All I can say is Thank God Dr. Mercola (with his list of over 2 million) is informed and active on this whole WiFi, cellphone, electromagnetic, microwave radiation debacle! His latest article, estimating that deaths from microwave radiation will surpass deaths from cigarette smoking and asbestos combined, features this latest EXCELLENT video from EMR expert, Magda Havas PhD:
I did a teleseminar with Dr. Magda Havas a few months ago to try and get clear on the risks of this technology and what each of us can do to protect ourselves and our children, you can download the mp3 recording here and / or download the pdf transcript here.
DNA Breaks
Of special note in Mercola’s article is this slide from the European Reflex Report, visually showing DNA breaks in a comet assay test from 24 hours of cell phone radiation exposure compared with DNA breaks from 1600 chest x-rays:
Cell Towers And Cancer
And what REALLY freaked me out is the data about the cell tower in the UK – 500 metres away from the village. My eight-year-old daughter Zara’s gymnastics club has 4 cellphone towers, mounted on a high voltage powerline, less than 100 metres away from the club- and she’s there 9 hours/week:
“when the Wishaw T-Mobile phone mast went up in her small U.K. village, an estimated 77 percent of the residents within 500 meters became ill with a range of health problems from symptoms of electrosensitivity to infertility and cancer. Seven years later a cancer cluster was discovered in the village, after which the tower was forcefully removed.
Six ladies developed breast cancer, there was one case of prostate cancer, one case of bladder cancer, one case of lung cancer, three cases of pre-cancerous cervical cells, one man developed a spinal tumor and motor neuron disease (MND), many cases of breast lumps and pervasive symptoms of electrosensitivity, such as sleep problems,headaches, dizzy spells, vertigo, fertility problems, immune disregulation, and fatigue. An Olympic level horse was also treated for blood problems.
When the mast came down, the symptoms of electrosensitivity went away, and with few exceptions, cancers people were treated for never recurred and the Olympic horse no longer suffered with blood problems.”
Cell Tower + WiFi = Nosebleeds
So what does this mean in terms of my daughter’s current risk? We have already noticed that if she goes to school (6 hours of WiFi radiation in the school + cellphone radiation from teachers and students) and then straight to her gymnastics (3 hours), she will get nosebleeds. And not little ones; massive, gushing nosebleeds.
However, if I keep her home from school for half the day, twice per week, on the days she does her gymnastics training, she does not get nosebleeds. So her body has shown us where her exposure threshold is, that results in visible, noticeable negative symptoms – but what’s going on at the cellular level, that we don’t know about?
How Much Is Too Much?
It’s so hard as a parent and someone who also understands that health is a holistic phenomenon. What I mean by this, is that I can give my kids ALL the physical elements they need to be healthy. But if my kids do not have joy and zest in life, if they do not feel loved, accepted and secure, then they will likely not be healthy.
And the flip side of that is that even though they may not have all the ideal elements that contribute physically to health, but they also have no emotional/psychological stressors and they are happy and vibrant every day, then it is likely they will be healthy. It is a question of balance. And this is what’s so hard to judge with microwave radiation – as emitted by cell phones, wireless computers, iPads, Playstations, Xboxes, Wii’s, etc. – HOW much is too much? And can the body repair the cellular damage, the DNA breaks – and under what circumstances or conditions?
For example, if all the other health elements are in place, is it okay if the kids are in a school that has WiFi, as long as their home and sleeping environment is shielded so that radiation levels are lower than 0.01 microwatts per cm2? Can the body then repair sufficiently while they sleep – to prevent cancer or serious illness?
Increase In Cancer & Effects On Microorganisms
Then you have the statistical picture: If current trends show that daily WiFi exposure increases the risk of cancer tenfold (for example), but cancer incidence in children is only 14.8 per 100,000 kids, then a tenfold increase would equal 148 kids per 100,000 – which is still only a 0.15% risk. So then, even if my kids are exposed, if their risk is only .15%, is that worth taking them out of school and sports for? Especially if sports confers a protective effect against cancer?
Emotionally, I want to grab onto the above statistical scenario with both hands and breathe a big sigh of relief: Whew, I don’t have to worry after all! But then you have other nasty little bits of research that show (for example) yeast increases rapidly when exposed to microwave radiation – scientists theorize this may be because the micro-organisms feel under attack and so replicate quickly to fend off the threat. Other preliminary studies have shown that microwave radiation at 2.5 GHz can reduce airborne microorganisms. So, just one more aspect to wonder/worry about: how is this technology affecting the balance of microorganisms in our bodies, our environment, animals, etc? Just one more thing no one’s bothered to test before flooding us with microwaves!
And what about viruses and bacteria inside our bodies? How do they behave when exposed to WiFi and cell phones? I know that just about every kid around has a wart or two, my daughter had a nasty herpes outbreak that spread from one sore on her lip to multiple sores over about 1/3 of her face (call me paranoid, but I kept her out of gymnastics for one week), this latest flu bug (for both kids and adults) is seeming to go on for about 6 weeks, waning after 3, then boomeranging back again, how many kids have rashes and eczema? And how many people do you know that sleep deeply and peacefully every night for a full 7-8 hours? Yeah, me neither.
Common sense says that if you are one of the vulnerable: children, elderly or ill, you should err on the side of caution. But as these technologies become ubiquitous (see Magda’s video above), how do you protect children without removing them from society? And what effect will that then have on their joy and life-force energy? I know if my kids are not allowed to play soccer (there’s a massive cell tower with relays in my son’s training field), nor compete in gymnastics, nor go to their friends’ houses, nor see their friends at school – they’re not going to be very happy and they would find all those restrictions quite stressful!
As you can see, I’m still struggling with this one. I feel really hamstrung over this issue and I’m not in a position to act decisively, yet. I know I have a lot of very intelligent, discerning readers, so let me know your thoughts in the COMMENTS section below as I would really like to hear your perspective…
After witnessing massive devastation in a blink of an eye – from earthquake, tsunami and a potential nuclear breakdown in Japan – it brings home just how fragile and temporary this existence is. You can tear your hair out thinking of all the things out there that can kill us, make us ill etc – none probably as bad as the effect of constant worry on the mind and body. My mother did everything right – except she took to heart hurts she collected along the way – in that she would mull over them for days, weeks, years after the incidence. She developed a gastrointestinal carcinoma from an ulcer and passed away unusually early. My father – who is a “live life to the fullest and worry about it tomorrow” type of guy – who is both a long time heart patient and years older than my mother – who eats crappy food and is fond of a few nightly beers has amazingly outlived her – though he may be made of ill of the heart ache of losing his one true love. The half of the benefits or harms of anything is the power you give it from your mind, and this may explain part of the huge variance in susceptibility to ubiquitous triggers.
I totally get where you are coming from, Jini. We specifically did not get wireless in our house, and yet the neighbours wireless leaks over into our house – to the delight of our children who hop on the internet on the ipad we received for Christmas (you can’t use ipad with wired connection). I refuse to buy my kids cell phones so my daughter texts via an app she downloaded on the ipad. I have succeeded in not letting her take the ipad to her bedroom and play with it before bed, but it’s a struggle.
My daughter’s school is wired internet but the new high school my son attends is wireless. My son is liable to nosebleeds and I never thought about possible connection with wifi.
On the other hand, I truly appreciate what LTD has said about effect of state of mind on health – it’s possibly one of the most powerful influences on our health, and I’ve noticed that myself. It’s really a bit of a tightrope walk between trying to be really healthy and control our environment but also enjoying our life and not worrying about every little thing.
Thanks Jini for your information – it’s priceless and also to others like LTD who make thoughtful comments (such a difference from most internet comments)
My perspective is that one needs to set priorities and then things become clearer.
If good health for a lifetime is a high priority then one must take precautions for oneself and ones family, and then further for one’s guests, neighborhood and job, and school, and beyond to the whole planet.
When one educates oneself one finds that health scientists have discovered evidence of the dangers of cell phones, and therefore their cousin WiFi., microwave ovens, and more.
It is then obvious that one does not want one’s children to go to a school with WiFi, or to have WiFi in the home. One would use a wired phone, preferably an old rotary phone, not modernized, for the least amount of radiation. If your neighbor has WiFi you can move or take precautions with special curtains, paint, low E windows etc.
What would happen if children and teachers refused to go to schools that were not healthy?
Towers and antennas that provide the radiation for these systems radiate the environments 24/7 affecting trees, birds, bees, and all living creations. If one of your priorities is to protect the environment, withdraw your support for these wireless technologies. If they were not supported other technologies would be invented. Become part of the solution and not continue the problem, and help others to understand also.
Ask the gymnastics teacher to hold lessons in a healhy environment.
Be proactive rather than sbmissive to corporate greed, convenience and ignorance.
Take charge of your life as much as you can, take precautions,and minimize “guinea pig” situations. This radiation is cumulative in its effect. Make an effort to not gamble with one’s health or the health of more vulnerable children.
When I read the following about “cancer clusters” in the US (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/31/disease-clusters-us-states_n_842529.html#s259789&title=Arkansas) – I recalled this thread and thought to share the information.
As to the ongoing debate as to how vigilant or worried one needs to be to live a healthy balanced life, we all have to find our threshold for zen. I keep coming back to read Jini’s blogs because I resonate with her outlook strongly in some ways – and love her unexpected sense of humour. I share this same contradiction – most think I’m fairly resilient and laid back – but at the same time I adhere to a fairly minimalist and sometimes puratinical way of life – more because I know there is a difference between want and need – and sometimes we want things that are more likely to hurt than to help. During my university years, I became rather disenchanted with the way we were progressing – too many, too much inequality, too much harm, to much greed and aggression – it seemed so overwhelming that I lost my selfish gene. I decided I will live as someone who is part of the solution and not the many problems, will try to educate and learn, but will not be a biological mother.
We have a 16 month old. and despite the fact that we have not had cell phones, cordless phones, or wifi in our home, are now realizing how much unwanted radiation we are exposed to. we know because my husband received an I-Pod touch for Christmas. I was curious to see if he had wireless access in our home, eventhough we did not subscribe to it, and we did! Our neighbors adjoining us, we live in a duplex, were nice enough to turn theirs off, but we are still getting signals from other neighbours.
I became sick in 2003, and got progressively worse. I had my mercury fillings removed, but it was AFTER our baby was born. My husband and I are beginning to wonder if our extreme fatigue and uncharacteristic agitation, night sweats and general spaciness may have been caused by it.
My husband was nervous about asking our neighbours to turn off their Wifi, but they did. Now I feel we have to go around the neighbourhood and that is socially scarey, but i will do anything to protect my family.
I am anxious and excited to get the materials. Thing is we are now living in Quebec. And french is not our first language to start with. Do you have any info in French? Or other languages? Would be helpful to us, and may be to others as well.
Why isn’t this more public knowledge? Why am I only now finding out how harmful this is? I’ve been careful with my diet, and vaccines for our child, but this seems out of my control. It’s like being subjected to someone else’s second hand smoke 24/7, and there is nowhere to escape from it. And i know it is more harmful.
I was so happy spring has arrived, but now when I step outside my home we pick up 3 sometimes up to 12 or more wireless accounts in our neighborhood. I feel trapped. I usually love the outdoors, and now feel robbed of my sanctuary.
I want to buy some of the protective clothing but don’t want to unintentionally end up heightening the microwaves. Any advice/education here would be appreciated.
Well, the funny thing is: I’ve been testing everything with my Radiation Meter and I spent a day and a half in absolute euphoria thinking: “Oh my gosh, I’ve been worrying for nothing! The levels in my house are really low, even a packed restaurant at lunch time is low.”
Then I realized I had it on the wrong setting!
So I re-tested my house, but then I discovered some puzzling things:
1. I could get a reading of .002 microwatts/m2 (uW/m2) and then move the meter 4 inches to the right and get a reading of 84 uW/m2. So what does that mean?? What’s the actual radiation load of the room – or does it completely depend on exactly where you are sitting or standing? And in that case, if you are continually flashing in and out of high –> very low radiation, is that actually going to cause any damage? It just doesn’t seem very reliable or definitive to me. Some other spots in the same room were 17, 20, .001, 75 and so on.
2. I had noticed there was a tripod attachment at the bottom of the meter, so I thought, hmmm… I wonder if anything will change if I attach it to a tripod? And sure enough, for example, on the tripod, the reading was .002 uW/m2, but when I placed my hand on the meter, or held it in my hand, the reading (in exactly the same spot) jumped to 42 uW/m2. And I tested this repeatedly, so it wasn’t just that someone was making a call or downloading at that particular moment. Hello? According to safety standards I, myself, am emitting enough radiation to be of “severe concern” to people around me – not to mention myself!
To say that I am now thoroughly confused would be an understatement. And every video I’ve seen of people testing for EMR, they’ve been holding the meters in their hands…
Any techies out there who care to enlighten me on what’s going on, what this all means, and how to actually get a reliable (and meaningful) measurement?
AV – For materials in French or useful contacts:
http://www.citizensforsafetechnology.org
Jini – you have brought up a very important point – that holding the meter affects the reading!
The reason is that we as human beings are fantastic “antennas”. So it would seem that the signal is coupling with our bodies, which affects the reading on any meter. That is why some of these meters are designed to be attached to a tripod.
To prove that humans are fantastic antennas, try this experiment. Take any cell phone that has two or three bars on the strength meter – hold it in your hand and rotate your body so that you find the direction of the cell tower you are connecting to – you will see the signal strength increase on the phone. Once you find that “sweet spot”, ask two or three people to stand directly in front of you. The signal should get stronger as the two or three bodies act as antennas to amplify the signal.
Also, the signal strength can vary in a room depending on where you are standing or sitting – there are “hot spots” which continually change.
Re: radiating energy…. It should be noted that living organisms have elecromagnetic potential as well – and heat/temperature affects the nature of EMR waves. For some more food for thought regarding this phenomenon – perhaps a read over this overview (it isn’t exactly a lay article) would shed some light on the weird readings: http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/~Amir_H_Golnabi/ENGG168_files/Papers/Bioelectrodynamics%20in%20living%20organisms.pdf
I just thought of the timeliness of this post again when just reading a story on CBC regarding the Rogers cellphone tower plans (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/05/09/bc-cellphone-tower-opposition.html) – and the same questions Jini posed are being asked by many parents and teachers. Unfortunately, those instituted to safeguard public health are wearing spectacles that hinder clarity on the big picture. This may be the opportunity to bring the issue to the publics greater awareness and have an open discussion about how much we know, the real science behind the effect of radiation, and what we’re willing to risk. By reading the comments to the news story – there is a great deal of ignorance all around.
we received our electrosmog meter last week. what a relief! and what an eye opener.
we got great (very low) numbers outside. my sanctuary is still there. even though we get multiple wifi signals from neighbors, the signal strength is weak, so that the meter gives us the green light. it’s safe 🙂
next to being outdoors in our neighbourhood, our daughter’s bedroom was the best. good news to me.
the eye opener came from how EXTREMELY high and dangerous biologically talking on a cell or cordless phone is. the numbers were shocking.
also did some tests on wifi, and the cordless phone base at our adjoining neighbour’s home. because they placed their cordless phone system on the adjoining wall, we the highest readings in the toy room, adjacent to that wall.
the biggest lesson we are taking from this is that if a person subscribes to wifi in their home, has a cordless phone, and a cell phone, they are getting the highest amount of radiation while using it, as well as broadcasting radiation through their own homes. the corded phone can be a drag, but considering the numbers were actually higher for a cordless phone than even a cell phone, makes the slight inconvenience worth it. i am so happy that our two next door neighbours were kind enough to turn their wifi off or else our radiation numbers would surely be higher. funny thing is lots of people don’t even use the wifi in their homes, it just gets hooked up and not really given a second thought. we had to seek out and turn off the wifi that was on as a default setting on our printer! something we didn’t even think about until recently.
as for our meter, we take it with us everywhere we go. it’s like a fun science experiment. we point it at cell towers, and see what kind of numbers we get downtown as opposed to our rural neighbourhood. funny thing is if we drive past a person standing at a bus stop just talking on a cell the numbers skyrocket! it’s crazy!
by the way we purchased the Cornet ED85EX from radmeters.com for around $175. It measures from 1 MHz – 8GHz. It measures in mW/m2, so we only need to move the decimal point one place to the left to understand it in terms of uW/cm2, which is how most biological effects to the human body are listed.
AV – just out of interest sake (and to be able to compare), what parameters does your meter give for what constitutes a “safe level”?
And what levels do they mark as ‘concern’ or ‘danger’?
Hi Jini,
To answer your questions:
Green (safe) is up to 0.18 mW/m2 or (0.018 uW/cm2.) Also gives a decibel reading of -35dBm.
Yellow is 0.58- 5.8 mW/m2. -30 thru -20 dBm.
Red (Concern) 18-180mW/m2. -15 thru -5dBm.
We usually convert to the uW/cm2 because those are the units used in the charts we have found regarding biological effects. I don’t know much about what the dB means in reference to the radiation yet.
Angie
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When I was age 5 to about 10 years old, I would go to work with my father, Edward Brown Lane, Jr. to The Miter Site Barricks, in Truro, Ma. Miter Site. There were Gaint Computers that would take up one small room. Today I am 58 years of age, wondering if I was exsposed to radiation. Now and before I was born in 1953, I am seriously concerned IF i AM CARING RADITION in my system, as I write this today, Saturday November 5,2001. My father diffinately had radiation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He could hold on to an animal coral electric wire with both his hands and NOT GET A ELECTRIC SHOCK!!!!!! I can go near a eletrical pluged into a wall circuite and the radio will get louder without me touching the radio. I was also born toxic. My mother had toximia 2 months prior to when I was born on September 5, 1953. My guestion is ; should I be concered about my health, physically,mentally, and or greatly do I need a specialist to see for help like a Nerologist Doctor? Because I have Fibromyalgia and Myofascial disease, besides diverticulous disease. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am very concerned for the whole world on this topic. Thank you, take care of number one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thats you!!!!!!!
MICHELLE – it’s interesting because I had a meeting with Dr. George Carlo – who has spearheaded much of EMR awareness and treatment – and his treatment protocols were very similar to mine in my book Listen To Your Gut (natural healing methods for Crohn’s, colitis, diverticulitis). So basically, healing the whole body – regardless of the initiating events – seems to be pretty much the same pathway, with a few tweaks here and there. Here’s a good overview of Dr. Carlo and his websites:
http://www.whale.to/b/carlo_h.html
[…] packaging materials, etc. – as outlined above. We definitely need (as is the case with EMR – electromagnetic radiation) a non industry-influenced regulatory body to test and research these new technologies before they […]