By Gene Ayres, Your Consumer Curmudgeon

I've mentioned before in previous dispatches that a lot of disturbing research is surfacing around the globe, indicating that cell phones may not be all that good for you. Or me. I know, I know, this comes under the category, particularly in this gift-seeking season, of sounding like, well, a curmudgeon. After all, cell phones are the greatest invention since, well, white bread. Or at least, since the PC, and we all love them to pieces.

For what that's worth, when Sir Walter Raleigh first showed up in the Queen's court from a sojourn to the Colonies with a boatload of New World produce, people at the time felt the same way about tobacco. Sometimes, the more we learn about something, the less appealing it might be. We're going through this painful transition as we speak with carbon-based energy and transportation vehicles. It's proving really hard (against huge deliberately placed obstacles legal and political worldwide) to make this change away from oil dependency to something that won't fry the planet, and we are resisting it with what might very well turn out to be every fiber of all our beings.

Cell phones are a bit more complicated. They are more like pesticides, in the sense that at first they seem really great for improving our lives and world, and only when we start slowly dieing of strange diseases and getting weird cancers and birth defects, do we start to give a second look to what we've been dumping into the air and water the past few generations. Or injecting into our food.

Cell phones are just so—cool. And they have all those cool widgets and apps, and the kids love 'em, and even Grandma loves 'em, or is starting to, because you can keep in constant touch, not to mention all that texting and tweeting and surfing and no one can drive to the end of their driveway any more without making at least two calls and a Tweet and putting another on hold. How did we ever live without them, up to a decade or so ago, when they so literally exploded onto the global scene?

Answer: a lot more peacefully, and less stressfully, in a lot of ways. Plus, with maybe a lot fewer traffic accidents as well.

The problem with cell phones—the biggest of many we just, literally don't want to hear about—isn't what they are doing to the bees, although that's certainly a worry as well. It's coming from the same source, though: what's called an Electromagnetic Field (EMF). This kind of field occurs naturally, of course, just like x-rays, and there's a very large EMF at this moment surrounding our planet. But our biology and evolution have taken this into account. Not so with cell phones and wireless technology. These energy fields have another name: microwaves. As in, those nifty little ovens we zap our junk food with. Would you stick one of those in your ear and turn it on? Maybe not if you thought about it. But that's exactly what you're doing every time you talk on a cell phone. Granted, these are smaller, lower in frequency, and don't produce a thermal effect, so we assume if they aren't cooking us on the spot they are safe. Not so. Now scientists and doctors alike are discovering these energy fields are related to numerous ailments, diseases, and disorders ranging from cancers, to immune system problems, cardiovascular diseases, sleep disorders, autism, learning disorders, metabolic problems, and fertility failures. In other words, these EMFs, which power all our burgeoning wireless technologies—in particular cell phones—are behaving in very similar ways to pesticides, which means their impact is not about chemistry or physics. It's about biology. Namely, our own.

Not surprisingly, despite what is now a body of evidence from literally thousands of medical studies turning up worldwide, industry “experts” and their government minions, as was the case with tobacco, oil, toxic chemicals, and the mining and coal industries, is a blatant campaign of misrepresentation to the effect that these products are safe and harmless. The top 20 cellular telephone companies have spent $2.3 billion in the last ten years just on lobbying in Congress and elsewhere, not even counting advertising expenditures.

In a word: they are not as safe as we are being told. And the truth that emerges in decades to come may be much worse than anything we can imagine at the moment. Medical experts are now predicting a worldwide epidemic of brain cancers and DNA damage yet to come to future generations. True, critics note that, as with other environmental issues, some people appear to be much more sensitive to EMFs than others. Just as with mercury fillings, allergens, MSG in food, and so on. You may chat ten hours a day on your wireless for the next thirty years and never be bothered at all. But the odds are now becoming measurably ominous that you might also stand an increasingly high chance of coming down with one of the above-mentioned afflictions. Are you really comfortable with taking that chance?

There are ways to mitigate these dangers, even now. Make fewer calls, for starters. It might even save you some money. Using a landline now and then, or a wired earphone is another way to reduce the impact. Maybe it's not cool. But then, neither are birth defects.

Happy Shopping.

Sources: Thomas M. Rau, MD, Medical Director,
Paracelsus Clinic, Switzerland.

Dietrich Klinghardt, MD, PhD, Director, Klinghardt Academy of Neurobiology, Expert in the health consequences of electromagnetic fields and leading educator of physicians.

Henry Lai, PhD, Research Professor, Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington.

David Carpenter, MD,
Professor, Environmental Health Sciences, Director, Institute for Health and the Environment, School of Public Health, University of Albany, SUNY
Co-Editor, The BioInitiative Report (www.BioInitiative.org).

B. Blake Levitt, Award-winning science journalist and Author, Electromagnetic Fields: A Consumer’s Guide To The Issues And How To Protect Ourselves, Member of the Bioelectromagnetics Society.

Magda Havas, PhD, Associate Professor, Environment & Resource Studies, Trent University, Canada, Expert in radiofrequency radiation, electromagnetic fields, dirty electricity and ground current.

Robert A. F. Thurman, PhD, Jey Tsong Kappa Professor, Indo-Tibetan Studies Department of Religion, Columbia University President, Tibet House Author of Why The Dalai Lama Matters: His Act of Truth as the Solution for China, Tibet and the World, and many others.

Gene Ayres is a career writer, author and freelance journalist. His latest book is A Billion to One: An American Insider in the New China. He can be found at: www.geneayres.org.