Cell Phone Radiation Drastically Underestimated for Children
by melody on Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011 |
The scholarly journal Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine released an article online last month concluding that 97% of the population is exceeding current FCC guidelines for cell phone radiation exposure because of flaws in the current measuring system when testing cellphones for the market. The findings for children using cell phones are grim:
Children's radiation absorption rates compared to adults
- Twice the amount to their heads
- Up to three times the amount in the their brain's hippocampus and hypothalamus
- As much as ten times more in their bone marrow
It's enough to make me wonder whether we will begin to see an epidemic of childhood and young adult leukemia in the next decade or so, as the long-term effect of this DNA-damaging radiation begins to express itself in the form of cancer.
For the most part, though, the largely uninformed public hasn't heard about this. Why? Because they either don't want to know, or they just don't care. It doesn't help that the cellphone industry designed the cellphone certification standards and is in clear conflict of interest with any alternative standard that would force them to lower the radiation emissions on their products.
A Better Way to Measure Absorbed Cellular Radiation
The good news is an alternative system exists, based on MRI imaging that can measure the amount of radiation being absorbed into all tissues on people of different sizes. Called the "Virtual Family," it can measure absorption rates on a 5-year-old girl, a 6-year-old boy, an 8-year-old girl, an 11-year-old girl, a 14-year-old boy, a 26-year-old female, a 35-year-old male, an obese adult male, and a pregnant woman at various stages of her pregnancy.
The irony about this new system? It's already FCC approved, and yet it has never been used for certification purposes. Instead, the FCC continues to use an outdated 1991 method for occupational exposure that is completely out of touch with the current widespread saturation of involuntary cellular radiation exposure 24/7, and without regard to the increased vulnerability of certain populations such as children and unborn children in the womb.
Yet despite the increasing number of research studies coming out warning against the dangers of cellphone use, the American population seems to be blithely ignoring the warnings and continuing on with their daily lives, unwilling to accept the idea that their smartphone might not be the best invention since sliced bread.
The Normalcy Bias
Financial investors and psychology experts call this the normalcy bias. Even when the threat of imminent catastrophic harm comes to a town such as New Orleans in 2006 before Hurricane Katrina hit, people refuse to acknowledge the bad and continue with their normal routine until it is too late. More simply put, it's the ostrich sticking its head in the sand.
Don't tell me because I don't want to know. If I don't know that I'm buying my children the equivalent of their first carton of cigarettes at the age of eight and encouraging them to a lifetime of exposure to carcinogenic toxins, maybe I won't have to feel guilty when they get cancer in their early 30s. Maybe I won't be around at that time. Surely they'll have left the house by then and I won't be held responsible for their choices.
I know I'm being harsh. But when it comes down to it, every parent is responsible for protecting the long-term health of their child. If you know that something poses a long-term threat to them, how can you NOT do something about it, regardless of the personal inconvenience? Some parents argue that there are too many other imminent threats like car accidents, kidnappings, and accidental falls, etc. to worry about whether their child's cell phone is going to give them cancer 20 years from now.
But doesn't the same reasoning apply to second-hand cigarette smoke?
The Problem of Consent
The skeptical parent might say, "But no one has officially come out and banned cell phones. I'm going to wait until that happens before I do anything."
No one has come out and banned cell phones yet, but countries like Canada, Israel, Germany, India, France, Finland, Russia and Switzerland have issued advisories to limit cell phone use for children under the age of 18.
It all boils down to informed consent. It's irresponsible to allow young children who are not old enough to understand the long-term risks of using cell phones to bathe in toxic radiofrequency radiation 24/7.
Other Countries' Wireless Safety Standards
Take a look at Russia, China, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria. All these countries have recently lowered their exposure limits from wireless transmitters in public places. In the case of Austria, the safe exposure limits are more than 5000 times lower than the current FCC standard. Don't believe me? Read our article, The Wireless Human Experiment. The rest of the world is waking up to this threat and is becoming proactive in protecting the health of their most valuable asset: their children.
When is the right time to do something: before the hurricane wipes you out, or after your children have already been swept away?
Don't you think it's time this great country of ours did a little more to protect our own?
Sign the Prove-It Initiative to ask the President to stay the installation of new wireless technologies until better safety standards can be implemented.
Sign the Cellphone Safety Pledge at the Center for Safer Wireless.
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