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EMF - A Clear & Present Danger
EMF - CLEAR & PRESENT DANGER
"Alternative Medicine Magazine", June 2002
By Heidi Gitterman
Electricity is what causes our hearts to beat and our brains to think. With out it there would be no
cell division; we could not hear, see, feel or move. We don't Just use electricity-it is an essential
part of who we are.
Our planet has its own natural electrical and magnetic fields. Lightning, for example, creates
natural electric fields as it strikes the planet hundreds of times each hour. The Earth itself is like
a giant magnet, with lines of magnetic force running from the North Pole to the South Pole.
Life has adapted to and existed within this natural electromagnetic environment for millions of
years. That is, until the last century. Our civilization now runs on man-made electricity, and we
live in proximity to power sources and office machines and appliances that generate a wide range
of electromagnetic radiation almost 24 hours a day. But the electromagnetic fields, or EMFs,
created by modern society are very different from the static magnetic field in which life has
evolved.
Unease about the health effects of electromagnetic fields can be traced back to a 1979 study
conducted by epidemiologist Nancy Wertheimer and physicist Ed Leeper. The
Wertheimer-Leeper study found that children living close to high-current power lines were two to
three times more likely to develop cancer than children who did not.
In the 23 years since, dozens of studies have corroborated the Wertheimer-Leeper findings, and
hundreds of other studies have associated exposure to EMF's with increased incidence of
childhood and adult cancers, including leukemia, lymphoma, brain cancer and male breast
cancer, as well as increased risk of miscarriage, depression and suicide And while some studies
have found either no risk or very low risk of electromagnetic fields for cancer, a preponderance
of the evidence suggests that EMF's are a serious threat to human health.
In his 1985 book The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life, Robert 0.
Becker, M.D., noted, "The human species has changed its electromagnetic background more
than any other aspect of the environment." According to Becker, "The greatest polluting element
in the Earth's environment is the proliferation of electromagnetic fields."
Everyone recognizes the health hazards of chemical pollutants in our air, land and water. But ask
someone about the dangers of EMF's and you'll most likely get a blank stare.
PUTTING THE SPIN ON SCIENCE
In July 1997, addressing the First World Conference on Breast Cancer, environmental consultant
and policy researcher Cindy Sage declared that decision-making on public health issues is
hampered "when there is a large industry presence [that] may suffer financial consequences with
the admission of liability for a carcinogenic product." Such a situation, she added, "creates a
difficult climate for funding, evaluating and acting on new scientific information. The state of the
science becomes a battleground, where scientific uncertainty is argued as reason to defer action
or take trivial or meaningless action." This is exactly what has happened with EMF research.
Due to strong industry pressure to ignore possible health risks, studies showing positive
EMF-cancer associations have been discredited, while other studies have disguised or buried
the association altogether. We are being kept in a state of ignorance about the dangers posed
by electrical pollution at a time when the devices contributing to that pollution-from power tools to
cell phones to electric cars-are proliferating wildly, with no EMF safety-testing whatsoever and
almost no non-industry- sponsored funding for research.
PRUDENT AVOIDANCE
The United States has no federal health-based standards for exposure to electromagnetic fields.
However, after more than 25 years of intensive study, the Swedish government established a
safety limit for exposure to ELF (extremely low frequency) magnetic fields at 2.5 mG. Since EMFs
are not visible, have no odor and make no sound discernible by the human ear, some scientists
believe that EMF detectors are essential to prudent avoidance of hazardous EMFs.Gauss meters
can be used to check for EMFs in your home, office and car. You can hire an environmental
consultant to do the job, or you can purchase an inexpensive meter and do the checking yourself.
Sometimes moving a bed, a chair or an appliance as little as 6 to 12 inches can mean the
difference between resting in a safe place or a potentially dangerous one. The California EMF
Program suggests you stay 3 to 4 feet from appliances, 60 to 200 feet from distribution lines and
300 to 1,000 feet from transmission lines.
It's a good idea to check the electrical wiring throughout your home. Non code wiring is often the
cause of high EMF readings.
Finally, because of the amount of time we spend sleeping and the negative health effects that
high levels of EMF's can have on the body's ability to produce cancer-fighting melatonin, keeping
EMF's under 1 mG in the bedroom is especially important.
STUDIES AND MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
In their 1979 study Electrical Wiring Configurations and Childhood Cancer," Wertheimer and
Leeper observed, "Electrical power came into use many years before environmental impact
studies were common, and today our domestic power lines are taken for granted and generally
assumed to be harmless. However, this assumption has never been adequately tested..."In
1976-77, we did a field study in the greater Denver area which suggested that, in fact, the homes
of children who developed cancer were found unduly often near electric lines carrying high
currents."
The groundbreaking study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, was summarily
dismissed by utility companies and government agencies, which refused to fund a single study
that would refute or confirm the findings. Three years later, Swedish physician Lennart Tomenius
reported significantly higher-than-expected levels of cancer among Stockholm residants exposed
to EMF levels similar to those reported in the Denver study. His findings, too, were ignored.
Many occupational studies have demonstrated an EMF-cancer link. In July 1982, research
epidemiologist Sam Milham of the Washington State Department of Health published the results
of a study indicating that workers with high EMF exposure-such as electricians and power station
operators-had a greater-than-expected rate of leukemia. Dozens of other studies corroborated
these findings. And in 1989 Johns Hopkins University reported that, in addition to having a
higher-than-average risk of leukemia and lymphoma, male telephone-cable splicers also had a
higher - than-average risk of lung, prostate, colon and breast cancer.
Most of this research went unreported by the popular press.
Then, in 1989 and 1990, a series of articles by Paul Brodeur in the New Yorker, entitled "Annals
of Radiation: The Hazards of Electromagnetic Fields," shocked the nation into an awareness of
the possible health dangers associated with these unseen energy fields. A flurry of print and TV
news stories on the subject followed. Then silence.
Critics who scoff at the idea that EMFs pose any health risk often point to studies in which
exposure to EMFs could not be shown to cause a significant increase in cancer or other
diseases- In other words, EMFs seemed to have relatively low "risk ratios." What these studies
did not take into account was that, because EMFs are everywhere in modern industrial society, it
is virtually impossible to find control groups for clinical EMF studies.
In his 1998 study of carcinogenic risk, "Carcinogenicitv of Electromagnetic Fields," Milham
illustrates this point by presenting the basic data of a 1956 study of smoking and lung cancer
conducted by British physicians Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill. In that study, Milham notes,
"a high relative risk [Was] achieved only when heavy smokers [were] compared to nonsmokers."
He then points our that "the EMF equivalent of nonsmokers does not exist in the industrialized
world." The relatively small risk ratios camouflage an already elevated incidence of EMF-related
disease in the general population.
A second factor compromising EMF risk calculations is that researchers may actually have used
the wrong magnetic field meters to conduct their exposure assessments. The Positron, Emdex
and Amex meters that still are used in many residential and occupational studies have one fatal
flaw: They do not detect EMFs below 35 or 40 Hz, the very low frequency (VLF) and extremely
low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields that are known to have negative effects on human
health. (Nor do they detect the higher frequencies used by cell phones, televisions, radios and
microwaves.)
Let's examime a study that is still widely cited as evidence that EMF's are harmless: The National
Cancer Institute-Linet Study. According to a 1997 NCI press release, "A comprehensive study by
researchers from the National Cancer Institute and the Children's Cancer Group found no
evidence that magnetic fields in the house increase the risk for the most common form of
childhood cancer."
Yet, the researchers acknowledge in no less than four places in the report that a statistically
significant increase im acute lymphoblastic leukemia exists in children exposed to power line
magnetic fields in excess of 3 milligauss (mG). The report confirms previous studies showing a
similar level of association between childhood leukemia and magnetic fields from electricity.
So how did the NCI come to the conclusion that there was no risk? Very simple. It set a cutoff limit
of 2 mG. (The worldwide safety standard is 2.5 mG.) By establishing that limit, the NCI effectively
removed any statistically significant connection with the associated dangers.
There are no health-based standards for long-term or short term exposure to extremely
low-frequency EMFs in the home or in the workplace. The federally permitted 1,000 mG limit for
U.S. workplaces, established in 1986, addresses only thermal safety standards-those necessary
to avoid shocking, boiling or frying the human body.
The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement, in its 1995 "Draft
Recommendations on EMF Exposure Guidelines," generally endorsed an ambient EMF exposure
limit of 2 mG. A final report has yet to be released.
In 1990, Paul Brodeur ended his New Yorker series with this conclusion: "The de-facto policy that
power lines, electric blankets and video-display terminals be considered innocent until proved
guilty should be rejected out of hand by sensible people everywhere. To do otherwise is to
accept a situation in which millions of human beings continue to be test animals in a long-term
biological experiment whose consequences remain unknown."
That is the situation we find ourselves in today.
A 1998 Microwave News industry report, "Unfinished Business: EMF Research Must Continue,"
makes several important points that remain true today: "First, it is striking that we still know so
little about who is exposed to what. [For instance,] only recently did we recognize that
sewing-machine operators have higher EMF exposures than do electric utility workers.
"[Second.] sources of EMFs turn up in surprising places. For example, Swedish researchers
report ... that steelbelted radial tires can expose automobile passengers to EMFs as high as 50
mG. Thus, an office worker with a long commute might have more exposure than a utility worker,
[and] a suburban kid who gets shuttled around in his parents' car might have more exposure
than a child living within sight of a power line."
Contemporary EMF Research
Last year was a banner year for EMF research. In January, a study by Milham connected many
disputed pieces of the EMF puzzle. Building on the accumulating evidence that leukemia and
certain other cancers are linked with exposure to electromagnetic fields, Milham wrote that "until
poles and wires were first extended into our communities, humans had never been exposed to
alternating power-frequency fields. Similarly, radio, television, radar, microwaves, cell phones
and other indispensable devices of our modern world all expose humans to EMFs, which are
completely new to human evolutionary experience."
Milham uncovered conclusive proof that the appearance of a new childhood leukemia peak in
children ages 2 to 4 is the direct result of residential electrification as it took place, country by
country and state by state, throughout the world. The peak was highest in states with the
greatest levels of electrification and, even today, places without electrification do not show this
childhood leukemia peak.
As a result of this finding, Milham and his researchers conclude that 75% of childhood acute
lymphoblastic leukemia and 60% of all childhood leukemia may actually be preventable. They
also note that "weak alternating magnetic fields have been shown to affect reaction time, slow the
heart and affect the electroencephalogram in humans." In other words, the negative health
effects from exposure to EMFs are not limited to children; they can and do affect all of us. As
environmental physicist Neil Cherry, M.D., Ph.D., and others have pointed out, the historical rise
in childhood leukemia is paralleled by the same rise in adult leukemia in all developed countries.
Then, on July 16, 2001, under pressure from a First Amendment Coalition lawsuit, the California
Department of Health Services released a major report on the health effects of power frequency
electric and magnetic fields. The report summarized a decade of research costing more than $7
million. It stated, "Some of the health risks associated with exposure to electric and magnetic
fields such as those that radiate from power lines are added risk of miscarriage, childhood
leukemia brain cancer and greater incidence of suicide."
Two other EMF studies rounded out the year. In November, researchers from japan's National
Institute for Environmental Studies presented a study showing that exposure to electromagnetic
fields can interfere with melatonin, a sleep-regulating hormone that also inhibits cancerous tumor
growth. When the researchers exposed breast cancer cells to a level of electromagnetism that
people are exposed to on a daily basis, they found that it decreased melatonin's ability to
suppress the cancer cells' growth.
And in December, scientists at the Neuro Diagnostic Research Institute in Marbella, Spain,
discovered that a mobile phone call lasting a mere two minutes can produce abnormal
brain-wave patterns in children that last up to an hour.
But what about all those studies purporting to show that cell phones are harmless? Milham and
other scientists say it's impossible to know for sure. Since cancer has a latency period of at least
10 to 20 years, it's too soon to tell. There is mounting evidence, however, of increased incidence
of brain cancer among heavy cell phone users.
WHO IS LOOKING OUT FOR PUBLIC HEALTH?
With our ever-expanding use of electricity and recent developments in and burgeoning use of
wireless technologies, the health risks for all life forms are growing at an alarming rate. Since cell
phone technology first came into use, levels of manmade EMF radiation have increased by as
much as 100,000 times for the whole planet. The third-generation cellular systems now being
built require four times the number of transmitter masts used by the current mobile phone
system. The installation of millions of wireless computer networks in offices, homes and schools
will add another layer to the amount of microwave and radio frequency radiation to which people
are exposed every day. There is near-total agreement among researchers that the developing
brains of children are most vulnerable to EMFs. Environmental consultant Sage is worried that
installing wireless computer networks in schools could increase children's exposure to harmful
radiation one hundredfold.
It is time to clear the air of disinformation about EMFs. The need to understand electromagnetic
fields, identify their potential health hazards and implement measures to mitigate the risks they
pose to human health has become urgent. Milham and other scientists are increasingly
concerned that it may take an epidemic of brain and other cancers to catalyze the independent
research, government oversight and avoidance measures that are necessary to protect human
health and the health of the entire planet. Let's hope they're wrong.
Heldl Gitterman is a speaker, author and contributing editor to Alternative Medicine.
"Alternative Medicine Magazine", June 2002
By Heidi Gitterman
Electricity is what causes our hearts to beat and our brains to think. With out it there would be no
cell division; we could not hear, see, feel or move. We don't Just use electricity-it is an essential
part of who we are.
Our planet has its own natural electrical and magnetic fields. Lightning, for example, creates
natural electric fields as it strikes the planet hundreds of times each hour. The Earth itself is like
a giant magnet, with lines of magnetic force running from the North Pole to the South Pole.
Life has adapted to and existed within this natural electromagnetic environment for millions of
years. That is, until the last century. Our civilization now runs on man-made electricity, and we
live in proximity to power sources and office machines and appliances that generate a wide range
of electromagnetic radiation almost 24 hours a day. But the electromagnetic fields, or EMFs,
created by modern society are very different from the static magnetic field in which life has
evolved.
Unease about the health effects of electromagnetic fields can be traced back to a 1979 study
conducted by epidemiologist Nancy Wertheimer and physicist Ed Leeper. The
Wertheimer-Leeper study found that children living close to high-current power lines were two to
three times more likely to develop cancer than children who did not.
In the 23 years since, dozens of studies have corroborated the Wertheimer-Leeper findings, and
hundreds of other studies have associated exposure to EMF's with increased incidence of
childhood and adult cancers, including leukemia, lymphoma, brain cancer and male breast
cancer, as well as increased risk of miscarriage, depression and suicide And while some studies
have found either no risk or very low risk of electromagnetic fields for cancer, a preponderance
of the evidence suggests that EMF's are a serious threat to human health.
In his 1985 book The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life, Robert 0.
Becker, M.D., noted, "The human species has changed its electromagnetic background more
than any other aspect of the environment." According to Becker, "The greatest polluting element
in the Earth's environment is the proliferation of electromagnetic fields."
Everyone recognizes the health hazards of chemical pollutants in our air, land and water. But ask
someone about the dangers of EMF's and you'll most likely get a blank stare.
PUTTING THE SPIN ON SCIENCE
In July 1997, addressing the First World Conference on Breast Cancer, environmental consultant
and policy researcher Cindy Sage declared that decision-making on public health issues is
hampered "when there is a large industry presence [that] may suffer financial consequences with
the admission of liability for a carcinogenic product." Such a situation, she added, "creates a
difficult climate for funding, evaluating and acting on new scientific information. The state of the
science becomes a battleground, where scientific uncertainty is argued as reason to defer action
or take trivial or meaningless action." This is exactly what has happened with EMF research.
Due to strong industry pressure to ignore possible health risks, studies showing positive
EMF-cancer associations have been discredited, while other studies have disguised or buried
the association altogether. We are being kept in a state of ignorance about the dangers posed
by electrical pollution at a time when the devices contributing to that pollution-from power tools to
cell phones to electric cars-are proliferating wildly, with no EMF safety-testing whatsoever and
almost no non-industry- sponsored funding for research.
PRUDENT AVOIDANCE
The United States has no federal health-based standards for exposure to electromagnetic fields.
However, after more than 25 years of intensive study, the Swedish government established a
safety limit for exposure to ELF (extremely low frequency) magnetic fields at 2.5 mG. Since EMFs
are not visible, have no odor and make no sound discernible by the human ear, some scientists
believe that EMF detectors are essential to prudent avoidance of hazardous EMFs.Gauss meters
can be used to check for EMFs in your home, office and car. You can hire an environmental
consultant to do the job, or you can purchase an inexpensive meter and do the checking yourself.
Sometimes moving a bed, a chair or an appliance as little as 6 to 12 inches can mean the
difference between resting in a safe place or a potentially dangerous one. The California EMF
Program suggests you stay 3 to 4 feet from appliances, 60 to 200 feet from distribution lines and
300 to 1,000 feet from transmission lines.
It's a good idea to check the electrical wiring throughout your home. Non code wiring is often the
cause of high EMF readings.
Finally, because of the amount of time we spend sleeping and the negative health effects that
high levels of EMF's can have on the body's ability to produce cancer-fighting melatonin, keeping
EMF's under 1 mG in the bedroom is especially important.
STUDIES AND MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
In their 1979 study Electrical Wiring Configurations and Childhood Cancer," Wertheimer and
Leeper observed, "Electrical power came into use many years before environmental impact
studies were common, and today our domestic power lines are taken for granted and generally
assumed to be harmless. However, this assumption has never been adequately tested..."In
1976-77, we did a field study in the greater Denver area which suggested that, in fact, the homes
of children who developed cancer were found unduly often near electric lines carrying high
currents."
The groundbreaking study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, was summarily
dismissed by utility companies and government agencies, which refused to fund a single study
that would refute or confirm the findings. Three years later, Swedish physician Lennart Tomenius
reported significantly higher-than-expected levels of cancer among Stockholm residants exposed
to EMF levels similar to those reported in the Denver study. His findings, too, were ignored.
Many occupational studies have demonstrated an EMF-cancer link. In July 1982, research
epidemiologist Sam Milham of the Washington State Department of Health published the results
of a study indicating that workers with high EMF exposure-such as electricians and power station
operators-had a greater-than-expected rate of leukemia. Dozens of other studies corroborated
these findings. And in 1989 Johns Hopkins University reported that, in addition to having a
higher-than-average risk of leukemia and lymphoma, male telephone-cable splicers also had a
higher - than-average risk of lung, prostate, colon and breast cancer.
Most of this research went unreported by the popular press.
Then, in 1989 and 1990, a series of articles by Paul Brodeur in the New Yorker, entitled "Annals
of Radiation: The Hazards of Electromagnetic Fields," shocked the nation into an awareness of
the possible health dangers associated with these unseen energy fields. A flurry of print and TV
news stories on the subject followed. Then silence.
Critics who scoff at the idea that EMFs pose any health risk often point to studies in which
exposure to EMFs could not be shown to cause a significant increase in cancer or other
diseases- In other words, EMFs seemed to have relatively low "risk ratios." What these studies
did not take into account was that, because EMFs are everywhere in modern industrial society, it
is virtually impossible to find control groups for clinical EMF studies.
In his 1998 study of carcinogenic risk, "Carcinogenicitv of Electromagnetic Fields," Milham
illustrates this point by presenting the basic data of a 1956 study of smoking and lung cancer
conducted by British physicians Richard Doll and Austin Bradford Hill. In that study, Milham notes,
"a high relative risk [Was] achieved only when heavy smokers [were] compared to nonsmokers."
He then points our that "the EMF equivalent of nonsmokers does not exist in the industrialized
world." The relatively small risk ratios camouflage an already elevated incidence of EMF-related
disease in the general population.
A second factor compromising EMF risk calculations is that researchers may actually have used
the wrong magnetic field meters to conduct their exposure assessments. The Positron, Emdex
and Amex meters that still are used in many residential and occupational studies have one fatal
flaw: They do not detect EMFs below 35 or 40 Hz, the very low frequency (VLF) and extremely
low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields that are known to have negative effects on human
health. (Nor do they detect the higher frequencies used by cell phones, televisions, radios and
microwaves.)
Let's examime a study that is still widely cited as evidence that EMF's are harmless: The National
Cancer Institute-Linet Study. According to a 1997 NCI press release, "A comprehensive study by
researchers from the National Cancer Institute and the Children's Cancer Group found no
evidence that magnetic fields in the house increase the risk for the most common form of
childhood cancer."
Yet, the researchers acknowledge in no less than four places in the report that a statistically
significant increase im acute lymphoblastic leukemia exists in children exposed to power line
magnetic fields in excess of 3 milligauss (mG). The report confirms previous studies showing a
similar level of association between childhood leukemia and magnetic fields from electricity.
So how did the NCI come to the conclusion that there was no risk? Very simple. It set a cutoff limit
of 2 mG. (The worldwide safety standard is 2.5 mG.) By establishing that limit, the NCI effectively
removed any statistically significant connection with the associated dangers.
There are no health-based standards for long-term or short term exposure to extremely
low-frequency EMFs in the home or in the workplace. The federally permitted 1,000 mG limit for
U.S. workplaces, established in 1986, addresses only thermal safety standards-those necessary
to avoid shocking, boiling or frying the human body.
The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement, in its 1995 "Draft
Recommendations on EMF Exposure Guidelines," generally endorsed an ambient EMF exposure
limit of 2 mG. A final report has yet to be released.
In 1990, Paul Brodeur ended his New Yorker series with this conclusion: "The de-facto policy that
power lines, electric blankets and video-display terminals be considered innocent until proved
guilty should be rejected out of hand by sensible people everywhere. To do otherwise is to
accept a situation in which millions of human beings continue to be test animals in a long-term
biological experiment whose consequences remain unknown."
That is the situation we find ourselves in today.
A 1998 Microwave News industry report, "Unfinished Business: EMF Research Must Continue,"
makes several important points that remain true today: "First, it is striking that we still know so
little about who is exposed to what. [For instance,] only recently did we recognize that
sewing-machine operators have higher EMF exposures than do electric utility workers.
"[Second.] sources of EMFs turn up in surprising places. For example, Swedish researchers
report ... that steelbelted radial tires can expose automobile passengers to EMFs as high as 50
mG. Thus, an office worker with a long commute might have more exposure than a utility worker,
[and] a suburban kid who gets shuttled around in his parents' car might have more exposure
than a child living within sight of a power line."
Contemporary EMF Research
Last year was a banner year for EMF research. In January, a study by Milham connected many
disputed pieces of the EMF puzzle. Building on the accumulating evidence that leukemia and
certain other cancers are linked with exposure to electromagnetic fields, Milham wrote that "until
poles and wires were first extended into our communities, humans had never been exposed to
alternating power-frequency fields. Similarly, radio, television, radar, microwaves, cell phones
and other indispensable devices of our modern world all expose humans to EMFs, which are
completely new to human evolutionary experience."
Milham uncovered conclusive proof that the appearance of a new childhood leukemia peak in
children ages 2 to 4 is the direct result of residential electrification as it took place, country by
country and state by state, throughout the world. The peak was highest in states with the
greatest levels of electrification and, even today, places without electrification do not show this
childhood leukemia peak.
As a result of this finding, Milham and his researchers conclude that 75% of childhood acute
lymphoblastic leukemia and 60% of all childhood leukemia may actually be preventable. They
also note that "weak alternating magnetic fields have been shown to affect reaction time, slow the
heart and affect the electroencephalogram in humans." In other words, the negative health
effects from exposure to EMFs are not limited to children; they can and do affect all of us. As
environmental physicist Neil Cherry, M.D., Ph.D., and others have pointed out, the historical rise
in childhood leukemia is paralleled by the same rise in adult leukemia in all developed countries.
Then, on July 16, 2001, under pressure from a First Amendment Coalition lawsuit, the California
Department of Health Services released a major report on the health effects of power frequency
electric and magnetic fields. The report summarized a decade of research costing more than $7
million. It stated, "Some of the health risks associated with exposure to electric and magnetic
fields such as those that radiate from power lines are added risk of miscarriage, childhood
leukemia brain cancer and greater incidence of suicide."
Two other EMF studies rounded out the year. In November, researchers from japan's National
Institute for Environmental Studies presented a study showing that exposure to electromagnetic
fields can interfere with melatonin, a sleep-regulating hormone that also inhibits cancerous tumor
growth. When the researchers exposed breast cancer cells to a level of electromagnetism that
people are exposed to on a daily basis, they found that it decreased melatonin's ability to
suppress the cancer cells' growth.
And in December, scientists at the Neuro Diagnostic Research Institute in Marbella, Spain,
discovered that a mobile phone call lasting a mere two minutes can produce abnormal
brain-wave patterns in children that last up to an hour.
But what about all those studies purporting to show that cell phones are harmless? Milham and
other scientists say it's impossible to know for sure. Since cancer has a latency period of at least
10 to 20 years, it's too soon to tell. There is mounting evidence, however, of increased incidence
of brain cancer among heavy cell phone users.
WHO IS LOOKING OUT FOR PUBLIC HEALTH?
With our ever-expanding use of electricity and recent developments in and burgeoning use of
wireless technologies, the health risks for all life forms are growing at an alarming rate. Since cell
phone technology first came into use, levels of manmade EMF radiation have increased by as
much as 100,000 times for the whole planet. The third-generation cellular systems now being
built require four times the number of transmitter masts used by the current mobile phone
system. The installation of millions of wireless computer networks in offices, homes and schools
will add another layer to the amount of microwave and radio frequency radiation to which people
are exposed every day. There is near-total agreement among researchers that the developing
brains of children are most vulnerable to EMFs. Environmental consultant Sage is worried that
installing wireless computer networks in schools could increase children's exposure to harmful
radiation one hundredfold.
It is time to clear the air of disinformation about EMFs. The need to understand electromagnetic
fields, identify their potential health hazards and implement measures to mitigate the risks they
pose to human health has become urgent. Milham and other scientists are increasingly
concerned that it may take an epidemic of brain and other cancers to catalyze the independent
research, government oversight and avoidance measures that are necessary to protect human
health and the health of the entire planet. Let's hope they're wrong.
Heldl Gitterman is a speaker, author and contributing editor to Alternative Medicine.