Besides home, I'm looking for people who want to know technology's dangers and who'll practice self-regulation to protect nature and health. I figure I've come to the right place. I'd like to spell out some troubling rules and studies about electronics, & some regulations we can implement ourselves. But first, let's go back a few billion years, before man-made laws or mobile phones, when this planet was a mass of gasses, wa

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An Electronic Silent Spring

A Talk in two parts by Katie Singer

given at the Techno-Utopianism and the

Fate of the Earth Teach-In

(www.ifg.org) at Cooper Union, October 25, 2014

In 1960, in a hospital a few miles uptown, my mother gave birth to me under bright, electric lights with an epidural that erased her pain and made her unconscious for my arrival. While my mother slept in a nearby room, nurses fed me commercial formula that I could not digest.

Compared to most humans born after World War II, there's nothing special about my techno-birth. Compared to most mammals, it's a recipe for abandonment and a life questioning, What is home?

Besides home, I'm looking for people who want to know technology's dangers and who'll practice self-regulation to protect nature and health. I figure I've come to the right place.

I'd like to spell out some troubling rules and studies about electronics, and some regulations we can implement ourselves. But first, let's go back a few billion years, before man-made laws or mobile phones, when this planet was a mass of gasses, water, dust and rock.

After a buildup of charge, lightning began to strike. A bombardment of lightning storms led to nucleic and amino acids, the building blocks of life. Early plants made oxygen and paved the way for animals.

Plants and animals still function by electro-chemical signals. So do our brains and hearts. Even at rest, all cells have measurable voltage. In other words, without electromagnetic energy, none of us would be here.

By 1880, we humans figured out how to generate, store and transmit electrical energy over long distances. We got electric lights. We got motors and built refrigerators. We got radio and TV.

Since 1934, our Federal Communications Commission has said, go forth and invent electronics--as long as you don't create "harmful interference." This means we can't disrupt existing radio, TV and cellular broadcasts. "Harmful interference" at the FCC has never included biological harm.

Call this exclusion of nature.

In 1996, our FCC filled the head of a 200 pound plastic man with salty fluid. The engineers called him SAM, for Standard Anthropomorphic Man. They took SAM's temperature. They gave the dude a cell phone for six minutes, then they took his temperature again.

SAM's temp had changed by less than two degrees.

And so, the FCC determined that mobile devices are safe. Call this test insufficient.

Next, everybody got a cell phone. Then came smartphones, which also transmit Wi-Fi. Providers installed about 300,000 cell towers. In a few short years, we blanketed our environment with frequencies and amplitudes that do not exist in nature.

Some of us want to know the non-thermal, biological effects of exposure to electromagnetic radiation from wireless technologies.

We want to know the effects of long-term exposure. What happens if exposure begins in utero? What if a child can see a cell tower from her bedroom window? What if a utility company installs a microwave-transmitting "smart" meter on your breaker box and you've got a medical implant? How do wildlife react when around cell towers?

If the FCC has considered these questions, they've not made their studies public.

Many scientists have. For 1800 peer-reviewed studies about the biological effects of EMR exposure, please visit BioInitiative.org.

Most studies come from Europe, Turkey and the Middle East, because U.S. telecom providers will not give subscribers' usage data to epidemiologists. Another questionable situation.

So what are the biological effects of exposure to EMR?

Fundamental things are affected, including the rate of calcium release from a cell's membrane, the brain's metabolic rate, the rate of DNA breakage, melatonin production, and decreased sperm production.

A Swedish study found that people who begin using a digital cell phone as teenagers or younger have a 420% increased risk of brain cancer.

South Korean teens now commonly have dementia. Their doctors think this comes from excessive screen time--and using only one side of their brains.

After Wi-Fi was installed in Los Angeles schools, some children began bleeding from their noses and ears.

A British toddler was admitted to an addiction treatment center because she would not let go of an iPad. A 31-year-old man with Google Glass was admitted for Internet addiction disorder because he was online 18 hours a day.

When people with deep brain stimulators for Parkinson's ride in a Prius and the car breaks and recharges its battery, pulsed magnetic fields from the car's computers shut off the medical implant.

Men with erectile dysfunction are 2.6 times more likely to keep a cell phone in their front pants pocket. Now, we all want men to assume more responsibility with birth control; but I don't think this qualifies.

Lots of folks just don't feel well after they get Wi-Fi or a new mobile device or their utility installs smart meters or a cell tower goes up nearby. They don't sleep. They get headaches and memory problems. Their eyes strain. They get nausea and strange rashes.

European and Russian studies since the 1960s associate these symptoms and many more with exposure to radiofrequency radiation from radar and now mobile devices, cell towers, Wi-Fi and smart meters.

As for wildlife, a Spanish biologist studied a common frog habitat 140 meters from a cell tower. He built a metal box around some frogs. Two months later, these shielded frogs had a mortality of 4.2%. The unshielded frogs had a mortality of 90%.

While white stork pairs tried to build nests near antennas, they often fought over sticks. Their sticks fell to the ground. The nests did not get built. Chicks frequently died.

In a German study, 65% of bee colonies abandoned their hives when nearby cell towers went live. GMOs, pesticides and monocultures likely also play roles in colony collapse. But ill bees typically die in or near their hives. In this study, no ill bees were found.

Bees use cryptochromes, magnetically sensitive genes in their eyes, to sense the Earth's electromagnetic energy fields and to navigate. Exposure to EMR emitted by cell towers disrupts cryptochrome-based navigation.

Humans also have cryptochromes. They're involved in our sleep cycles.

Here's another red flag. Section 704 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act states that no health or environmental concern may interfere with the placement of telecom equipment as long as it complies with FCC emissions guidelines. Among other things, this means that even if you can prove that a cell phone caused brain cancer, you can't sue the provider.

So. Did Congress or AT&T know something they don't want us to know about how cell phones and towers affect health or wildlife?

And why doesn't the FCC employ even one person to routinely measure radiation emitted by those 300,000 cell towers?

Many people consider electronic technologies "green." But broadcasting data wirelessly takes much more energy than transmitting data on copper wire or optical fiber. A mobile call requires three times as much energy as a corded landline call. To keep air conditioned, data centers require the equivalent of 30 nuclear power plants. If data centers were a country, they would rank fifth in use of energy.

For the most part, modern technologies expand our use of energy. They do not curtail it.

Authors Website: http://www.ourweb.tech

Authors Bio:

Katie Singer writes about nature and technology in Letters to Greta. She spoke about the Internet's footprint in 2018, at the United Nations' Forum on Science, Technology & Innovation, and, in 2019, on a panel with the climatologist Dr. James Hansen. Her most recent book is An Electronic Silent Spring. www.DearGreta.com and www.ElectronicSilentSpring.com.