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RFID tags useful, but potentially risky 6-25-08
A new study found that use of
radio frequency identification (RFID), a wireless technology, on medical device
may pose a risk to patients who are supported by a critical care medical device
such as pacemakers.
RFID, an automatic identification method, relies on storing and remotely
retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders, which can be
applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of
identification using radio waves.
The study showed that when active RFID tags were moved around 41 critical care
medical devices including pacemakers, ventilators IV pumps, defibrillators,
dialysis machines and anesthesia machines at different distances, they
interfered with the critical devices in 34 tests out of all 123 tests.
Doctors were asked to evaluate the degree of the risk from the electromagnetic
interference and they said in 22 out of the 34 test settings RFID tags may cause
hazard to patients who are using a critical care medical device like pacemakers.
The U.S. health care providers are spending an estimated $50 million dollars a
year in the RFID solutions and the applications are expected to at least double
in the next decade, authors said in their report. But according to
technewsworld.com, the medical industry has not yet adopted the technology as
widely as thought because of the cost.
The study was conducted by researchers at Vrije University in Amsterdam in the
Netherlands and the results were published in the journal of the American
Medical Association.
The researchers did not recommend that hospitals stop using RFID tags just
because there is a potential harm the technology could pose to patients. Rather
they suggest further research should be performed to confirm the findings and
make sure that use of this RFID asset tracking method does not endanger the
medical equipment and the patients.
RFID tags are finding more and more applications, far beyond hospitals. The
telecommunication companies like AT&T have been exploring new applications to a
point that the industry wanted school children to wear a RFID tag for tracking
purposes, which drew attention from privacy advocates.
RFID tags or implants provide incredible inconvenience in monitoring an animal
or an article, or a property. But this modern technology like many others such
as medical x-ray and cell phones can pose a threat to human health and long-term
or intense exposure to the radio wave such as from implants or RFID tags could
potentially promote cancer development.
Reuters in September, 2007 reviewed studies on the safety of RFID and found that
a significant percentage of animals wearing RFID tags developed tumors mostly
near the tags.
Likewise in a September 8, 2007 news story, Washington Post cited some studies
published in veterinary and toxicology journals between 1996 and 2006 to say lab
mice and rats receiving microchips sometimes developed subcutaneous "sarcomas" _
malignant tumors, most of them encasing the implants.
In 1997, a German study found 1 percent of 4,279 chipped mice developed cancer.
And the researchers attributed the tumors the implanted microchips.
Although RFID technology used in hospitals may pose a risk mostly to patients
who rely on a critical care medical device, long-term exposure to the radio wave
or implants which would release a risky dose of radio wave can be a danger to an
ordinary individual.
Antichips.com conducted a review of eleven studies previously reported in
toxicology and pathology journals and found that in six of the reports between
0.8% and 10.2 % of laboratory mice and rats developed malignant tumors around or
adjacent to the RFID chips and two studies showed dogs developed
microchips-relate cancer.
The current study did not involve patients who count on a device to live their
lives, which could be potentially affected by a RFID tag. But the research seems
significant enough to warrant further studies on the possible risk of RFID tags
to those patients.
For everyone else, caution may need to be exercised when considering
volunteering to be implanted with a RFID microchip. There should be no doubt
that anyone who dares to try the fancy RFID tag or implants might put himself at
higher risk of cancer.