Alarming report: cell/wifi frequencies and your health

I was in Walgreens last night waiting for traffic to die down when I opened the current issue of GQ magazine. I found an article in it called, Warning: Your Cell Phone May Be Hazardous to Your Health.

I was disturbed by the science behind the article. I think this is a must read for many of us who are attached to our cell phones, have WiFi networks in home and/or live near high power lines. Time will tell, and probably in the upcoming few years if radio frequencies can in deed harm human DNA. Or, at the least, cause DNA to mutate, causing potential cancer and other health risks.

Sample: Snip-its I found interesting. Please read the full article to get more of the science. I personally find the politics more interesting. After all, the entire wireless business revenue is well into the hundreds of billions a year.

Carl Blackman believes “a decision was made to stop the civilian agencies from looking too deeply into the nonthermal health effects from exposure to EM fields. Scientists who have shown such effects over the years have been silenced, had funding taken away, been laughed at, been called charlatans and con men. The goal was to only let in scientists who would say, ‘We know that microwave ovens can cook meat, and that’s all we need to know.’ ” One veteran EPA physicist, speaking anonymously, told me, “The Department of Defense didn’t like our research because the exposure limits that we might recommend would curtail their activities.”

Here, in the U.S., there’s been very little resistance to the march of the cell towers. In fact, in Congress there’s been almost nothing but support. The Telecommunications Act of 1996—a watershed for the cell-phone industry—was the result, in part, of nearly $50 million in political contributions and lobbying largesse from the telecom industry. The prize in the TCA for telecom companies branching into wireless was a rider known as Section 704, which specifically prohibits citizens and local governments from stopping placement of a cell tower due to health concerns. Section 704 was clear: There could be no litigation to oppose cell towers because the signals make you sick.

When President Bill Clinton signed the TCA into law in February 1996, the rollout of “personal communication services,” marketed as PCS, was in full swing. By the end of the year, telecom companies had paid the federal government more than $8 billion to purchase portions of the microwave-frequency sequence. (According to the FCC, fees paid for allocation of spectrum as of 2009 amounted to $52 billion.) Almost immediately, cell-phone antennas sprang up across the country, appearing on church steeples and apartment buildings, in parks and along highways, on streetlights and clock towers and flagpoles. One industry estimate tallied 19,850 such installations in the U.S. in 1995. Today there are 247,000, most hosting multiple antennas.

Modern society, needless to say, is in the grip of wireless technology. All you have to do to understand this is step outside your door. “It just so happens,” Frey had told me, “that the frequencies and modulations of our cell phones seem to be the frequencies that humans are particularly sensitive to. If we had looked into it a little more, if we had done the real science, we could have allocated spectrums that the body can’t feel. The public should know if they are taking a risk with cell phones. What we’re doing is a grand world experiment without informed consent.”

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I pray that the science behind this is wrong. I pray in the long run us who use cell phones everyday, live in our WiFi networks and work in cities engulfed in wireless technology remain healthy. But, there is little doubt that we can do things everyday to help limit our exposure. For example, put your cell phone down instead of carrying it on your hip. Or, don’t live near large power lines, or turn off your WiFi network when it is not needed. Still, living near a town or city will forever expose you to these frequencies. And whether we like it or not, cell phones today are a part of live and a must for business.

-Adam Faragalli

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