Do Cell Phones Really Cause Cancer?
In July, the Pittsburgh Cancer Center issued a nationwide warning about cell phones. The warning: Cell phones cause brain tumors. The warning made national news. But do cell phones really cause cancer?
The answer may surprise you. Let me start by telling you a story. Illa Garcia was a fire lookout for the state of California. She worked at one of my favorite places on the planet — Mt. Shasta. Her site was a stone’s throw from a newly erected cell phone tower.
There were also three state communication towers within six feet of where she had to walk every day. She could hear the high-pitched buzzing. No one informed Garcia and her co-worker Mary Jasso about the hazards posed by cell phone towers. These towers pour out electromagnetic frequency radiation (EMF).
The FCC’s safety regulations mandate that these towers have posted warnings about the dangers of EMF. But most of these signs simply warn that you’re in an area where EMF is present.
Most of the major cell phone companies also issue a warning about EMF in their user manuals, which come with all their cell phones. The warning usually says to keep the phone at least three-quarters of an inch away from the body at all times because of the EMF radiation.
So you can imagine how much EMF radiation comes from a tower. But is it cancer causing? By the end of the 2002 season, Garcia and Jasso were so ill that they had to retire.
The state closed the lookout. Garcia now has severe disabilities with fibromyalgia, auto-immune thyroiditis, and acute nerve degeneration. Medical tests confirm broken DNA strands in her blood and abnormal tissue death in her brain.
Jasso had worked the lookout for 11 seasons. She has severe brain and lung damage. She also has partial left side paralysis, muscle tremors, bone pain, and DNA damage. Jasso is only 61.
Her memory has been so severely impaired that she can’t remember back to when she had her first three kids. She found that all of the lookouts who worked nearby Likely Mountain since 1989 are disabled.
Dr. Gunner Heuser is a medical specialist in neurotoxicity. He says there’s no doubt the EMF exposure made Garcia ill. He writes, “In my experience, patients develop multisystem complaints after EMF exposure just as they do after toxic chemical exposure.”
But this horrible problem doesn’t stop with these two women. There are 22 members of their families that have a myriad of unexplainable horrible health problems. Jasso’s husband has a rare cancer. He spent time with her at the lookout. Garcia’s daughter was at the lookout two hours during her first pregnancy.
Her daughter was born with slight brain damage and immunity problems. She spent three days there during her second pregnancy. Her son was born with autism. Doctors have confirmed that Garcia and Jasso have a terminal condition known as “toxic encephalopathy.”
That means toxic inflammation of the brain. Their cells have severe DNA damage. When these cells divide, they produce daughter cells with the same damage. And they will continue to do so until their bodies finally shut down and die.
There is no treatment for broken DNA. You might wonder how this severe DNA damage could happen. After all, doesn’t DNA damage come from nuclear radiation, not EMF? Well, that’s what I thought. But let me tell you about research from two people I highly respect, Narendah Singh and Henry Lai.
Both are biomedical researchers from the University of Washington. Years ago, I reported on their amazing discoveries on artemisinin and cancer. Drs. Singh and Lai reported a decade ago that cell phone radiation quickly causes DNA single-strand and double-strand breaks at well below the current federal safety level for exposure. This causes a condition called micronuclei.
Dr. George Carlo is a public health expert who conducted wireless technology research. He showed that human blood exposed to cell phone radiation had a 300% increase in genetic damage in the form of micronuclei. He says that wireless technology is “potentially the biggest health insult” this nation has ever seen, bigger than cigarette smoking and asbestos.
Even by the year 2000, there were at least 220 peer reviewed published papers documenting the cancer-initiation and cancer-promoting effects of high frequency EMF coming from wireless technology. By 2004, many research groups in several European countries had confirmed significant DNA breaks from routine cell phone radiation in both human and animal cells in the lab.
Also in 2004, University of Chicago researchers found that cell phone frequency microwaves can alter gene expression in our cells at levels that don’t produce heat. So, even if the EMF doesn’t break your DNA, it can damage its function.
Dr. Carlo believes that exposure to EMF is equivalent to exposure to the well-known gamma waves of nuclear fame. Both break your DNA. There’s no dose dependency. Any DNA damage, no matter how small, can be deadly serious. Studies have further confirmed that cell phone EMF damages your blood-brain barrier.
The International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health confirmed that workers exposed to high levels of EMF routinely have astronomical cancer rates. And, in the case of high exposure, cancer comes quickly. How common is high exposure?
The FCC has set exposure limits so high that no matter how much additional wireless radiation is added to the national burden, “it will always be within standards,” says Norbert Hankin, chief of the EPA’s Radiation Protection Division.
One expert, Dr. Bill Curry, found that one tower was irradiating homes at over 65 microwatts per square centimeter, well within FCC guidelines of up to 580 microwatts. During the Cold War, the Soviets bombarded U.S. embassy workers with an average exposure of only .01 microwatt per square centimeter.
The illnesses at the embassy made international news. There has been no funding to look at the cumulative effects of the myriad of EMF types of exposure. But there are reports of an instantaneous spike in mortality after cell phone service began in the 1990s.
In some cities, the rate of mortality went up by 10-25% compared to the typical death rate. Let’s look at studies abroad: A French 2002 study found living close to a cell phone tower can cause extreme sleep disturbance, chronic fatigue, skin problems, brain disturbances, and cardiovascular problems.
A German study found a high rate of cancer developing on average eight years earlier than national averages if you live within 1,200 feet of a cell tower. Spanish researchers found significant illness increases at a radiation exposure of only 0.11 to 0.19 microwatts.
That’s what you’ll get living within 1,000 feet of a tower. And it’s thousands of times less than the FCC standards. An Egyptian study found close proximity to cell towers resulted in nerve and psychiatric problems. It also caused debilitating changes in neurobehavioral function. Exposure results in significantly lower performance on tests for attention, short-term hearing memory, and problem solving.
In an Israeli study, researchers found that living close to a cell tower increased the risk of cancer by 400%. Breast cancer was most common. It gets worse. U.S. companies are rolling out WiMAX, a wireless Internet access.
When one company powered up a WiMAX system in Sweden, the local hospital ER was flooded by calls from people wiped out by pulmonary and cardiovascular symptoms. The companies hope to have WiMAX in every city in the country for public use.
But there hasn’t even been a single environmental or public health study demanded by the government. And there won’t be until we demand they do it. It’s time to take immediate action.
Call your elected officials immediately. Demand honest investigations and hearings on further EMF exposure. Hopefully, the recent media attention to the problem will get Congress moving. Next, use corded phones. Limit cordless and cell phones to emergencies only. Make sure your diet is as healthy as possible.
There’s no reason to add insult to injury by eating a diet that’s damaging your cells along with the EMF. Consider getting meters to check your local environment for toxic EMF. Here are a few: Electrosmog Detector (available at many Internet stores); Trifield Meter (800-658-7030, www.trifield.com); and Alan Broadband meter (888-596-9627, www.zapchecker.com).
I always try to give you a cure for the problems I tell you about in Second Opinion. But there isn’t a cure for EMF damage to your DNA. There are no gadgets to protect you from cell phone radiation, no matter the claim. This is a disaster that you can only prevent, not treat. You can read more about this at: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,389881,00.html.
