Wireless World: Old mobile phones a hazard

United Press International ^ | December 3, 2004 | Gene Koprowski

[kerrywearsbotox]

By Gene J. Koprowski UPI Technology News

Published 12/3/2004 9:04 AM CHICAGO, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- A mobile phone is a disposable product -- consumers buy a new one about every year and a half, and toss the old one in the closet. Then, years later, when they have a major house-cleaning weekend, they find a few old phones collecting dust and toss them out in the trash. Experts told UPI's Wireless World this pattern is starting to become a major environmental issue, as old mobile phones start to fill up garbage dumps across the United States and leach lead, arsenic, gold and other toxins into the groundwater. "There are a lot of heavy metals being released into landfills because of old mobile phones," said Chuck Harrell, an environmental supervisor with the Southeastern Public Service Authority, a government agency in Chesapeake, Va.Now, mobile phone manufacturers such as Motorola Corp. are collaborating with environmentalists and the government to solve this emerging problem. --Wireless World is a weekly series examining the social, cultural and economic impact of mobile telephony technology, by Gene Koprowski, who covers technology for UPI Science News. E-mail sciencemail@upi.com. Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International

[martin_fierro]

It's a keyboard (apparently people didn't like the handwriting recognition software), like the Blackberry's.

See the blue key? That's the ZOT button.

< |:)~

[Ghengis]

Five year old Nokia, very happy with it.

Just funnin' with you!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I like my ZOT key, I can see it:

[snopercod]

Geez', what a crock. Gold and lead are not soluble, and don't "leach".

And hell, it came out of the ground; What's the problem with putting it back?

[nomorelurker]

Yeah I went ?????? when I read Gold.

[snopercod]

I recently quit using my Oki 5W bag phone and switched to Verizon. Two things:

I understand that even if your old bag phone is "retired", you can still use it to call 911 (assuming that you keep the battery charged).

The other thing is that if you have a weak signal at home, you need to get you one of these Wilson 13dB-gain Yagi antennas. I have one and get 5 bars way down in a holler 30 miles from a tower.

Right now, I have it mounted out on the deck. When I want to make a call, I simply take the cell phone out there, unscrew the built-in antenna, and plug in the adapter cable to the Wilson Yagi antenna.

[more information here]

[Issaquahking]

Gold is soluble but the catch to get it into solution is that you have to boil it nitric acid. All of us good conservatives should start charging folks to give us their old cellphones, we'll take care of the heavy metals problem!

Gene J. Koprowski must be a frickin' idiot trying to sell this junk science to anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature

[snopercod]

If Koprowski wants a crusade, he should try Coleman lantern mantels, each of which contains enough microcuries of radioactive Thorium 242 to cause bone cancer if ingested.

Why no warning label, hmmmm?

[SierraWasp]

Somehow, I knew you'd enjoy the way this thread started going... The urban legends just keep growing until they become "CONventional wisdom!"

The one that cracks me up is the way Art Bell, who I know knows better, keeps suckin 'em in with his wild imaginationmachinations!!! (and he does it with a straight facevoice!!!)

[festus]

bubba eats catfish, actually a whole mess of fried catfish, thereby ingesting significant amounts of heavy metals over the years.

Bubba gets braindamage from metals.

Bubba falls for liberal propaganda.

Democrats sieze power.

YOWSERS! Suddenly I've become an environmentalist ;-)

[Glenn]

Why do they need new ones so often?

Because I am a man and if it is newer, faster, better, well, then, I just have to have one.

[RadioAstronomer]

Rachael Carson was full of it!!!

IMHO, Rachael Carson was the root cause of more suffering and death over the years than Hitler.

[RadioAstronomer]

If Koprowski wants a crusade, he should try Coleman lantern mantels, each of which contains enough microcuries of radioactive Thorium 242 to cause bone cancer if ingested

Don't forget there is Americium 241 in smoke detectors. :-)

[snopercod]

Yeah, with a little Be, you could make a thermal neutron source ;-)

[RadioAstronomer]

Heck, you can buy that stuff on Ebay! LOL

[snopercod]

I agree with your comment on Rachael Carson. She was the biggest mass murderess of all time.

What is it? 1-3 million malaria deaths per year for over 30 years? 300 million presently infected?

Gotta' love those liberals... /sarc

[SierraWasp]

Thank you for helping me push back the frontiers of ignorance, as Walter Williams is so fond of saying.

You too, cod man!!!

[snopercod]

...but what about Fluoride in our water!!!

[SierraWasp]

I don't have any in mine... I'm on a well and my teeth are all rotting outa my head, don'tcha know?! They keep jammin my insinkerator dealie... naw, just kiddin!

Then somebody tried to tell me alla my danged fillings were gonna poison me to death because a sumthin in 'em... What's an aging FReeper ta do??? Drink the Kool Aid??? What??? Help! Save me frum bein sucha cynic!!!

[editor-surveyor]

"OH, don't claim that heavy metals cause health hazards"

Only a moron would.

Less than one gram of each phone is toxic metals, and even if each person discarded 50 phones (unlikely) It would take over 1000 years of dumping all of the phones in the world into one dump to acumulate enough heavy metals to be of concern.