the head where the phone was usually held. No
indications of an increased risk for less than 10 years of mobile phone use were found. Before definite
conclusions can be drawn, the results of these studies have to be confirmed by additional research.
This type of research, however, faces several problems. One is that long-time users first used
analogue phones, and then digital phones. No risk has been found for digital phone use only, but then
the follow-up time is shorter. Other methodological problems, such as recall bias, have been
identified: people, especially patients, might have a selective memory on the side of the head where
the telephone was used .
A number of clinical complaints related to the use of mobile phones are reported in the
scientific literature. They include headache, fatigue, sleep disorders, loss of memory, dizziness,
feelings of heat or tingling in the auricular (or auditory) area or in the head, vertigo, deafness and
blurred vision. Very few studies are available, and their results provide no evidence of an association
between these symptoms and the use of mobile phones. It should be noted, however, that these are
general, nonspecific symptoms that may be induced by a wide range of causes. Since they represent a
problem for those suffering, the cause should be elucidated.
In summary, the evidence available does not support the hypothesis that mobile phone use is
associated with an increased risk of malignant brain tumours, but an increase in the risk of acoustic
neuroma after 10 years or more of mobile phone use has been found. Therefore, it seems that neither
acoustic neuroma nor brain tumours are related to mobile phone use of less than 10 years.
Nevertheless, those studies were conducted with data from the time when only analogue mobile
phones had been in use for more than 10 years, and they cannot determine if the results would be

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similar after long-term use of digital mobile phones. Likewise, a carcinogenic effect after a very long
period of exposure would remain undetected. Therefore mobile phone can harm ones health as a
whole.

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Health problem 2: Biological and Physiological Effects
Experimental research on the biological effects of RF and microwave fields is very
broad and includes studies of volunteers, animals and in vitro, cell-based techniques. The
studies cover the effects of RF and microwave radiation between 100 MHz and 60 GHz and
focus both on the functional changes in the brain (influence of exposure to RF and
microwave fields on the head) and on carcinogenic processes, reproduction and development,
the cardiovascular system and longevity (as a result of whole body exposure to RF and
microwave fields).
The biological effects observed on the cardiovascular, endocrine and immune systems
and on the behaviour of animals studied seem to be thermal effects of acute exposure to RF
and microwave radiation, with increases of at least 1 C or 2 C in temperature needed to
produce these effects. Moreover, a biological mechanism that explains any possible
carcinogenic effect from RF or microwave fields has yet to be identified. Because of the
difficulties in interpreting findings from laboratory studies, the hypothesis that RF or
microwave radiation is harmful and could have effects on health that have not yet been
recognized cannot be rejected.
Indirect experimental results are difficult to extrapolate. In vitro experiments that
show abnormal cell proliferation, changes in cell membranes, and movement of ions and
substances across membranes are difficult to extrapolate to people. It is also difficult to
extrapolate to people the observed effects on cerebral functions that relate to the behaviour of
rodents since, among other reasons, the whole brain of these small animals is exposed to
radiation whereas the brains of people who use mobile phones, although being exposed,
receive the highest exposure in the part closest to the handset. Moreover, the thermal effects
of radiation are likely to be seen in people, as the increase in the local temperature of the
brain induced by the microwaves generated by mobile phones is negligible (it has been
estimated to be up to 0.1 C). Finally, there is evidence of thermal effects on human health.
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It is important to distinguish between biological (or physiological) effects and
psychological and health effects. The demonstration of an RF or microwave radiation effect
in experimental research necessarily mean that such exposure will lead to harmful effects on
human health. Human bodies, with the aid of their immune, nervous or endocrine systems,
can effectively resist some external pressures, but sometimes not adapt to them and not
maintain the stability (homeostasis) disrupted by those changes.

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Conclusion
Recommendation
Social problem 1
In order to decrease the rate of the crime that will happen in the organization we as the
management team should conduct a meeting with the leader to imposed the new policies and
rule and regulation in our companies. This is to make sure that the environment inside our
organization is safe and sound. Not only that the use of mobile phone in the working time
should be less. The guideline provided to the staff should be follow. Any staff or the manager
which not follow the rule will be given punishment.
Social problem 2
The use of mobile phones during the working hours should be limit. This is because the use
of mobile phones during the working hours can create misunderstanding. During the working
hours the staff is encourage to talk face-to-face so that the information given is clear and the
understanding of the staff can be enhance. Face-to-face communication have many advantage
as compare to communication by using the mobile phones.
Health problem 1
Therefore the use of mobile phone should be avoided during the working hours. This is
because the use of mobile phones during the working can create several health problem such
as fatique, dizziness and low memory recall. This s because we use mush our left side brains
to think. Thus the use of mobile phone during the working hours should be avoided to
decrease the chances to get the health problem.
Health problem 2
The use of mobile phones should be limit so that the tendency of the staff to get the cancer
can be decrease. As what we can see from the pass research there is a positive correlation
between heat produce by mobile pho to the human brains. This is because mobile phones is
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produce heat when they are being use. Therefore in order to make sure that we are free from
those health problem we as a staff have to follow any rules and regulation in our organization.

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References
"Facts about the Mobile" (http://www.mobilen50ar.se/eng/FaktabladENGFinal.pdf) (PDF).
Retrieved 26 June 2013.
Marples, Gareth. "The History of Cell Phones" (http://www.thehistoryof.net/history-of-cellphones.html). Retrieved 27 June 2013.
A. Kling, Andrew (2010). Cell Phones. 27500 Drake Road, Farmington Hills MI 48331:
Lucent Books. pp. 2426.
World

Health

Organization:

Cell

Phones

May

Cause

(http://www.businessinsider.com/cell-phonescause-cancer-2011-5).

Cancer"
Business

Insider. Retrieved 30 June 2013.

Brian Rohan (2 January 2008). "France warns against excessive mobile phone use"
(http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL0223157720080102). Reuters. Retrieved
26 June 2013.

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