Friday, April 12, 2019

Miracle Teenager Survives On His Own For Almost 6 Hours With No Wi-Fi

IN what has been hailed as ‘a miracle’, one Waterford teenager has reportedly survived in his home with no connection to the internet for almost 6 whole hours.
Answering to the name ‘David Gowan’, the 16-year-old was found in a distressed state yesterday evening, walking through a Dungarvan neighbourhood holding his Samsung Galaxy above his head looking for a signal and muttering incoherently.
The emergency services were notified and David was brought to a nearby Starbucks and hooked up to their Wi-Fi immediately. It remains unclear as to how the teen was left without internet for such a long period of time, and a search has begun to find David’s parents, with fears that they may have other kids without even a single bar of coverage.
“David survived without access to any social media or video sharing sites for the better part of an afternoon,” said an amazed member of Waterford’s child protection services.
“No GIFs, no memes, no porn. It’s incredible to see him in such good condition, considering what he went through. There’s grown adults who can’t go without internet for that long, let alone teenagers. God love him like, he didn’t even see the new Star Wars trailer yet”.
David was not available for interview, with rumours circulating that the poor youngster had lost the ability to speak in anything other than normal English, having not used emojis for so long.

The Dangers of Wireless Radiation and How to Protect Yourself - A conversation with Peter Sullivan


Silicon Valley is probably the last place you’d expect to hear health warnings related to your cellphone. But that’s where you’ll find Peter Sullivan, a man with a mission to help the public understand how their devices cause real harm.

Sullivan started out as one of the biggest fans of a technology he now does his best to avoid. He attended graduate school at Stanford University in Silicon Valley, and later worked as a software designer, rubbing shoulders with people who would go on to design the devices that shape our wireless world. Living on the cutting edge, 

Sullivan became one of the earliest adopters of wireless technology, but he also got sick from it long before most people knew it was possible.

His illness—now known as electrosensitivity—and the realization that it was caused by wireless radiation exposure, pushed Sullivan to find answers. While government regulators and the telecom industry insisted that the level of microwave radiation flowing from his phone was safe, Sullivan talked to several top scientists who found strong evidence showing otherwise.

Some of these scientists can be seen in a film Sullivan produced in 2017 called “Generation Zapped.” This eye-opening documentary tells of the manipulative tactics the telecom industry uses to sell the public a technology despite overwhelming evidence that it was harmful. 

Today, Sullivan’s full-time job is spreading the word about the dangers related to electromagnetic frequency (EMF) radiation, urging people to keep their devices off or at a distance whenever possible. He also funds research at Harvard, Stanford, University of California–Berkeley, and several leading environmental health nonprofits in an effort to provide a better picture of a technology we all use because most of us assume it’s safe.

The Epoch Times talked to Sullivan about the problems associated with wireless radiation exposure, and what we can do to protect ourselves from it. Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.

The Epoch Times: It seems like people are just starting to realize the dangers related to wireless technology, but you’ve been looking at this for the past 10 years. What gave you a head start?

Peter Sullivan: I basically got to experience what people are experiencing now about 10 or 15 years ago, because we were on the cutting edge in Silicon Valley, and getting a lot of different exposures.

My brain was saying, “All this stuff is good,” but my body was having some really serious problems. I had to learn the hard way on this one that our assumptions about the safety were just totally false.

At first, I thought I had food allergies. Then I determined I had high levels of mercury. But even after detoxifying myself, cleaning up my diet, and doing all these things, my health just kept going down. I got really skinny. My teeth were cracking. My body was demineralizing. I felt spacey and weak, and I’m not a weak person. I was a Navy pilot. I ran marathons. I did triathlons, so I’m not used to being weak, but I got physically and mentally weak.

I got to where if I put a cellphone next to my head, I could feel it, and it didn’t feel good.

I didn’t think there was any research out there about this, but I got invited to a session at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco where there were some scientists talking about wireless exposure. So I started looking at the research. Thousands of these studies show harm.

The Silicon Valley folks aren’t clued into this, but the telecom industry, the FCC, and U.S. government really know about this issue, but they’ve sold the spectrum anyway. They’re basically using tobacco tactics. Did you read the article from The Nation about this? They did a six-month investigation about how the industry has been covering it up.

The Epoch Times: How does wireless radiation impact our bodies?

Mr. Sullivan: I think the most important thing people should know is Dr. Martin Pall’s work on the calcium channel. He has shown that these frequencies and fields can impact the calcium channel in our cells. Calcium channels are really fundamental to brain development, the immune system, T-cell function, the blood-brain barrier, the gut-brain barrier—they’re really a central factor.

The number one risk factor for autism is a calcium channel variation. From twin studies we know that the genetic component of autism is only about 38 percent. The rest is environmental, so we’re looking for environmental factors that can have an impact on the calcium channel. Dr. Pall has spoken about this at autism conferences.

Variations in calcium channel functioning are associated not just with autism, but with ADHD, depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia. People with these variations are at a higher risk.

Calcium channel variations also increase the risk factor for electrosensitivity. But even if you have very normal calcium channel function, you can become electrosensitive with a high exposure. It still gets overloaded at some point, and especially as we add in more things like 5G.

So some people can get completely overloaded by wireless, but it’s not just the wireless. It’s really a combination of multiple things in the environment. Dr. Lisa Nagy says that people will frequently have mold exposures that can damage the calcium channel, and then that makes them more susceptible. Some people have toxic exposures. Some people have dental risk factors, like mercury fillings or infected root canals that also make them more susceptible. So you really have to lighten the load of all of these factors to stay ahead of the game right now.

The Epoch Times: We live in a world where lots of factors conspire against us.

Mr. Sullivan: And that’s what we’re looking at with autism. We went in thinking it was just going to be one gene, and one environmental factor. But it turns out it’s multiple genes but along the same pathway, and multiple environmental factors that are affecting that single pathway.

Of course, that pathway is also a target for drugs. So if folks are taking calcium channel blockers for their heart or their mental health, EMFs are working against those drugs. At some point you’re going to start having to control these exposures, and having a reality check on this whole thing. Some problems are not going to be solved by adding more drugs. We need to start removing interference factors to really restore our health.

The Epoch Times: I’ve read that supplementing with magnesium can help with the disruption of the calcium channel.

Mr. Sullivan: Dr. Pall and others have found that magnesium is a natural calcium blocker. It downregulates the calcium channel. If you are low in magnesium, your calcium channel becomes hyperactive. When the calcium channel gets excited, it’s telling your nervous system that something important is going on so we should stay alert.

The problem is, we’re not meant to be in that state all the time. It’s a very stressful state to be in. You can think of it like a cell danger-mode state. It consumes a lot of energy, and it’s exhausting. The body is not meant to stay in this fight-or-flight state all the time.

Many of the doctors that I’ve talked to have been recommending a certain form of magnesium that gets into the brainstem and the brain more directly. It’s called magnesium threonate. It’s been shown to really help with brain connections.

The Epoch Times: It’s amazing that the disruption of this tiny cellular mechanism can result in all these different problems.

Mr. Sullivan: Dr. Pall says the calcium channels are most dense in the heart, the nervous system, and brain. We are starting to see the effects on both mental health and physical health.

People need to understand that the primary symptom of EMF exposure is sleep disturbance. Next is headaches, attention issues, anxiety, and memory issues.

The one that blows my mind the most is sperm damage. Dozens of studies show that these frequencies and fields can damage sperm. So a cellphone in a pocket of a man who is about to become a father is a major concern that needs to be investigated. People need to understand that when they put a cellphone in their pocket they’re playing genetic Russian roulette. They’re taking all these good genes that have gone through the test of time and they just randomly flip them. That’s going to be really challenging to reverse.

The Epoch Times: What should people do to reduce their exposure to wireless radiation?

Mr. Sullivan: The first thing is to clear out devices close to you in your sleep environment. These exposures undermine sleep, and they undermine your melatonin production and your depth of sleep.

It’s very common right now for people to use their cellphone as their alarm clock and they’re charging it and having it right next to them all night.

Some people are even using fitness trackers that have a constant wireless exposure, like a Fitbit, to track their sleep. We also tell people to turn off their Wi-Fi at night, or turn off their cordless phone base station. Don’t have a tablet or modem anywhere near you at night. These will all disrupt sleep.

Sleep is really fundamental to your health and mental health, and of course child development.

An important one for children: We tell parents to turn off the baby monitor at night. At minimum, move it across the room.

In general, create space around your sleep environment and your work environment. The strategy should either be to turn it off, or move it away. If you can’t turn off the device, move the device away from you. If the device can’t move, like a smart meter, you move away from the device.

Distance makes our exposure signal rapidly drop off. Every time you double the distance, the exposure drops off by 75 percent.

People should never, under any circumstances, touch the cellphone to their head when they’re talking on it. The FCC has never tested that configuration. Every phone has a warning which says that it’s tested with a space between itself and the body. They are not tested directly next to the body as most people are using them. Even if they’re just close, there is a risk of them going over the FCC limit, which is already not a biologically based safety limit.

I also have a wireless safety card on my website ClearLightVentures.com. This card shows you some basic solutions for some of the most common sources of wireless radiation. It has a little bit of the science, and a little bit of the health effects on one card. I give these away to parents. When people see this in writing and they see that there is science there and see that there are solutions in place, then they start taking action.

The Epoch Times: I think a big reason people don’t take wireless radiation seriously is because they can’t see it. 

Mr. Sullivan: That’s right. It’s invisible so it’s hard for people to get a sense of it. One of my jobs is to make the invisible visible for people. We’ve gone to a couple of autism conferences where we’ve given people an experience. We set up a 10 foot by 10 foot canopy, kind of like a farmers market tent, but the sides are covered. It’s basically a wireless clean room. We tell people who enter it to turn off their phones, their Apple watches, or whatever you’ve got that’s emitting a wireless signal, then you go into this room.

On average, between 85 to 95 percent of the people will feel a difference when they step into that room. The most common thing they report is feeling calmer. This calcium channel interference stops and the body starts unloading.

We’ve had some people who have had so much exposure for so long that they get a little nauseated when they step into this environment.

The Epoch Times: What is this tent made out of?

Mr. Sullivan: It’s made of a shielding material that blocks and reflects wireless radiation. And shielding is one of the strategies people can do to limit their exposure, but I recommend people do all the free and easy stuff first before they buy anything new.

The Epoch Times: So shielding is a more advanced level.

Mr. Sullivan: Yes, and to do it right you may need a professional to help you so that it doesn’t reflect it back and make your environment worse. People should put most of their attention on exposure reduction.

The Epoch Times: Is testing your environment important? And if so, how do you do it?

Mr. Sullivan: You can buy a consumer level meter from companies like LessEMF or Safe Living Technologies. I actually recommend a couple of meters on my website.

You can also get people who will measure this for you. Search for EMF experts. Sometimes they’re called building biologists or environmental consultants. They are trained in this and they will come in and give you a one-time assessment.

The Epoch Times: What are some other things people should know about wireless radiation?

Mr. Sullivan: People should also know that it has failed safety testing many times at various levels. Of course, the newest level, 5G, is not being tested again. So people should demand that these devices be tested before they use them and before their children use them.

Wireless safety needs to be a market requirement just like automotive safety. People should start actually looking at science and not just taking industry talking points at face value. 

Conan Milner is a health reporter at The Epoch Times.

Source


Canton of Geneva prohibits construction of 5G antennae

Thursday 11 April 2019 | 16:08 CET | News
The Canton of Geneva has introduced a preliminary ban on the construction of 5G antennae, reported SRF.ch. The cantonal parliament first requires investigations into possible health implications. The decision on the moratorium came in at 58 votes against 28.
The prohibition will only be lifted again if independent scientific findings are available on the possible health effects of 5G. The Geneva government will now turn to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and request independent studies.
In Geneva's Grand Council, it was argued that many mobile operators would explain to consumers that 5G is the same as LTE. However, the environment is increasingly burdened by electromagnetic waves and nobody knows about the health effects. The cantonal parliament also wants to know about the effects on animals.
By the end of the year, Swisscom plans to cover more than 90 percent of Switzerland with a 5G network. Sunrise has been covering 150 cities and locations throughout Switzerland since the beginning of April. With the award of the 5G licences at the beginning of February, the discussion about the health risks of mobile radiation in Switzerland has been resumed.

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Wi-Fi dangerous to health and should not be installed at seniors facility

Recently, one of your readers wrote to say that it would be nice for a seniors facility to have Wi-Fi. What would be safer would be to install a wired computer for general use in the facility.

It seems that the general public is not yet aware of some important findings regarding health with regards to Wi-Fi. To provide clarity, all microwave radiation, whether it comes from a cell phone, Wi-Fi, a cell tower, or any other device, is considered to be a 2B carcinogen by the WHO in the same category of concern as lead.


In March 2018 Dr. Fiorella Belpoggi the lead scientist from a study exposing rats to cell tower radiation made the following statements: “microwave radiation is strongly carcinogenic…should be turned off when not in use…any new infrastructure using such technology should be put on hold for the time being”. The press conference for the study is on Youtube.

In September 2018 the National Toxicology Program in the United States (scientists studying disease), completed a study on exposure of rats to radio-frequency radiation (also called microwave radiation) of 2G and 3G cell phones. Their findings echoed that of the Ramazzini Institute. The studies showed clear evidence of tumours in the hearts of rats, and some evidence of brain tumours associated with exposure to these phones.


It is time to heed the warnings of scientists, even though our fedreal government’s lack of protection is woefully inadequate just as it was with the dangers from cigarette smoking. Pay attention and let your local MP know of your concerns.

Number of children going to ER with suicidal thoughts and attempts has doubled

The number of children and teens in the United States who visited emergency rooms for suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts doubled between 2007 and 2015, according to a new analysis.
Researchers used publicly available data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, administered by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention every year. From the 300 emergency rooms sampled, the researchers tracked the number of children between 5 and 18 who received a diagnosis of suicidal ideation or suicide attempts each year.
Diagnoses of either condition increased from 580,000 in 2007 to 1.12 million in 2015, according to the study, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics. The average age of a child at the time of evaluation was 13, and 43% of the visits were in children between 5 and 11.
"The numbers are very alarming," said Dr. Brett Burstein, the lead study author and a pediatric emergency room physician at Montreal Children's Hospital of McGill University Health Centre. "It also represents a larger percentage of all pediatric emergency department visits. Where suicidal behavior among the pediatric population was just 2% of all visits, that's now up to 3.5%."
The findings come as no surprise to child psychiatrists.
"We know that suicide and depression have been rising significantly," said Dr. Gene Beresin, executive director of The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study.
Depression and a prior suicide attempt are the two biggest risk factors for suicide, and with rates of suicide on the rise, it makes sense for risk factors to increase as well, he explained.

The reason? It's complicated

One reason for the increase in depression and suicidal behaviors may be more stress and pressure on kids, Beresin said.
"Kids are feeling more pressure to achieve, more pressure in school, and are more worried about making a living than in previous years," he said.
Parents and caregivers are also more stressed, Beresin said, adding that rates of suicides have increased in all age groups over the past 20 years and that the stress is passed down to children and teens.
Another reason may be the rise of social media and increasing rates of cyberbullying that have come with it, Beresin said.
Approximately 15% of US high school students report that they've been bullied online in the past year, according to the CDC. A Pew Research Center survey found that the number could be even higher: 59%.
"Cyberbullying can be especially difficult for kids," explained Dr. Neha Chaudhary, child and adolescent psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Brainstorm: Stanford Lab for Brain Health Innovation and Entrepreneurship. "Unlike in settings like schools, it can fly under the radar without anyone knowing it's happening and without the same repercussions for the bullies."
In isolation, none of these factors has been proven to lead to an increase in suicidal behaviors and ultimately suicide, but taken together, a pattern begins to emerge, Beresin said.
And the country may not be adequately equipped to deal with the problem.

Families left waiting

According to data from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the majority of the United States faces a severe shortage of practicing child and adolescent psychiatrists, with fewer than 17 providers available per 100,000 children.
This means many families face long wait times, which can lead to worsening of a child's underlying mental health condition and an eventual need for more treatment sessions than if the condition had been addressed in its early stages, explained Jennifer Mautone, a psychologist in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
The available qualified providers face another challenge: communicating with other systems caring for children.
Many systems are aimed at caring for children, including the education, health care, juvenile justice and child welfare systems, said Dr. Barbara Robles-Ramamurthy, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio who was not involved in the study.
"All of these systems that are supposed to be caring for children oftentimes are not talking to each other," she said. "A lot of times, kids fall through the cracks, and families are not getting the appropriate support they need."
According to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics in February, half of kids in the United States with mental health conditions like depression and anxiety go untreated.
Rising rates of mental health conditions in youth coupled with difficulties accessing care and long waiting lists is a bad combination, Beresin said.
Burstein, who regularly sees children and teens in the emergency department with suicidal behaviors, worries that the rates will continue to increase.

"We are seeing an acceleration of this issue, and I worry that we have not yet seen the peak," he said.

T-Mobile and Sprint pitch merger as a way to beat China to 5G

Sprint CEO Michel Combes and and T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray have a message for Washington: If you want to beat China in the 5G race, you'd better approve our merger.
Why it matters: The $26 billion deal that would combine the 3rd and 4th largest U.S. wireless carriers has been waiting on federal approval for almost a year now.

  • The companies shrewdly seized on all the fretting over China's threat to make the following case to telecom regulators: Sure, you'll lose one wireless competitor in the U.S., but you'll gain a stronger global competitor that can help the nation stay ahead of its 5g nemesis.
  • "The race has barely begun. There's going to be an intense phase of running this race and investment in these networks. You've heard about the resources needed to do that. We're up against formidable competition. The Chinese machine has incredible momentum," Ray told a room full of wireless lobbyists (as well as a few FCC staffers).
Sprint has a boatload of mid-band spectrum that complements T-Mobile's low-band and millimeter wave spectrum. Combining financial resources would allow the companies to build faster, Ray said. "It's not '1+1=2,'" he said. "It's 1+1=4."
  • On Thursday, T-Mobile CEO John Legere pledged to add at least 11,000 more jobs by 2024.
  • Also on Thursday, the FCC restarted the merger review shot clock, which now runs out in early June. (Be smart: The shot clock is just a goal, not a binding deadline.)
  • NEC Director Larry Kudlow also reiterated the Trump administration's support for a market-based approach to deploying 5G.
Reality check: Verizon and AT&T are moving full-speed ahead on their own 5G deployments, and Verizon flipped the switch on commercial 5G service in Minneapolis and Chicago this week.
  • "We have all we need to compete against China," Verizon President Ronan Dunne told Axios when asked about his competitors' pitch. "That's not to say we should be complacent, but I don't see any evidence to say we are hamstrung in our ambitions to lead not just in the U.S. but to lead the world.

Sea turtles are being born mostly female due to warming—will they survive?



She started out studying tree-climbing marsupials, but only after she applied what she knew to marine reptiles did Camryn Allen actually get worried.

Allen, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Hawaii, had spent her early career using hormones to track koala bear pregnancies. Then she started using similar techniques to help colleagues quickly answer a surprisingly hard question: whether a sea turtle is male or female.

You can't always tell which is which just by looking. That often requires laparoscopy, viewing the turtle's internal organs by inserting a thin camera. Allen figured out how to do it using blood samples, which made it easier to check lots of turtles quickly.

That mattered because the heat of sand where eggs are buried ultimately determines whether a sea turtle becomes male or female. And since climate change is driving up temperatures around the world, researchers weren't surprised that they'd been finding slightly more female offspring.


But when Allen saw results from her research on Raine Island, Australia—the biggest and most important green sea turtle nesting ground in the Pacific Ocean—she realized how serious things might get. Sand temperatures there had increased so much, she and a team of scientists reported last year, that female baby turtles now outnumber males 116 to 1.

"I can't deny it: seeing those results scared the crap out of me," Allen says.
Sea turtle life is hard enough on its own, and humans were already making it even harder.

Dropping survival odds

Seven species of sea turtle crisscross the tropical and temperate oceans. From the start, there's is a risky world.

Sea turtles lay eggs on sandy beaches, but many of them never hatch. The incubating creatures may be killed by microbes, dug up by wild dogs, or exposed by other turtles scraping out new nests. Those breaking free from their delicate shells have to race past vultures and racoons to make it to the ocean. There, fish, crabs, and all manner of marine life wait, eager for a meal. Just a fraction of 1 percent of baby hatchlings ever make it to adulthood.

Once they're mature, adults face few natural predators. An adult Kemp's ridley may weigh less than most teenagers, while a leatherback can outweigh a bison. Either way few wild creatures aside from tiger sharks, jaguars, and orcas ever really try to eat them.

Humans, however, have lowered their survival odds considerably.

We build condominiums on their nesting beaches. We poach eggs for sale on the black market, carve up adults for their meat, and use their skin to make boots and handbags. We transform the fiery gold and red carapace of hawskbills into bracelets, eyeglasses, hairbrushes, and jewelry boxes. (Read more about how much bigger this problem is than first thought.)

Fishing boats accidentally snare turtles in their nets or with longlines. Container ships hit them and crack open their shells.

"The general trajectory is that sea turtles are depleted worldwide, across all species," says Bryan Wallace, who oversees a committee that evaluates sea turtle status for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's endangered species redlist. "I'd have to think hard to find a population that is way better off than it was 100 years ago."

Currently, six of the seven species are considered threatened or endangered. The seventh, Australia's flatback, is merely lacking information for scientists to say one way or the other.

New research—new hope?

Still, when Allen and NOAA colleague Michael Jensen began examining sea turtle feminization, there wasn't much reason to fear a large or immediate impact on turtles. In one earlier study, Allen found a small population of green sea turtles outside San Diego had gone from 65 percent female to 78 percent female over time as nesting sands warmed. Loggerheads from West Africa to Florida also had shown similar trends.

No one had ever examined a population as important or as large as Raine Island.
More than 200,000 sea turtles nest on or near Raine, a tiny 80-acre curl of sand along the northern edge of the Great Barrier Reef, the portion hardest hit by warming waters. The other portion of that sea turtle population nests further from the equator, near Brisbane, where temperature increases have not been as dramatic.

What Allen and Jensen discovered was significant. Older turtles that had emerged from their eggs 30 or 40 years earlier were also mostly female, but only by a 6 to 1 ratio. But younger turtles for at least the last 20 years had been more than 99 percent female. And as evidence that rising temperatures were responsible, female turtles from the cooler sands near Brisbane currently still only outnumber males 2 to 1.

Six weeks after Allen and Jensen published their results, another study from Florida looking at loggerheads revealed that temperature is just one factor. If sands are moist and cool, they produce more males. If sands are hot and dry, hatchlings are more female.
But new research in the last year also offered rays of hope.

Long-term resilience?

Sea turtles have been around in some form for more than 100 million years, weathering ice ages and even the extinction of the dinosaurs. They may have developed lots of coping mechanisms. One, it turns out, could be altering how they mate.

Using genetic tests to examine a small group of critically endangered hawksbills in El Salvador, Alexander Gaos, a turtle scientist who works with Allen, found male sea turtles mating with multiple females. That population was producing 85 percent female hatchlings.

"We found that, hey, wow, this strategy is being employed in small, endangered, highly reduced populations," Gaos says. "We think they were just responding to a lack of options for females."

It's not clear whether this move is something that has increased over time, or whether it could help stave off a population-scale turtle crisis.

"Is there potential for this to help compensate for more females being born?" Gaos asked. "We don't know. Just the fact that the males can actually do that is fairly new. We might only be seeing the very beginning."

Meanwhile, other researchers in the Dutch Caribbean figured out that providing nesting beaches with more shade from palm leaves actually cooled down the sand. That could help alter the male-to-female ratio of baby turtles considerably.

Allen, for one, finds the new developments reassuring. Sea turtles may be more resilient than once thought.

"We may lose some smaller populations, but sea turtles are never going to go away completely," Allen says. "I think turtles, out of all the other species, might actually have a pretty good shot."

They might just require a little more help from us.


Do you drive ‘intexicated’? AAA invents word to keep motorists off cellphones

You might think almost everyone believes it’s a bad idea to email, text or check on social media while driving.
But a AAA survey finds more than three out of 10 people are OK with it: Only 67% of D.C. residents responded that it’s never OK for drivers to engage in those distracting behaviors while behind the wheel.
It’s National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and AAA has created a new word to describe it — “intexicated,” a word deliberately similar to “intoxicated.”
“Distracted driving — especially texting while driving — is just as dangerous as drinking and driving,” said John B. Townsend II, AAA Mid-Atlantic’s manager of public and government affairs.
“Behind the wheel, this can become a deadly weapon,” Townsend said while holding up a cellphone.
“We stand firmly with the Metropolitan Police Department and AAA to tell motorists not to drive ‘intexicated,'” said Everett Lott, D.C. Department of Transportation deputy director. “Last year in the District, there were two fatal crashes that took three innocent lives. These deaths could have been prevented and avoided if drivers had not been intexicated.”
D.C. police conducted an aggressive enforcement effort immediately after a Wednesday news conference announcing the “Don’t Drive Intoxicated – Don’t Drive Intexicated” campaign. At times, there were up to three or four vehicles pulled over with officers on the blocks around 14th and U streets in Northwest D.C.
Officers handing out citations or having a talk with drivers might help save the lives of motorists, cyclists and pedestrians, said D.C. police Assistant Chief Jeffery Carroll.
“Maybe you don’t get a ticket, but we need to have the conversation to let you know that what you’re doing is very dangerous, and it could really have an impact on someone’s life or kill them,” Carroll said.

Phonegate scandal: Swiss deputies on the front lines

For the past year, many Swiss deputies have been asking the Federal Council for information and explanations regarding the Phonegate industrial and health scandal. Most recently, on 20 March 2019, National Councilor Silva Semadeni (Socialist group) and 26 other deputies* tabled another interpellation, 193180:
“Phonegate”: Properly inform mobile phone users:
“…smartphones are often worn close to the body, in the pants pocket, or directly glued to the ear during a call. In 2018, in France, it was made public that many models of mobile phones sold exceeded the specific absorption rate (SAR) values declared by the manufacturer. For years, users have been deceived…”

An article that makes waves

The interpellation mentions the article published on 13 February 2019 by the popular Swiss consumer magazine “Beobachter”, written by Editor-in-Chief Andres Büchi, reporting on the Phonegate scandal, “Mobile phone users have been deliberately misled. For years, mobile phone manufacturers have reported values that are too low. Critics talk of a scandal.”
In the interpellation, the Federal Council was asked when it was informed of these inadequate limit values ​​and what steps have been taken to properly inform users.  It also placed this issue within the context of 5G, citing the research work of Professor Niels Kuster of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, showing that industry standards for limit values ​​do not protect against sustained and damaging heating of body tissues. Prof. Kuster recommended urgent adjustments to these limit values, especially for 5G.
Phonegate is linked to the use of flawed and lax national and international standards by manufacturers of the sector. Can we have confidence in an industry that wants to develop 5G technologies inside mobile phones?

Swiss Federal Council reaction is still pending

Already on 14 June 2018, National Councilor Silva Semadeni and 21 other deputies tabled an interpellation in the National Council of the Swiss Parliament,18.3622: “Radiation-emitting devices close to the head and body”, mentioning Phonegate:
“A French study (Phonegate scandal) revealed that the specific absorption rates (SAR) of most mobile phones were respected in optimized laboratory measurements, but not during daily use near the body.”
The Swiss Federal Council issued its first opinion on 29 August 2018, concluding with the following words:
“…the Federal Council would appreciate it if the industry could voluntarily indicate the radiation (SAR values) emitted by products worn close to the body, as was the case for mobile phones. This would give consumers the opportunity to purchase low radiation-emitting equipment.
For the moment the interpellation has been deferred.

Strong mobilization to protect the health of mobile phone users

In Switzerland, the concern of citizens, doctors, politicians, regarding the potential effects of 5G technology on human health and the environment has generated strong opposition: lectures, petitions, demonstrations, letters to deputies in Parliament and at local level, favorable coverage by the mainstream media.  The Green parties in five cantons in French-speaking Switzerland have requested their communes to declare a moratorium or apply the precautionary principle regarding the launch of 5G.
For Dr. Arazi, President of Phonegate Alert :
« These initiatives of the Swiss parliament as well as the many stakeholders show in an encouraging way how concerned citizens are to have the best protection for their health and in particular, for children, in the multiday use of mobile phones.  It is time for industry to understand this and for governments to take action to seriously regulate this sector.”

*Co-signatories (26)