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Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR)

Background

I've been shocked in the past by things I have read, and seen, and felt, and so on. But nothing has shocked me as much as the following two articles. I urge you to read them. If you don't like reading long articles on a screen, then print them off, and read them, and pass them on to everyone you know. I don't normally do the whole internet "pass-this-on-to-all-your-friends-to-be-happy" crap, but really, this is truly stunning stuff.

The articles provide clear evidence that the blanketing of our planet in electromagnetic radiation from a variety of sources is having a detrimental effect on public health. Well, gee, that sure doesn't sound too exciting compared to terrorism, or lunatics on university campuses shooting thirty two people, but read on, please...

The source of this 'electromagnetic radiation'? It comes from many places:

  • cell phone towers
  • cell phones themselves
  • cordless home telephones
  • radio antennae
  • wi-fi networks
  • old-fashioned cathode-ray tube screens

Is it really a risk?

There's the debate! Some say no (Cell Phones and Cancer: No Clear Connection), and others say yes.

One of those who have been researching the effect of EMR on public health since the early 1980s, is Arthur Firstenberg, who is a founder and director of the Cellular Phone Task Force, a non-profit organisation that disseminates information about electromagnetic pollution and provides advocacy and support for victims of this pollution.

Over the last 20 years, western societies have become increasingly dependent on communicating with eachother, especially via mobile phones. To supply demand, many cell phone towers have been installed, to provide mobile phone services to a huge area of the planet.

However, scientific research (not mere speculation) has shown how EMR can cause problems such as (amongst many others) Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. The incidence rate of this disease is increasing - yet others are happy to rubbish the whole idea because such diseases cannot be easily pinned down, or diagnosed in a lab in the same way as other diseases.

Quotes

On to the articles I mentioned:

Killing Fields - Electromagnetic Radiation

Selected Quote:

To date, 1,200 physicians in Germany (2000 worldwide), have signed a petition (the Freiburger Appeal) calling for severe restrictions on wireless technology because they are seeing such a dramatic increase in certain diseases and symptoms in their patients - symptoms which they can only attribute to ambient microwave radiation. The diseases include: attention deficit disorder, extreme fluctuations in blood pressure, heart arrhythmias, heart attacks and strokes in young people, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, leukaemia and brain tumours. The symptoms include: headaches, migraines, chronic fatigue, agitation, sleep disorders, tinnitus, nervous and connective tissue pains of unexplained origin, and susceptibility to infection. The appeal calls for a massive reduction in exposure limits; no further expansion of cell phone technology; cell phone-and antenna-free zones; a ban on cell phone use by children; and a ban on cell phones and digital cordless phones in schools, hospitals, nursing homes, public buildings and public transportation.

The California Department of Health Services has concluded that, on the basis of a telephone survey, 120,000 Californians - and by implication one million Americans - have left their jobs because of electromagnetic pollution in the workplace. The people who have left their homes for such a reason are not being counted by anyone.

The Largest Biological Experiment Ever

Selected Quote:

"They are acting as a warning for all of us," says Dr. Olle Johansson of people with this illness. "It could be a major mistake to subject the entire world's population to whole-body irradiation, 24 hours a day." A neuroscientist at the famous Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Dr. Johansson heads a research team that is documenting a significant and permanent worsening of the public health that began precisely when the second-generation, 1800 MHz cell phones were introduced into Sweden in late l997.

After a decade-long decline, the number of Swedish workers on sick leave began to rise in late 1997 and more than doubled during the next five years. During the same period of time, sales of antidepressant drugs also doubled. The number of traffic accidents, after declining for years, began to climb again in 1997. The number of deaths from Alzheimer's disease, after declining for several years, rose sharply in 1999 and had nearly doubled by 2001. This two-year delay is understandable when one considers that Alzheimer's disease requires some time to develop.

...

If cell phones and cell towers are really deadly, have the radio and TV towers that we have been living with for a century been safe? In 2002 Örjan Hallberg and Olle Johansson coauthored a paper titled "Cancer Trends During the 20th Century." which examined one aspect of that question.7 They found, in the United States, Sweden and dozens of other countries, that mortality rates for skin melanoma and for bladder, prostate, colon, breast and lung cancers closely paralleled the degree of public exposure to radio waves during the past hundred years. When radio broadcasting increased in a given location, so did those forms of cancer; when it decreased, so did those forms of cancer. And, a sensational finding: country by country - and county by county in Sweden - they found, statistically, that exposure to radio waves appears to be as big a factor in causing lung cancer as cigarette smoking!

What to do?

Who knows - I have no idea. As ever, the mighty dollar is caught up in all of this. Seems hard to imagine all the CEOs of all those huge telecommunications corporations being pleased about there being any health risks associated with their products...

I've never really been much of a mobile phone fan anyway, but now, well, I'm definitely sticking mine in the bottom of my cycle pannier, to be used only when I'm stuck 10 miles from a phone box, and need to call for help in the event of a breakdown... Or maybe I should just never use it again!

Am I a gullible fool for believing all of this? For each article I've read that says there's a problem, there'll probably be many more saying how wonderfully safe mobile phones are. But, what have these scientists got to gain by making it all up? Nothing - definitely nothing like what the phone companies have to lose if people really catch onto this information...

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