Cell phone radiation- could cancer and tumors really be the tip of the iceberg?

Lloyd Burrell (me) became electrosensitive in 2002 largely because of exposure to cell phone radiation. That's what started me off writing this blog.

But another Lloyd (Morgan) got a brain tumor, also through cell phone use, in 1995. What's interesting with Lloyd Morgan is that he is also a scientist.

In the following video he shares his story and his insights. The most interesting of which are:

– the science says that cell phones cause brain tumors, the only thing missing for this to become an absolute cast-iron certainty in the eyes of our decision makers, is a replication of these studies.

– the cell phone industry has done a first class job of it showing that there is no such replication of studies.

– the hidden/overlooked danger of cordless phones

– children should not use cell phones – you’ve heard me say this before

– and lastly, but MOST IMPORTANTLY: the cancers and tumors that cell phone radiation causes are only the tip of the iceberg. Its all the other diseases people are dying from because of this exposure, that remain totally unquantified and totally off the radar that we really need start asking questions about.

Here are my tips on how to best protect yourself from cell phone radiation, and here is the video:

Cell Phone Radiation and Brain Tumors

Lloyd Morgan: “I am an electronic engineer but I also consider myself a scientist. I have published papers in this field and I’m generally considered an expert and I had a brain tumor which is how I got started in this area. I went to lunch with a colleague on April 28th 1995 not knowing that I had a health problem at all and I had a 45 minute grand mal seizure during lunch. An ambulance then takes me to the hospital and I am told I have a massive brain tumor. I was in fact very close to dying. I was 8 days in critical condition and a total of 11 days in the hospital and when I asked my neurosurgeon “why did I get this thing”, he said “perhaps electromagnetic fields.” I had never heard this before and I certainly consider myself among the more informed people in the world. So I went immediately to the science, this is 1995 now. And so there were no cell phone studies out but what I found from electrical utilities, Electric Power Research Institute in particular, was a statistically significant risk for brain tumors from electric fields and for leukemia. Being a little naive at the time I said, “well if this is in the science paper, why doesn’t the public know.” I now know that, as I tell fellow scientists, that science is necessary but not sufficient. Until you can put it into the public domain it doesn’t really matter. It matters only within this small club that we call scientists, but the public has to know what the science says and that is what has been suppressed so far.

Cell Phone Radiation Studies

If you look at the Hardell studies, they are totally internally consistent which is one of the things that you expect in epidemiology. They’ve found that is the longer you use the cell phone and the more accumulative hours of use, the higher your risk. The longer the time since your first use the higher the risk, the higher the power your cell phones emits, the higher the risk. The younger you are, the higher the risk. This is all consistent with what you would expect. Now the interphone study is a highly flawed study but even there though they show statistically significant protection for less than 10 years of use which by the way they never say that, but they say we found no risk. So that is just spin squared, but they always find, always and the interphone study is an industry funded study, statistically significant risk for more than 10 years of use. They always find a statistical link between the side of the head where you hold the cell phone and where the brain tumor is with one exception and statistically significant means 95% confidence. The one exception was near significance something like 93% or 94 % percent confidence so it is consistent. Add to that what we know from animal studies we get double strand breaks of DNA from cell phone use. If we are looking at cellular studies, we see a lot of geno-toxic which means gene damage in cells, all this is overwhelming data. The only thing that does not exist, in what would be the classic reason for saying that a risk is confirmed, is the replication of studies. The industry has made sure that there is no replication of studies. We have enough evidence right now, if you look at the total number of flaws that are being suggested, and there are certainly flaws that exist in all the studies, and say what is the worst it could be, I couldn’t imagine you would reach a place where you wouldn’t still have risk. Cell phones are causing brain tumors end of story. And that is the science.

Other effects of Cell Phone Radiation

There are a lot of other effects, there is eye cancer, there is testicular cancer, and there is lymphoma there is leukemia, all of these. Now these are single studies and it is hard to draw that out but it all says there is a problem. Now there are secondary health issues, everything from headaches to electro-hypersensitivity and so on. But I prefer to focus on the major problems and you can recognize with all cancers, I mean smoking also cause heart attacks and emphysema. There are a lot of problems with any carcinogen, in some ways the cancer is the tip of the iceberg and all of these other diseases are underneath the water. But people suffer from them anyway and they can die from these other diseases as well.

Cordless Phone Radiation

Cordless phones are basically the same as cell phones. And what is really horrible is where a great proportion of people keep the base station which is always radiating 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The base station is where you put the handset and then you can walk away from that and talk and so that is transmitting the messages to the headset and it is receiving the transmissions from the handset. People put them next to the bed because they would like, if they get a phone call in the middle of the night, they prefer not to get up. So that means that you are in near proximity to the base station even though you are not using the headset all night long for 8 hours or 9 hours or 6 hours, whatever the amount of sleep you get 7 days a week. The worst possible place to put this base station is in your bedroom, in particular immediately next to your bed.

Cell Phones and Children

My own belief is that children shouldn’t use cell phones. Now I am practical enough to recognize that at this time that couldn’t happen. Particular if you have teenagers and you say you cannot have a cell phone which parents have the power to do that it is almost impossible to deal with that. Certainly children should use cell phones in a precautionary way which is headsets being kept away from the body. My own step son, who is now in medical school, uses a cell phone as ideally as anyone I know. He uses it like an answering machine; it is off, expect when he wants to see who has called him, then he takes the phone out he puts on the head set and he replies to those people who have called him.

Using a hollow tube is somewhat better without a doubt than a wired headset but wired headsets are much more available and they help an enormous amount. The bottom line that an average person should know about cell phones is that cell phones cause brain tumors.”