Startup Targets Mobile Phone Health Hazards

BARCELONA, Spain — With the mobile communications industry's biggest annual bash just opened in Barcelona, a year old company tried to dampen proceedings by warning of the health dangers of wireless communications and suggested it has the technology and product to protect people from the potentially harmful effects of radiation emitted from mobile devices.

Exradia (London, England) used the GSM World Congress to tout its ASIC chip that is embedded in a mobile phone's battery to neutralize potentially harmful emissions from a mobile phones and other wireless devices.

The custom chip generates the noise field signal that drives a wire coil to produce the noise field itself.

"We own the patents on this technology and are working with design groups in the U.S. and equipment makers in China to bring to market this year our My Wi-Guard product which neutralises potentially harmful emissions from the mobile phone," Jim Lawler, CEO of Exradia told EE Times Europe .

Lawler cited recent work that implied health problems from the long-term use of mobile phones may create health problems. For instance, he mentioned that Professor Lawrie Challis, a world expert on mobile phone radiation and chairman of the U.K's mobile communications health research programme, is seeking a total of £3.1 million (about $6 million) from the Department of Health, and from the mobile network operators, to monitor 200,000 volunteers, including long-term users, for at least five years to plot mobile phone use against any serious diseases they develop, including cancer and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.

He said there is a clear need for sensible risk management and that providing people with the choice to protect themselves would also safeguard the health of the industry. "Most major man-made causes of illnesses have taken more than a decade to become apparent," he warned. "This industry needs to raise its game about the freedom of being able to choose to protect themselves against the potential dangers."

Lawler suggested Exradia's technology seems to be the only scientifically proven patented solution to neutralize potentially harmful EMF emissions from electrical devices at source. It is based on Noise Field Technology, which superimposes a low frequency randomised magnetic field over the man-made regular electromagnetic field emissions generated by electronic equipment.

The added noise field results in both ELF and RF electromagnetic emissions generated by man-made devices appearing to living cells as irregular, mimicking the random low level electromagnetic fields, which tend to occur in nature. Randomized low level electromagnetic fields do not cause biological changes to human cells.

"This is like the air-bag for wireless," he suggested to EE times Europe .

Lawler would not name the company that developed the ASIC at the heart of its device, except to say it is based in California, nor its Chinese partner. He said the Nokia 6230 phone would be the first to deploy the battery incorporating its device, "and we are talking to several other tier 1 phone makers about this low-cost and simple solution."

He said the technology can be incorporated into products other than mobile phones, for instance the network cabling within offices or living spaces.

For now, product development is focusing on DECT phones, Wi-Fi laptops, wireless networks, Tetra radios, Bluetooth headsets, radio base stations and infrastructure within wireless offices and homes.

Placing the chip into the phone circuitry requires a power source and a means of triggering that is in some way proportional to the RF field generated by the phone. The battery uses current consumption as an indirect means to measure the RF levels.

In a statement sent to EE Times Europe , the company says: "Since the RF signal is being produced by the phone, it would appear to be reasonably straightforward to derive this measure from within the phone circuitry. A few external components are also required; two SOT23 transistors, two resistors and two capacitors (0603 or smaller)."