Take the Pledge, But For All the Right Reason’s
April 30th was influential talk-show host Oprah Winfrey’s No-Phone Zone Day. It was designated as such because of her passionate campaign to end texting and talking on cell phones while driving. She pointed to statistics that showed texting while driving is as dangerous as driving under the influence of alcohol. Oprah is calling for the public to take the pledge and sign petitions requesting legislators to make it illegal to text and talk while driving.
While eliminating cell phone use in automobiles is of paramount importance, it misses the most crucial point. Cell phones are dangerous to your health while used inside your car for other equally lethal reasons.
Mobile phones are a dangerous health risk because of the harmful and potentially deadly radio frequencies they use:
- Cell phones require electromagnetic frequency waves that penetrate your automobile to achieve a signal.
- Your automobile acts a magnifier, causing a ricochet effect to occur inside your car. This is something like sticking your head into a microwave oven [1].
- The RF’s from the cell towers as you go from zone to zone are strongest while you are first picking up a signal. This stronger signal means stronger EMF exposure.
- Electric sensitivity (ES) may be manifest in some but latent in most of us, resulting in more and more instances of diseases such as: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Dizziness, Parkinson’s disease, Cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, Fibromyalgia, and other environmental illnesses.
- Higher technology in newer cars increases the wireless transmission density inside the car as well as in the environment as a whole.
Texting and talking on your cell phone while you are driving is certainly distracting and dangerous. High numbers of traffic accidents, many of them resulting in killing or maiming passengers have been related to a driver’s attention not being on the road when the accident occurred. It doesn’t take much brain power to put two and two together to see the need to require driver’s to pull off the road to text or talk on the phone.
Heartbreaking stories from those that were involved in these accidents filled the screen as Oprah spoke with her guests on the show. But where were the children who have had cell-phone caused brain tumors [2]? How about the women who have lost breasts [3] because of mobile phone caused tumors? What about countless others whose health has been adversely impacted, some mildly, some severely, by EMF radiation related to mobile phone’s Wi-Fi, cell phone towers and broadband connections, microwave ovens and a host of other sources?
While I applaud Oprah’s commitment to getting cell phones out of the hands of drivers, a more comprehensive approach to the restriction of mobile phone use needs to be implemented. The mobile phone craze has caused serious health risks from using them under any circumstances, not just inside automobiles.
Yes, I applaud her efforts, but I’d need to see her champion the cause of legislation regulating cell-phones period before I’ll give her a standing O.
*Oprah’s No Texting Campaign, Oprah.com, accessed Apr. 30, 2010, http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/End-Distracted-Driving http://www.oprah.com/packages/no-phone-zone.html [4]
For my 12 tips on how to protect yourself from cell phone radiation click here [5].