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Scientists around the world have been speaking out...

The Bio-Initiative Report

 The Bio-Initiative Report was published by 14 experts in science and public health in 2007. It reviewed about 2000 studies and concluded:

People who have used a cell phone for ten years or more have higher rates of malignant brain tumor and acoustic neuromas...
People who have used a digital cordless phone for ten years or more have higher rates of malignant brain tumor and acoustic neuroma...
The current standard for exposure to the emissions of cell phones and cordless phones is not safe considering studies reporting long-term brain tumor and acoustic neuroma risks.
The consequence of prolonged exposures to children, whose nervous systems continue to develop until late adolescence, is unknown at this time. This could ... result in diminished capacity for thinking, judgment, memory, learning, and control over behavior.
The effects of long-term exposure to wireless technologies ... is simply not known yet with certainty. However, the body of evidence at hand suggests that bio-effects and health impacts can and do occur at exquisitely low exposure levels: levels that can be thousands of times below public safety limits. 

 
 

 

Watch this short film for a quick summary of the Bio-Initiative Report

(click here for larger version)

In September 2009,  a number of eminent scientists called on the US Senate to issue safety advice with mobile phones

Other scientists have commented on the evidence...

  enough is known now to take action to limit exposure in schools, hospitals and public places... The public deserve to be informed of the risks and governments should be taking steps to protect the public from involuntary exposure. 
 

Dr Starkey, Neuroscientist, PhD London University, 2009

 

 this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking and directly concerns all of us, particularly the younger generation, including very young children.
 

 
Dr V G Khurana, an Australian Neurosurgeon in 2008 report "Mobile Phones and Brain Tumours - a Public Health Concern"
 
I fear, but hope that I am wrong, that we are at an historical moment, watching the tide recede prior to a health emergency tsunami that is poised to drown us in in future health tradegies of unknown dimension 
 

Lloyd Morgan of CBTRUS, the US cancer registry, 2009

 

 I have no doubt in my mind that at the present time, the greatest polluting element in the earth’s environment is the proliferation of electromagnetic fields.  I consider that to be far greater on a global scale, than warming, and the increase in chemical elements in the environment. 
 
Dr Robert O. Becker, twice nominated for the Nobel Prize
 
  These waves deform and damage the cell nucleus. That is proven and has resulted in experiments ‘in vitro’ (in laboratory studies). And the injuries that result from radioactive radiation are identical with the effects of electromagnetic radiation. The damages are so similar that they are hard to differentiate. 
 
Professor Dr Heyo Eckel is a radiation expert, lecturer at Göttingen University, vice chairman of the Health and Environment Committee of the German Medical Association, Chairman of the Niedersachsen province charity Children of Chernobyl
 
the ICNIRP guideline exposure level is set many orders of magnitude too high to accomplish this (protection of public health). …This (view) has been intransigently maintained in the face of compelling laboratory and epidemiological evidence of adverse health effects that would have had a chemical declared carcinogenic, neuropathogenic, cardiogenic and teratogenic for humans many years ago. 
 

Dr Neil Cherry, Associate Professor of Environmental Health at Lincoln University until his death in 2003

 

Official advice is more equivocal...

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) refers to the advice of the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones (IEGMP) stating that it concluded the balance of evidence to date suggests that exposures to RF radiation below NRPB and ICNIRP guidelines do not cause adverse health effects to the general population

It is not clear what is meant by "balance" of evidence. It may well reflect the fact that industry-funded studies significantly outnumber independently-funded ones and that studies of short-term users outnumber those that include long-term users. If so, assessing the risk based on the balance of evidence would result in a flawed conclusion. Read more about the science...

The HPA also states: on the basis of current evidence, the HPA does not consider there to be a problem with the safety of WLAN [wi-fi]Read more...

However, the Chair of the HPA, Sir William Stewart, expressed concern about the official guidance in a BBC Panorama Programme in 2007. He said that the World Health Organisation guidelines, on which the HPA bases it's advice, needed to be reviewed. He also expressed concern about the health effects of microwave radiation on children and in particular about the use of wi-fi networks in schools. Read the transcript...

Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research (MTHR), a UK research council funded by government and industry, stated in its 2007 that it had found no association between short term mobile phone use and brain cancer but stated: the situation for longer term exposure is less clear as studies have so far only included a limited number of participants who have used their phones for 10 years or more. The committee recommends more research be conducted in this area.

Then Chairman of  MTHR, Professor Lawrie Challis, said in 2007: We know from smoking and with the bomb falling in Hiroshima that nothing was seen for 10 years...there is still a need for more research, especially to check that no effects emerge from longer-term phone use from adults and from use by children.

Read more about why governments do not always ring the alarm bells when the public's health may be at risk...