People wonder if it is harmful to their health to use the cell phone while it is charging.
Here’s what the experts say about it:
In recent weeks, a video has become viral warning about the health risks of using a cell phone while charging. The piece is popular on various social networks, especially on TikTok, where it has been shared more than 600,000 times.
The narrator of the video claims that when talking on a cell phone while it is charging, “electrical waves” will pass through the body, which is harmful. To demonstrate this, a non-contact voltage detector is used that is brought up to a child’s left arm while the child is holding, with the hand of the opposite arm, a charging phone.
When you put the tool on the arm, a light comes on in the detector and it in turn, emits an alarm beep. Once the charger is disconnected, the light turns off and the sound is no longer heard.
In consultation with Andrew Wood of the Department of Health and Medical Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, it was determined that any cable with a connection to the electrical network (and not connected to any appliance) would do the same. Therefore, for the expert, the video is “tremendously misleading.”
In turn, Eric Yeatman, from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London, stated that other wall-connected appliances, such as a hand mixer, would probably give a result similar to that of the viral video if subjected to it.
It’s harmless
Yeatman explains that cell phone chargers have a unit that converts dangerous voltage from an electrical network into harmless low-voltage direct current that travels through the wire to the phone.
According to the expert, a small amount of the frequency of the electrical network can be captured by the tool that appears in the video. However, it is “generally harmless.”
However, there are some health and cell battery risks that arise from using poor quality chargers or faulty batteries. Such use may pose a small risk of electrocution, burns, or fire. Yeatman said the biggest risk from cheap chargers is that they can fail and catch fire.
