Bad News For Cell Phone Users
According to a study published in the June issue of "Environmental Health Perspectives", researchers have documented damage to nerve cells in the brains of rats they exposed to the type of radiation cell phone users get when calling their friends or family.
The damaging mechanism seems to be a weakening of the blood-brain barrier, a kind of filter which protects the brain from toxic or otherwise unwanted chemicals circulated with the blood. As the brain is more sensitive than other body tissue, the barrier filters and bars entrance to what should not be in the brain.
Calling on your mobile may put that vital barrier out of commission, so any damaging substance present in the blood which is normally kept out can now imperil the brain's functions. Double jeopardy for those who also take a swig of of Coke or Pepsi "light" or any other soft drink containing Aspartame. The brake-down products from this widespread but quite deadly artificial sweetener are poisons that might just have an easier time getting into the brain after a lengthy chat with your sweetheart.
The situation seems to be nothing short of serious - the researchers say that "after some decades of (often) daily use, a whole generation of users may suffer negative effects, perhaps as early as in middle age."
As great as it is to be connected, we might one day have to pay for having embraced a dangerous technology too willingly and too quickly. Not that microwaves for communication purposes are the only technology available. Other bands of the electromagnetic spectrum are less damaging, although they might also be less efficient.
But then - there's also G-Com technology, a new way of transmitting information that does not require any electromagnetic waves, which has already been demonstrated by a German scientist. The principle is described in a recent article on this site.
Here is the article that got me ranting:
Rat Brain Damage After ONE Cell Phone Exposure
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Protecting Our Health Cell
Phones Cause Damage To Rat Brains
Protecting Our Health.org
9-19-3Salford, LG, AE Brun, JL Eberhardt, L Malmgren and BRR Persson. 2003.
Nerve cell damage in mammalian brain after exposure to microwaves from GSM mobile phones
Environmental Health Perspectives 111:881-883.
Salford et al document serious neuronal damage in rat brains following exposure to microwave radiation from a cell phone, at levels comparable to what people would experience during normal use. Damage to nerve cells was observed in several places within the brain, including the cortex, hippocampus and basal ganglia. It was associated with evidence of leakage of proteins through the blood-brain barrier. The authors express concern that "after some decades of (often) daily use, a whole generation of [cell phone] users may suffer negative effects, perhaps as early as middle age."
In a companion news story in the issue of Environmental Health Perspectives in which the research is published, the journal comments: "It might be time to get serious about using your headset when talking on your mobile phone and encouraging your family members to do the same."
What did they do? Salford et al exposed rats to microwave radiation from a GSM cell phone, varying the intensity of radiation across a range that would be experienced by mobile phone users. The rats were contained within plastic trays inside a specially constructed wooden box that allowed free movement, other than to prevent direct contact with the source of radiation. One set of animals was placed in the box without turning on the transmitter; they served as a control group. The others were exposed to peak power densities of 0.24, 2.4 and 24 Watts/square meter (which translates to 2 milliWatts per kg, 20 mW/kg and 200 mW/kg, respectively). Each group contained 8 animals.
After a 50-day waiting period, during which the rats were monitored for behavioral abnormalities, Salford et al. killed the animals, carefully removed their brains, and studied them by applying stains and albumin antibodies that allowed detection of abnormalities.
What did they find? As expected, both control and experimental animals had albumin within the hypothalamus. This is normal.
Exposed animals, however, were much more likely to have albumin leaking from blood vessels in inappropriate locations.
A closer look at the cells within the brain revealed that exposed animals had "scattered and grouped dark neurons... often shrunken.. with loss of internal cell structures." These altered neurons were seen in all locations, but "especially the cortex, hippocampus and basal ganglia."
What does it mean? Most of the public debate about possible health effects of microwave radiation from cell phones has focused on cancer. While debate about this continues, most studies, including by Salford's research team, have had negative results.
This work focuses on a different mechanism which had been identified by earlier authors (e.g., Oscar and Hawkins 1977) but not pursued vigorously: increased permeability of the blood-brain barrier. These results cleary establish an adverse impact at levels within the range experienced by people using cell phones.
According to these scientists, "intense use of mobile phones by youngsters is a serious consideration. A neuronal damage of the kind described here may not have immediate, demonstrable consequences, even if repeated. In the long run, however, it may result in reduced brain reserve capacity that might be unveiled by other later neuronal disease or even the wear and tear of aging.
We cannot exclude that after some decades of (often) daily use, a whole generation of users may suffer negative effects, perhaps as early as in middle age."
That is a cautious way of saying that Salford and his team of scientists are very concerned about the possible human impacts of cell phone use. Indeed, as noted above, the journal in which these results were published, Environmental Health Perspectives (the journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences), went so far as to recommend using headsets.
Source: http://www.rense.com/general41/rat.htm
See also relatedIndia Daily - January 14, 2005:
Avoiding cancer - Indian scientists research new cell phone technologies that do not radiate cancer causing microwavesCell Phone Risks - Amy Worthington
June Russell's Health Facts
Cell Phone Manners, Safety, and Health EffectsResearch backs up fears on mobiles - an article on the "next generation" mobile phone technology, which increases the packet-transmission frequency from the current approximately 200/sec to as much as 1,000,000/sec, which means the secondary frequency (the packet transmission "tact frequency") is moving into the radio band and thus might have quite different effects - giving a clue to why the tests found immediate and quite different health effects compared with today's technology.
Mobile phones 'harm blood cells'
Heavy mobile use 'damages sperm'
Study indicates mobile phones increase tumor risk
Mobile phones tumour risk to young children
Mobile Phone Turns Enzyme Solution into A Gel
Do Microwave Technologies Cause Chronic Fatigue?
Cell phones Invisible hazards of the wireless age
Few people would be surprised to hear that cell phones are unhealthy. But how many of us actually know the degree of damage they cause, the extent of the cover-up by the industry, or that there is a viable solution? Dr. George Carlo, a mobile phone industry whistleblower, recently presented a talk in Vancouver about how electropollution from wireless technology can cause brain damage, cancer and an array of mental illnesses. I checked his facts against recent, peer-reviewed scientific papers and the results were startling. Dr. Carlo explained why the industry's user manuals don't warn of these health hazards: currently, there are pending class action lawsuits against them, which threaten to expose the entire industry, similar to the cases brought against "Big Tobacco", and the asbestos and silicone breast implant industries...World's safest mobile phone on way
The Wi-Guard technology works by randomising the field so it becomes more similar to naturally occurring electromagnetic fields that the body can deal with. Lawler said the amount of radiation emitted by man-made electromagnetic fields was one billion times higher than in 1950, due predominantly to the massive rise in the number of mobile phones and wireless laptops being used over the past decade.
This is an interesting technology, as randomizing the extra low frequency pattern could indeed make the radiation from cell phones and wireless devices less harmful for biological organisms. Of course it would be more efficient to implement this concept not as a remediation effort but as a basic feature of wireless standards...EU watchdog calls for urgent action on Wi-Fi, mobile phone radiation
Europe's top environmental watchdog is calling for immediate action to reduce exposure to radiation from Wi-Fi, mobile phones and their masts. It suggests that delay could lead to a health crisis similar to those caused by asbestos, smoking and lead in petrol. The warning, from the EU's European Environment Agency (EEA) follows an international scientific review which concluded that safety limits set for the radiation are "thousands of times too lenient", and an official British report last week which concluded that it could not rule out the development of cancers from using mobile phones.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Wednesday October 1 2003
updated on Sunday September 28 2008URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/10/01/bad_news_for_cell_phone_users.htm
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