Cell Phones are the Cigarettes of the 21st Century

A comparison of cell phone use, which continues its meteoric rise and cigarette smoking, is illustrative. Just a few of the similarities between the two habits include:

• Manufacturers and industry leaders who either hide or debunk unfavorable study results and continue to promote their products despite awareness of the significant dangers to public health
• Government conflict of interest created by lobbies for both industries and revenues collected from use taxes
• Expensive, effective marketing campaigns aimed at every segment of society, including children
• Massive amounts of scientific data proving beyond a shadow of a doubt the direct link between these products and life-threatening damage to the human body
• The addictive nature of both products

The primary distinction between cell phone use and cigarettes is that smoking has been around long enough to confirm it can, indeed, be a fatal habit. According to a 2008 World Health Organization (WHO) report, tobacco use kills 5 million people a year worldwide, and is a risk factor in six of the eight leading causes of death.

The Evidence of Cell Phone Danger Continues to Pour In

These are just a few recent examples of study data linking electromagnetic radiation and cell phone use to a stunning array of serious health concerns:

• At a recent Senate Committee hearing, witnesses testified that cell phone use has been linked to salivary gland tumors
• Wearing a cell phone on your hip – either on your belt or in a pocket – has been linked to decreased bone density in the pelvic region. All the other vital organs located in your pelvic region – your liver, kidney, bladder, colon and reproductive organs – are also susceptible to radiation damage.
• Proximity to cell phone towers causes an increase in the symptoms of electromagnetic hypersensitivity, including fatigue, sleep disturbances, visual and auditory disturbances, and cardiovascular effects, just to name a few.

Cell Phones and Brain Cancer

Thanks to a multimillion-dollar research study funded by none other than the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA), which certainly didn’t set out to uncover these results, we now have proof of:

• A significant increase in cell phone users’ risk of brain tumors at the brain’s outer edge, on whichever side the cell phone was held most often.
• A 60 percent greater chance of acoustic neuromas, a tumor affecting the nerve that controls hearing, among people who had used cell phones for six years or more.
• A higher rate of brain cancer deaths among handheld mobile phone users than among car phone users (car phones are mounted on the dashboard rather than held next to your head)

In addition to this research, a review of 11 long-term epidemiologic studies published in the journal Surgical Neurology revealed that using a cell phone for 10 or more years approximately doubles the risk of being diagnosed with a brain tumor on the same side of the head where the cell phone is typically held.

Australia has seen an increase in pediatric brain cancers of 21 percent in just one decade. This is consistent with studies showing a 40 percent brain tumor increase across the board in Europe and the U.K. over the last 20 years.

Brain cancer has now surpassed leukemia as the number one cancer killer in children.

Other Health Hazards Linked to Cell Phone Use

In addition to the widespread concern about brain cancer, scientists have found that information-carrying radio waves transmitted by cell phones and other wireless devices can:

• Harm your blood cells and cause cellular changes
• Damage your DNA
• Cause nerve-cell damage
• Possibly accelerate and contribute to onset of autism, and trigger Alzheimer’s disease (You may have read the recent spin that cellphone use can cure Alzheimer’s, but you should know that study involved exposures that were nothing like a cell phone exposure, even though the publicity suggested otherwise. More on this soon.)
• Damage your eyes
• Cause sleep disruptions, fatigue and headaches

Steps You Can Take to Protect Yourself and Your Family

While you can’t completely avoid radiation in today’s wireless world, if you’re ready to give up your cell phone, you can virtually eliminate that one hazard, at least.

If you’re not prepared to take that step, you can minimize exposure by heeding the following advice:

Children Should Never Use Cell Phones: 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.

In Dr. Havas’ video above, you saw three images of cell phone radiation penetrating the skulls of an adult, a child of 10, and a five year-old from the research of Dr. Om Ghandi of the University of Utah. Those depictions are a graphic representation of just how deeply into your child’s brain cell phone radiation can reach.

Reduce Your Cell Phone Use: 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: Although more and more people are switching to using cell phones as their exclusive phone contact, it is a dangerous trend and you can choose to opt out of the madness.

Reduce or Eliminate Your Use of Other Wireless Devices: You would be wise to cut down your use of these 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 many 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 wont help much).

See meters at www.emfsafetystore.com. You can pretty much be sure your portable phone is a problem if the technology is DECT, or digitally enhanced cordless technology.

Use Your Cell Phone Only Where Reception is Good: 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.

Also seek to avoid carrying your phone on your body as that merely maximizes any potential exposure. Ideally put it in your purse or carrying bag.

Don’t Assume One Cell Phone is Safer Than Another. There’s no such thing as a “safe” cell phone.

Keep Your Cell Phone Away From Your Body When it is On: 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.

Use Safer Headset Technology: 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 acts as an antenna attracting ambient information carrying radio waves and transmitting radiation directly to your brain.

Make sure that the wire used to transmit the signal to your ear is shielded.

The best kind of headset to use is a combination shielded wire and air-tube headset. These operate like a stethoscope, transmitting the information 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.

It’s Time to Take a Stand

I’ve been warning of the dangers of cell phones for over a decade now, watching for and reporting on new findings along the way. There’s no doubt in my mind that if our society keeps ignoring this issue, we will pay a very steep price in declining health over the coming generations.

Media reports from around the world are catching on to the similarities between tobacco and cell phones, including this cleverly titled article from China Daily, "Mobile-boro Man, Is His Second Addiction a Cancer Cell Phone?"

Camilla Rees, founder of ElectromagneticHealth.org, also recently interviewed investigative journalist and GQ author Chris Ketcham about an article he wrote titled, “Warning: Your Cell Phone May Be Hazardous to your Health.”

Ketcham’s article contains some disturbing insights into government and industry efforts to squash research into the health hazards of electromagnetic fields. One study Ketcham cites was done 35 years ago and thanks to our Pentagon, never saw the light of day.

In his article, Ketcham poses the obvious question, “The evidence is starting to pour in, and it’s not pretty. So why isn’t anyone in America doing anything about it?”

Louis Slesin, Editor of Microwave News, offers this revealing but troubling response: “Much of the comfort in our modern life relies on not caring, on refusing to recognize the dangers of microwave radiation.”

Camilla has this to say:

“… modern man (and woman) seems to be highly oriented to ego and power and greed, to an ‘achievement mindset’ derived in many cases by a need to feel worthy by winning the approval of others, or the need to be in control.

This encourages a mind body ‘disconnect’, making it difficult to appreciate the body as a living system, or our own exquisite, though fragile, electromagnetic makeup.

It’s easier in this place to dismiss potential biological effects of artificial electromagnetic fields, arrogantly denying this possibility from a place of ego, ‘being right’. People are like this all around us and it is astounding.”

It’s time to care, and it’s time to take a stand.

I’m enlisting your help to spread the word about the dangers of cell phones and electromagnetic radiation.

We can’t look to either the government or the telecom industry to do the right thing, although it is true we are seeing signs of hope, in Maine, with Rep. Andrea Boland’s proposed Children’s Wireless Protection Act, and in San Francisco, where last week Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced consumer right-to-know legislation that will require cell phone retailers to post cell phone radiation levels at point of sale.

It’s fundamentally up to us. We must express our concerns so our elected officials, who are supposed to be representing our interests, know that we care deeply about this public health issue.

For more information, please see EMF.mercola.com for the latest news and updates. And please sign ElectromagneticHealth.org’s EMF Petition to Congress.