Cell Phones and Child Brains: 'Casualty Catastrophe' and more

[AaronJ]

Please watch the video ..click on link below... what the cellphone manufacturers DON"T  tell you.........you will never look at your cellphone the same way again.

Be careful also where you put your cellphone too, especially ladies who like to put their cellphones in their bras.

Info regarding children is about 3 mins 10 secs on in the video

The video also gives information about microwaves and WiFi Routers.

Please spread the message to your loved ones

http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001O1ElZgqplpvfXgFf_kFY1bvJpM-gAxrvBegJ4BwKTR2KPoj8rWslac-ZCRGHl0bPIbtwa4jwfgsLQFh0hRxMGX3W-iyPmC5zldWwbPu4GQDU7apeATT8hCt4Y67OWEnqZn3kFu4xUJ_yRVH4yeqBm36yAA3vm5ol

[luv2laugh]

Thank you for posting this.  Before our daughter was born, we had planned to make changes regarding our cell phone use. 

The truth is that we haven't changed all that much.  We don't charge them in the same room as her, but have them around all the time. This article reminds me that we really need to get more information and make changes (for ourselves as well). 

[MarthaT]

Thanks for sharing, try and keep our phones away from the lo's as much as possible

[lenchik_rs]

Очень важная информация, спасибо автору!

[AaronJ]

here is a link with information on  *Swiss govt warning warning its citizens concerning
on cordless devices, WIFI* (Including your hand-phone and baby monitor)

Maybe we should all get back to wired products...

The cordless phone at home sends out the same kind of microwave frequency
like wi-fi. PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO CLIP then you will understand. Kindly click on the
link below.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/aAnrmJ3un1g&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/aAnrmJ3un1g&rel=1</a>

[Skylark]

Thank you for sharing!

Yes, it is difficult to make changes    We just trying to make little steps that we can do, little is better the none 

For the last year we decided to have our cell phones ONLY when we are out in town. For that reason we also switched from the plan we had ( monthly payment for unlimited this and that) to simple pre payed wireless card. The truth is , it turns out that we only really need our cell phones for a few hours here or there just to be reachable when we are out! So in effect we do not have any cell phones at home, and we save on an expensive plan!

I know, we sill use wireless internet ( simply because our property is large and we did not get around to set up the wires for the internet in different locations around), but we might be working towards that. We feel that while we can not totally protect our children from all the harmful environmental influences around, we can do what we can, and it is better then none.

[robbyjo]

Evidently, the video author, Magda Havas, published a paper in 2013 documenting "adverse health effects" of electromagnetic field (EMF):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23675629

First of all, I do not have access to the paper, unfortunately. However, the journal (Electromagn Biol Med.) has a pretty low impact factor (0.814), which means that it is not a very respectable journal. Dr. Havas' 3 most recent papers to date were published in exactly the same journal (see here). I would say that speaks volumes to the quality of her research. Another paper of hers:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24192494

The journal (Reviews on Environment Health) has no registered impact factor, which, again, indicates that it is not a respectable journal. I have no access to this article either. I tried to search on her website, but there is no PDF of most of her scientific papers, only the listing. The only PDFs I could find are about white papers (mostly descriptive, not much formal research), policy papers, petitions, etc.

Secondly, the abstract of the first paper seems to indicate that she used subjective measures, which can be highly unreliable. She claims, in both papers, that the effect is not "psychosomatic" (meaning, not just feelings), but there is no indications of what she actually measured (from the abstract). The mention about rouleau formation, heart palpitations, etc. feels like very cursory mention about several conditions. Rouleaux, for example, could be caused by infection or other inflammatory reaction. Has she ruled out infection or inflammatory condition in the first place? The details might be in the paper, but I really doubt that she dealt with it. Plus, there is no real control.

Thirdly, her (other, but similar) study has some serious flaws too. You can read a more thorough treatment about it here.

Fourthly, in contrast, another meta study by Rubin et al, which has a much better experimental design, many more subjects (thousands, as opposed to 69 subjects), proper blinding and control, directly contradicts her finding.

Fifthly, another, more respectable study on prenatal exposure (of mice) yielded a negative result. This is consistent to the actual measured bodily specific absorption rate (SAR) 5.01 micro Watt / kg (at 99% level, meaning that the rate is even lower than that 99% of the time), which is well below the FCC standard of 1.6 Watt / kg. The safe threshold of SAR is 4 Watt / kg.

Sixthly, posting scientific results directly to the public via Youtube or other social media without proper peer-review is really an underhanded method to garner private attention. If scientific peers do not approve the method, usually there are some flaws associated with the study. So, I would cast much doubt on such studies (including hers).

All in all, don't be too panicky. Always cross check your sources.

[robbyjo]

More reading about this topic:
http://www.emfandhealth.com/EMF&Health%20EHS%20Poor%20Studies%201.html

Excerpt:

In this paper Havas studies 4 individuals suffering from diabetes. Here she tries to link their insulin levels to "exposure" to "dirty electricity. The biggest problem with this "study" is that it is entirely anecdotal. Both the patient and the experimenter knew when the GS filters were installed. We asked one of own scientist friends, who suffers from Type I juvenile diabetes, to read and comment on this "study". The following are his comments.

The most egregious problems with this "study" are the ones mentioned above, which are that it is an incredibly small population, which self-reports, and without double-blind controls.

These issues are exacerbated by the fact that this tiny group mixes diabetics of Types I and II, which are essentially different diseases, with different treatment regimes, and since this  includes a newly diagnosed Type I juvenile diabetic, who was monitored during only the first month following diagnosis!

Their conclusion:

Dr. Magda Havas of Trent University is probably Canada's leading alarmist. She has a web site that promotes her alarmist views. Following are a few of examples of her deeply flawed "studies" on the effect of EHS.

Further reading:
http://www.emfandhealth.com/EMF&Health%20EHS%20Poor%20Studies.html
http://www.emfandhealth.com/EMF&Health%20EHS%20Poor%20Studies%202.html
http://www.emfandhealth.com/EMF&Health%20EHS%20Poor%20Studies%203.html
http://www.emfandhealth.com/EMF&Health%20EHS%20Poor%20Studies%204.html

[ashleywells]

Thanks for sharing this information.

[Chris1]

It would be interesting to know whether Robbyjo’s post has made anyone more or less sure of their original beliefs on this topic.

[luv2laugh]

Thank you, Robbyjo.

I was just telling my mom that I'm nervous about cell phone use, but wish I had my background/expertise in the area.  I was reading some recommended advice on praise and the 'authority' had absolutely zero idea what he was talking about.  I knew because I have a background in Applied Behavior Analysis.  Dr.'s in the field of psychology, may debate back and forth what is best, but among specialists there is zero debate.  Reasonable parents do not have the expertise to see all the flaws in the psychologist's debate - but, to me, it was completely obvious.

I was telling her I wish I knew someone who was a specialist or at least educated in the issues that would affect the safety of cellphone use.  I am so weak in Science that I can not even begin to understand the background and therefore validity of either side of the argument.  I like how you looked at the validity of the journal he published in.  I appreciate the insight you bring to the discussion!!  I didn't take the time to look into the research and thankful you posted it for us.

[robbyjo]

Thank you all, that is so kind of you. I just want everyone to be informed of the current status and spare everyone from unfounded worries.

Mind you, while there is no measurable health impact, the radiation effect is certainly non-zero. It is still a contentious issue with no consistent replication of the Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) results. Here is a very good review from a respectable journal. Basically, WHO says: "Alright, this might be a problem, but get the evidence first."

----

Despite increasing reports in the world literature recognizing EHS as a legitimate clinical entity, (World Health Organization, 2011a, McCarty et al., 2011, Havas et al., 2010, Havas, 2000, World Health Organization, 2011b and Chemical Sensitivity Network, 2011) many people remain skeptical about the veracity of the idea that a subsection of the population experiences illness and disability as a result of intolerance of ordinary everyday levels of EMR (Levallois, 2002). Some consider the EHS condition to be purely psychosomatic (Rubin et al., 2010 and Das-Munshi et al., 2006) — a “made-up term used by hypochondriacs and alternative-medicine practitioners to explain away unrelated medical problems” (National Post, 2011).

This stance is buttressed by the failure of numerous studies to prove a connection between people's reported EHS and their actual exposure to EMR (Nam et al., 2009 and Mortazavi et al., 2007). In fact, many of the studies show that people with self-reported EHS were more sensitive to devices emitting no EMR than true EMR (Frick et al., 2005). In contrast to the more recent double-blind work confirming measurable physiological change in response to EMR exposure (McCarty et al., 2011), Rubin et al. (2011) found that participants with self-reported EHS did not have any abnormal physiological responses to acute EMR exposure. Looking at twenty-nine single or double-blind studies that exposed people to real and sham EMR, they report that most of the studies did not show any significant association between EMR and consistent symptoms in the self-reported EHS participant (Rubin et al., 2011).

Secondly, many EHS patients with EMR-induced brain dysfunction have CNS symptoms involving mood, cognitive ability, perception, and behavior. Because of the labile nature of this condition depending on incitant exposures, EHS patients are often perceived as inconsistent and unreliable, which makes it tempting for skeptics to label their condition as psychogenic. As a result of these various factors, many clinicians, politicians, and industry groups have chosen to label EHS as a fictitious malady.

After reviewing all available evidence, however, the WHO in 2004 released a factsheet identifying non-specific multi-system illness resulting from EMR exposure as ‘electromagnetic hypersensitivity’ (EHS) (World Health Organization, 2011b). In May of 2011 a coalition of physician scientists met with officials in the WHO responsible for developing the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). The WHO expressed a willingness to consider professional and public input on evidence supporting the inclusion of EHS into the 11th version of ICD to be released in 2015 (Chemical Sensitivity Network, 2011).

Various national governments have also recognized EHS as an emerging medical problem. Sweden (with about a quarter of a million people with EHS reported in 2004 (Johansson, 2006)) classifies EHS as a functional impairment (Johansson, 2006). Taking steps to diminish the risk of toxicant exposures – the source etiology of SRI and EHS – the Swedish Chemicals Agency has introduced recommendations in the form of a ‘Substitution Principle’. This report recommends: “If risks to the environment and human health and safety can be reduced by replacing a chemical substance or product either by another substance or by some non-chemical technology, then this replacement should take place” (Swedish Chemicals Agency, 2007). Other nations have also begun to introduce guidelines and legislation in relation to EHS. Spain, for example, recognizes EHS as a permanent disability (Grupo Medico Juridico, 2011) while the Canadian Human Rights Commission includes EHS among environmental sensitivities as a disability to be accommodated under Canadian federal legislation (Sears, 2007a). With conflicting outcomes in EHS research to date, however, legislative and public health action has been slow in many jurisdictions.

What considerations might potentially explain the apparent inconsistencies and contradictions in study outcomes and conclusions about the legitimacy of the EHS diagnosis?

6.1. Response to challenges relating to the EHS diagnosis
❖
Lack of Clinical Response to EMR in some Research: Individuals with EHS may be sensitive to different frequencies; not all electromagnetic frequencies are the same. Just as people with food intolerances are not sensitive to all foods and chemically sensitive patients are not sensitive to all chemical exposures, EHS patients are not necessarily sensitive to all frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. Testing EHS patients for identifiable physiological changes by exposing them to one frequency may miss frequencies that they are sensitive to — it is equivalent to testing people for food intolerances by exposing them to only one food or testing for all atopic illness in a patient by testing with only one antigen.
❖
Fluctuating Clinical Response to EMR in some Research: For those individuals with SRI, levels and intensity of intolerance can change over the short and long term (Genuis, 2010a, Ashford and Miller, 1998 and Miller and Ashford, 2000). The intensity of response can fluctuate depending on changing levels of the total body burden, incitant dose, overall inflammatory status of the body, concomitant associated triggers, medication or natural health product use, general health, emotional state, and various other determinants.
❖
Delayed Clinical Response to EMR in some Research: Clinical change following incitant exposure is not necessarily immediate and can be delayed in onset. As some inflammatory responses can take time to manifest, immediate clinical testing for the purposes of research may not be reliable.
❖
Differing Clinical Outcomes in Different Individuals: Some of the studies claiming to disprove EHS utilize a reductionist approach to assessing patient suffering. Each person with EHS is a unique individual functioning in a complex environment, not a machine in a laboratory. Many of the studies attempt to create a controlled environment, and then draw conclusions — which are not generalizable to the complex environment where biochemically unique individuals with distinct genomes exist, and where a multiplicity of interconnected determinants may impact susceptible persons.
❖
Psychogenic Etiology: Many patients with EHS have been able to recover and have achieved sustained health using physiological interventions, without psychological therapies. In other words, correction of patho-physiology rather than patho-psychology has been successful in ameliorating this condition. This suggests that there may be a physiological basis for at least some portion of EHS.
❖
Lack of Objective Evidence: Unlike hypertension or diabetes, where isolated predetermined clinical markers determine diagnosis, EHS is not easily measured with quantifiable criteria. Without objective markers, some health professionals tend to dismiss the EHS diagnosis. EHS generally does not occur in isolation — it is often one component of complex multi-system health problems resulting from SRI (Genuis, 2010a, Dahmen et al., 2009 and Sears, 2007b). EHS is a person-specific syndrome based on a person's total environmental burden, on their overall health, and how their unique bioelectric cellular chemistry responds to external EMR. Individuals with EHS may have associated biochemical deficiencies, toxicant bioaccumulation, and individual genetic polymorphisms that affect cellular detoxification processes, neurocognitive biology, and other determinants of health and illness (Landgrebe et al., 2008).
❖
EHS Defies Experience and Doesn't Make Sense: As most healthy people do not perceive EMR in their environment, it may be counter-intuitive to accept that some individuals experience physically disabling symptoms as a result of seemingly incidental exposure. As a result, many scientists and clinicians are not willing to entertain the possibility that such sensitivity exists, and automatically default to the psychogenic attribution of disease. It is instructive to consider, however, that just as some vulnerable individuals with peanut allergy can experience life-threatening anaphylaxis from exposure to miniscule amounts of everyday peanuts, some EHS persons can develop debilitating responses to everyday levels of EMR.
❖
Conflict of Interest Issues: Sensitivity to environmental factors has huge implications for issues relating to insurance, employment, human rights, liability, policy initiatives, legislation, industrial policies, lifestyle and so on — issues with profound economic implications. In science and medicine as in other disciplines, there are those so closely allied to vested interests that they have seemingly been inoculated against truth, against credible research, and against observed fact (Michaels, 2008 and Moynihan, 2003). Regardless of how compelling the evidence to the contrary, some unscrupulous or uninformed scientists continue to serve and represent the vested interests that fund them or the entrenched ideas and ideologies that propel them (Michaels, 2008 and Angell, 2000). It has been suggested that perhaps some of the facts about EHS are being obfuscated and that ‘evidence’ has been manipulated to instill doubt and to impede public health regulation in exposure related matters (Genuis, 2008 and Michaels, 2008).
❖
Historical Precedent: History repeatedly demonstrates that a disorder failing to fit the existing scientific paradigm of a specific era does not automatically translate into the condition being a psychosomatic or metaphysical nonentity. Many afflictions from Parkinson's to peptic ulcer disease were initially thought to be psychological rather than physiological in origin (Pall, 2007 and Marshall, 2002).
❖
Knowledge Translation: Medical history consistently demonstrates that the adoption of new knowledge in clinical medicine is notoriously slow (Genuis, 2012, Genuis and Genuis, 2006, Doherty, 2005 and Grol and Grimshaw, 2003). Currently, EHS is generally ignored, ridiculed or denied in much the same way that many other conditions such as ulcerative colitis, migraine headaches, multiple sclerosis and post-traumatic stress disorder were summarily dismissed in the past (Pall, 2007).

[Chris1]

I found the Backfire Effect interesting-see link below.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Cell Phones and Cancer
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/C5HM2F13Dfk&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/C5HM2F13Dfk&rel=1</a>

“Once something is added to your collection of beliefs, you protect it from harm. You do it instinctively and unconsciously when confronted with attitude-inconsistent information. Just as confirmation bias shields you when you actively seek information, the backfire effect defends you when the information seeks you, when it blindsides you. Coming or going, you stick to your beliefs instead of questioning them. When someone tries to correct you, tries to dilute your misconceptions, it backfires and strengthens them instead.”
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/

Chris.

[robbyjo]

Well, I have to disagree with Neil deGrasse Tyson somewhat. He's coming from a physics standpoint, while I am from a medical standpoint. I agree with him that we are constrained by what we can measure and by the measurement device (or method, or protocol, etc).

Firstly, yes, real "signal" is repeatable, but not necessarily huge or even big (especially true in the medical research). Secondly, if there is "no signal", properly designed experiments would almost always give no positive results. Rare exceptions do happen, especially when the sample size is small. Thirdly, inconsistency amongst results is not always an indicator of "no signal", but it is always an indication of the difference of the experiments. This is why we ought to know experimental design in order to throw away badly designed experiments. However, if the experiments are equally good in design and yet still give inconsistent results, it might be an indication of either "no signal" or failure to account for "hidden and significant variables" or the experimental protocol being too complicated to be executed flawlessly or the measurement device (or method, or protocol) is not precise or consistent enough.

In this (electromagnetic-hypersensitivity, EHS) case, it is mostly about measurement issue. What is being measured as an indication of "adverse health effects" of cell phones / electromagnetic devices (EMF)? What Dr. Havas did was essentially "a fishing expedition". That in itself is reproachable. There is no way for me to access her scientific articles due to pay-wall. I have access to many respectable journals, but none of the journals through which she submitted her articles is accessible. Her webpage online only provides white papers and policy statements, showing no real experimental design. A scientist's website usually provides an electronic copy of his/her articles, especially so since major research funding agencies around the world now make that a requirement.

The backfire effect has a formal name, "Confirmation Bias", by the way.

[Chris1]

I also wasn’t convinced that the signal had to be huge, just statistically significant.

The backfire effect although similar is not the same as the confirmation bias.

Quote:
Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. For example, in reading about current political issues, people usually prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes.They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).

A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.

Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in military, political, and organizational contexts.

Backfire effect

A similar cognitive bias found in individuals is the backfire effect, in which individuals challenged with evidence contradictory to their beliefs tend to reject the evidence and instead become an even firmer supporter of their initial belief.. The phrase was first coined by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler in a paper entitled "When Corrections Fail: The persistence of political misperceptions".

Chris.

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