Attention P-nkophiles: Put down your cellular phones, NOW!
Mr. P-nk received this from His beloved anceient Aunt Pink.
Read the literature and then let Mr. P-nk show you how to profit from the scare.
Beloved nephew:
Are all your friends talking about Wednesday night's ABC 20/20 report on
microwave hazards from cellular telephones?
They should be. Given the proclivities of the media to oversimplify and
sensationalize, one necessarily awaits clarification
from alternative sources. However, certain parts of the story appear absolutely
unimpeachable - particularly the part about
so-called conformity with FCC safety limits.
It turns out that the FCC testing requirements are so loosey-goosey that it's
extremely hard NOT to pass, even when the device
wouldn't pass as "safe" in the vast majority of actual uses. (They test
radiation in just one of the myriad possible positions in which
a user will hold the apparatus against the head - as if people knew what that
position is, and never moved their hand or head.
This lack of rigor in the safety requirements is nothing short of scandalous,
but alas, nothing new.
Although a newer model (a Nokia with the antenna tilted away from the head)
reduces the amount of microwave exposure,
that's in terms of a presumed safety limit. That is to say, at this point we
don't really know that even that lower exposure is safe.
Richard Branson says that he will only use a cell phone with a separate headset,
and I say that he is right.
If you aren't already using a headset, for the sake of your health and BRAIN, I
hope you'll do the prudent thing and commence
using one immediately.
Here are a just a couple of pertinent articles on the subject (but not the new
stuff on cancer).
The Sunday Times, 20th September 1998.
Mobile phones ?slow? the brain in new tests
Scientists have found that radiation emitted by
mobile telephones can effect the user?s short-term
ability to perform simple mental tasks.
The study, carried out at Bristol Royal Infirmary and
sponsored by the department of health, offers the
first objective evidence that the telephones, used by
8.5 Million people in Britain may alter memory and
interfere with concentration and spatial awareness.
It follows a study by Dera, the research agency of the
Ministry of Defence, showing that the emissions
alter nerve cell behavior of the part of the brain
controlling short-term memory and learning.
Previous research has found that the microwave
radiation produced by the phones could, in some
circumstances, promote brain tumours in rats.
This Bristol research, is, however, the first suggest
that phones could have an impact on human mental
skills.
In the Bristol experiments, researchers fastened a
transmitter that emitted microwaves identical to
those produced by most mobile phones to
volunteers? heads for half an hour at a time.
The volunteers were asked to perform psychological
tests to measure their memory, spatial awareness,
reaction time and vigilance.
Dr. Alan Preece, who led the study, found a clear
effect on participants? responses and will publish his
results later this year.
He said that his research had, already persuaded him
to change his own telephone for a model with a
lower emission.
The Daily Mirror
The Daily Express
From the Director of Powerwatch.
Headaches from Cellular Telephones:
Are They Real and What Are the Implications?
by Allan H. Frey
Environmental Health Perspectives (March 1998)
Abstract
There have been numerous recent reports of headaches occurring in
association with the use of hand-held cellular
telephones. Are these reported headaches real? Are they due to emissions
from telephones? There is reason to
believe that the answer is "yes" to both questions. There are several lines
of evidence to support this conclusion.
First, headaches as a consequence of exposure to low intensity microwaves
were reported in the literature 30
years ago. These were observed during the course of microwave hearing
research before there were cellular
telephones. Second, the bloodðbrain barrier appears to be involved in
headaches, and low intensity microwave
energy exposure affects the barrier. Third, the dopamineðopiate systems of
the brain appear to be involved in
headaches, and low intensity electromagnetic energy exposure affects those
systems. In all three lines of research,
the microwave energy used was approximately the same--in frequencies,
modulations, and incident energies--as
those emitted by present day cellular telephones. Could the current reports
of headaches be the canary in the coal
mine, warning of biologically significant effects?
Introduction
There have been many recent reports of headaches occurring in association
with the use of hand-held cellular
telephones ( 1, 2). Digital telephone users are more likely than analog
telephone users to report headaches. Are
these reported headaches real? Are they due to emissions from the
telephones? There is reason to believe that the
answer is "yes" to both questions.
There are several lines of evidence to support this conclusion, evidence
that was gathered in the 1960s and 1970s,
well before there were cellular telephone systems. The evidence from that
research now has unsettling
implications because of the recent development and now widespread use of
cellular telephones.
At that time, it was reported that when people are exposed to very low
intensity microwave energy with certain
frequency and modulation characteristics, they report that they hear sounds
( 3 , 4 ). This has been called the
microwave hearing effect. These sounds, e.g., buzzes, clicks, tones, etc.,
vary as a function of the modulation. The
incident average power density at the head needed to induce the effect is
quite low, in microwatts per square
centimeter. The transmitting antenna can be many feet away.
The salient characteristics of the primary cellular telephone systems in use
today are shown in Table 1. The
transmitting frequencies fall in the most sensitive band for the microwave
hearing effect ( 5 ). The transmitting
frequencies are also in the band that has maximal penetration into the head
( 4 ). Further, when the head is shielded
from the microwave energy, the area of the head that needs to be exposed to
the microwaves in order for people to
perceive the effect is in proximity to the antenna of present day cellular
telephones ( 4 ).
In a series of experiments, the microwave hearing effect apparently occurred
within the cochlea ( 6 ð 9 ). (There is
some confusion in the literature because a few people, using high power
energy delivered by applicators placed on
the head, induced vibration in the head; they called this microwave hearing,
but it is a different phenomena.)
Microwave hearing is a robust effect. Puranen and Jokela ( 10 ), for
example, stated in a recent review that "...the
microwave auditory effect is the only well established specific effect in
realistic exposure situations."
In the context of this paper, the most important point that came out of the
microwave hearing research that I did in
the 1960s is the finding that my human subjects were reporting headaches. I
found that I also was getting headaches
when I was in the microwave field, and I do not get headaches. I reported
the headache phenomena in the 1960s ( 5
).
At that time I could not do experimentation on the headache phenomena.
Little was known about headaches and
there were no suitable animal models. I was sufficiently concerned about the
headache phenomena that I stopped
doing microwave hearing research with humans. In sum, 30 years ago I
encountered and reported headaches from
microwave energy exposure at approximately the same frequencies,
modulations, and incident energies that present
day cellular telephones emit.
Two other lines of research done at that time bear on the cellular telephone
headache question: one involves the
bloodðbrain barrier, and the other involves the dopamineð
opiate systems of the brain.
BloodðBrain Barrier
The bloodðbrain barrier separates the brain and cerebral spinal fluid of the
central nervous system from the blood.
It primarily consists of an essentially continuous layer of cells lining the
blood vessels of the brain. It is a critical
regulatory interface.
Recent data indicate that breakdown of the bloodðbrain barrier may be
involved in headaches ( 11 ð 13 ). There is
significant evidence in the literature that indicates the bloodðbrain
barrier does break down with exposure to low
intensity cellular telephone frequency band microwave energy.
Several fluorescent dyes bind to serum protein when injected into the blood
stream. These have been used to study
the nature of this regulatory interface and have been found to be quite
useful. I used one of these, sodium
fluorescein, to explore the effects of exposure of animals to microwave
energy ( 14 ). I found penetration of the
barrier in response to exposure to microwave energy; fluorescence was found
in the diencephalon level of the
brain as well as, to some extent, in the mesencephalon and metencephalon.
The differences in brain fluorescence
between the exposed and sham-exposed animals was statistically significant.
Pulse-modulated energy was more
effective than continuous ( 14 ).
Oscar and Hawkins ( 15 ) extended the work by exposing rats to microwave
energy to assess the uptake of several
radioactive neutral polar substances in the brain. They observed barrier
permeability increases for mannitol and
inulin but not for high molecular weight dextrin. The apparent permeability
change, which was reversible, was
greatest in the medulla, followed in decreasing order by the cerebellum and
hypothalamus. It was also found that
microwave energy exposure of the same average power but with different pulse
characteristics produced different
uptake levels.
Albert ( 16 ) and Albert and Kerns ( 17 ), using yet another technique,
exposed Chinese hamsters to microwave
energy and injected them with various electron dense tracers. Specimens were
then prepared for light and electron
microscopic examination. The exposed and sham-exposed groups differed in
that exposed animals showed tracer
penetration of the barrier in the cerebral and cerebellar cortices, medulla,
thalamus, and hypothalamus. Thus, a
picture was unfolding which indicates that low intensity microwave exposure
opens the bloodðbrain barrier, a
particularly important biological effect.
But then the field was thrown into confusion. Over a 2-year period, J.H.
Merritt made oral presentations in which
he stated that he replicated the Frey et al. work ( 14 ) and Oscar and
Hawkins work ( 15 ) and could not find an
effect. When he finally submitted a manuscript for publication, a
statistical analysis of the presented data by the
editor and a reviewer showed that, in fact, his data supported the opposite
conclusion and provided a confirmation
of the findings of Frey et al. ( 14 ). When the editor brought this to his
attention and asked him to revise the paper to
include the data analysis and to revise his conclusions, Merritt withdrew
his manuscript ( 18 , 19 ). Over a 2-year
period, A.W. Guy et al. also made oral presentations in which they reported
that they had replicated earlier work
using fluorescent dyes and did not find a change in the bloodðbrain barrier,
but they did not make available details
of their methods and the statistical analysis underlying their conclusions.
When details were eventually obtained, it
was found that they used intraperitoneal injections instead of intravenous
injections, as used in the other studies
without compensating for the injection method and differences in time for
the blood to deliver the dye to the
bloodðbrain barrier. The dye did not have time to fully reach the
bloodðbrain barrier. They also inappropriately
used the t -test to compare exposed and control groups, using data with high
variability, an ordinal scale, and only
four animals in each group ( 18 , 20 ). Thus, the data actually were quite
consistent and indicated that the bloodð
brain barrier opens in response to low intensity microwave energy exposure.
At this point, the U.S. Department of
Defense decided to effectively terminate funding for bloodðbrain barrier
experiments that used low intensity
microwave energy ( 18 , 19 ).
The data that was collected before this line of research was terminated,
considered with recent data indicating that
bloodð brain barrier permeability is involved in headaches, suggest that the
reported headaches associated with
cellular telephone use are real and may be due to the cellular telephone
emissions. [I also found and reported that
the bloodðvitreous humor barrier of the eye was affected by low intensity
microwave energy exposure ( 21 , 22 ).
This might also be of consequence in cellular telephone use.]
DopamineðOpiate Systems of the Brain
There is now data in the literature which indicates that the dopamineðopiate
system may be involved in headaches (
23 ð 25 ). This is of consequence because it provides yet another basis for
the belief that cellular
telephone-associated headache reports have a basis in fact. There is a
substantial body of data indicating that the
dopamineðopiate systems are influenced by electromagnetic fields, including
those at cellular telephone
frequencies ( 26 ).
In the early 1970s, I hypothesized that the dopamine systems of the brain,
in part, mediate the effects of exposure to
electromagnetic fields ( 27 , 28 ). A series of experiments to test the
hypothesis indicate that the dopamine systems
of the brain are involved ( 26 , 29 ). I extended the dopamine hypothesis to
include the opiate systems and
provided a comprehensive integration of the evidence, indicating an effect
of electromagnetic fields on the brain's
dopamineðopiate systems ( 30 , 31 ). A series of experiments followed that
supported the hypothesis ( 26 ).
Thus, there is now a substantial body of data indicating that brain systems,
particularly the opiateðdopamine
systems, are influenced by exposure to brief, very low intensity
electromagnetic fields. These systems could be
involved in the reported headaches.
Discussion
The use of hand-held cellular telephones raises a number of questions. Are
these telephones safe? There is an
abundance of evidence to support a conclusion that the reported headaches
from cellular telephone use are a real
phenomena. Thirty years ago, headaches as a consequence of exposure to low
intensity microwaves were reported
in the literature. These headaches were observed during the course of
microwave hearing research before cellular
telephones were developed. The bloodðbrain barrier appears to be involved in
headaches, and low intensity
microwave energy exposure affects the barrier. The dopamineðopiate systems
of the brain appear to be involved in
headaches, and low intensity electromagnetic energy exposure affects those
systems. In all three lines of research,
the energy used was approximately the same in frequencies, modulations, and
incident energies as those emitted by
present day cellular telephones. These current reports of headaches may be
the canary in the coal mine, warning of
biologically significant effects.
The use of cellular telephones exposes nearby people, as well as the users,
to microwave energy. Should this be
allowed? There is not sufficient data at this time to answer this question;
but in view of the fact that there has not
been a reasonable search for such data, should people be exposed to
second-hand microwave emissions without
their consent?
There are a few people who would claim that there has been a search, as
indicated by studies on the biological
effects of microwave emissions which have not revealed a hazard. But the
conflicts of interest and questions on the
actions of those who decided what research was done and published have been
documented by Steneck ( 18 , 19 ).
Thus, this claim that there has been a search is hardly credible. Nothing
much has changed in the control of this
area of biological research, as far as I can see, since Steneck did his
in-depth study of this research area. (Steneck,
at the time, was Director of the Collegiate Institute for Values and Science
at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor. He and institute fellows in biology and physics did their case study
with a major grant from the National
Science Foundation's Program for Ethics and Values in Science and
Technology.)
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