Raise awareness of environmental health issues in order to better protect our children and future generations.

19 July 2015

Powerful Ads Show What Your Child Sees When You're Addicted To Your Phone

Powerful Ads Show What Your Child Sees When You're Addicted To Your Phone
by Caroline Bologna, Associate Editor, The Huffington Post,
10 July 2015

A new Chinese ad campaign illustrates the way smartphones can affect family life and relationships.

Titled "Phone Wall," the campaign by Ogilvy & Mather China is a literal representation of the barriers to human relationships that screen addiction creates.

"Pulling out a phone during a conversation is like erecting a brick wall between two people," Juggi Ramakrishnan, Executive Creative Director (ECD) of Ogilvy & Mather Shanghai, told The Huffington Post. "We want people to see this and rethink their relationships with others and their phone in a different light."

The campaign is for the Center for Psychological Research, Shenyang, a government body focused on raising awareness around social issues and causes. Ramakrishnan says screen addiction is a growing issue in China. "This is a definite pressure point that Chinese society is facing on its path of rapid development," he said, noting that smartphones and social media seem to permeate "all aspects of everyday life" -- from shopping to business to social interactions.

16 July 2015

Comments on Wireless Technology and Electrosensitivity

We are updating this newspaper comment by adding one from Nancy Miller in Canada, replying to a CBC radio program on the subject of "How are employers accommodating your disability?" (Federal public servants with visual impairments say their employer is failing to get them the tools they need to do their jobs. How well are employers accommodating you?):

Nancy Miller

I resigned from my teaching position due to lack of accommodation for an invisible illness - environmental sensitivity. I did get accommodation for chemicals/scented products, but NOT for electrohypersensitivity (EHS), which is a biological reaction to radiation frequencies from wireless networks (and is recognized as a disability by the Ontario Human rights Commission).

There is an increasing number of teachers (and students) who can no longer tolerate being in a wireless environment for extended periods of time. We experience chronic head and muscle aches, extreme fatigue, rashes, foggy thinking and irregular/rapid heart rates. These health effects are not conducive to effective teaching! The accommodations we are requesting are easy to implement: a wired connection for our personal computer, on/off switches for the access point (router) in the classroom and in common areas, and requesting that those working within 15 meters put their cell phones in "airplane" mode.

Teachers with this disability are being denied accommodation, as I believe it is becoming a hot-button issue, just as cigarettes were a few decades ago.

If someone had told me 10 years ago that I would be too ill from wifi technology to continue in my job, I would not have believed them. Yet this is my reality; it's been a financial struggle as well as a social one, and one that has a very reasonable solution.

http://www.cbc.ca/ontariotoday/2015/07/09/how-are-employers-accommodating-your-disability/#vf-10123300001665

13 July 2015

Can You Actually Hear 'Inaudible' Sound?

Activation of the auditory cortex during stimulation of
the ear by low-frequency sound and infrasound.  Credit:
Max-Planck Institut für Bildungsforschung
Can you actually hear 'inaudible' sound?
by Erika Schow, medicalexpress.com, 
10 July 2015

Are wind farms harmful to humans? Some believe so, others refute this; this controversial topic makes emotions run high. To give the debate more objectivity, an international team of experts dealt with the fundamentals of hearing in the lower limit range of the audible frequency range (i.e. infrasound), but also in the upper limit range (i.e. ultrasound). The project, which is part of the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP), was coordinated by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB). At PTB, not only acoustics experts, but also experts from the fields of biomagnetism (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) were involved in the research activities. They have found out that humans can hear sounds lower than had previously been assumed. And the mechanisms of sound perception are much more complex than previously thought. Another vast field of research opens up here in which psychology also has to be taken into account. And there is definitely a need for further research.

12 July 2015

France: Testimony of Violette, 14 years old and electrohypersensitive

The mountains of Ariège
This testimony of Violette, 14 years old and electrohypersensitive, was read out, probably at a gathering of EHS in France in August 2014.  We have done our best to do justice to this very poignant testimony when translating it into English.

Violette Gould, Couserans, Ariège - 
August 2014
EHS: Lueurs sous les MHertz

To Everyone,

There it is: a letter from me.  It is all that I could do to participate in this gathering.  However, to be present, to meet other people, to exchange..., I dream of this!  To throw myself into the world, build with you... My "fate" denies me this.

But is it really my "fate" denying me this?

I am going to tell you the story of the disaster which is occurring in my life.  You may then form an opinion about responsibility for my fate.

I am now 14 years old.  When this began, I was 10.  Until that moment, my life had been normal;  family life, school, my friends, my love for the mountains of Ariège... Great Happiness, very great Happiness:  I was free (except when my parents restrained me!)  The beginning of the catastrophe occurred during the start of the 5th year in school.  I will forever remember this period as a nightmare.

10 July 2015

DECT Cordless Phones (and WiFi) Causes Heart Irregularities

In South Africa, a Roodepoort school teacher had a heart
attack while teaching and died in the classroom a short
while later.  Photo:  eNCA/ Bianca Bothma
This year, there have been several reports in the media of young teachers collapsing in front of their students in classrooms and dying of heart attacks. The most recent story is of a 7-year-old girl at a school in the United Kingdom, who went into cardiac arrest in the classroom and died. In looking at the reasons for these heart attacks, have doctors considered wireless technology? We do not know whether these schools have Wi-Fi in their classrooms.  We should write to these schools to educate them about the risks of exposing children and teachers to Wi-Fi and also to the hospitals where these persons were taken.

DECT Cordless Phones (and WiFi) Causes Heart Irregularities
Powerwatch, 22 October 2010

DECT Cordless phones which transmit a pulsed signal have been shown to impact heart rate in new research published in the European Journal of Oncology [1].

The double-blind, peer reviewed provocation study of 25 people validates the condition complained of by increasing numbers of people across the globe today called 'electrosensitivity' (ES or EHS), demonstrating immediate effects on heart rate, almost doubling the heart rate in some cases. The study was led by Prof. Magda Havas of Trent University, Canada.

09 July 2015

The Story of Silent Spring

Rachel Carson
(Photo:
Alfred Eisenstaedt / Time Life Pictures)
"Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which in 1962 exposed the hazards of the pesticide DDT, eloquently questioned humanity's faith in technological progress and helped set the stage for the environmental movement...

"The threats she had outlined -- the contamination of the food chain, cancer, genetic damage, the deaths of entire species -- were too frightening to ignore. For the first time, the need to regulate industry in order to protect the environment became widely accepted, and environmentalism was born."

The Story of Silent Spring -
How a courageous woman took on the chemical industry and raised important questions about humankind's impact on nature.
Summary by the Natural Resources Defense Council

Although their role will probably always be less celebrated than wars, marches, riots or stormy political campaigns, it is books that have at times most powerfully influenced social change in American life. Thomas Paine's Common Sense galvanized radical sentiment in the early days of the American revolution; Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe roused Northern antipathy to slavery in the decade leading up to the Civil War; and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which in 1962 exposed the hazards of the pesticide DDT, eloquently questioned humanity's faith in technological progress and helped set the stage for the environmental movement.

08 July 2015

The World Health Organization Continues to Spread Its Lies: "There Is No Evidence of Any Relationship Between Telephone Antennas and Cancer"

Dr. Maria Neira
WHO's lies regarding "no relationship between cancer and electromagnetic emissions and other diseases" continue to be spread, this time, by Maria Neira, the Director of the Department of Public Health and Environment, WHO.  We wrote Dr. Neira several years ago regarding this issue.  She never replied.

"There is no evidence of any relationship between telephone antennas and cancer "
laverdad.es, 24 June 2015 (Google translation)

The director of the Department of Public Health and Environment WHO says in Murcia that although the link has been sought "proactively", there were no indications

The director of the Department of Public Health and Environment of the World Health Organization (WHO), Maria Neira, said today in Murcia so far there have been many studies and none have shown a relationship between cancer and electromagnetic emissions and other diseases.

05 July 2015

Wireless Breast Cancer Detection Device to Launch in India and the US

Following this article, we have posted the Abstract of the first clinical study evaluating this technology, published in 2013.

Wireless Breast Cancer Detection Device to Launch in India and the US
Press Trust of India, 10 June 2015

A wireless handheld device which will enable any health care worker to conduct a breast cancer examination within five minutes and access the results on a smartphone or tablet would be launched next month in the US and India, a top US official has said.

The device is the outcome of US Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration investment of $1 million in a proof-of concept centre to bring life-sciences research to the market, US Commerce Secretary, Penny Pritzeker told the students of Columbia University on Tuesday.

"Scientists at Drexel University, working with the centre, developed a hand-held, wireless breast cancer scanner, called the iBreast Exam. This device will enable any doctor or health care worker to conduct an exam within five minutes, and then access the results on a smartphone or tablet," Pritzeker said in her address to the 'Future of Urban Innovation Summit' in New York.

02 July 2015

Switzerland: Published Comments on Electrosmog - 4

Comments by the Editor of this blog, published in Swiss newspapers.

Toxic Toys
Tribune de Genève, 11 December 2012

This year, Father Christmas is bringing toxic gifts.  Among these, the Vtech Storio 2 tablet, designed for children aged 3 to 9.  The use of these electronic "toys" can generate language, reading and writing difficulties in young children.  These tablets are made in Vtech factories in China under deplorable conditions for employees, according to a report published by the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights.  Employees work standing up 12 to 15 hours a day, six days a week, for a salary below the minimum wage.  They suffer health problems created by exposure to toxic dilutants used to clean circuit boards.

It is time that parents behave as responsible consumers by no longer buying electronic toys that are "toxic" to the workers who make them and to the development of the young children who use them.

Switzerland - Published Comments on Electrosmog - 3

Comments by the Editor of this blog, published in Swiss newspapers.

The Death of Bees:  Monitor Cell Phone Radiation
Tribune de Genève, 16-17 June 2012

Research has shown that electromagnetic pollution emitted by wireless technology can affect the health of living creatures. It is not only pesticides and parasites that are contributing to the disappearance of bees.

According to a Swiss study published in the journal, Apidology, waves emitted by this technology can have an impact on the behavior of bees, inducing alarm signals from the workers bees announcing either preparation to swarm or reflecting important perturbations in the colony.

A study by the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zurich, has noted an increased risk of cataracts in calves raised near a mobile phone antenna. The risk disappeared after taking down the antenna. We cannot accuse these creatures, sensitive to waves, of being hypochondriacs, as one wrongly judges “electrosensitive” persons.

Like animals and insects, these people suffer biological perturbations. However, we prefer to discard the idea that the waves emitted by the gadgets which please us and which are useful can one day lead to serious problems for our health and life in general, including the disappearance of pollinators (bees, birds, bats) on which depends a large part of our agriculture and hence, our food supply.