What You Should Know about Wireless Radiation: Including Effects on Children, Fertility, & Brain Health
/Updated 29 June 2024
Wireless communication and devices has intensified research into the risks for exposure to its potential health effects, especially in school children and teenagers.
Wireless devices, such as cellphones and iPads, and wireless transmitters (which are mounted on towers, street poles and rooftops) send and receive radio-frequency energy, called “non-ionizing radiation.” It’s also called wireless radiation.
There is a growing body of research showing evidence of health risks even when people are exposed to radiation below the FCC limits.
Did you know? There is NO government safety standards for wireless radiation exposure. The US has no government safety standards for safe levels of wireless radiation exposure, only "guidelines" that the FCC adopted from the wireless industry.
For decades, the wireless industry has dismissed such ideas as fearmongering. It is far from a trivial concern and not a conspiracy idea.
What Is Wireless Radiation?
Both cellphones and wireless transmitters (which are mounted on towers, street poles and rooftops) send and receive radio-frequency energy, called “nonionizing radiation.”
Most safeguards against wireless radiation focus only “thermal” harm, which is how it may overheat body tissue, as a microwave oven would. The government guidelines do not address other forms of harm.
Wireless radiation is recognised as a carcinogen
In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization (WHO) classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields emitted by wireless communication devices as Type 2B Possible Carcinogen to Humans. The WHO report concluded that additional research is important and advised the public, particularly young adults and children, to take pragmatic measures to reduce exposure.
“The general population receives the highest exposure from transmitters close to the body... In children... deposition of RF energy may be two times higher in the brain and up to ten times higher in the bone marrow of the skull than in adult users.”
Many studies are revealing multiple mechanisms of action for RF radiation (wireless radiation) carcinogenesis such as on DNA repair, oxidative stress, down regulation of mRNA and DNA damage with single strand breaks. Studies are also establishing clear evidence on neurological effects on all ages.
2. Thousands of studies show that EMFs are hazardous to human health
The Bioiniative Report publishes science, public health, public policy, and global response to the growing health issue of chronic exposure to electromagnetic fields and radiofrequency radiation in the daily life of billions of people. First published in 2007, the report has been updated in 2012, 2017, and May 2019 to keep up with new scientific studies on EMF exposures.
Studies of people living near cell towers have also confirmed “electromagnetic hypersensitivity”, or an array of health complaints, including dizziness, nausea, headaches, tinnitus, and insomnia.
In 2011, the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified RF radiation from cell phones as a Class 2B carcinogen due to their association with glioma, a type of brain cancer. This is the same categorisation as lead, DDT, pesticides, and chloroform.
3. Children are more vulnerable to wireless radiation.
Studies have shown that children’s thinner, smaller skulls, and their brains being at critical stages of development leave them more vulnerable to the effects of cellphone radiation.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has, for years, urged the FCC to revisit its radiation standards, saying they don’t adequately protect kids.
More than 20 foreign governments, as well as the European Environment Agency, urge precautionary steps to limit wireless exposure, especially for children.
4. Over 6,000 research and papers on the harmful biological effects of wireless radiation have been published.
The effects of EMFs include:
Abnormal influx of calcium into cells, which can lead to and trigger allergic reactions.
Mitochondria dysfunction. Mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cells creating energy. This could explain the common link between fatigue and RF radiation exposure.
Depolarisation of red blood cells, causing them to clump together and carry less oxygen.
Decreased number of Natural Killer Cells (white blood cells), weakening the immune system.
Weakening of the blood-brain barrier, causing toxins to enter the brain more readily.
Decrease of 5-HTP in the blood that can lead to depression
Induction of a stress response with elevated cortisol levels, causing hyperactivity and consequently weakening of the adrenals.
Altered melatonin production, causing sleep difficulties.
5. No symptoms ≠ no effect
The science shows that EMFs, including wireless radiation, impact our biology at levels below those that most people can feel or that cause immediate symptoms.
Major health impacts include harming fertility and brain development.
6. You probably are living in an electromagnetic smog of wireless radiation.
Virtually no laptop computer, smartphone, tablet, or communication gadget not equipped with Wi-Fi technology. laptops, tablets, cordless, and mobile phones with their base stations, and wbiological effects on children, fertility, and brain development:
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The “Interphone study” looked at over 5,000 cases of Glioma and Meningioma to determine what level of cell-phone use was observed. Ultimately they found that those with the highest exposure to RF radiation from cell-phones did have an increased chance of developing brain tumors during their lifetimes. This extensive study was part of the reason that the WHO classified RF radiation as a “possible carcinogen” in 2011, shortly after the study was published.
LINK: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20483835 -
Dr. Joel Moskowitz (Director, Center for Family and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley) published a systematic review and meta-analysis of the case-control research on mobile phone use and tumor risk in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) (Choi et al., 2020). This study updated our earlier meta-analysis which was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (Myung et al., 2009). It found evidence that linked cellular phone use to increased tumor risk. Based on their meta-analysis, 1,000 or more hours of cell phone use, or about 17 minutes per day over 10 years, was associated with a statistically significant 60% increase in brain tumor risk.
LINK: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/21/8079 -
Dr. Leif Salford, a neurosurgeon at Lund University Hospital and Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery, is a leading researcher on EMR and its effects on the brain. Since 1988, their results clearly show that microwave radiation opens the Blood-Brain-Barrier (BBB), making the brain more susceptible to any infection and toxins that may be circulating in the blood. They found:
Long term exposure of rats to a cell phone caused memory impairment.
A single six-hour exposure at extremely low power levels caused genetic damage.
Blood-brain barrier leakage occurs after only two minutes of exposure. Just 2h of low exposure caused 2% loss in the brain in rats. This is at levels MUCH LOWER than a cell phone.
Even exposure to a low-frequency magnetic field (also emitted by cell phones btw) caused disturbances of calcium transport in cells.
In this presentation, Dr Salford goes into detail on wireless technology and its effect on the brain, in the world we live in today and its ‘alien’ non-native EMFs is 1018 (that’s quintillion) more than before 1940.
VIDEO PRESENTATION LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_WJ_aJPWIA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1E05oktkU3fSceIDA_Bt4VFU8IjBSoIGU8GgYY4LdSYghBlpcGye2XmXE
His work is noted in the paper Public Health Implications of Wireless Technologies (2008). It was "the weakest exposure level [which] showed the greatest effect in opening up the BBB [blood brain barrier]." [Cindy Sage and Dr. David Carpenter]. -
Studies of the blood-brain barrier: Preliminary findings and discussion (1975 to present). Dr. Alan Frey first determined that the blood brain barrier (BBB) could be opened with microwave radiation in 1975.
This finding has been repeated at least 7 other times by other scientists.
LINK: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/RS014i06Sp00349/abstract -
Dr. Martin Pall, PhD Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences, Washington State University. He highlights the massive literature, providing a high level of scientific certainty, for each of eight pathophysiological effects caused by non-thermal microwave frequency EMF exposures. It reviews 23 controlled, scientific studies of such health-related effects in animals, cells including human cells in culture and in human beings.
It summarises the mechanism of action and substantial evidence for the cumulative nature and eventual irreversibility of the neurological/neuropsychiatric effects, of the reproductive effects, the mutational DNA effects, the cardiac effects, of some but not other of the hormonal effects; any causation of ADHD and autism may add additional concerns.
LINK: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935118300355 -
A study from China confirms earlier research from Sweden (led by Dr Leif Salford) that found that exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from mobile phones for 4 weeks causes leakage of the blood-brain barrier and impairs cognition.
The blood-brain barrier is a crucial structure that prevents many neurotoxins from passing from our blood into our brains. Leaks in this barrier are definitely a problem. Reduced spatial memory function, also found in the study with rats. The study was published in well recognised and established journal – Brain Research (March 2015 issue).
LINK: Abstract and figures of this study are freely available on website of the Brain Research. For pdf copies of the article, you may contact Gang Zhu at gangzhu6666@sina.com. -
Autism and EMF? Plausibility of a pathophysiological link. Dr. Martha Herbert, MD, is an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, and EMF expert Cindy Sage wrote a review showing how symptoms of autism matched symptoms of overexposure to EMFs. These symptoms include immune aberrations, low total and reduced glutathione levels, lower activity of the anti-oxidative stress system, and mitochondrial dysfunction.
A common attribute among individuals with autism is oxidative stress, which aligns with well-established research showing low-intensity EMF radiation exposure is associated with oxidative damage.
LINK: www.marthaherbert.org/library/Herbert-Sage-2013-Autism-EMF-PlausibilityPathophysiologicalLink-Part11.pdf -
A study by Richard Lathe at the University of Edinburgh hypothesised that neonatal exposure to microwaves and EMF radiation may cause a child to be predisposed to autism:
potential mechanisms and the presence of magnetite in human brain, with pulse modulation of microwave signals in a frequency band critical for synaptic plasticity
typical levels of domestic microwave exposure were compared against recorded effects of gestational exposure of experimental animals
The timing of the first rise in autism compared to the spread of domestic microwave devices. Autism diagnoses began to noticeably rise in the early 1980s, around the same time that microwaves were first introduced into households. By the mid-1980s, it was common for most households to have a microwave.
LINK: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235935634_Microwave_Electromagnetic_Radiation_and_Autism
