Mobile Phones Explained: Why Can't We Use Mobile Phones in Hospitals and on Planes?

It has become so common for us to experience some kind of electromagnetic interference daily that many of us have ceased to notice

. For example, when your mobile phone is near a computer, radio, CD player or laptop, you may hear a familiar electrical tattoo come through your speakers. Similarly, you might have heard a truck's CB radio come in over your car's FM station when it drives by.

The electromagnetic field from your mobile phone is created by the simple flow of electricity through its wiring and components. Any electronic device acts in the same way, radiating at the frequency at which the device operates. This ranges from 133Mhz or more for a PC to about 1Mhz for an AM radio. The latest smartphones like the iPhone 4, Samsung i9000 Galaxy S and HTC Desire all have new generation processors that operate at 1GHz.

Given that devices like your car radio, baby monitor, mobile phone and computer speakers work on different signals or radio bands, the crossover of signals should not happen. However, transmitters do tend to transmit on harmonic side bands at lower power and so, your car's FM radio picks up the CB waves transmitted by the truck though they are attuned to different radio bands.

With mobile phones, the wires in your electronics act like an antenna and pick up transmissions in the audible range sent out from your mobile phone.

These phenomena of crossed wires are a minor nuisance in our daily lives, but on planes and in hospitals, your mobile phone signal can have a deep and hazardous impact. In hospital, much equipment is networked wirelessly, transmitting data back to nursing stations using antennas.

Using your mobile phone around this equipment can interrupt the exchange of important data wirelessly even if your mobile phone is not actively receiving or sending texts or phone calls. Mobile phones and their signal towers "handshake" with each other regularly and this quick burst of data transmitted is enough to interrupt the transmission of other data in the area.

In an airplane, though the risk of mobile phones differs technically from hospitals, the effect is the same interrupting the messages sent between pieces of equipment on the plane and with the ground. An airplane uses radios for a range of purposes pilots talk to grounds control and air traffic control (ATC); they use radar; radios communicate the plane's position to ATC computers; navigate direction with gyros and compasses.

All this equipment is adjusted to send and receive data at specific frequencies. However, when a mobile phone is turned on, it can transmit with enough strength to overlap with the plane's radio frequencies. Similarly, if wires on the plane have damaged protection, the wire could behave like your computer's speakers and pick up signal like an antenna.

Mobile Phones Explained: Why Can't We Use Mobile Phones in Hospitals and on Planes?

By: Pandora Devine

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