Wireless technology: The dark side of convenience
Fri. Apr. 18, 2014 by Ron Gordon
(NaturalHealth365) The ancient Romans became sickened by seemingly safe lead pipes bringing drinking water. Today, the story repeats with wireless.
Something new is in the air. You can’t see it, hear it, smell it or feel it, but the cells in your body can. It’s called wireless technology.
Are we slowly cooking humanity to death?
Wireless fills the air around us with an invisible electrosmog of microwave radiation used for communication by devices like cell phones, mobile computers, and smart (utility) meters. The wireless age has revolutionized the way we live our lives – with smartphones tapping into our ancient human need to communicate and belong.
Many of us have willingly succumbed to the addiction of these modern conveniences handed to us by government and industry… but how many of us have stopped to ask: is this safe?
How does this stuff really work? Are we so desperately attached to our mobile devices that we no longer care to know the truth?
Behind the lure of convenience there is something industry would rather we not know: people are getting sick from wireless; there is a trail of ignored studies going back to WW2 showing stark dangers; our industry skewed safety ‘guidelines’ are obsolete and largely deceptive; and there is no proof that this technology is safe.
While Europe begins to awaken to the dangers and starts to step back, North America hurtles towards a potential public health disaster. Could it be that the ultimate cost of our wireless convenience is lethally short-sighted?
A new twist to old technology
Most people are not aware that wireless is a modern day adaptation of WW2 radar technologies, complete with most of its inherent risks. It’s difficult to relate to the nebulous nature of microwaves which pierce silently through the air around us at the speed of light, vibrating atoms at millions to billions of times per second, penetrating virtually everything including buildings, cement walls, and – unfortunately – our bodies and brains.
Silent and invisible, it’s easy to dismiss the radiation from the new cell tower down the street and slot it into the ‘no threat’ compartment of our minds. This, however, could be a fatal filing error.
We need water every day, which comes to us through pipes. We wouldn’t think of putting water into towers and sprinkling it all over ourselves just in case we wanted a drink, yet this is exactly what we do with microwave radiation. Instead of getting it through wires on demand, which works perfectly well and presents no risk, we now blast it silently and invisibly from thousands of cell towers and wifi’s – 24/7/365 – onto everyone.
Water is inert and harmless. Microwave radiation is not.
Our present exposure to man-made microwaves is 1 quintrillion (one followed by 18 zero’s) times greater than our natural exposure to these frequencies, and increasing rapidly. With a cell tower almost always within sight, smart meters on every home, and industry hell-bent on saturating every square centimeter of the planet with wireless signals, we are literally microwaving every living organism in a global biological experiment.
Is it any wonder that some of us are showing signs of being cooked?
The early warning signs are self-evident
On a pleasant spring morning, in 2006, the residents of the small village of Götene, Sweden arose and began to go about their daily routine. Unknown to most people, on this day a powerful ‘WiMAX’ station (a wireless internet access system) was activated for test purposes.
Before long some people began to feel ill, and the local hospital emergency room telephone began ringing with calls from people suffering from headaches, difficulty breathing, blurred vision, racing hearts and a range of other symptoms. The symptoms abated when the system was deactivated or if the sufferer left the area. On May 23, 2006, the story was covered on Sweden’s STV television station current affairs program, ‘Debatt’.
A decade earlier Swedish health authorities had noted that the widespread expansion of wireless signals coincided with a sharp but subtle decline in the overall health of the population. The number of Swedish workers on sick leave began to rise abruptly in late 1997 – after declining for years – and doubled in the next five years.
Today, about 270,000 Swedes are on disability for related impairments. Sweden, the historical epicenter of the cell phone industry with the longest exposed population, was the first country to recognize disabilities from electromagnetic radiation (‘EMR’) as a valid medical condition.
In spite of calming reassurances from public health authorities, increasing numbers of citizens appear to be presenting classic symptoms of microwave radiation sicknesses. The Russians, who coined the term, describe its effect as “reversible in the early stages, lethal over time”.
What is the communication industry hiding from us?
It is common for public health agencies to state that wireless is ‘safe’ and that there is ‘no reason for concern’. But, should we trust these opinions, when thousands of international doctors and scientists have become concerned enough to sign resolutions warning of the opposite?
After all, our authorities have been dead wrong many times before – remember thalidomide, lead, tobacco, and asbestos? In reality, our public health agencies – often lagging decades behind the marketplace – have a rather spectacular history of failure in protecting us from new products.
As chronic long-term exposure to EMR peaks at levels the human body has never before experienced, increasing numbers of us are beginning to succumb. Those highly sensitive are called ‘electrohypersensitives’ (‘EHS’). Are today’s EHS sufferers the early canaries in the coal mine – who’ve reached a tipping point we may all be headed for as exposures continue to increase?
EHS: An Environmental Sensitivity
About 3% of the general population appears to suffer serious to severe symptoms of EHS caused by exposure to EMR – in most cases, wireless devices. Another 35% of the general population has lesser symptoms such as impaired immune function and chronic illness.
EHS is defined by the World Health Organization as: “…a phenomenon where individuals experience adverse health effects while in the vicinity of devices emanating electric, magnetic, or electromagnetic fields.” Common initial symptoms are skin redness and rashes, fatigue, headaches, concentration problems, dizziness, nausea, heart palpitations, sleeplessness, and nervous disorders.
Marie (not her real name), is an ex-teacher in her late 50’s who considers herself typical of the EHS canaries. Also diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivities (there appears to be a link) her problem began when a headache and feeling of unease developed when using a cordless phone. Over time, the condition worsened.
Now, being around cell phones, wifi’s and other devices is intolerable – triggering headaches, nausea, dizziness, and twitchiness and nervous system disorders such as muscle spasms. She became so sensitive she could not enter her doctor’s office due to electrical devices – he would pay a ‘house call’ visit to her car as she waited in the parking lot.
Unable to work and on disability insurance, her personal life is severely limited. She must avoid places like public transit, shopping malls, public libraries and other buildings with wi-fi – which trigger her symptoms.
Frustrated EHS sufferers often feel abandoned in a type of medical and legal purgatory – electromagnetic refugees with an officially overlooked ‘invisible disease’. Doctors, few of whom are trained in the impairment, may attribute the symptoms to another ailment.
An informal but accurate description might be simply that these individuals are ‘allergic to electromagnetic frequencies’. Over time some take drastic personal measures to avoid radiation, including moving to rural areas. In desperation, some contemplate suicide.
Dr. Riina Bray of the Toronto Women’s College Hospital Environmental Health Clinic, one of the very few mainstream medical clinics treating EHS, has gone from seeing ‘zero’ EHS patients five years ago to now seeing 2 or 3 new patients each week. The patients almost universally blame their symptoms on wireless exposure.
“It’s a huge, huge problem” says Bray, who is calling for more education for physicians for what she calls a “major and fast-growing public-health menace”.
North American safety codes: A half-blind referee
In order to understand how industry can legally radiate citizens into sickness it’s necessary to understand how North America’s obsolete, inadequate, and industry friendly safety codes protects us – or more accurately – don’t. North America’s wireless safety codes are one of the world’s worst standards, being 100 to 1000 times less protective than some other countries.
The real problem, however, lies in a deceptive design flaw.
Designed decades ago, primarily for workers at radar sites and before cell phones existed, these standards only recognize short term ‘thermal’ effects of radiation – if the radiation source heats or burns your body. It completely ignores the more pervasive and subtle ‘non thermal’ effects which occur at far lower levels.
Volumes of scientific studies document the frightening effects of chronic long-term, low-level radiation that are simply ignored.
Standards like this are a like a half-blind referee that only sees one side of the playing field – the thermal side – while claiming the other side doesn’t exist – and that’s just the way industry wants it. This allows hydroelectric utilities to bolt a microwave radiating ‘smart meter’ to your home and tell you it’s ‘safe’. Technically, they are correct – in the context of obsolete and inadequate standards.
Beyond obsolete safety codes, lurking below the surface and hidden from public view is the vicious world of corporatized science in a multi-trillion dollar wireless industry. Paving the way to pushing wireless radiation into everyone’s living room has required the maintenance of outdated safety standards, muzzling and intimidation of scientists who report harm, manufacture of deceptive studies to obscure danger, and the hijacking of public health agencies.
Sound like big tobacco? This is bigger.
Wireless causes DNA breaks and cellular leakage
Andrew Goldsworthy, a retired Imperial College (UK) cell biologist with no industry affiliations who has studied this area extensively, attributes most of the health effects EHS sufferers report to a single cause: at certain frequencies, weak wireless signals – far below safety standards – which pull structurally important calcium ions off of our body’s cell membranes, weakening and causing them to leak.
Having its meticulously balanced systems destabilized, even slightly, by wireless triggered leakage wreaks biological chaos – subverting the integrity of the body’s intricate defense mechanisms and leaving it vulnerable to all manner of damage. Goldsworthy theorizes how many EHS symptoms can thus be explained: leaking skin cells cause rashes, tingling, numbness, burning sensations; leaking heart cells trigger potentially life-threatening arrhythmias; in the inner ear, leaking cochlear cells trigger tinnitus and leaking vestibular cells cause dizziness and other symptoms of motion sickness, including nausea.
The biological effects our safety standards ignore reads like a guest list to Dante’s inferno: DNA damage, genetic changes, breakdown in intra-cell communication, protein damage, immunological function changes, reproductive system damage, decreased sperm counts, cell damage and death, brain-blood barrier leakage, brain nerve cell damage, free radical increases, melatonin decreases, possible linkage to auto-immune diseases like MS, embryonic cell damage, fetal defects, heritable birth defects, and literally hundreds of potential illnesses related to leakage in cell membranes throughout the body.
While industry continues to deny, deflect, and off-balance studies finding harm, much independent science clearly points to wireless radiation as being antagonistic to the basic cellular roots of life.
This is serious stuff. While there are still many unknowns, it is clear that we’re only beginning to understand the complex health risks of the dangerous frequencies the wireless industry has unleashed on unsuspecting citizens.
Public health authorities asleep at the wheel
As the evidence accumulates, other countries have begun to wake up and resist the global wireless assault. Conceding to citizens enraged over cancer clusters, India has recently reduced their allowable EMR levels by a factor of 10 (they were already lower than North America’s) and banned cell towers from schools and hospitals.
The French National Assembly has banned wifi from schools until proven safe and banned advertising of cell phones to children. The German parliament, the Council of Europe, and the Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection have all come out strongly against wifi in schools.
More than 30 international appeals and resolutions since 2000 warning of wireless dangers have attracted the signatures of thousands of international scientists and doctors.
The guiding concept of the ‘Precautionary Principle’ is ‘better safe than sorry’ – inferring that the onus is on industry to prove safety before exposing the public. As past experience has shown however, the truth about the risk of highly profitable toxins such as tobacco, asbestos, DDT, agent orange, thalidomide, X-rays, depleted uranium and others can often be suppressed – at all levels – until bodies begin to accumulate. Due perhaps to the unrelenting laws of inertia, this trend shows every sign of continuing.
A wireless legislative vacuum
We are in the midst of an explosion in wireless technology as legislation lags far behind. Neither industry nor public health authorities can present proof of safety.
There is strong evidence showing a correlation between chronic, low level microwave radiation that falls through the loopholes of our inadequate safety guidelines and a range of harmful biological effects including cancer. Except for a few activist citizen groups and the rare public figure, there are few advocating for the citizens already sick and suffering from wireless exposure, or for future generations who may be affected.
Professor Olle Johansson of Sweden, a recognized international expert in EMF radiation who has spent three decades researching this area, summarizes our current situation in four simple points – paraphrased for brevity:
1. Non-thermal health effects are demonstrated at levels significantly below existing standards.
2. Public safety standards are obsolete and inadequate for prolonged, low intensity exposures.
3. New standards are urgently needed.
4. It is not in the public interest to wait.
2. Public safety standards are obsolete and inadequate for prolonged, low intensity exposures.
3. New standards are urgently needed.
4. It is not in the public interest to wait.
Like big tobacco, we can expect the wireless industry to continue to maximize profit without regard to human cost while our legislators look in the other direction. Welcome to big wireless.
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About the author: Ron Gordon is a businessman who suffered a brain tumor in 2010 he attributes to earlier EMR frequency exposure. He continues to research the connection between wireless radiation and adverse health effects, and acts as a riding representative for the Canadians for Safe Technologies organization. For more information – visit: C4ST.org
Suggestions:
1. Minimize your exposure by using your cell phone as little as possible and always holding it away from your head. Texting is safer than talking.
2. Turn the cell phone off at night or when not in use. Do not carry it next to your body when it is turned on. Do not sleep with it turned on next to you.
3. Replace wireless devices with ‘wired’ if possible.
4. Replace ‘DECT’ (cordless) phones with corded and avoid the use of wireless baby monitors.
5. Avoid being in close proximity to cell towers and rooftop microwave antenna’s.
6. Most studies show significantly more harmful effects on children – children’s use of wireless devices should be prevented or minimized.
References:
1. Hallberg, O., Johansson, O. (2004) Does GSM 1800 Mhz. Affect The Public Health in Sweden? Stockholm: Karolinska Institute Publication
2. Lai, H., Levitt, B., (2010) Biological effects from exposure to electromagnetic radiation emitted by cell tower base stations and other antenna arrays Retrieved August 24, 2013 from: http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/A10-018
3. Havas, M., (2007), Guidelines-to-diagnosing-and-treating-patients-with-electrohypersensitivity. Retrieved August 24, 2013 from: http://www.magdahavas.com/austrian-medical-association-guidelines-to-diagnosing-and-treating-patients-with-electrohypersensitivity
4. Granlund-Lind, R., Lind, J. (2004), Black on White: Voices and Witnesses About Electro-Hypersensitivity The Swedish Experience. Retrieved 2013.08.20 from: http://www.feb.se/feb/blackonwhite-complete-book.pdf
5. Goldsworthy, A., (2012) The Biological Effects of Weak Electromagnetic Fields. Retrieved 2013.08.20 from: http://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Biol-Effects-EMFs-2012-NZ2.pdf
6. Carlo, G., (2002). Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age: An Insider’s Alarming Discoveries about Cancer and Genetic Damage. New York: Carroll & Graf
Publishers.
7. Ishisaka, N., (2011). UW Scientist Henry Lai Makes Waves in the Cell Phone Industry, Seattle Magazine, January 2011, retrieved August 24, 2013 from: http://www.seattlemag.com/article/nerd-report/nerd-report
8. Hallberg, O., Oberfeld, G., (2006). Letter to the Editor: Will We All Become Electrosensitive? Retrieved August 24 2013 from: http://www.next-up.org/pdf/EHS2006_HallbergOberfeld.pdf
9. Johannson, Olle. (August 30, 2012). Letter from Olle Johannson to Dr. Perry Kendall, Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity, Retrieved Sept. 15, 2013 from http://ehsbc.ca/oj.pdf
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