Turn Cell Phones Off!

I think in hospitals something with the waves emitted from the phone can mess up equipment or something.

I think people talk on their phones too much in public anyway. I mean, we all survived just fine without them attached to our heads, right? I am guilty of talking on my phone in line sometimes and I know it is rude but when someone calls you just have to take it....it is like torture to let the phone ring! :wink:

I've never heard of all this. I do know about being on planes and how the waves can interfere with communications. Interesting.

Well, I found out about the gas stations and cell phones…from snopes.com

According to some experts there is a danger that using a mobile phone near gas pumps could touch off an explosion, but not only have we found no real-life instances of such an explosion occurring, we don't know anyone who has demonstrated experimentally that it's even possible (including the folks at The Discovery Channel's Mythbusters program). Even so, gas pumps in Australia bear stickers cautioning motorists to turn off their phones while refueling; Shell in Malaysia has affixed similar stickers to each of its gas pumps; numerous pumps in the U.S.A. are similarly adorned; Canada's major gas pump operators have banned customers from using mobile phones while at the gas pump; and the city of Cicero, Illinois, recently passed the first law in the USA banning the use of cellular phones at gas stations.

Cellular phone manufacturers Nokia and Ericsson have said that the risk is very small that something will happen, but since there is a risk, it should be counted. Nokia also said that the company has been recommending for a long time that the mobile phones should be turned off while the car is being refueled. What it is about a cellular phone that could possibly trigger an explosion is difficult to fathom, however. The claim that the batteries used in a cellular phone can ignite gasoline seems specious, since cellular phone batteries are the same voltage as automobile batteries (12V D.C.) but deliver far less current. Likewise, the claim that a "cellular phone ringer uses more than 100 volts for excitation" is a curious artifact of the "regular" telephone era: cellular phones don't have ringers; they produce audio tones that simulate the sound of a ringing telephone.

And also on snopes….about cell phones and hospitals -

Although no real deaths have yet occurred, enough scary incidents have taken place that at least some hospitals have banned the use of cell phones on their premises, or at least in their trauma, critical care, and surgical areas. Cell phone interference has created false alarms in infant incubators and prompted heart monitors to spew results making it appear as if patients hooked up to them were in cardiac arrest. It has set off fire alarms and caused IV pumps to stop working. Worse, it has caused failures in some equipment necessary for the maintenance of life itself. For instance, at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, a breathing machine for infants sputtered to a halt when a worker switched on a cellular telephone while medical equipment was being tested. That there was no baby attached to that gizmo at that time doesn't mean that a similar failure couldn't have happened when an infant's every breath was on the line.

In another incident reported on the FDA web site:
A patient in the intensive care unit was receiving epinephrine by an infusion pump when a visitor received a cell phone call. When the phone was answered, the infusion pump increased the rate of the drip. The patient received an unintended bolus of medication and subsequently developed epinephrine toxicity.
Although some medical care facilities have enacted bans on cell phone usage, others have merely chosen to restrict their use to non-critical parts of the hospital, and some have decided to ignore the whole thing. Patients and visitors will not find consistent policies in place in all hospitals and have to rely on signage on the premises (or lack thereof) to guide them as to what each facility's cell phone policy is.

As for how seriously those hospitals who have chosen to institute bans on cell phone use within their walls take matters, in 1998 a man in Wareham, Massachusetts, was arrested in the emergency room of Tobey Hospital after refusing to end his call. Officers twice used pepper spray on him in an effort to relieve him of his phone.