A buzz began a few weeks ago among people concerned about the spread of wireless technologies. Germany’s Green Party asked its Federal Government to formally take a position. The Government responded by saying that people should use wired connections when it is at all possible in order to avoid exposure to radio frequency radiation.
The German Health Ministry’s reasoning is instructive. Although it takes the stand that uncertainty surrounds the health risks associated with exposure to radio waves like those emitted by cell phones and wireless routers, the Ministry takes the official position that caution is required with such a new technology.
In England, the head of that Government’s Health Ministry has been calling for caution as well, but the other Ministries and even his own bureaucracy have ignored his concerns. However, one newspaper—The Independent—has made the issue its own and just this past Sunday carried news of the German decision.
Closer to home, San Francisco dodged the WiFi bullet—not because it applied the precautionary principle as Germany has but because Earthlink pulled the plug on the deal. That I’m aware of, no American newspaper carried the German story.
However, news of the health risks from radio frequency radiation have been leaking into the press lately. This past Sunday the Washington Post carried a story titled “Hold the Line: The Debate Over the Health Effects of Wireless.” The story took seriously those who are concerned and the science that supports their concern. The article ends with a message like that of the German Health Ministry: “mobile-phone and wireless technology is fairly new, studies examining the long-term effects of the devices are still underway.”
News yesterday offered another radiation leak. The FDA happily approved radio wave emitting chips as medical monitoring devices saying there’s no evidence of risk. Meanwhile, in the veterinary research literature it’s been known for a decade that this kind of monitoring device is associated with cancer.
A group of scientists recently released the Bioinitiative Report. A link to it is available on our website. Its primary purpose is to document the inadequacy of current standards for exposure to non-ionizing radiation based on current research. They report on the evidence for the disruption of gene and protein expression, DNA damage, the effect on stress proteins, the effect on the immune system, the effect on neurology and behavior, the risk of brain tumors, the risk of childhood leukemia, the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and the risk of breast cancer.
Yet many of the articles in the popular press that I read have, somewhere in there text, a statement by the writer that she or he (and by implication all of us) can’t imagine life without wireless devices. I want to remind you of something. Such a life without wireless devices is unimaginable for a reason.
The manufacturers of and service providers for those wireless devices are not in business to make your life convenient, exciting, sexy, or anything else. They’re in business to make money. They want life without their devices to be unimaginable for you. So they spend vast sums of money to insinuate their devices into the fulfillment of your needs. It’s called marketing, which a marketing friend of mine once called making the kill and leaving it by the side of the road for the sales force to bring home.
Communication is an essential human need. It can be accomplished in a thoroughly modern way by plugging a device into an appropriate wall socket. It’s very imaginable. It just means deciding not to be another kill by the side of the road.
