HEAVY CELLPHONE CAN CAUSE BRAIN CANCER
Source Article By Dr. Mercola:
No one wants to hear that
something as “indispensable” as your cell phone might cause grave harm to your
health, but that’s exactly what mounting evidence tells us we’re faced with.
Wireless phones and other gadgets
have the potential to cause all sorts of health problems, from headaches to
brain tumors. The link between brain cancer and cell phone use has been a
particularly persistent one, and mounting research has only made this
association stronger...
As mentioned in the featured
video, previous research has shown that those who begin using cell phones
heavily before age 20 have four to five times more brain cancer by their late
20s, compared to those whose exposure is minimal.
In 2011, the International Agency
for Research on Cancer (IARC), an arm of the World Health Organization (WHO),
declared cell phones a Class B Carcinogen, meaning a “possible cancer-causing
agent,” based on the available research.
This places cell phones in the
same category as diesel engine exhaust, some pesticides, and some heavy metals.
The expert panel ruled that there was “some evidence” that regular cell phone
use increased the risk of two types of tumors – brain tumors (gliomas) and
acoustic neuromas.
When you consider the fact that
your body is bioelectric, it’s easier to understand how and why biological
damage from wireless phones might occur.1
For starters, your body uses
electrons to communicate, and inside every cell are mitochondria, the “power
plants” of the cell, and these mitochondria can be adversely impacted by
electromagnetic fields, resulting in cellular dysfunction. Other mechanisms of
harm have also been discovered in recent years.
Wireless Phone Use Increases Risk
of Malignant Brain Tumor
The latest analysis, 2, 3
published online ahead of print in October, was performed by Dr. Lennart
Hardell, a professor of oncology at University of Örebro in Sweden, and
statistician Michael Carlberg from the same University.
The pair looked at data from two
previous case-controlled studies on Swedish patients diagnosed with malignant
brain tumors during the periods of 1997-2003 and 2007-2009.
The patients were between the
ages of 18 and 80 years old at the time of their diagnosis. Cell phone use was
ascertained via questionnaires. (Use of a hands-free device counted as
non-exposure.) In all, nearly 1,500 brain cancer patients were included, along
with 3,530 cancer-free controls.
Using regression analysis,
adjusted for gender, age, year of diagnosis, and socioeconomic index, the odds
of developing a malignant and highly lethal brain cancer called glioma rose
concurrently with increased cell phone use.
The more hours spent with a cell
phone pressed to their ear, and the more years they’d spent using a mobile
phone, the higher the odds were.
Those who logged the most amount
of hours on their cell phones were twice as likely to develop glioma compared
to those who used them the least
Those who used either a cell
phone or cordless house phone for more than 25 years had triple the risk of
glioma, compared to those who had used wireless telephones for less than one
year
To put this risk ratio into some
perspective, just over five people out of 100,000 were diagnosed with malignant
brain cancer between 1995 and 2002. If that rate triples, the odds of
developing a malignant brain tumor rise to about 16 out of 100,000.
But, there are also signs that
technology is progressively getting more harmful—not less so... As noted in the
featured article: 4
“The case control studies covered
periods during which phone technologies had changed considerably. It started
with first generation analogue phones that had an output power of 1 W at about
900 MHz
The 2nd generation GSM (Global
System for Mobile Communication) phones (2G) with either 900 or 1800 MHz
frequency had pulsed output power averaging tens of mW.
The 3rd generation (3G) phones
UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) are more amplitude modulated
than pulsed, and typically use a broad frequency band (5 MHz width) from 700-3
590 MHz on a worldwide basis, and from 900-2 170 MHz in Europe with output
power of the order of tens of μW.”
The findings show that 3G phones
may cause more harm than earlier versions, raising the risk of brain cancer
four-fold. It also appears to have shorter latency period—just five to 10
years, compared to about 25 years for earlier mobile phone versions.
Proposed Mechanisms of Harm
One mechanism of harm, published
in 2010, 5 explains how electromagnetic fields damage your cells and DNA by
inducing a cellular stress response. The research was conducted by Dr. Martin
Blank, 6 PhD, and a former Associate Professor at Columbia University in the
department of physiology and cellular biophysics, and past president of the
Bioelectromagnetics Society.
He gave an informative speech at
the November 18, 2010 Commonwealth Club of California program, "The Health
Effects of Electromagnetic Fields," co-sponsored by
ElectromagneticHealth.org.
In his lecture, Dr. Blank
explained that DNA, with its “coil of coils” structure, is very vulnerable to
electromagnetic fields. It possesses the same structural characteristics of a
fractal antenna (electronic conduction and self-symmetry), and these two
properties allow for greater reactivity of DNA to electromagnetic fields than
other tissues.
Moreover, no heat is required for
this DNA damage to occur. Dr. Blank believes the potential harm of wireless
technologies can be significant, and that there’s plenty of peer-reviewed
research to back up such suspicions.
A review of 11 long-term
epidemiologic studies published in the journal Surgical Neurology7 in 2009
revealed that using a cell phone for 10 years or longer approximately doubles
your risk of being diagnosed with a brain tumor on the same side of the head
where the cell phone is typically held. Both Dr. Hardell and Carlberg were
involved in that study as well, and these findings are very similar to the
findings in their latest review, discussed earlier.
Another important study, funded
by the US government, was published in JAMA8, 9 in 2011. Using a specialized
brain scanner capable of detecting alterations in glucose, the researchers
determined that cell phone radiation triggers your brain cells to metabolize
glucose at an increased rate. Glucose metabolism equates to cell activation, so
the findings indicate that radiation from your cell phone has a well-defined
measurable influence on your brain. Essentially, each time you put a cell
phone up to your ear, you’re artificially activating your brain cells. While
that much is clear, it’s still unknown whether this excess glucose production
is harmful, or can cause a cascade of problems down the line.
Common-Sense Guidelines to protect
your and Your Family’s Health
It’s important to note that
researchers are in general agreement that there’s a latency period of about 10
years or more before the damage shows up, which places children at greatest
risk—a risk that is potentially exacerbated with more modern 3G technologies,
which appear to be even more harmful than earlier versions.
From my perspective, the evidence
clearly indicates that we need to invoke the precautionary principle with
regards to cell phone use, as well as other wireless technologies. Until the
industry starts taking this matter seriously, the responsibility to keep
children safe falls on the parents. To minimize the risk to your brain, and
that of your child, pay heed to the following advice:
* Don’t let your child use a cell
phone. Barring a life-threatening emergency, children should not use a cell
phone, or a wireless device of any type. Children are far more vulnerable to
cell phone radiation than adults, because of their thinner skull bones.
* Keep your cell phone use to a
minimum. Turn your cell phone off more often. Reserve it for emergencies or
important matters. As long as your cell phone is on, it emits radiation
intermittently, even when you are not actually making a call. Use a land line
at home and at work.
* Reduce or eliminate your use of
other wireless devices. Just as with cell phones, it is important to ask
yourself whether or not you really need to use them every single time. If you
must use a portable home phone, use the older kind that operates at 900 MHz.
They are no safer during calls, but at least some of them do not broadcast
constantly even when no call is being made. Note the only way to truly be sure
if there is an exposure from your cordless phone is to measure with an electrosmog
meter, and it must be one that goes up to the frequency of your portable phone
(so old meters won’t help much). As many portable phones are 5.8 Gigahertz, we
recommend you look for RF meters that go up to 8 Gigahertz.
You can find RF meters at
www.EMFSafetyStore.com. Even without an RF meter, you can be fairly certain
your portable phone is problematic if the technology is labeled DECT, or
digitally enhanced cordless technology. Alternatively, you can be very careful
with the base station placement as that causes the bulk of the problem since it
transmits signals 24/7, even when you aren't talking. If you can keep the base
station at least three rooms away from where you spend most of your time, and
especially your bedroom, they may not be as damaging to your health. Ideally it
would be helpful to turn off or disconnect your base station every night before
you go to bed.
* Limit cell phone use to areas
with excellent reception. The weaker the reception, the more power your phone
must use to transmit, and the more power it uses, the more radiation it emits,
and the deeper the dangerous radio waves penetrate into your body. Ideally, you
should only use your phone with full bars and good reception.
* Avoid carrying your cell phone
on your body, and do not sleep with it below your pillow or near your head.
Ideally, put it in your purse or carrying bag. Placing a cell phone in your bra
or in a shirt pocket over your heart is asking for trouble, as is placing it in
a man's pocket if he seeks to preserve his fertility. The most dangerous place
to be, in terms of radiation exposure, is within about six inches of the
emitting antenna. You do not want any part of your body within that area while
the phone is on.
Don't assume one cell phone is
safer than another. There's no such thing as a "safe" cell phone.
* Respect others; many are highly
sensitive to EMF. Some people who have become sensitive can feel the effects of
others' cell phones in the same room, even when it is on but not being used. If
you are in a meeting, on public transportation, in a courtroom or other public
places, such as a doctor's office, keep your cell phone turned off out of
consideration for the “secondhand radiation” effects. Children are also more
vulnerable, so please avoid using your cell phone near children.
* Use a well-shielded wired
headset: Wired headsets will certainly allow you to keep the cell phone farther
away from your body. However, if a wired headset is not well-shielded -- and
most of them are not -- the wire itself can act as an antenna attracting and
transmitting radiation directly to your brain. So make sure the wire used to
transmit the signal to your ear is shielded. One of the best kinds of headsets uses
a combination of shielded wire and air-tube. These operate like a stethoscope,
transmitting the sound to your head as an actual sound wave; although there are
wires that still must be shielded, there is no wire that goes all the way up to
your head.
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