Rob: Okay, so the genes change --
KS: They're affected. Radio frequency signals can disrupt cryptochrome-based navigation. After cell phone towers get installed near beehives, we get abandonment of the beehives from beekeepers who've been keeping bees a long time. What scientists are saying is, okay if we had problems that were caused by pesticide exposure, GMOs, or the monocultures or really cold winters, or whatever, we'd see weak or ill bees. We'd have dead bodies. In this case, we just have abandonment; there's nothing to be found. Bee colonies abandon their hives after the cell towers go live.
Rob: Wow.
KS: So they're concluding that that's the cause. Birds also have cryptochromes. There are lots of studies that are saying we need to take this stuff seriously and start asking new questions so that the biological effects of these devices get included before we start deploying new technologies, purchasing new technologies, all that stuff.
Rob: So, we've got 6 minutes left about. What advice would you give people on two questions: What advice would you give to people personally to take steps immediately to make themselves and their families safer? That's the first question.
KS: Okay, turn your WIFI off for at least 12 hours while you're sleeping. Just keep it off unless you're not using it and try to get cabled Internet access. Two, do not use phone in a moving vehicle, or any mobile device in a moving vehicle. I would also say, if you've got children, do whatever you can to keep your child from getting an iPad and from being in a school with WIFI. That's almost an impossible situation. Kaiser Permanente, however, recommends that teenagers, wait a minute let me read this exactly. Okay, according to Kaiser, they recommend limiting screen time to less than 2 hours a day for teenagers, less than one hour a day for children ages 3 through 12, and no screen time for children under 3. I will just say, the questions that you, Rob, are asking about--What about my Prius? What about my Bluetooth? All that stuff, keep those questions going, it's going to be a major learning curve and a wow! experience moment-to-moment as you start looking at the possible biological effects of all this stuff.
Rob: Okay, now the other question is: what can people do in terms of getting some changes made in regulations or even just starting to get the FCC and other organizations to start asking questions that they are either not asking or keeping from being asked?
KS: Get on mailing lists at places like EMRpolicy.org. Once you're in the loop of people who are aware of the regulatory situation, you will be notified when regulations are up and then you can make comments to the FCC. Also, pay attention to what's going on in your municipality. So, if there's a new ordinance (and it might be called green sustainable land use code or something innocuous like that), see what they're voting on around telecommunications. See what that ordinance includes around telecommunications. And then my website does have suggestions and models that you can send to your legislatures so that they keep regulations in place.
Rob: All right, I have to say that we just barely scratched on the surface of this here, your book and your talks have really gone into great depth. There's a series that you did on opednews: two articles that basically summarize what you spoke about in your talk (at Cooper union for the IFG Teach-In, Techno-Utopianism and the Fate of the Earth), but this book is really valuable and worth having. You've certainly got me paying attention and thinking about it more. Anything you want to rap up with now?
KS: I just thank everyone for giving the issue their intelligence and please check out the website, electronicsilentspring.com and the book, An Electronic Silent Spring. Thanks very much, Rob, really, for your sincere looking at this.
Rob: Okay, thank you. This has been Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show WNJC 1360 AM reaching Metro Phili and South Jersey, sponsored by opednews.com. I've been speaking with Katie Singer, the author of An Electronic Silent Spring: Facing the Dangers and Creating Safe Limits. Her website is electronicsilentspring.com; thanks Katie.
KS: Thank you for having me.
Rob: My pleasure. So I left out one question I realize that I was kicking myself for. I call the show the Bottom Up Radio Show because I think we're transitioning from a top-down to a bottom-up world. Are there any top-down or bottom-up aspects to what you're working with?
KS: They are everywhere. We've got these laws in place that protect telecomm corporations and the engineering needs of all of these devices. We do not have regulations that protect biological effects; that's really obvious. Okay now comes the complication of most people being addicted to their wireless technologies. People cannot imagine their lives without them. I can say, keep WIFI out of your schools, that's kind of insane. Because Tom Wheeler, the FCC chair, has just dedicated 2 billion dollars to getting WIFI installed in every school in the country. Also, municipalities have passed initiatives to issue an iPad for every child starting, in some cases, in kindergarten. So, what's a parent to do? In terms of the bottom-up factor, we need massive awareness and I'm going to say sacrifice. Because people are saying, I love what my phone can do, I love what I can do with an iPad, all that stuff. In many cases, people become aware that there are problems, health problems resulting. They may say, but I can't live without this device. So, we're in this really slow place of recognizing our responsibility and our possibilities, but people are going to have to quit things in order to see a reduction in the electrosmog that surrounds us. There's just no way around that. And that means changes in how we function, changes in what skills we value, what skills we learn.
Rob: It seems to me that if people wanted to, they could drastically reduce this. One: they could make it so the phone didn't work if you put it right up to your head, so you had to use something like ear buds or something like that. They could set up WIFI so that it only went on when you tapped on a device that used WIFI. So it would only be activated when it receives a signal calling for it, and it would only be in a receive mode. So, these are things that could be done, that really probably would add pennies to the cost of making them, yet it would make things so much safer. I mean this is just the head stuff I came up with while looking at your work.
KS: Okay, I'm going to stay on the side of people with medical implants or children. What you've come up with would be a reduction and we want that, but what's this person, who, say lives on the other side of your apartment, who's got a medical implant or a pregnant woman there? And you're installing WIFI, and it goes through the walls or there's a smart meter there. Where's that family's protection from what we might call secondhand exposure?
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