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| Sunday, 17 October 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Solemn thoughts: Does cellular-tower fog threaten your health? by Wendell W. Solomons The first studies of risk had come before the 1990s. However, a blitz of cell phone advertising converted me. I did scoff. Was a hand phone going to harm my body? In time I became the user of a gift Motorola A300. Today, entire nations are reaching for mobile phones. Analysts suggest that the explosively emergent $40 billion a year mobile phone industry is poised to deliver a Wireless Revolution. During the next five years it is expected to double the one billion people connected by telephone lines over the past century. After Euthopia - return to discovery Everyday more than 300 million cell phone users are reaching out and "touching someone" (as the advertising suggests.) Yet, to call the person implied by the ad, for 24-hours in the day the nearest cellular phone tower must touch EVERYONE in the vicinity with microwaves. Each tower uses microwaves so as to receive the signals that mobile phones transmit. You are caught in its "cell" of operation. The hand phone itself acts as a very small broadcasting and receiving station. The towers task is to boost the hand phone signals so that they carry to the service providers centre. Arthur Firstenberg writes in "The Ecologist June 1, 2004" "Having stumbled upon an obviously well-kept secret, I researched the world literature on bioelectromagnetics, (or the biological effects of electromagnetism), and made myself an expert... I learned that there was a disease thoroughly described in the Russian and Eastern European medical literature called radiowave sickness, the existence of which was usually denied by western authorities. This description made me remember my `unknown illness', the one that had derailed my medical career. Bradycardia, or a slow heart rate, was said, in these texts, to be a grave sign?" "You will hear statements by supposed experts - always the same few, in the pay of the telecommunications industry - to the effect that cell phones/cell towers/microwave radiation have been proven safe in countless studies." Most experiments still show "effects on heart rhythms, on brain waves, on the blood-brain barrier, on sleep, on the eyes, on the gonads, on the skin, on hearing, on calcium, on melatonin, on glucose, on metabolism, on human well-being. If you look, you will find. Zorach Glaser reviewed over 5,000 such studies for the United States Navy during the 1970s alone." "From the volume of literature I have seen, certain results stand out in my mind"? "Canadians Tanner, Romero-Sierra and Bigu Del Blanco worked with parakeets, chickens, pigeons and seagulls. Birds avoided microwave fields if they could, and collapsed within seconds if they couldn't. Defeathered birds showed no such distress, and these researchers then showed that feathers act as antennae conveying microwave energy to the birds. Thirty years later, Alfonso Balmori MartA-nez has carefully documented the decline and disappearance of white storks, house sparrows, and free-tailed bats from the vicinity of cellular phone base stations." "In the early 1990s, the government of Switzerland commissioned a study in response to people's complaints of insomnia near the shortwave transmitter at Schwarzenburg. Residents kept sleep diaries and did not know when the transmitter was on or off. The investigators found that the transmitter was disturbing sleep up to several miles away, and because of this finding that particular radio station was permanently shut down". "In Germany, Wolfgang Volkrodt linked forest die-back to microwave radiation rather than acid rain. Autopsies revealed that the cows died of acute circulatory collapse and bleeding from several organs." "In France, Roger Santini has found that the closer people live to a cell tower, the more likely they are to experience dizziness, nausea, memory loss and other neurological symptoms. Claudio GA mez-Perretta has obtained similar results in Spain. The Dutch government sponsored double blind experiments in a laboratory. People exposed to a cell tower signal experienced dizziness, nervousness, chest pain, shortness of breath, numbness and tingling, weakness, and difficulty concentrating." Body as Galaxy William Thomas, reported on August 8, 2004 "Exquisitely sensitive to subtle electromagnetic harmonies, human brains and bodies as intricate as galaxies depend on tiny electrical impulses to conduct complex life-processes" including the ability to read, recall and respond to these words. Acting as antennas, our anatomies just as easily tune into spurious signals from radio and microwave transmissions. Blake Levitt, author of "Electromagnetic Fields", says that when it comes to cell phones, a worse frequency could not have been chosen for the human anatomy. "As cell phones conquer consumer minds and markets, researcher Carol Anne Patton notes that the brain reaches peak absorption in the UHF bands, right where cellular telecommunications operate. British military scientists have discovered that cell phone transmissions disrupt the brain sites for memory and learning, causing forgetfulness and sudden confusion. Other studies show that electromagnetic signals from cellular phones reduce the ability to concentrate, calculate and coordinate complicated activities such as driving a car. Startled by $4 billion a year in extra claims among cell phone-wielding drivers, North American insurers did a double-take that found simply juggling cell phones is not causing a 600% increase in accidents." "Hands-free mobile speaker-phones cause even more crashes because they typically emit 10 times more brainwave interference than handheld units." "For all drivers dialing out, University of Toronto investigators report that the heightened probability of cracking up your car persists for up to 15-minutes after completing a call. That's comparable to the risk of crashing while driving dead drunk" exclaims Dr. Chris Runball, chairman of the B.C. Medical Association's emergency medical services committee." www.rense.com/general56/place.htm At the Russian Academy of Science Institute of Cell Biophysics, Pushchino, Russia, V.V. Novikov, V.V. Kuvichkin, and E. E. Fesenko examined BOTH animal and plant proteins: "It was shown that weak combined static (42 microT) and low-frequency variable (40 nT; 3-5 Hz) magnetic fields change the intensity of intrinsic fluorescence of some proteins (cytochrome c, bovine serum albumin, horseradish peroxidase, alkaline phosphatase)." www.earthpulse.net/emf.htm The next report is entitled "Nerve Cell Damage in Mammalian Brain after Exposure to Microwaves from GSM Mobile Phones." Writing in Environmental Health Perspectives, June 2003, researchers of the Department of Neurosurgery, Department of Neuropathology, Department of Medical Radiation Physics, and Department of Applied Electronics, of Lund University, Sweden concluded: "The possible risks of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields for the human body is a growing concern for our society. We have previously shown that weak pulsed microwaves give rise to a significant leakage of albumin through the blood-brain barrier. In this study we investigated whether a pathologic leakage across the blood-brain barrier might be combined with damage to the neurons. Three groups each of eight rats were exposed for 2 hours to Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) mobile phone electromagnetic fields of different strengths. |
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