HEALTH UPDATE: mobile phone use in hospitals poses danger

Using mobile phones near hospital beds or important equipment is dangerous and could switch off ventilators or disrupt pacemakers, Dutch researchers said on September 6.
The University of Amsterdam researchers recorded nearly 50 incidents of electromagnetic interference from cell phone use in hospitals and classified 75 percent of them as significant or hazardous.
Because of this mobile phones should come no closer than one metre to hospital beds and equipment, said the researchers who published their study in BioMed Central's online open access journal Critical Care. "Critical care equipment is vulnerable to electromagnetic interference by new-generation wireless telecommunication technologies with median distances of about 3 centimetres," they wrote.