Sunday, June 12, 2016

MAJOR U.S. GOVERNMENT STUDY FINDS CELL PHONE RADIATION CAUSES CANCER, Spin vs Facts

MAJOR U.S. GOVERNMENT STUDY FINDS CELL PHONE RADIATION CAUSES CANCER, Spin vs Facts


Please take a moment to circulate the press release, Microwave News article, and fact sheet below to your local news outlets and other favorite news media.  Write letters to the editor.  Please also send this information to your local, state, national elected officials.  It is time for them to take action to protect the public health.  Local governments can immediately turn off WiFi and wireless transmitters on all their electronics within their buildings and install fiber optic or other communication cables to enable all workstations to access the internet safely.  

Ron Melnick Ph.D., who led the design of the NTP rodent study which found a link between wireless radiation and cancer, wrote a letter rebutting false information being put out about the study.  In it he states "a pediatrician would be acting irresponsibly if he or she knew and understood the implications of the human and animal cancer data on cell phone radiation and did not offer precautionary advice to the parents of his or her patients" (See article below.)  It is time for governments and schools to act in a precautionary way and stop using wireless, especially WiFi.  No one should be forced to be exposed to a carcinogen when connectivity can be achieved in ways that do not carry that risk and even operate at higher speeds.

Help spread the word on social media about the National Toxicology Program findings that radiation from cellphones causes cancer - post links on Facebook, Twitter, and the numerous other social media sites.  It is time for Congress to take action since it is their fault that wireless technology got promoted without first being safety tested!
  • Request Congress to amend Section 704 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 so that the health and environmental effects of cell towers and other commercial wireless facilities can again be a legal, legitimate component of all deliberations involving antenna placement, construction, and modification.  This would allow communities to remove antennas.
  • Request Congress to shift authority for setting and enforcing RF safety limits (for both wireless technology and "dirty" electricity) from the FCC back to the EPA and to provide funding to perform these duties. (FCC is too conflicted by their duty to promote technology to have these key responsibilities.)
  • Request Congress to immediately require Government buildings and places of public accommodation, particularly hospitals and schools to use wired connections exclusively and turn off all the transmitters on their equipment.  
  • Request Congress to immediately require removal of antennas from building roofs since this leads to very high exposure levels for building occupants.
  • Congress should instruct the FCC to halt it's 13-39 Rules process that will relax the existing (and grossly outdated) public safety limits.  The FCC should not make the existing cell phone radiation standards less restrictive… they should not complete this process until after the full NTP series of results are published, at a minimum.
In the meantime, suggest people read the Solutions page at www.electricalpollution.com for steps to take to minimize their own RF exposure.  And, of course pass the link for the Solutions page on to those you care about and spread it around on social media too.

Best, Catherine


Protecting my health and that of others by using a hardwired computer in a low RF environment.  For more information, seewww.electricalpollution.com

In case any of you missed it, Dr. Joel Moskowitz has written several articles on the NTP including this one below and put together a great 1-page flyer "Spin vs Facts" attached. Attached is the press release I sent out with the news. The references for quotes are:


Monday, May 30, 2016
 
SPIN vs FACT: National Toxicology Program report on 
cancer risk from cellphone radiation
 
The National Toxicology Program (NTP) of the National Institutes of Health reported partial findings from their $25 million study of the cancer risk from cellphone radiofrequency radiation (RFR). Controlled studies of rats showed that RFR caused two types of tumors, glioma and schwannoma. The results “…could have broad implications for public health.”
 
A factsheet on the NTP study that summarizes some biased statements, or “Spin,” about the study that tend to create doubt about data quality and implications, as well as “Facts” from decades of previous research is available at http://bit.ly/NTPspinfacts.
 
 
 

Press release: June 1, 2016                                     For immediate distribution
 
Contact: Nina Beety 831-655-9902
Wireless Radiation Alert Network
 
MAJOR U.S. GOVERNMENT STUDY FINDS CELL PHONE RADIATION CAUSES CANCER



Last night the National Toxicology Program (NTP) of the National Institutes of Health issued the first in a series of reports that contains partial findings from their long-awaited, $25 million study of the cancer risk from cell phone radiation. This report summarizes the study of long-term exposure to cell phone radiation on rats. The report on mice will be issued at a later date.
 
Last Thursday, the U.S. National Toxicology Program released final peer-reviewed results of its $25 million study on rats and cell phone radiation exposure. The findings: 46 out of 540, or 1 in 12 male rats developed malignant brain tumors (glioma) or malignant heart tumors (schwannoma) or pre-cancerous lesions. None of the rats in the control group developed tumors of the brain or heart or pre-cancerous lesions. Birth weights for exposed animals were also lower than for control animals.
 
Microwave News, which announced the impending release of results, cited an unnamed source within NTP that senior scientists wanted to get this information out to the public as soon as possible.
 
Chris Portier, former associate director of the NTP, called this study a “game changer” and “a wake-up call to the scientific establishment.” These results concur with human studies such as the 5-country Interphone study which found significant 40-95% increases in glioma after only 10 years for cell phone usage as little as ½ hour per day. The latency for brain tumors is normally 15-30 years. The WHO IARC listed this radiation as a Class 2B carcinogen in 2011.
 
The NTP study was designed to mimic human exposure and look at effects on all parts of the body. Consumer Affairs says, “Rats are commonly used in cancer studies because their reactions to various carcinogens are similar to humans.” The study intentionally kept exposure levels low, below levels that would increase body temperature. As a result, the cancers were not caused by thermal effects. Current FCC exposure limits are only based on thermal effects. Wireless devices are tested for compliance with these thermal limits but are not safety tested.
 
Female rats developed tumors or pre-cancerous lesions at a lower level which was not considered statistically significant. American Cancer Society stated: “It’s important to note that these sorts of gender differences often appear in carcinogenic studies.”
 
The frequency tested was 900 MHz for 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off for a cumulative time of 9 hours per day. This frequency is close to that used by other wireless devices including PG&E wireless Smart Meters.
 
The American Cancer Society called the NTP report “good science,” saying
 
NTP staff were clearly aware of the potential importance of this study and went the extra distance to ensure the best science is used. They used double the number of animals required for this type of study; they convened not one but three panels to look at abnormal tissues from treated animals to ensure that what was identified as a brain and heart tumor was indeed a brain and heart tumor;
they solicited review from multiple scientists from outside the NTP to critically review all aspects of the data analysis and study findings, to ensure the findings would stand up to the critical assessment expected once these unexpected findings were released.
 
On Friday, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) released a statement with comments from Ken Foster of the IEEE committee that reviews RF exposure limits:
With the NTP study results, Foster expects more governments to put out cautionary guidelines and radiation labeling for cellphones. He says he wouldn’t be surprised if California adds RF radiation to its Proposition 65 list of carcinogenic chemicals, and if the IARC ups its classification rating from 2B: possibly carcinogenic to humans to 2A: probably carcinogenic to humans. “And they wouldn’t be out of line in doing that,” he says. “This is going to change the rhetoric in the field. People can point to much more hard evidence that [cellphone RF exposure] really is a problem.”
 
Joel Moskowitz, Director, Center for Family and Community Health at the School of Public Health, UC Berkeley:
The results of the study reinforce the need for more stringent regulation of radiofrequency radiation and better disclosure of the health risks associated with wireless technologies -- two demands made by the International EMF Scientist Appeal -- a petition signed by 220 scientists who have published research on the effects of electromagnetic radiation.
 
Ron Melnick, retired from the National Toxicology Program, told Microwave News:
The NTP tested the hypothesis that cell phone radiation could not cause health effects and that hypothesis has now been disproved…After extensive reviews, the consensus is that there was a carcinogenic effect…This is a major public health concern because the cells which became cancerous in the rats were the same types of cells as those that have been reported to develop into tumors in cell phone epidemiological studies.
 
IEEE calls NTP studies “the gold standard for animal cancer assays”. The National Toxicology Program is part of the National Institutes of Health, and tests substances for toxicity and effects on human health.
 

For references to the research that found increased risk of malignant and nonmalignant tumors among long-term cell phone users see http://bit.ly/WSJsaferemr.
 

References:

No comments:

Post a Comment