Attack of the killer cell phones

WHOLISTIC WORLD VISION GLOBAL NETWORKING SERVICE (PLEASE PASS ON!)
www.wholisticworldvision.org
> Hi All,
>
> very valuable and disturbing article about the effect of EMR and mobile
> phones (cell phones in the USA) . Note the point about phoning from inside
> a car or metal vehicle....
> best, Richard
>
> Plus another article below on divided expert opinion
>
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> ATTACK OF THE CELL PHONE ZOMBIES! by William Thomas (13 May 2008)
> MUST READ! MOST EXCELLENT!!
> http://www.willthomasonline.net/willthomasonline/Attack_Of_The_Cell_Phone_Zombie.html
>
> Cell phone zombies are everywhere. And they are winning! For now. Found in hundreds of clinical and military studies to inhibit the ability to concentrate, calculate and coordinate, cell phone transmissions disrupt cellular functioning, as well as the brain's ability to remember and learn. With some 2 billion people currently using cell phones - including 500 million teens and children - epidemiological studies estimate the number of cell phone-induced eye and brain cancer will reach a half-million cases annually by 2010. Don't become a cell phone zombie! -- Walk down virtually any metropolitan street, if you still dare, and you will discern with a jolt of alarm that no one around you is aware of each other's presence or their surroundings as they shuffle past with the shambling gait of automatons. Hearing blocked by blaring or blathering headsets, heads bent over cell phones, iPods, palm pilots, multimedia players, text messagers and other hypnotic gadgetry, these walking dead with their vacant stares are so far departed from the reality around them they don't even know they're gone.
>
> Cell phone zombies are proliferating everywhere. Spread by the most virulent contagion on Earth - the lust to own and continuously jack into wireless technology - addictive endorphin jolts sent by cell phones to the brain threaten agonizing withdrawal, even as their invisible emanations attack the frontal lobes, short-circuiting memory, awareness and cognitive thought.Succumbing to the identical marketing strategies marshaled by the same advertising agencies pushing tobacco onto children, hordes of cell phone zombies as young as four-years-old are replacing normal human relationships with the cold calculus of truncated text messages, while disturbing their sonic space and interrupting conversations with friends and spouses to jabber with ghosts who are not even present, even as they spread the blight of their second hand microwaves among the last pockets of cell phone resistance. (...)
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> Still, innocent bystanders and drivers can be at grave risk from deranged zombies talking on their cell phones while operating heavy fast-moving vehicles. In cities that have not yet disarmed cell phone-brandishing drivers, the resulting daily carnage is as gory as any scene out of "Night Of The Living Dead". Except this mayhem is real. Stunned by an additional $4 billion a year in claims for drivers using cell phones, North American insurers discovered that juggling phones while driving is not causing a 600% increase in accidents. Other drivers busy shaving, applying makeup, tuning radios, taming pets, pouring coffee, eating meals, retrieving dropped cigarettes, talking to passengers or attempting complex sexual gymnastics are even more preoccupied.
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> Cell phones are much worse than merely dangerous driving distractions. Tests conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy found that using a cellphone turns drivers into zombies, severely impairing their memories and reaction times by disrupting signals to and within their brains. Hands-free mobile phones cause even more crashes because they typically emit 10-times more brainwave interference than handheld units.
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> Phoning from inside a car or truck is a bad call for everyone in the vehicle - especially children - because the surrounding steel structure amplifies cellphone emissions.
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> The UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee reports, "using a mobile phone in a vehicle can accelerate radiation levels by up to 10-fold due to resonance effect." For all drivers dialing out, Swiss researchers have found "changes of brain function induced by pulsed high-frequency electromagnetic fields outlast the exposure period." University of Toronto investigators report that the heightened probability of cracking up your car persists for up to a half-hour 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. CLIP
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> Health Risks posed by Electromagnetic Radiation exposure from Cellular Towers
> http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/esd_pet_235_e_30191.html
>
>
> America's Frightening Alzheimer's Epidemic (May 16, 2008)
> http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/85532/
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> By 2030, one in four adults over 65 will have Alzheimer's. This unforgiving brain damage can cripple patients, families and the economy. (...) One in eight Americans who are 65 years old or older has Alzheimer's disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association's 2008 Facts and Figures Report (http://www.alz.org). By 2030, due to the aging of our population, that number will have doubled to one in four. There's no cure, and no certain evidence that the current medications -- Aricept, Exelon, Razadyne and Namenda -- which are said to slow the course of the disease, really work. (...) The costs, financial and emotional, of treating and caring for an Alzheimer's patient are astronomical. Today, the amount of time lost to American businesses by workers being forced to become caregivers of those with Alzheimer's is estimated at 8.4 billion hours a year. The monetary value of this unpaid labor -- often taking place in the caregiver's home -- varies by state, from the lowest, Alaska, at a little above $100,000 a year, to the highest, California, at about $10 billion. CLIP
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Experts Revive Debate Over Cellphones and Cancer
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Published: June 3, 2008
What do brain surgeons know about cellphone safety that the rest of us don’t?

Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cellphones next to their ears. “I think the safe practice,' said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, “is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away from your brain.'

Dr. Vini Khurana, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Australian National University who is an outspoken critic of cellphones, said: “I use it on the speaker-phone mode. I do not hold it to my ear.” And CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital, said that like Dr. Black he used an earpiece.
Along with Senator Edward M. Kennedy's recent diagnosis of a glioma, a type of tumor that critics have long associated with cellphone use, the doctors’ remarks have helped reignite a long-simmering debate about cellphones and cancer.

That supposed link has been largely dismissed by many experts, including the American Cancer Society. The theory that cellphones cause brain tumors “defies credulity,' said Dr. Eugene Flamm, chairman of neurosurgery at Montefiore Medical Center.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, three large epidemiology studies since 2000 have shown no harmful effects. CTIA — the Wireless Association, the leading industry trade group, said in a statement, “The overwhelming majority of studies that have been published in scientific journals around the globe show that wireless phones do not pose a health risk.'

The F.D.A. notes, however, that the average period of phone use in the studies it cites was about three years, so the research doesn't answer questions about long-term exposures. Critics say many studies are flawed for that reason, and also because they do not distinguish between casual and heavy use.

Cellphones emit non-ionizing radiation, waves of energy that are too weak to break chemical bonds or to set off the DNA damage known to cause cancer. There is no known biological mechanism to explain how non-ionizing radiation might lead to cancer.
But researchers who have raised concerns say that just because science can’t explain the mechanism doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. Concerns have focused on the heat generated by cellphones and the fact that the radio frequencies are absorbed mostly by the head and neck. In recent studies that suggest a risk, the tumours tend to occur on the same side of the head where the patient typically holds the phone.
Like most research on the subject, the studies are observational, showing only an association between cellphone use and cancer, not a causal relationship. The most important of these studies is called Interphone, a vast research effort in 13 countries, including Canada, Israel and several in Europe.

Some of the research suggests a link between cellphone use and three types of tumors: glioma; cancer of the parotid, a salivary gland near the ear; and acoustic neuroma, a tumor that essentially occurs where the ear meets the brain. All these cancers are rare, so even if cellphone use does increase risk, the risk is still very low.
Last year, The American Journal of Epidemiology published data from Israel finding a 58 percent higher risk of parotid gland tumors among heavy cellphone users. Also last year, a Swedish analysis of 16 studies in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine showed a doubling of risk for acoustic neuroma and glioma after 10 years of heavy cellphone use.
“What we’re seeing is suggestions in epidemiological studies that have looked at people using phones for 10 or more years,' says Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News, an industry publication that tracks the research. “There are some very disconcerting findings that suggest a problem, although it’s much too early to reach a conclusive view.'

Some doctors say the real concern is not older cellphone users, who began using phones as adults, but children who are beginning to use phones today and face a lifetime of exposure.
“More and more kids are using cellphones,' said Dr. Paul J. Rosch, clinical professor of medicine and psychiatry at New York Medical College. 'They may be much more affected. Their brains are growing rapidly, and their skulls are thinner.'

For people who are concerned about any possible risk, a simple solution is to use a headset. Of course, that option isn't always convenient, and some critics have raised worries about wireless devices like the Bluetooth that essentially place a transmitter in the ear.

The fear is that even if the individual risk of using a cellphone is low, with three billion users worldwide, even a minuscule risk would translate into a major public health concern.
“We cannot say with any certainty that cellphones are either safe or not safe,' Dr. Black said on CNN. “My concern is that with the widespread use of cellphones, the worst scenario would be that we get the definitive study 10 years from now, and we find out there is a correlation.'


well@nytimes.com