Are children's brains like apples turning brown?
What physics teachers need to learn about biology, asap
The anti- pro-ethernet brigade, and physicists, are fond of telling those of us who don’t want the scary microwaves passing through us or our children that ‘non-ionising radiation does not have enough energy to remove electrons’ and that therefore it cannot be harmful and we are getting hysterical about nothing.
What these view-holders mean is that non-ionising radiation (= the phone and WiFi type) does not go around knocking electrons off atoms and molecules so that those atoms and molecules then go on the rampage causing oxidation in our bodies and damaging DNA. That’s true, but to conclude that non-ionising radiation therefore does not cause harm or even oxidation is false. There are other ways to oxidise tissues than by stealing electrons, and other ways to harm health than via oxidation, and phone radiation does both.
(If oxidation talk seems boring, then it’s boring but important: imagine a child’s brain being oxidised, like that apple; the brain’s equivalent of going brown and wrinkled as a result of chemical reactions caused by microwaves passing through it. Accelerated oxidation is tantamount to accelerated ageing; the Environmental Health Trust calls oxidation a ‘critical health endpoint’ with implications for chronic disease and cancer. Several prominent and highly-qualified wireless radiation scientists have also called this situation, for children at least, a ‘health emergency’ which is why I am sitting up writing this blog at 11pm instead of finishing my Colm Toibin novel. It’s not for fun or to argue for the sake of it.)
If physics teachers get their beliefs about how benign wireless radiation is from text books whose immutable facts may urgently need revising, then others get theirs from dominant information cathedrals such as Wikipedia. The Wikipedia entry for non-ionising radiation says this:
‘the consensus is that there is no consistent and convincing scientific evidence of adverse health effects caused by RF radiation [at levels below those capable of heating tissues]…It is still to be proven that non-thermal effects of radiation of much lower frequencies (microwave, millimetre and radiowave radiation) entail health risks.’
That’s odd, given that the preponderence of studies in the peer reviewed medical literature (reportedly over 2000 of them) prove just that: non-ionising radiation below the levels at which they can heat tissues is a health risk. In fact the independent experts in the field are adamant that there is scientific consensus on this. It’s puzzling then that the oracle of truth that is the totally unbiased corporate-funded Wikipedia would beg to differ.
It’s also puzzling that, as with so many physics teachers, Wikipedia sticks to the narrow parameters of electron theory when the overall picture of wireless harm is so much more complex and nuanced. And it cites for its evidence of a ‘consensus’ just two marginal sources, a Q and A session with a professor of radiation oncology and a now-defunct link to something from a medical physicist, neither of whom works in the field of phone radiation or its bio-effects.
Why would Wikipedia whose own founder has accused it of bias [yes, that’s a Wikipedia entry, but it doesn’t make it untrue] cherry-pick to such a degree and fail to notice the vast body of evidence that contradicts its pronouncement that the powerful and influential telecommunications industry is not harming people with its highly lucrative products?
Who knows, it’s a complete mystery, but in any case it has been known for many years that phone radiation causes oxidative stress - for example this 2013 study found a ‘strong link’. If you browse a search engine with the words ‘phone radiation oxidation’ you will find peer reviewed mainstream studies galore, including those listed here, many of them over a decade old, so the truth-deciders really should have updated the doctrine by now.
In conclusion, wireless radiation from phones, phone masts, and WiFi routers causes oxidation of tissues which causes DNA damage which causes cancer and other health problems. The proof of this is in numerous studies in the medical literature which can be found at the click of a mouse. If you are a physics teacher reading this: please, read the research studies, talk to your school about switching to ethernet, and consider discussing with your pupils if the ‘right’ answer to the question of whether or not non ionising radiation can harm the body is actually correct.