Subject:  Cell Phone Health Effects "More Likely," (Carman)..
Date:     Sat, 11 Mar 2000 180450 -0600 (CST)
From:     "Roy L. Beavers" 
To:       emfguru 
--------------------------------------------------


.........From EMF-L.......

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 23:44:39 GMT
From: Neil Carman 
To: rbeavers@llion.org
Subject: Cell Phone Health Effects Appear More Likely, in Science News

[........Allen Frey's comment in the last two paragraphs is particularly
worth noting......guru.......]


........Cell Phone Health Effects Appear More Likely 
(found in Our Toxic Times, March 2000, p. 8-9.)

Adapted from "Researchers Probe Cell-Phone Effects" by J. Raloff in
Science News 2/12/2000


Thirty percent of the U.S. population—some 85 million people—has joined
the mobile-phone revolution, and as the popularity of the cell-phones
grows, potential health effects from cell-phone use are getting more
scrutiny and more validation.

In Scandanavia, cell phones are being used by about half of the
population (60 percent in Finland), and many of these people are also
reporting side effects, observed Monica Sandstrom of the Swedish National
Institute for Working Life in Umea in early February at a
Bioelectromagnetics Society symposium in Washington, D.C. where she
unveiled data from her agency's new survey of cell-phone users; 5,000 in
Norway and another 12,000 in Sweden.

One-quarter of the Norwegian users feel warmth on or behind the ear when
they use their phones, and more troubling, she said, is that 20 percent
also linked frequent headaches and recurring  fatigue to cell-phone use.
Her agency saw the same trends in Sweden, though the over-all rates were
somewhat lower, Sandstrom noted.

At least one set of symptoms noted, which includes dizzinessm
concentration difficulties, memory loss, and a burning sensation, showed
up in 47 percent of those people who reported using cell phones an hour or
more daily.

Cellular phones, which send and receive radiofrequency (RF) signals via
their antennas, come in digital and analog varieties; digitial ones
broadcast in bursts of energy while analog ones use a continuous signal.
Analag phones beam eight times as much energy into the user's head as
digital phones do.

Overall, Sandstrom reported, "people using analog phones reported more
symptoms and more sensations of all kinds." However, she is quick to add,
"we didn't measure RF emissions." Any complaints might therefore be
related to ergonomics, job stress, or other factors.

Yet the RF emissions from cell phones clearly can affect the brain. says
Ala W. Preece of the University of Bristol in England. Last April he
published a study that used simulated cell-phone RF emissions, and he
found both digital and analog signals correlated with a slight (15
milliseconds) reduction in the time it took users to answer simple
questions. This reduction was confirmed both by a re-analysis of Preece's
data and by a subsequent Finnish study.

The quickened reaction times, though slight, demonstrate that cell-phone
emissions are biologically active, Preece points out.

Other scientists have recently reported biological effects in animals
triggered by bombardment with energy typical of cell phones.

W. Ross Adey of the University of California, Riverside, showed that a
pregnant rat's exposure to phone-like radiation at any of three power
levels alters the activity of an enzyme in the brain of the fetus.
Surprisingly, Adey noted, the lowest input of RF energy triggered the
biggest changes.

While cancer concerns have dominated public debate of cell-phone safety,
until now there have been too few long-term users to make epidemiological
studies practical. However, this summer a 13-country study of brain and
other head and neck cancers in cell-phone users will begin.

Allen H. Frey, a Washington D.C.-area consultant who has conducted
cell-phone studies, hopes neurological effects won't be ignored in a rush
to study cancer. Headaches, nausea, and reports of warming "could be
merely the most obvious symptoms that something else is going on," he
says. "There are some real indications of a hazard out there."


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Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.emfguru.com