www.energyfields.org/science/becker.html
British Cell Phone
Safety Alert
and An Interview with Robert O. Becker, M. D.
© 2000 by Linda Moulton Howe
"I have no doubt in my
mind that at the present time the greatest polluting element in the earth's
environment is the proliferation of electromagnetic fields.
"
- Robert O. Becker, M. D., Orthopedic Surgeon
The medical report makes a series of
recommendations to the British government that include:
1) To reduce cell phone radio frequency exposure five times lower than current
regulations.:
2) To monitor workers exposed to radio frequency radiation.:
3) To do independent audits of microwave masts and their emissions to make sure
they are not exceeding agreed upon levels.:
4) To create exclusion zones around microwave masts that are clearly marked.:
5) To create a national system to test shielding devices and hands-free kits.:
6) To fund a substantial research program under an independent panel to study
the health effects of mobile phones, financed equally by the public and
industry sectors.
As electromagnetic pollution proliferates
around the planet and scientists in countries such as
Fifty-two years ago in 1948, Robert
Becker graduated from
In Dr. Becker's 1990 book, Cross
Currents, The Perils of Electropollution, Dr. Becker
showed how our human bodies and immune systems are being adversely affected by
man-made electromagnetic fields from power lines, radar, microwaves,
satellites, ham radios, video display terminals, and even electric appliances.
In his book, Dr. Becker pointed out that radiation once considered safe,is now correlated with
increases in cancer, birth defects, depression, learning disabilities, Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome, Alzheimer's Disease and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome."
He told me this week that he met
resistance in finding funding for his pioneering research in the same way that
scientists and medical people today cannot get funding for independent research
on microwave and electromagnetic impacts on human health. There are now, he
says, too many industrial and political interests vested in the exponential
growth and profits of the global telecommunications industry, regardless of the
impact on cancers and neurological disease. I asked him what his current
perspective is on the controversy surrounding the safety of cell phones and electromagnetic
pollution.
Interview
Robert O. Becker, M. D., Retired Prof. of
Medicine at Upstate Medical Center, Syracuse ,
Director of Orthopedic Surgery at the Veterans
Hospital, Syracuse, New York and author of Cross Currents and The
Body Electric:
"When you get into this business of the
environmental effects of electromagnetic fields, I was involved in the early
stages of questions of microwave radar safety surfaced. My approach was: OK,
first of all we have to know if electromagnetic fields, the fields in the space
around you emitted from any sort of radiating source of such energy - do they
have any biological effects? And secondly, what was the natural electromagnetic
field environment before Thomas Edison came along.
Now if you look at the question of: Are
there biological effects, the engineers and the physicists say absolutely not.
Their view in general of what living systems consist of is that the cells are
little plastic bags filled with minestrone soup. And you can then with that
sort of a concept calculate the field strength and the frequencies you would
need to produce an effect on the minestrone soup. And this is exactly the
concept that was employed after it became apparent that radar systems could
heat up the human body. The physicists that were involved in answering the
question: Are there effects? And at what level do they occur? And what would be a safe level? Basically,
they followed a basic precept which was to consider a spherical cow, a circular
oval object filled with conducting solution and composed of a skin that is
transparent to the radio frequency waves that microwave generators produce. And
on that basis, they asked: How much does it take to heat this up? Where does
the cow's temperature start to rise?
And that number was calculated and
confirmed in actual procedures in the lab using the spherical cow concept. They
said, "OK, that's the number at which you are going to start heating
people. Let's say that's not such a good idea and we'll set a level ten times
lower as the safe levels."
That level was applied for several
decades to everything that concerned electromagnetic pollution. Of course, this
is not correct. Any biologist can tell you that the body is much more
complicated than that and the work I had done up to that point had involved the
body's actual use of electric currents generated in the body that regulated
certain things like healing. Wound healing is associated with a rather specific
electrical current and voltage. So, the
premise that was applied by the physicists
and the engineers was erroneous from the start.
That's number one. Number two, what would be the normal electromagnetic
environment assuming that we're starting from scratch at Edison's time - and
not Edison either because he went to DC current to light the light bulb. It
was Nikolai Tesla who conceived of the system we presently use and who,
incidentally, gets no credit for it: the 60 second electromagnetic field that
is carried by power lines, the big lines that are strung across the country,
and provides the current that comes into your home and appears in the wall
socket and you use to run the coffee maker and the TV and all the rest of the
things in the house 60 cycles. That didn't even exist one hundred years ago.
The
only electromagnetic fields on the earth were those inherent in the basic
magnetic field of the earth as it is influenced by the sun. And these were all at either a steady
state magnetic field which is one that is non-varying. The earth's field is
roughly 500 milligauss. The power, the magnetic field
strength of the refrigerator magnet is higher than that.
The magnetic field strength inherent in
the communication frequencies is far, far lower than that, but all of these are
oscillating. They are frequency-dependent. The earth's field does not oscillate
very much at all. It goes up and down to a slight extent depending on the time
of the day and the situation on the sun.
SO,
WE HAVE SURFACE LIFE THAT HAS BEEN USED TO EVOLVING AND GROWING IN A VERY
SPECIFIC KIND OF FIELD THAT THE EARTH HAS EMANATED STEADILY AND THEN SUDDENLY
SINCE
Everything markedly changed and if you
graphed the curve of increasing incidence of use, it would go up in an
exponential fashion. It has been a rise that doubles itself every couple of
years.
AND BASED ON YOUR KNOWLEDGE IN THE WORK
YOU HAVE DONE IN YOUR CAREER CONCERNING ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS AND BIOLOGY,
WHAT IS YOUR OWN ASSESSMENT OF WHERE WE STAND TODAY IN 2000 IN RELATIONSHIP TO
THE PROLIFERATION OF CELL PHONES AND THE
As far as I'm concerned, these factors DO
have biological effects. I think that the overwhelming evidence indicates that
happens. There is an effect even though physicists and engineers continue to
say it's impossible. But the biologists know biology. The engineers know
engineering and electromagnetics and the two were
never able to see eye to eye on this subject.
I have no doubt in my mind that at the
present time that the greatest polluting element in the earth's environment is
the proliferation of electromagnetic fields. I consider that to be far greater
on a global scale than warming...
GLOBAL WARMING....
yeah, and the increase in chemical elements
in the environment. All of these things are reduced when compared to the
proliferating affect of the electromagnetic fields. The only difference is that
we don't know they are there.
YES, IT'S AN INVISIBLE POLLUTION.
Yes, it's invisible to us. We don't know
that it's there. So, it has never been a particularly prominent question even
among the environmental people. And part of the problem is that our total
economy is based on unlimited use of electromagnetic energy.
WHAT
IS YOUR GREATEST CONCERN ABOUT WHAT THE EFFECTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF THIS
INVISIBLE MICROWAVE AND ELECTROMAGNETIC POLLUTION IS UPON US ALL?
There
are basically two most important biological effects of electromagnetic effects
on, or in, living systems are their effects on growth and development. There is
potential for producing disturbances in growth processes in the body that can
lead to the presence of malignancies. And in that regard, for a long time the National Institutes of
Health had studiously insisted there was absolutely no evidence that there was
ANY affect of such fields upon any cancer system in the human. I think this is
absolute nonsense. And last year, the NIH - without any fanfare and rather
quietly in the dark of the night - issued a little report that says there is a
relationship between electromagnetic effects and childhood leukemia.
Period. End of story, as though that was all. That's
not true. Absolutely not true.
THAT THERE ARE MORE
CONSEQUENCES?
Much more. And much more in the
area of abnormal growth, the production of malignancies, the production of
cancers. That's number one.
The second one is in the operation of the central nervous
system, the brain. There are definitive effects of low strength oscillating
electromagnetic fields on brain function. Now, we look around at the
present time and I have lived through roughly half of this period of increasing
use of electromagnetic energies. We're looking at an entirely different behavioral aspect of the population at the present time. We
certainly have a far different social attitude at the present time among the
majority of the population.
THAN A HUNDRED YEARS AGO WHEN THERE WAS
NOT OSCILLATING FREQUENCIES?
Yeah.
AND WOULD YOU PUT AT THE TOP OF THAT LIST
IRRATIONAL VIOLENCE AND ROAD RAGE?
Yeah, I would put it up there. I don't
know if it's the first thing on the list. If you look at the proliferation of
what is called Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) - that wasn't even here when I
was young. That was not a diagnosis. It never existed.
SO ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER WHICH HAS
BEEN A BIG DEAL IN SCHOOLS IN THE LAST HALF OF THIS CENTURY IS SOMETHING THAT
IS RELATIVELY MODERN AND COULD BE ASSOCIATED WITH THIS PROLIFERATION OF
OSCILLATING ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS?
I have no doubt of that. There are people
who were interested in this. No one, though, has done the definitive study.
This would involve the exposure of humans to fields which gets to be morally
difficult. But we should know. These are very important questions. And the
problem is that this is such an important aspect of our entire economic structure,
and not to mention our military posture, you cannot get very much in the way of
support from federal granting agencies to study this sort of thing.
SO SCIENTISTS AND RESEARCHERS ARE STYMIED
IN THAT REGARD?
Yeah. There is no money.
AND IN ENGLAND AND IN AUSTRALIA WHERE
THERE HAS BEEN SOME SUPPORT FOR THAT RESEARCH, THIS IS WHERE WE ARE GETTING THE
LARGEST BREAKTHROUGHS IN TERMS OF DATA AND THIS WEEK THERE HAVE BEEN
ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM ENGLAND, SPECIFICALLY FROM TAYSIDE UNIVERSITY IN SCOTLAND.
THEY ARE RAISING A BIG RED FLAG ABOUT KEEPING CELL PHONES AWAY FROM CHILDREN.
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THIS WORK AND WHAT IS YOUR COMMENT?
I'm only familiar with the press releases
that came out. It's a very good idea. I certainly would not permit any child of
mine under the age of sixteen to walk around with a cell phone in their pocket.
The funny thing is that 20 or 15 years
ago, maybe even a decade ago, cell phones weren't around. Now, when you're
using this, you put the telephone right up against your head. The antenna that
is emitting the signal that is picked up by the cell phone towers and then sent
to wherever you intend to go is irradiating the brain. There is no doubt about
it. It does.
Can this be good? As far as I am
concerned - No, it can't be good. Could it possibly be neutral? In other words,
have it and not get sick from it? I'm going to negate that one, too. I say I
don't believe that. I think that any time you have an extraneous energetic
source of electromagnetic energy introduced into a body carries a potential for
harm.
AND THAT'S BASED ON YOUR MEDICAL WORK?
Yes.
AND THEY ARE SAYING IN THIS NEW WORK THAT
THEY HAVE DATA TO THEIR OWN SURPRISE THAT "ONE ODD FINDING CAME UP WHEN WE
LOOKED AT MICROWAVE RADIATION IN NEMATODE
That's correct.
THEY ARE GROWING.
They are still forming structures in the
brain. They are still forming synaptic connections throughout the whole brain.
You introduce something that is going to change things there and you are
running the risk of producing a permanent alteration in some aspect of cerebral
functioning.
Now, I'm sorry, I know how important this
is from an economic point of view. But I think it's a very bad thing to do. I think the cell phone proliferation has
resulted in exposing more people to electromagnetic energy that's exceeded only
to our exposure to the 60 cycle radiation coming from our power frequency,
electric power grid. That exposes almost everybody in the world. It's either 50
cycle or 60 cycle and you can't go any place on the
face of the earth and put up an antenna and find an electromagnetic environment
NOT contaminated with one or another or many more of these frequencies.
AND IT'S NOT CLEAR WHAT THE CONSEQUENCES
OF ALL THIS IS ON OUR EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES?
Absolutely no.
AND
THE INCREASING VIOLENCE AND RAGE AND IRRITABILITIES IN SO MANY LEVELS OF
SOCIETY, ESPECIALLY IN THE INDUSTRIALIZED WORLD, COULD BE LINKED DIRECTLY TO
THIS?
I
don't know of any data that says that, but as far as I am concerned that would
constitute a perfectly valid hypothesis.
AND IN YOUR WORK, DID YOU EVER WORK WITH
MICROWAVE FREQUENCIES TO SEE WHAT THE IMPACT WOULD BE ON BIOLOGIES?
No, I did not. I stayed closer to the
natural frequencies. I did a lot of work on 60 cycles. Back then, microwaves
were theoretically considered capable of only heating things.
I've lived through a fairly lengthy
period of time in which science looking at this problem - both the biologists
and physicists and engineers looking at it - have changed their mind and have
grown closer together in regards to the potential for harm.
AGREEING THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR HARM.
Yeah. I think at the present time that
the majority of the physicists in the
The Electric Power Institute funded large
studies and they found nothing!
BECAUSE THEY HAD A
VESTED INTEREST IN NOT FINDING SOMETHING.
You can design a project to be negative
if you like to from the very start.
IN THIS TIME WHEN SCIENTISTS THEMSELVES
ARE EXPRESSING CONCERN ABOUT THE POLLUTION OF ELECTROMAGNETIC FREQUENCIES,
ISN'T IT IRONIC THAT NOW IS THE TIME THAT THE VESTED POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC
INTERESTS ARE EVERYWHERE WORKING TO MAKE THIS AN ELECTRONICALLY CONNECTED
WORLD. IS THERE ANYWAY OF PERSUADING ANYONE THAT GOING THIS ROUTE COULD HAVE AN
INCREASING PSYCHOLOGICAL AND OTHER NEGATIVE IMPACTS ON PEOPLE?
I don't believe there is ever going to be
a real solid unimpeded study of these factors. I think we will continue to
increase the exposure of the global population, that
we will see as a result of this, increases in cancer. We already have. We're at the point now where every other
person, one out of two, is very likely to in the course of their life time to
develop a malignancy. It was too long ago that it was one out of three. And
a little bit further back, it was one out of four.
NOW, IF WE'RE AT ONE OUT OF TWO, IT'S
ALSO POSSIBLE THAT NO ONE COULD LIVE WITHOUT HAVING A MALIGNANCY.
That's right. We shouldn't have to have
it. We should be able to prevent it. Who is looking at prevention? And as far as the other aspect of it - growth control and central
nervous system operations. Now, on that side of it, I will give you the
prediction that you are going to see more and more hyperactive attention
deficit disorder, you're going to see more and more aberrant behavior in the mature population. Where does this end?
Every time you start thinking that we're at the end of the line as far as the
development of electromagnetic devices that radiate into the environment, then
something new comes along. The cell phone is a very new item and it has become
ubiquitous in our environment and in most industrialized nations.
In the Scandinavian countries,
WHAT
KIND OF RADIO FREQUENCIES ARE EMITTED FROM THE TYPICAL
CELL PHONE?
The
present generation of cell phones, some are operating at the megahertz range.
Others are operating at the gigahertz range which is billions of cycles per
second. So, the radiation is oscillating at the enormously rapid frequency.
Even standard TV signals are megahertz signals. These are just an awful lot
faster frequency. The fact of the matter is that the higher up in frequency you
go, the more energy the radiation happens to have.
IN YOUR CAREER, YOU WERE ON THE TRACK OF
BEING ABLE TO HEAL FRACTURES AND POSSIBLE SPINAL INJURIES AND WHAT IN THE WORLD
WOULD BE MOTIVATING THE MINDS AT THE TIME TO STOP RESEARCH IN THAT DIRECTION?
At that point in time, it was primarily a
military problem in the Dept. of Defense. We were
shifting very rapidly from the standard warfare or WWII to the more high
technology of the Vietnam war. This is where most of
the technology that we see now in the military evolved was during
WHAT DO YOU THINK IT WOULD TAKE TO HAVE
THE POLITICAL AND MONEY POWERS CHANGE THEIR PRIORITIES?
(long laugh) I
don't know. Maybe at the end of the line when the occurrence of malignancy is
two in every person during their life time and we have rioting in the streets
for no cause and obvious problems with the psychology of the human race - maybe
some people will still be OK enough to say, 'Geez, we
made a terrible mistake.' But I don't see anything happening between now and
then. Or there may be a technology that becomes available that is capable of
safely replacing the cell phones. I don't know. But the longer it goes, the
more and more difficult it will be in affecting a change in our economic
structure."
More Info
To register your opinion about California
Senate Bill 1699 concerning cell phone safety, proposed by California State
Senator Tom Hayden, go to http://www.sen.ca.gov on
Web Sites
Credits
Copyright © 2000 Linda Moulton Howe
All Rights Reserved.
Republication and redissemination
of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without prior
Earthfiles.com written consent.