Positive Health Online

"The good news is that many of these EMF diseases may be preventable by simple environmental manipulation, if society chooses to pay attention. Unless public outrage intervenes, I am afraid that our 'diseases of civilization' will get worse.  Good science is not enough to force sensible public policy. Only citizens can do that."
Dr Samuel Milham in Dirty Electricity, 2010.

"This device emits electromagnetic radiation, exposure to which may cause brain cancer. Users, especially pregnant women and children, should keep it away from the head and body."
Currently proposed legislation for cell phones: Bill LD 1014, sponsored by Legislator Andrea Boland in Maine, USA.

Ignorance may or may not be bliss, but one thing is certain: it is very profitable. According to Buddhism, all suffering derives from ignorance, and it rarely hurts until it is too late; ignorance keys into the addictive potential in all of us and, thereby, allows somebody to make a huge pile of money on enslavement.  

The detrimental health effects of cell phones, WiFi, electromagnetic fields (EMFs), and the microwave-based technology we use daily makes worrying about our kids experimenting with drugs, sexual escapades, alcoholic binges, or a touch of crime insignificant - in comparison to the WiFi-equipped school you send them to, the cell phones you may have bought for them, the hours they spend in front of the TV (forget the content - the TV itself is worse), and the microwave oven from which they often receive their meals. Sex, booze, drugs, and crime are part of the dark side of life's education: one often learns from those mess-ups to go on to make healthy choices. Now consider that this 'progressive' and seductive radiation technology has the power to obliterate life, phase out our biological future, and kill the brain.

I am one of those suckers seriously injured by cell phones. Our solar-powered cottage on Manitoulin is far from phone lines; so, for 25 years we used public phones. Last summer, a cell phone tower was erected one mile from my study window. Being a social animal, I thought this was fabulous! Over a period of two months I quickly developed indescribable headaches, piercing pains in my right eye, and spontaneous bleeding from my right ear. My ophthalmologist diagnosed  two cataracts in my right eye: the hallmark of microwave radiation injury (age-related cataracts appear in both eyes), as we know from research begun on WWII US Navy personnel injured by radar equipment. In a future Vitality issue I will discuss the successful treatment I am undergoing and how I did not turn into a Luddite.

I am in stellar company: as reported in the Wikipedia entry on Gro Brundtland, former World Health Organization Director General (1998 - 2003) and convener of the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987. She did not permit any cell phones at WHO's Geneva headquarters because they caused her debilitating headaches. Of course, she had the wrath of the industry descend upon her accordingly. She is currently suffering from cancer.

In 2004 the WHO defined electrohypersensitivity (EHS) as: "... a phenomenon where individuals experience adverse health effects while using or being in the vicinity of devices emanating electric, magnetic, or electromagnetic fields ....  a sometimes debilitating problem [occurring] several orders of magnitude under the limits of internationally accepted standards."

In fact, everybody is at risk. Epidemiologist Dr Sam Milham first studied childhood leukaemia clusters in the 1970s that eventually proved beyond any doubt that the risk for this disease is directly related to the presence of power lines, and subsequently also cell phone towers; those areas of the world that have little or no electricity have almost no incidence of leukaemia. In addition to leukaemia, evidence now supports that cell phones cause especially brain tumours, cancer of the eye, salivary glands, testicles, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and Alzheimer's. This radiation also contributes to the development of autism and ADHD. While several causes are known for all of these conditions, research has confirmed that the use of cell and cordless phones and lap-top computers, speed up their manifestation such that people in their 30s are now beginning to be diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer's. The degranulation process of live brain cells when exposed to cell phone radiation has been experimentally demonstrated. Cancer incidence is also significantly higher within 400 meters of a cell phone tower or transmitter site (see www.microwavenews.com). Trent University researcher Magda Havas may now have discovered a third type of diabetes caused exclusively by electromagnetic radiation (www.magdahavas.com).

The most vulnerable are children, pregnant women, human brains in general, testicles, and ovaries. This was confirmed in 2007 by the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer and in 2010 by a Swedish government study, all showing that cell phone use increases the chances of brain cancer by 40% (see www.ewg.org for access to this and other studies as well as information on safer cell phones.) Last year, the European Journal of Oncology reported that serious heart and related problems (e.g. arrhythmia, palpitations, heart flutter, racing heart beat, fainting, profuse sweating etc) can occur to pulsed radiation as low as 0.5% of the existing Canadian and US federal guidelines which permit 10 mill micro/Wm2. The truly science-based exposure guidelines demonstrate that nobody should be exposed to more than 1 microW/m2. Indeed, most recent research shows what a disastrous effect microwave radiation has on animals and plants as well (www.popsci.com).

When it comes to any type of death industry, the most reliable information comes from the military. On the website www.safeschool.ca you can download a recently declassified US Navy document from1971 which summarizes the more than 2,300 studies on the health effects from microwave radiation known way back then! Of course they knew - microwave technology was already part of the military arsenal intended to inflict bodily harm. It is the Military University in Germany that developed EMF protection standards for civilian building codes (available on www.breathing-easy.net). In addition to people, building materials require protection from rapid corrosion caused by radio frequencies and microwaves. In 2008, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities asked the federal government for an emergency fund of $123 billion over 5 years to avoid building collapse (see November 2010 lecture my Andrew Michrowski on http://pacenet.homestead.com).

The financial problems caused by this irresponsible application of radiation-based technology includes agriculture and cows. Plants avoid high EMF levels by not growing as high as they normally would; when the EMF source is removed, they grow normally. As reported by Dr. Milham, when the 'dirty electricity' was neutralized by Graham/Stetzer plugs in a US school, "a dairy farmer a quarter of a mile away noticed that his cows each gave an average of ten pounds more milk per day, beginning the day the school received its filters. The cows were responding to dirty electricity being removed from the ground currents." As reported by the Planetary Society for Clean Energy, in 2008 the French Supreme Court ordered a power company to compensate cattle farmers for EMF damage (http://pacenet.homestead.com) .

Living creatures are electrical beings able to function only within specific frequencies. Devra Davis observes: "The difference between being alive and being dead is just one thing - the presence of electrical activity in the brain." She also reports a thoroughly depressing fact is that the main reason gorillas in Africa were reduced in numbers by 90% over the past two decades is because their habitat was destroyed by miners for a rare mineral called coltan. This mineral is apparently indispensable to the production of cell phones. The international efforts to save the gorillas is appearing to have some success, but nothing has happened so far, it seems to rescue the miners themselves - they are primarily children even as young as 6 years.

Thoracic surgeon Dr. William Rae, the co- founder of the American Academy for Environmental Medicine with Linus Pauling and Dr. Thoren Randolph, became originally interested in environmental influences generally on health when he himself became seriously EMF-sensitive in the 1970s from constant exposure to operating room equipment. His research led him to recognize the deleterious influence of pesticides and many other environmental toxins, all of which cause multi-system damage. The immune system is the primary target which does its job through electrically charged biological substances such as neurotransmitters, hormones, and peptides which in many situations transmit information throughout the body faster than the speed of light. It has been known since the 1990's that environmental illness from biological toxins and electrohypersensitivity share the process of a disastrous reduction in the nervous system enzyme cholinesterase (http://tis-hq.eh.doe.gov/chem_safety - article by Lucinda Grant, vol. 5/3 1997). It's sudden depletion cause depression and also suicidal behaviour.

All these biological processes have their inherent timing, repair, and defensive responses, especially during pregnancy and foetal brain development. Hence, the industry 'safety' standards, with which government regulators collaborate, are totally absurd because they do not take these known facts into account. Instead, as Devra Davis explains, industry standards are based on the imaginary SAM, the Standard Anthropomorphic Man derived from an average military recruit of 1989: six foot two tall, about 200 lbs, and never exposed to a cell phone. The subsequently constructed safety standards industry still relies upon date to 1962 when nobody knew the difference between heat-producing radiation and microwave radiation, and when cell phones did not exist.

The Safe School Committee in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada, (www.safeschool.ca) is fighting the WiFi craze that has hit Canadian schools. Even though WiFi is slower than landline-transmitted connections, and even though there is a documented 40% increase in cardiac arrest in children under 13 years directly related to this type of radiation (www.heartmdinstitute.com, the Toronto School Board is hell-bent on WiFi for all schools, presumably until no brains are left to zap. So eager are our guardians of education to implement what they call  "Vision of Hope" (the abysmally black humour is unintended), that they even exceed the already inappropriate safety standards set by Health Canada, which like those adopted by the USA date from a time when wireless phones were Dick Tracey-type sci-fi watches.

Canada's famous (now retired) hockey player, Ken Dryden, expressed outrage in an article in the Globe & Mail on March 12 about the lack of mandatory protection from head injuries in hockey, stating: "How could we be so stupid!" Such outrage applies to WiFi in schools even more because the brains of even more children - all of them in fact - will be affected. In a 2009 review of the usually irreversible harm EMFs cause, neuroscientists O. Johansson of the Karalinska Institute in Sweden, wrote: "Today no-one would consider having a radio-active wrist watch with glowing digits (as you could in the 1950s), having your children's shoes fitted in a strong X-ray machine (as you could in the 1940s), keeping radium in open trays on your desk (as scientists could in the 1930s), or X-raying each other at your garden party (as physicians did in the 1920s). In retrospect that was just plain madness. However, the persons doing so were not ...less intelligent. ... knowledge was deficient, as was a competent risk analysis coupled to a parallel analysis of public needs."

What is happening in other jurisdictions? As reported in the Globe & Mail on July 12, 2007, Germany initiated a policy of reducing the use of CAT scans because of their demonstrated cancer-causing properties, and because their use increased health care costs (directly and through additional cancer incidence) by 80% in 40 years. It followed logically Germany banned the energy efficient CFL light bulbs earlier this year because their carcinogenic radiation exceeds European exposure limits (www.fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com, 2011/02/16). I tossed all our CFL bulbs and put old-fashioned incandescent bulbs back; I found that the crushing fatigue I had mistaken for aging mysteriously disappeared!  Many jurisdictions in the US are now framing legislation to deal both with the bulbs' unacceptable levels of radiation and the difficulty of their disposal because of the high mercury content threatening the ground water. Recently, however, some companies have already developed CFL bulbs which contain no mercury at all, and since January of this year one can get the Apple Mini computer which emits no microwave radiation at all and its screen is lit by LED lights that are mercury free.

As reported by Magda Havas in the European Journal of Oncology, the European Union's September 2009 report on EMFs stressed the "serious and irreversible damage to health and environments" from EMF radiation and called on all member states to take precautionary action. Even the possibility of outlawing the use of cell phones for children under 18 was discussed in the EU parliament.

The UK, whose national Department of Health is as industry-friendly and science-challenged as our Health Canada, started to surrender to reality; The Telegraph reported on March 11, 2011, that Britons should text, rather than put their cell phones to their ears.

Switzerland, Finland, Luxemburg, and Austria supply their schools with the totally radiation-safe fibre-optic technology for their internet and communication needs. Israel has similar legislation in the works. Those countries also set the maximum level of exposure between 5 to 10 microW/cm2. (http://communities.canada.com). Recall: In Canada we are told 1,000 microW/cm2 is 'safe'. Guess on which part of the Earth human brains will survive!

Meanwhile, we are also being threatened with 'smart meters' which tend to increase electricity costs for people and expose them to massive amounts of radiation. As of February of this year, California allows people to refuse their installation, because a formal investigation showed that these US-made devices never passed all the mandatory regulatory hurdles, are hazardous to health, and can cause fire (see www.whyfry.org and www.stopsmartmeters.wordpress.com) .

Devra Davis in her superb 2010 book Disconnect explains how the most serous practical challenge to this industry comes from the world's large insurance companies, such as the Sterling Group of Lloyd's of London. Having nearly been nearly wiped out when the asbestos-related claims became undeniable in the early 1990s, the cell-phone industry was informed they would not be backed when radiation hits the fan, as it must. The trigger for this decision was the UK's 2005 Stewart Commission whose chair, citing  worldwide research demonstrating harm to children's brains from cell phones, told the mobile phone industry to "refrain from promoting the use of mobile phones by children". In Canada, liability is certainly worth testing in court, because the 2007 Human Rights Commission report on Environmental Illness specifically included harm from EMF radiation as being real and requiring accommodation.

It is already possible to survive with these dangerous toys, if proper care is taken and the available information is consulted. Yet, we do have a very long way to go before human health takes precedence over profits.

Sources
Milham S. Dirty Electricity, iUniverse, ISBN 978-1-4502-3821-2, 2010.
Davis D. Disconnect - The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, Dutton, New York, ISBN 978-0-525-95194-0, 2010.
Levitt BB. Electromagnetic Fields - A Consumer' Guide to the Issues and How to Protect Yourself, iUniverse, ISBN 978-0-595-47607-7 (1995) 2007.
Havas M. & Rees C. Public Health SOS: The Shadow Side of the Wireless Revolution: 110 Questions on Electromagnetic Pollution from a Forum at the Commonwealth Club of California, Wide Angle Health, LLC, 3980 Broadway, # 103-104, Boulder, CO 80304, USA, Info@ElectromagneticHealth.org, 2009 (private publication).
Jabari, T. Full Signal - The Hidden Cost of Cell Phones, DVD, 2010, www.FullSignalMovie.com
Firstenberg A. Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) - Killing Fields, The Ecologist 34(5) June 1, 2004.
Lai H and Hardell L. Cell Phone Radiofrequency Radiation Exposure and Brain Glucose Metabolism, Journal of the American Medical Association 305(8).
Havas M et al. Provocation study using heart rate variability shows microwave radiation from 2.4 GHz cordless phone affects autonomic nervous system. In Giuliani L and Soffritti M. eds. Non-thermal effects and mechanisms of interaction between electromagnetic fields and living matter, European Journal of Oncology, Library Volume 5, 2010.
Johansson O. Disturbance of the immune system by electromagnetic fields - a potentially underlying cause for cellular and tissue repair reduction which could lead to disease and impairment, Pathophysiology, in press, accepted January 30, 2009, in press doi:10.1016/j. pathophys.2009.03.004.
Sage Associates Environmental Consultants of Santa Barbara, CA, USA. Addendum: Assessment of Radiofrequency Microwave Radiation Emissions from Silver Spring OWS-NIC514 Model Wireless Electric Meter, February 18, 2011 (available on-line via Google).

Acknowledgement Citation
An amended version of this article was originally published in Toronto's Vitality Magazine, April 2011.