The Dangers of Cell Phones

January 24, 2008 Link Amma's Grace, Health

Dear Family and Friends,

The following is an article that Link wrote for his Mechanical Association’s Quarterly, Sanketika.  Please read and consider.

 

Choose Your Cancer with Care

        Susan Reynard never guessed that it would kill her.  Nobody told her.  In fact, everybody said that it was perfectly safe.  Nonetheless, Mrs Reynard is now one of the most famous casualties of the cell phone industry.  She died in 1993, afflicted with a strange cancer – growing into her head from the skin right next to her phone’s antenna.

        But this isn’t a chronicle of cell-phone related deaths.  Let us confine ourselves to cold, hard, facts and research.  Here’s a sampling of some history:

           1960’s – The National Research Council of Canada studied the non-thermal effects of microwaves on birds.  They witnessed the birds become more stressed and double their death rate under radiation.  Young chicks under the influence of 25mW/cm2 microwave radiation for more than five seconds collapsed on the floor until the influence removed.  For comparison, the permissible level for humans is 4mW/cm2 for half an hour.
Additional research between 1965 – 1980 showed that birds are severely affected by microwave radiations.  Their feathers act as a dielectric, picking up the signals, and irritating them.  They become stressed, change their flight patterns, or migrate away from the source of radiation.  Chickens had 13.7% more eggs, but twice the mortality rate.
1980’s – Mobile Phones (also known as Cell Phones and PCS phones) were introduced to the consumer market, without any pre-market safety testing.  This was permissible, since they were presented as “low powered” devices, and were within “safety limits”.
1993 – Dr George Carlo was chosen by the FCC to head up a study group called the “Wireless Technology Research Group”.  His job was to research the effects of wireless technology (mainly cell phones).  The funding for the research was to provided by the technology providers (cell phone manufacturers).
1994 – Dr. Henry Lai (University of Washington, USA) conducted independent research.  He and his research partner found (by looking at the DNA) that microwaves cause DNA to break down; which is a known cause of memory loss, cancer, and diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
1996 – The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) released the results of a study, noting that “exposure to EMFs has been linked to increased risk of diseases, including cancers such as childhood leukemia”.  Studies on humans demonstrate depression, irritability, disturbed sleep, heart palpitations, miscarriage, birth defects, sore joints, nausea, difficulty concentrating, migraine headaches, and memory loss.
1997 – Milt Bowling (Executive Director of the Canada-based Electromagnetic Radiation Task Force) was covered on the Fifth Estate (a Canadian CBC TV program) for his opposition to the installation of a cell phone transmission station on the top of his son’s school.  He shocked the world with his disclosure that the then “safety limits” only regulated human exposure to radiation when it was powerful enough to raise body tissue temperature by one degree Celsius in six minutes!  It had to cook you to be unsafe!
1998 – Dr Carlo’s six years and 28 million dollars of research showed that the nearfield electromagnetic plume (within 20cm of the cell phone) caused leakage in the blood-brain barrier and rare neural epithelial cancers.  The risk of a benign or malignant brain tumor was nearly tripled.  His funding was cut after he published this information in 1999.
2001 – Professor Kjell Mild (Orebro University in Sweden) surveyed 1,600 tumor victims who had been using cell phones for up to 10 years before diagnosis.  He compared the cases with both tumor-afflicted and healthy non-users of cell phones.  He found that use more than one hour daily increased the risk of Acoustic Neuroma by 30%.  Worldwide incidences of this type of cancer have increased by more than 80% since 1980.
In another study, Dr Mild compared the phone use of 4,400 people, half with cancer, and half who were healthy.  They found that using the cell phone for just one hour daily for 10 years increased the chances of getting a malignant tumor by 240%.  Sweden has had cell phones since 1984, and now the long term effects are starting to emerge.
2006 – Professor Ashok Agarwal (Cleveland Clinic, USA) led a study done in Mumbai involving 361 men, with 40 never using a cell, 107 less than 2 hours daily, 100 two-four  hours daily, and 114 more than four hours.  The last group had 25% less, 50% less properly formed, and 33% less live sperm.  Translation: defective children, if at all.
2007 – Dr Rony Seger (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel) exposed human and rat cells in a laboratory to low-level radiation at 875Mhz.  Though they used much less power than a typical cell phone, within ten minutes the cells began to produce a chemical signal.  This chemical signal is involved in the division of cells, and is linked to several cancers.
There is no dearth of research on the subject.  One survey of more than 300 studies completed between 1996-2002 found that those funded by manufacturers were six times more likely to find nothing wrong, compared to those funded independently!
Is there any solution?  The US Department of Defense funded research at the Catholic University (Maryland, USA) to find a way to avoid the non-thermal effects of EM radiation on humans.  The outcome?  There is a way.  By introducing a significant amount of noise at a frequency near to the transmitting frequency, the cells in the lab were no longer affected by the radiation.  They designed a chip, which is easily integratable into the existing cell phone architecture.  This will not, however, protect you from the heating effects of microwaves.
Why haven’t the Cell phone companies adopted this comparatively safer approach?  Let’s just imagine that one fine day Nokia said “Here’s a phone that is safer to use.”  There would be scandals and public outcry – “Why have you said that these phones are safe all along?”  Nokia (in the best-case scenario) would have to recall all of their current cancer-causing phones, and update them or replace them with the safer version.  Which mobile phone company is prepared to sustain that sort of mess?
All of the studies above invariably contained a line stating that there were no health risks attached to using a mobile phone.  Shall we listen to that rhetoric, or shall we look at the statistics?
Besides studies, there are also observations regarding this:
In New South Wales (Australia), hens and roosters inexplicably died soon after the installation of a mobile phone base station.  They were about 200 meters away from it.  The family who lived there developed tinnitus (microwave hearing) and severe headaches.  The headaches decreased after the street’s electrical supply was altered.  A bird keeper also had problems: all of his exotic birds died soon after the installation!
Sparrows are disappearing from cities, thought to be a result of increasing amounts of microwave radiation in the air.  In Toronto (Canada) the background radiation is more than 500,000 times what it was seven years ago.
The disappearance of bees is also linked to microwave radiation.  In one study, bees did not return to their hive when an active mobile phone was placed near it.
Many people have died, or contracted rare (less rare now than before) cancers, located suspiciously near to their mobile phone antenna.
We hope that this information is helpful to everyone…  Please take care of your health.  The best solution is to not use the mobile phones at all.  If that’s not possible, please try to keep it as far away from you as possible – use the speakerphone or a wired headset.  Some studies say that the wired headset poses more risks, as the wire acts as an aerial, picking up signals from the cell phone.  This can be averted by wrapping it around a ferrite bead (like that bulge on computer cords).

Loving you,

Kamala Anni and Link