Wifi, the horrifying dangers, particularly to children

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

As more countries ban iPads and mobile phones from the classroom, could wifi be giving our children cancer?
By Geoffrey Lean For The Daily Mail
22:04 21 Jun 2018, updated 00:41 22 Jun 2018
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5872001/Could-wifi-giving-chil dren-cancer.html

Top cancer expert Prof Anthony Miller claims wifi beamed through classrooms could be as dangerous could be as dangerous as tobacco and asbestos
Prof Miller of Toronto University says Wifi should not be allowed in schools
Some nations have begun banning or restricting wifi, as well as mobile phones
Plenty of children these days are so obsessed with having internet access that they will virtually refuse to go on holiday unless the hotel or villa has wifi.

They’re certainly used to being fully ‘connected’ at school, where millions of youngsters who were once taught with chalk on a blackboard now sit in circles on the floor surfing the web on their tablets or phones.

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The trouble is that though smartphones are used as educational tools in some lessons, they can also be a dangerous distraction during the day for pupils. In fact, youngsters taking phones into schools has become such a contentious issue that now a minister has called for them to be banned.

Yet there is another issue which is perhaps even more important: one of the world’s top cancer experts has said the wifi beamed through Britain’s classrooms — radio waves that send signals between base units and devices such as iPads and mobile phones — could be as dangerous as ‘tobacco and asbestos’.

Some nations have begun banning or restricting wifi, as well as mobile phones. Stock picture of a woman using a tablet
Prof Miller of Toronto University says wifi could be as dangerous as tobacco and asbestos
Prof Anthony Miller of Toronto University couldn’t be blunter, saying: ‘[Wifi] should not be allowed in schools.’

Professor Miller – who was Director of Canada’s National Cancer Institute’s Epidemiology Unit, and has held top posts in the World Health Organisation and the German Cancer Research Centre – is not alone in his fears.

He is the latest in a long line of top scientists to warn that the invisible waves of electromagnetic radiation that now constantly wash over us all - dubbed ‘electrosmog’ even by some academics - may cause a future cancer epidemic, and that it’s children who are most at risk.

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Some concerned nations have already begun banning or restricting wifi, as well as mobile phones – another source of electrosmog – in schools.

But not Britain. Eighteen years after a landmark official inquiry, headed by a former Government Chief Scientist, recommended a raft of measures to reduce this kind of radiation, virtually nothing has been done.

In the meantime, we have effectively been conducting a massive medical experiment on ourselves, and our children – who some campaigners are now referring to as ‘Generation Zapped’. For the fact is that human beings have never been exposed to anything like this before.

The ubiquitous electrosmog from mobile phones, wifi, baby monitors, smart energy meters and a host of other internet-connected products is a billion times stronger than the natural electromagnetic fields in which living cells developed over the past 3,800 million years.

The worrying thing is that we don’t know how this experiment will end. That is partly because it will take years to play out: massive exposure only began recently and cancers, for example, can take decades to develop. But partly it is because scandalously little research has been done into the possible effects of electrosmog.

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Most of the little we are learning comes from studies on mobile phones, which deliver relatively intense doses of the radiation to the head.

Some studies have given them the all-clear, but these have generally only looked at short-term exposures - people who had not used mobiles for long enough (generally less than a decade) to develop cancer.

By contrast, important Swedish research found that people exposed to them for ten years or more were twice as likely to develop a malignant brain tumour on the side of the head where they usually held their handsets.

This finding was broadly confirmed by a massive study, covering thousands of people in 13 countries, by the world’s top authority on cancer-causing substances – the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

These studies caused the Agency to conclude in 2011 that ‘electrosmog’ is a possible cause of the disease in humans.

And Professor Anthony Miller believes that new research – including a French study that suggested a fivefold increase in brain cancer risk from mobile phones – should cause the Agency to upgrade its assessment, and condemn the radiation as a clear carcinogen.

Studies have also linked mobiles with cancer of the salivary gland and acoustic neuromas - benign tumours on the auditory nerve which usually cause deafness and problems with balance.

What worries Prof Miller, and other top scientists who share his fears, is that increasing evidence that mobile phones can cause cancer may be revealing just the tip of the iceberg of a far wider danger from electrosmog.

Of course, a room full of wifi radiation delivers a much smaller dose than a mobile phone held to the side of the head. But people are exposed to it for much longer either in offices, schools or at home, especially if they leave it on overnight in the house, which almost everyone does.

And it’s not only cancer that is causing concern. Campaigners, and some senior academics, point to evidence that the thickening electrosmog may be linked with heart failure, male infertility, autism, severe cognitive impairment, damage to chromosomes and DNA, and many other conditions.

It is also increasingly accepted that about three in every hundred people are especially sensitive to the radiation, suffering symptoms like headaches, ringing ears, chest pains and sleeplessness.

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It should be stressed that nothing is proven, and it’s important not to be alarmist, but, whatever the true danger may be, it is children who are certainly most at risk both from mobile phones and from electrosmog in general.

Their nervous systems are still developing, making them more vulnerable. Their skulls are thinner, so their brains get bigger doses. And quite simply, with many decades ahead of them, they will be exposed to more of the radiation in their lifetimes than adults today.

So the proliferation of wifi into so many of our schools is worrying. While using wifi, tablets, laptops and other devices emit radiation as well as receiving it, which also increases children’s exposure. More than a million tablets are now in use in Britain’s classrooms.

Campaigners urge schools to avoid danger and still get the benefits of such technology by hardwiring devices, through, for example, direct connections to desks, or points on walls and floors, or hanging from the ceiling.

More and more countries and cities are indeed going back to the future in this way. France has banned wifi from nursery schools (the younger the child, the greater the danger), and restricted its use in teaching children up to the age of 11.

It has also banned mobile phones from all schools, partly because they are socially disruptive. But the country’s official Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety has recommended that tablets and other wifi devices should be regulated as phones are.

Cyprus has also banned wifi from kindergartens, and only permits it in the staff offices of junior schools for administration purposes. Israel also prohibits it in pre-schools and kindergartens, and allows it only to be gradually introduced in class as children get older. The Israeli city of Haifa has hardwired its school system so children can used computers that don’t need wifi to connect to the internet.

Frankfurt, meanwhile, hardwired 80 per cent of all its schools more than a decade ago, while the school authorities in Salzburg, Austria, wrote to headteachers officially advising them not to use wifi as long ago as 2005.

Ghent in Belgium has banned wifi in pre-schools and daycare centres, while individual local authorities in Spain and Italy have removed it from all their schools. Even faraway French Polynesia has prohibited it in nursery schools and limits it in primary ones. And so the list goes on.

Here in Britain, by contrast, there is only complacency and inaction - despite authoritative early warnings of trouble ahead.

Way back in 2000, a official inquiry headed by Sir William Stewart, a former Government Chief Scientist, produced a landmark report recommending ways of reducing exposure to electrosmog, especially for children. Tony Blair’s government publicly accepted most of its recommendations – then failed to implement them.

Five years later, Sir William - as chairman of the official National Radiological Protection Board - issued another report urging similar action, with the same lack of results. Then, in 2007 - he was by then Chairman of the Health Protection Agency (HPA) – he voiced concern about wifi in schools. But its use has only spread rapidly since then.

Public Health England, which succeeded the HPA, now says it ‘sees no reason why wifi should not continue to be used in schools’.

Official action on electrosmog in Britain is limited to advising that ‘excessive use’ of mobiles by children should be ‘discouraged’. Even this has been watered down from a decade ago, when youngsters were urged to avoid the phones for ‘non-essential calls’.

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As Professor Miller recently told a conference organised by the Environmental Health Trust, it is high time to start taking sensible precautionary measures to protect our children. The alternative is to do nothing and hope for the best. That’s what we did with tobacco and asbestos, and we know how that turned out. In the Professor’s words: ‘We ignore this at our future peril.’

[outsider]

'Wi-Fi: A Thalidomide in the Making - Who Cares?':
https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/emerging/docs/emf_11 7.pdf

[outsider]

Press Conference Scheduled on Unprecedented Challenge to FCC in Landmark Case on 5G, Wireless, and Cell Phone Tower Microwave Radiation:
https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Reminder--Our-Challenge-to-the-FCC -in-Landmark-Case-on-5G--Wireless--and-Cell-Phone-Tower-Microwave-Radi ation.html?soid=1116515520935&aid=aHa2nJLznLM

WASHINGTON, DC, October 21, 2020—Environmental Health Trust (EHT), a leading scientific think tank, has submitted a landmark brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia opposing the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 24-year old wireless exposure limits to cell phones, towers, antennas, and other microwave-transmitting devices.

EHT will hold an historic press conference on Wednesday, October 28 at 1:00 p.m. ET to present new, never-released information on industry influence in US agencies. EHT will present details of its latest response brief confirming the deceptive tactics of the FCC. Registration Link

EHT attorney Edward B. Myers filed the response brief to the FCC jointly with Children’s Health Defense. The brief documents how the FCC ignored thousands of published research papers and submissions to the federal record and instead invoked unauthorized, outdated industry-tied materials to justify extending current wireless exposure limits. The FCC also misrepresented the position of numerous government agencies, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Cancer Institute.

“During the pandemic, when our children are becoming increasingly dependent on wireless devices, they should be protected from harm using the latest science. They are not. Our historic lawsuit against the FCC exposes its irresponsible reliance on outdated science to maintain insufficient safety standards for this ever-more prevalent technology,” stated Devra Davis, President of Environmental Health Trust.

“Years from now our grandchildren will ask, ‘Did we do the right thing and act to protect them or did we harm them needlessly, foolishly, and permanently because we were blinded by the addictive delights of our technological age?’ I want to tell them that our lawsuit brought them one step closer to safer technology,” Davis said.

“The FCC ignored repeated calls for more protective regulations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and numerous experts in the field as research shows children are more vulnerable," said Theodora Scarato, Executive Director of Environmental Health Trust. “The hard reality is that no federal health agency has ever reviewed all of the recent research on this issue. To move forward with 5G is reckless."

The FCC based its limits on the assumption that the only harm from wireless microwave radiation is heating. Ample research has found numerous harmful biological effects — from cancer to brain damage to reproductive damage to oxidative stress — at levels far lower than the FCC’s heat-based wireless radiation limits.

The response brief concludes, “Obstinacy and willful blindness are not reasoned decision-making. Ignoring facts does not change them. Talismanic repetition does not transmute a false assumption into reality. The ‘picture,’ ‘consensus,’ ‘majority opinion,’ and ‘weight of the evidence’ have all changed since 1997. Current regulations are built on an incomplete assessment of the risks posed by RF/EMF. The evidence is compelling.”

Environmental Health Trust Press Conference

Subject: The FCC Misrepresents the Science and Mischaracterizes the Position of Federal Agencies. EHT to Release New Information.

Date: Wednesday October 28 at 1:00 p.m. ET

Registration Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_thsagg_sQhatJAt0HtNQkg

Links to the latest EHT et. al. Reply Brief
Link to Petitioner's Reply to the FCC
Link to Addendum to Petitioners Reply to the FCC
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