Open letter by UK medical doctors:
Health and safety of Wi-Fi and mobile phones
We wish to highlight our concern over the safety of exposure to microwave radiation from wireless technology, particularly for vulnerable groups like children, pregnant women, the elderly and those with compromised health.
There is growing concern that chronic (long-term) exposure to radiofrequency/microwave radiation from wireless technologies causes damage, particularly genetic damage, cognitive damage, cancer and decreased fertility. There is now substantial evidence of a link between mobile phone use and brain cancer. This was recognised by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)’s 30-strong panel of scientists, which in 2011 classed radiofrequency radiation as “possibly carcinogenic”.
Additionally, doctors are encountering a significant and growing number of people presenting with a range of acute (short-term) symptoms from wireless radiation, including headaches, palpitations, rashes, fatigue, sleep disturbance, allergies and memory and concentration problems.
International medical agencies have recognised the evidence of harm (see appended list) but these rulings may take many years to be reflected in public health policy. This controversy is a common characteristic of scientific understanding when environmental exposures are new.
New technologies and substances often come with scientific conflict, which can continue for several decades before consensus is achieved. Commercial pressures often delay the acceptance of health risks, even when scientific evidence is compelling. In the case of tobacco, asbestos, x-rays and leaded petrol, for example, it took many decades before damage was established and accepted by health agencies and during those decades millions of people suffered ill health and death as a result of the delay. Now, despite evidence of harm, wireless technology is being rolled out widely.
We urge health agencies and the public to act immediately to reduce exposure to radiofrequency/microwave radiation. This is especially important for children, who are physiologically more vulnerable to this exposure and for whom adults have a safeguarding responsibility.
Children’s health should be put ahead of convenience and commercial benefits. Children should not use mobile phones except in an emergency, and WiFi should be replaced with wired alternatives in schools and other settings where children spend considerable time.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Elizabeth Evans MA (Cantab), MBBS (Lond), DRCOG – medical doctor
Dr Andrew Tresidder MRCGP (1989), MBBS (Lond) – medical doctor
Dr Erica Mallery Blythe BM – medical doctor
BCM SSITA London WC1N 3XX // www.ssita.org.uk
Appendix – International Rulings
1. In 2011 the World Health Organization’s scientific panel, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), reviewed all the evidence on carcinogenesis (cancer-causing) and categorised electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones and Wi-Fi as Possibly Carcinogenic (Class 2B).
See http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf
2. The Council of Europe has called for member states to take measures to reduce exposure to electromagnetic fields and give preference to wired internet connections for children, particularly in schools and classrooms. The Parliamentary Assembly stated that “the Assembly regrets that, despite calls for the respect of the precautionary principle and despite all the recommendations, declarations and a number of statutory and legislative advances, there is still a lack of reaction to known or emerging environmental and health risks and virtually systematic delays in adopting and implementing effecti ve preventive measures. Waiting for high levels of scientific and clinical proof before taking action to prevent well-known risks can lead to very high health and economic costs, as was the case with asbestos, leaded petrol and tobacco.”.
See http://assembly.coe.int/mainf.asp?link=/documents/adoptedtext/ta11/eres1815.htm
3. The BioInitiative Report, updated in 2012 by 29 scientists, states that biological effects are clearly established and occur at very low levels of exposure to electromagnetic fields and radiofrequency radiation from just minutes of exposure to mobile phone masts (cell towers), WI-FI, and wireless utility ‘smart’ meters.
See http://www.bioinitiative.org/conclusions
4. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine stated in a 2012 Position Paper that “Multiple studies correlate RF exposure with diseases such as cancer, neurological disease, reproductive disorders, immune dysfunction, and electromagnetic hypersensitivity.”
See http://aaemonline.org/emf_rf_position.html
5. International Society of Doctors for the environment (ISDE) and Irish Doctors’ Environmental Association (IDEA) state that “there is sufficient scientific evidence to warrant more stringent controls on the level and distribution of electromagnetic radiation [EMR]. The joint statement and recommendations are part of a call by medical and scientific experts for safe technologies in schools.”
See http://www.env-health.org/news/members-news/article/isde-idea-statement-on
6. The Safe Schools Report 2012 lists statements by other doctors and medical associations raising concerns over children’s exposure to electromagnetic fields from Wi-Fi and other wireless technology.
See http://Wi-Fiinschools.org.uk/resources/safeschools2012.pdf
This is a wonderfully insightful article and it should be rolled out en-masse to every school and hospital in the country. I install wireless technology within these environments but have recognised the dangers for a long time.
The main problem is we are all being led by brain-cripples who have absolutely no interest (other than self-interest) in protecting people; they are far more interested in profits for themselves. One need only look towards evil companies such as Monsanto and their ilk to recognise this fact. Big Pharma is another prime example. The reality is: Only that which is natural is right; there are no exceptions!
This earth is being governed by the most insidious and greedy people this planet has ever known. Governments are in collusion with each other in the arrogant belief that they know what is best for the rest of us.
The peoples of all nations are sleep-walking to servitude. Nothing has changed for thousands of years and still we allow ourselves to be led by these destructive idiots. So how do they cling to power? In exactly the same way as this type of people have for millennia; the answer is simple: by force!
Will things change when there is so much money at stake? Highly unlikely. Globalisation has brought about massive corporations whose only interest in life is to make masses of money; and to hell with the consequences.
That aside, we are in a time when all things will now totally collapse of there own accord. Anyone with just a little insight can see the terrible consequences of what this mankind has done. That which is not built upon a sound foundation will, and must, eventually collapse.
i agree.problem is,the bees and trees are collapsing along with it.it shames me to see pictures of manhattan island before “progress” and after.now obama and his flakes are coming full force with their agenda to “manhattanize” our whole country here.new “seed” laws are coming into play now restricting any life form from legal existence if it cant be factory farmed.the cities and apartment complexes,businesses,ect spraying herbicides ritually accross the entire state here.the coastal mountain range here in oregon is almost completely dead,the parts they havent already clearcut.been sick from the smartgrid since it came.watched billions of life forms die and disappear from this area that was thriving with life in 2009.phone jacks for landlines are painted over and disabled here,cell towers on every block,wifi in every school.verizon came door to door here last month,now every apartment here(about 16 large apartment complexes in a 2 mile radius with 150-400 units each)now has high powered wifi routers that cannot be turned off,and a wifi beacon transmiting 850 ft along with the smartgrid routers transmitting 125 miles,and smartmeters 30 miles each through the cells of everything that lives,or used to live.i am watching bees drop dead daily here,every single day,and twice as many on the weekly “spray day”.every business and rental residence in the metropolitan area here is spraying poisons labeled “green” by the corps who make them.to call the utility gets you a smartgrid PR person who could give a crap less about you or the future of the planet,call the city and you get the eternal run around.the media is on the take,environmental org.s claim “no funding for that” and give you the donation ploy.they are adding to these networks.disabled people like me cant move.there is no car,no money,no energy,no place free of these frequencies.but hey,your cell phone works in the mountains now,and you can get online “free” at the beach
This is a very good letter. There must be other doctors who willing to sign this, especially when they’ve read it… Dr David Dowson, a retired specialist in Bath would I’m sure.
Who is it addressed to? May we take copies and pass this on?
Phillip and Deanna, your comments are articulate and help spur us on – thank you.
By all means take copies and forward it Stephanie.
Hi,
Every heard of the photoelectric effect? I recommend anyone reading this and feeling concerned should give it a whirl on the old Google.
It was demonstrated by a chap called Einstein over a hundred years ago. Its what got him his Nobel. It quite categorically shows that There is no possibility for electromagnetic radiation at these frequencies to interact with human tissue, at any intensity, because the frequencies cannot cause ionisation. So whatever you guys think is going on has nothing to do with Wifi or cell phones or anything else that we have in our homes that goes beep.
I would very much like to see what evidence there exists to support this claim, beyond anecdotal examples and statistical correlations. Do you for example have what I believe clinicians call a credible pathway for this interaction to occur? And one that you can demonstrate experimentally?
There are a lot of good reason for kids not to have cell phones but this is not one of them.
Hi Liam,
The basic premise that the photon-energy of non-ionizing radiation is too low to have biological effects is wrong. If this were true, plants (which use non-ionizing visible light for photosynthesis) could not exist, nor would anyone be able to see because our eyes also have to respond to light.
Also, some miss the fact that living organisms conduct electricity. This means that they can act as antennas to pick up a radio signal and convert the energy of countless numbers of its photons acting together to give strong coherent electric currents with sufficient energy to have biological effects.
Our brains and nervous systems are electrical organs with tremendous powers of amplification (running at only around 80 millivolts) that make our best supercomputers look like children’s toys. Do you really expect them not to be affected by electric currents imposed on them by exposure to externally applied electromagnetic fields?
You might like to take a look around our website for the evidence that you seek. Dr Andrew Goldsworthy’s (hon. lecturer at Imperial College London) paper on bio effects is a good place to start. http://www.foodsmatter.com/es/health_risks/articles/goldsworthy-biological-effects-04-12.pdf Search around for Prof Henry Lai’s work, Dr Devra Davis, Prof Hardell, Klinghardt, Von Klitzing, Belpomme, etc. There are many, many more for those with the eyes to see.
Hi and thanks for replying, much appreciated.
Of course plants have evolved to use the sun as a power source for photosynthesis, and our eyes are sensitive to a narrow window of EM. Its also the case that we get burnt in the sun. Electro-chemical interactions are not at all the same as ionisation.
Its true that our CNS is essentially an electrical control system but what people also don’t realise is that it is incredibly noisy already, it is totally un-sheilded from other parts of the CNS, never mind the environment. It has an SNR that would be totally unusable in a conventional communication system, but there is a compelling argument that the system is based on constant feedback, that it uses something remarkably similar to Bayesian statistical analysis to function, which suggests very high noise tolerance.
But thats where the story ends. The idea that the human body coherently amplifies (in-phase, single frequency, plus additional gain) incomming EM is absurd, there is no mechanism for that. And anything that follows from that can be discounted.
Claiming that something is 100% safe is a daunting task however proving that it is not, should be trivial, if that is true. If the claims made in the paper you linked to are true then we would expect epidemic levels of non-ionising radiation related diseases and illnesses related to cell-phone and wifi usage, controlling for other lifestyle factors of course. Nobody has produced this work, which is remarkable given the purported controversy of this technology and the fierce competition among academic clinicians who would be strongly motivated to be the first to show such an effect, if it existed.
There are many references in that paper (as well as quite a few hand-waving arguments), so I chose one, and you will have to trust me that it is the first one I picked. There is even a link to it at the bottom of the page. It is used to back up the claim that:
“A number of epidemiological studies have shown significant reductions in sperm motility, viability and quantity in men using cell phones for more than a few hours a day (Fejes et
al.2005; Agarwal et al. 2006”
So i looked up the paper and guess what? Not only were the subjects of the paper infertile men to begin with, who were undergoing fertility treatment (regime unreported), and who’s cell phone usage monitoring mechanism was not clear (self-reporting?) but, and I am quoting directly from the paper here: “the difference in mean sperm count between the three groups or between different levels of cell phone usage was not significantly different (P > 0.05)”.
This isn’t a simple case of miss-interpretation, the difference are quite stark and the argument used in the paper you linked to is clearly a distortion of the qualified and weak original conclusion. Agarwal also states that the mechanism is unknown. There is an expression for this, it is called Cheery-Picking.
If one is to make a credible argument, then one must acknowledge the weaknesses inherent in that argument and not simply pick the bits that suit the conclusion.
Understand none of this is personal 🙂 Thanks again for engaging.
With respect.
Hi Liam,
Thanks for your comments. However, you are wrong when you say that the nervous system is totally unshielded because the whole bang-shoot, from individual nerve axons to the columns of cells in the cerebral cortex that are the basis of its Bayesian logic are based on coaxial technology and is inherently resistant to self-interference. The outer conductor is the external medium surrounding the cells, the internal conductor is the inside of the cells and the insulator separating the two is the cell membrane, which has an incredibly high resistance to DC.
As you may know, the insides of most cells are maintained at voltages in the region of 100mV negative to the outside but the cell membrane is only about 10nm thick, which means that it normally withstands a voltage gradient in the region of 10 million volts per metre. Nerve impulses (action potentials) are due to a temporary reduction in that voltage that propagates along the cell membrane without loss due to the opening and closing of ion channels in proper sequence. It is in effect a continuous in-line amplifier.
However, problems arise when alternating fields are applied because they remove some of the calcium ions that help to stabilise these membranes so that they begin to leak. This allows free calcium ions to flow through them into the cells’ interiors down a huge electrochemical gradient (circa 1000:1). This interferes with the function of neurons, which normally use a brief pulse of calcium coming from internal stores to trigger the release of their neurotransmitters, which then pass on the signal to the other neurons in the network.
However, the predicted increase in intracellular calcium brought about by alternating electromagnetic fields puts the neurons into hair-trigger mode which makes them more likely to release their neurotransmitters and make the whole network hyperactive. This would be fine were it not for the fact that some of these transmitted signals will be spurious and sometimes lead the brain off in directions that it may not otherwise have gone and result in a loss of concentration or, in severe cases, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This is bad enough when it occurs in an adult, but when it occurs in the foetus or very young child up to about 18 months old, it interferes with the early learning process (which is concerned mainly with learning how to use its sense organs and interact with other people) it can result in a whole range of autistic spectrum disorders, depending on the degree and type of neurological damage done. You should find a fully referenced explanation of the underlying mechanism of this at http://www.foodsmatter.com/es/health_risks/articles/goldsworthy-biological-effects-04-12.pdf I hope you will find it helpful.
With respect to your doubts about the effects on male fertility, times have moved on since the initial epidemiological studies on partially fertile men. If you follow up the more recent literature on the subject, you will find that controlled experiment using ejaculated sperm from healthy donors also showed similar deleterious effects following either exposure to mobile phone or WiFi signals. Personally, I find controlled experiments much more convincing than epidemiological studies although it is understandable why the mobile phone industry prefers epidemiology since it is often open to other interpretations and buys them more time. Yes, controlled experiments are better and we should do more of them.
Finally, your point about the nervous system having no amplifying capacity; are you aware that the dark adapted human is reported to be able to detect a single photon, and the threshold of human hearing is less than a billionth of a watt? How anyone can say that this can be done without a huge degree of amplification defeats me.
Kind regards
Andrew Goldsworthy.
Why, then, did the Russians,and the Americans in the 1960s make “weapons” using these frequencies, in order to irradiate, and so destroy the enemy population, thus leaving a country wide open and intact, to walk into?
They did irradiate the USA embassey in Moscow, which resulted in most of the staff in the space of 2 or 3 years falling ill with various cancers and chronic illnesses. The source was detected.
With the end of the cold war, the technology was handed over to industry, who used it to make microwave ovens– the initial ones leaked and people who liked to watch the food, suffered from cateracts, and other eye conditions. (Though this problem was corrected they still leak microwaves, to this day)
Also Liam , you could try growing Cress Seeds next to your wirelss router, as the Swedish schoolgirls did and see what happens, comparing the growth with seeds set in a wifi- free area, if you want proof of damage to living cells.
Anecdotes don’t constitute evidence. I refer you to the second-last paragraph of my post. BTW as far as I am aware, microwave oven tech was discovered by radar technicians working on high-powered airborne radars in the 1940s, and have been commercially available since then.
I live in a small village in Ireland. Up until a few years ago there was an abundance of wildlife, bats, bees, flocks of birds etc. When a Vodafone antenna mast arrived the bats started dying in my garden, along with the bees who flew and crawled in circles, aimlessly. The birds disappeared. Family pets developed skin lesions, bleeding from the eyes and the paws.
Now ‘Irish Water’ are rolling out the installation of water meters which will work via transponders – powered by microwaves. The Irish Water company say that these meters will work on the 868 MHZ frequency – and are not microwaves. Kilkenny County Council have acknowledged that they are operated by microwaves.
Every house/flat in Ireland will have one of these meters which will be remotely viewed thus saving money. Does anyone know if these are Smart Meters and if so, is there anything to be done about it ? Installation starts in August. Irish Water won’t release details yet of what kind of meter will be used, as ‘it hasn’t been decided yet’. Could they work via a passive RFID chip, and be therefore less harmful ?
The letter is excellent – the trouble is there are many such letters and they are all being ignored, but hopefully it will do the job of bringing the day nearer when this toxic energy will be banned. So thank you doctors for doing your best to get the message across.
For the growing numbers of us whose lives have been permanently blighted by illegal microwave pollution of our homes, and who face yet higher levels of irradiation 24/7 via Smart electric and water meters on or near our homes the future looks grim.
As Wendy has said, world governments have been experimenting with this toxic energy for decades, so effective is its destructive properties against all life forms. Many lives have been lost and the body count is rising because of this enforced irradiation of the general population.
Yes, the highly paid employees of Industry will insist that this radiation is safe, and waste our time, energy and focus on engaging in arguments to put us on the defensive. It is time to stop being distracted by shills or those who are genuinely so misguided that no amount of reasoning, no amount of evidence, will change their minds.
Could the Irish Doctors Environmental Association write a similar letter to the Irish Government, asking them to change their current policy of misleading the public and ignoring those who are dying from microwave radiation poisoning?
Could both the British and Irish doctors hold a press conference – to be aired on Youtube (if the mainstream media ignore it) attesting to the fact that this radiation known to be toxic for decades is irreparably damaging the health of our children and is nothing short of genocide.
I want to help to stop this kind of technology …. I among hundreds of thousands of people being experimented on and smart meters are part of it…