A Disturbing Article on Cell Phone and Wi-Fi Radiation

While I have written before on the link between cellphone electromagnetic radiation and cancer, I just completed an article by Christopher Ketcham entitled Radiation From Cell Phones and WiFi Are Making People Sick -- Are We All at Risk? that offers some disturbing evidence of the dangers of the wireless world in which we live and to which, in varying degrees, almost all of us are addicted.

Looking at a variety of studies as well as anecdotal evidence, Ketcham affords us the opportunity to ask ourselves whether we are risking our health, indeed, our very lives, for the price of the alluring convenience of our various electronic gadgets. For anyone embarking on research of the evidence, there is one proviso that should be borne in mind, as pointed out in the article:

Published meta-reviews of hundreds of such studies suggest that industry funding tends to skew results. According to a survey by Henry Lai, a research professor at University of Washington, only 28 percent of studies funded by the wireless industry showed some type of biological effect from cell phone radiation. Meanwhile, independently funded studies produce an altogether different set of data: 67 percent of those studies showed a bioeffect. The Safe Wireless Initiative, a research group in Washington, DC that has since closed down, unpacked the data in hundreds of studies on wireless health risks, arraying them in terms of funding source. "Our data show that mobile phone industry funded/influenced work is six times more likely to find 'no problem' than independently funded work," the group noted. "The industry thus has significantly contaminated the scientific evidence pool."

Cell Phone Use and Cancer

Having just completed Disconnect, a book by epidemiologist Devra Davis showing the relationship between cell phone use and cancer, I was heartened to read that the Who has just released a statement that cell phones may in fact be carcinogenic. Although mildly worded to play down the danger, it is a breakthrough of sorts, in that the cell phone industry has been doing everything in its power over the last two decades to undermine studies that show the damaging effects of cell phone microwave radiation.

Having lost my brother-in-law to glioma, an almost-always fatal form of brain cancer, I have been sensitive to the dangers of cell phones since he was diagnosed. A heavy user and early adopter, his cancer was, as is usually the case, found on the side of his head where he regularly and frequently used his phone.

While there is no doubt that the industry will seek to undermine the WHO's warning, it really is incumbent upon the consumer to exercise due caution when operating these devices. I am also including here a video based on much of Davis's book: