Local Doctor speaks on Wi-Fi issues

[sharingwisdom]

Terry Su MD is a long time friend of mine. Her husband, Robert Rowan MD, gave me permission to have his letter, to Sebastopol elected officials, printed on this egroup. Judy

Dear Elected Officials,
I am a multiple board certified physician. I am a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Johns Hopkins University. I graduated from UCSF medical school in 1975. I am writing this to strongly urge you to read the attached materials and reconsider your approval of WiFi for downtown Sebastopol. Cell phone radiation is now repeatedly shown to damage people. Worse, the radiation damages DNA. WiFi will be an even greater disaster. At least you can limit cell phone use (although you might not be able to avoid a tower erected in your neighbors lot). Your approval of WiFi will expose hundreds of people in downtown Sebastopol to DNA damaging radiation. Sebastopol has long prided itself on being "nuclear free". If you allow this to go through, to remain truthful, you will have to change the slogan to "nuclear damaging zone" for what this decision will mean to cellular nucleus function of the exposed.

Please remember that it took decades to realize the danger of tobacco. It took years and wading through tons of lies to uncover what drugs like Vioxx have done to people. We are experimenting with forces (electromagnetic frequencies) that not only have no honest safe level data, but are repeatedly proven to be unsafe. What level of radioactive element exposure is safe? Most people will now tell you that the level is zero. What level of lead is safe? Same answer. And it took years to come to that conclusion as well. Do you really want to expose us, the public, as well as your children, who are far more vulnerable to the effects of these toxic energy fields, to a known DNA disrupter?

And far worse, Federal law gives no remedy for those you expose to certain Federal levels, which levels are of very significant risk. Are you suddenly trusting the Federal government now to tell you that something is safe when it is not? I thought that Sebastopol was more enlightened.

I would appreciate a response from you as a nearby dweller and one who is frequently shopping in downtown Sebastopol. The attached is a rough draft of what I intend to publish in my national health newsletter Second Opinion. Should you go ahead exposing all of us to these rays, I'll be able to write a first hand article on the cold responsiveness of elected officials to environmental concerns from an alleged environmental city. By the same token, should you honorably review the materials and reconsider and void the terrible decision, my readers would be delighted to know that elected officials do have eyes and ears, and that there is at least one enlightened city in America.

My wife, Teresa Su, MD, also a physician and longtime Sebastopol area dweller concurs.
Robert Rowan MD.
www.secondopinionnewsletter.com
www.doctorrowen.com

Note: Please contact your elected officials now before the infrastructure of WiFi is added to your community. The Feds have already stuck the knife in our backs. Federal law provides immunity against your suing local officials if the radiation they expose you to falls within Federal guidelines. So your recourse even after you are damaged has been neutered.

The only thing left is to block it in the first place. Tell them you don’t want exposure to wireless technology in your homes or workplace.

[Braggi]

... Cell phone radiation is now repeatedly shown to damage people. Worse, the radiation damages DNA. WiFi will be an even greater disaster. ...

These statements are absolutely unsupported by facts. Note that none are stated. The latest and largest cell phone study, with full controls, has shown no deleterious effects.

As of today no studies have proven any harm from exposure to WiFi and it's doubtful any will since the energy levels are so low.

This letter is histrionic and is not grounded in facts.

If you know of any facts to support your assertions, please post them.

Please link to studies on large populations of humans, since that is who will be using WiFi (as opposed to rats or tomatoes).

The study cited below covered over 420,000 cell phone users.

-Jeff

Massive study debunks link between cell phones, cancer

By Nate Anderson | Published: December 06, 2006 - 10:24AM CT
A major new study of Danish cell phone users finds no increased risk of tumors or leukemia in subscribers. In fact, owning a cell phone can actually be correlated with lower rates of certain cancers—if you're a man.


The study, which appeared today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, used a group of 420,095 Danes for the study. All of them first began subscribing to cellular phone service between 1982 and 1995, and the study examines their cancer rates through 2002. This was made easier by the fact that Denmark maintains a national cancer registry on every person who gets the disease. Researchers obtained access to cell phone subscription data, then used the names and addresses of subscribers to find out which of them later came down with cancer. ...

... the rest of the story: https://arstechnica.com/news.ars/pos...1206-8366.html

[don]

I imagine that they didn't cover radio frequency transmission basics in medical school, but your first point in trying to prove that Wi-Fi is dangerous using cell phone damage declaration is irresponsible. They did cover radio frequency transmission theory and practice in my electronics and engineering classes and when I was tested by the FCC to obtain my 1st Class License (the one you need to work on transmitters, including two-way radio systems, radio and TV station transmitters, etc).

While there certainly are valid issues with EMF / RF transmission health-related issues, PLEASE stop confusing people by making misleading and unsubstantiated statements and claims regarding these issues ~ people that don't know better might believe you. I get that this is an emotional issue for you, but no matter how emotional you are about it, it will not change the value of good science, a concept that you learned in school. I imagine threatening Sebastopol elected officials will also not further your cause.

Working together with collective knowledge, not hysteria, we can find better solutions that serve us all.

Don
sharingwisdom wrote:"I am writing this to strongly urge you to read the attached materials and reconsider your approval of WiFi for downtown Sebastopol. Cell phone radiation is now repeatedly shown to damage people. Worse, the radiation damages DNA. WiFi will be an even greater disaster... Your approval of WiFi will expose hundreds of people in downtown Sebastopol to DNA damaging radiation."

[Sasu]

Today we are surrounded by electricity, magnetic fields, and radio frequencies. Just as these frequencies go through walls they also are absorbed by the body. How our bodies deal with this depends on each persons exposure levels, basic overall constitution and other health factors.

The State of California recommends practicing low and no cost avoidance of EMF's.
The Ca EMF program links EMF's to leukemia up to a 95% certainty.
brain cancer up to 80% certainty
miscarriage up to 60 % certainty
breast cancer 50% certainty
alzheimers 45% certainty
suicide 45% certainty
Considering there are many factors which contribute to overall health these
findings are really significant.

Studies have found DNA breaks. It's prudent to alert people about the dangers of placing radiation all over town. There are many people who are already electrically sensitive and some are seriously affected. Over 275 doctors, health care professionals, residents and people who work in Sebastopol have signed our petition asking the City Council to reverse their decision to impose wi-fi on our town.

The London Resolution advising no wi-fi in homes, school and public places was issued at an emergency conference at the Royal Society in London.

I along with Michael Neuert are giving a talk on this subject tonight at Palm Drive at 7 pm. We'll see if we can start to debunk the industry created myth of no health effects.

[Braggi]

Today we are surrounded by electricity, magnetic fields, and radio frequencies. Just as these frequencies go through walls they also are absorbed by the body. How our bodies deal with this depends on each persons exposure levels, basic overall constitution and other health factors.
...

Isn't it astonishing how, despite all this stuff going on, that you can't point to a single study proving a link to all this stuff and harm to humans from normal every day exposure. Isn't it interesting how you can't find a single study finding Wi-Fi causing harm?

Isn't it interesting how life expectancy and overall health continue to improve (in spite of the obesity problem) in these United States despite cities with some of the densest exposures in the world?

More exposure over time to EMFs and longer lives. Could there be a connection?

...

The State of California recommends practicing low and no cost avoidance of EMF's.
The Ca EMF program links EMF's to leukemia up to a 95% certainty.
brain cancer up to 80% certainty
miscarriage up to 60 % certainty
breast cancer 50% certainty
alzheimers 45% certainty
suicide 45% certainty
Considering there are many factors which contribute to overall health these
findings are really significant.
...

No, these aren't really significant. What do these numbers mean to you and me? How many of these problems per 1,000 people will these exposures cause over a ten year period? Answer: probably none. If you have studies that show otherwise, please quote them.

...

Studies have found DNA breaks. It's prudent to alert people about the dangers of placing radiation all over town. ...

It's prudent to find out whether the sky is indeed falling before running all over town declaring that it is. At some point, nobody is going to listen to you any more.

DNA breaks happen all the time and are healing all the time and cells are dying all the time. That's life.

If you want people to look up to you as an expert, you first should be able to quote chapter and verse from studies supporting your statements. You have not been able to do that here so I'll be surprised if you can do that in a public speaking situation.

I do hope you find what you're seeking.

-Jeff

[Kunnskaping]

Isn't it astonishing how, despite all this stuff going on, that you can't point to a single study proving a link to all this stuff and harm to humans from normal every day exposure.

No, there is nothing surprising about that. First of all, the ethical limitations on how the subject can be studied limits the results to statistical inference rather than the firm experimental proof you seem to believe would automatically emerge as a known fact if a causal link existed.

Second, because the causal variables under consideration are increasingly ubiquitous and their impacts are believed to be imperceptibly small over periods measured in less than months, if not years, it is difficult, if not impossible, to design a study that adequately controls the theoretically interesting causal variables, the many confounding variables in the environment, and the research subjects for a sufficient length of time to say anything definitive about the real world impacts of EMR people are being exposed to in modern life.

Third, such a comprehensive and complicated study would be expensive. There would need to be some expectation of a pay off to those funding the study under the overwhelmingly commercialized reality of modern applied science. But, in this case, the big money is on the side of the electronics manufacturers that make the stuff that is suspected of causing problems. There is no magic cure waiting in the wings that might motivate big pharma to jump into this game. Instead, there is an active lobby to shape and limit the level of reporting on this subject in the U.S., which is why most of the research is not done in the U.S. There is a well respected researcher in this subject at the University of Washington, but he gave up the game years ago because he could not get funding to continue his surprising research that indicated very low levels of EMR caused more problems than did higher levels.

Isn't it interesting how life expectancy and overall health continue to improve (in spite of the obesity problem) in these United States despite cities with some of the densest exposures in the world?

Factually speaking, the interesting thing is that the trend toward increased longevity in the U.S. has leveled off over the past few years, while it continues to rise in other countries, most of which have less electrosmog to contend with or are doing more to limit the exposures of their populations. And so it is that the U.S. now lags behind forty-odd countries in terms of expected longevity--for a variety of reasons. For a guy who insists on scientific proof, this reference to the average longevity of all populations within the U.S. seems like a particularly weak and illogical argument, even without taking note of the inaccuracy of the claim itself.

No, these aren't really significant. What do these numbers mean to you and me? How many of these problems per 1,000 people will these exposures cause over a ten year period? Answer: probably none. If you have studies that show otherwise, please quote them.

The studies have been referenced in earlier discussions. They do arrive at statistically significant results. For instance:

Sadetzki S et al, (December 2007) Cellular Phone Use and Risk of Benign and Malignant Parotid Gland Tumors A Nationwide Case-Control Study, Am J Epidemiol. 2007 Dec 6 [Epub ahead of print]

"Analysis restricted to regular users or to conditions that may yield higher levels of exposure (e.g., heavy use in rural areas) showed consistently elevated risks. For ipsilateral use, the odds ratios in the highest category of cumulative number of calls and call time without use of hands-free devices were 1.58 (95% confidence interval: 1.11, 2.24) and 1.49 (95% confidence interval: 1.05, 2.13), respectively. The risk for contralateral use was not significantly different from 1. A positive dose-response trend was found for these measurements. Based on the largest number of benign PGT patients reported to date, our results suggest an association between cellular phone use and PGTs."

You could look this stuff up yourself instead of repeatedly claiming that the information does not exist because no one will spoon feed it to you or because the scientific community is no closer to providing a definitive statement about this complicated issue than it is to settling the dispute about whether global warming is causing an increase in the frequency of hurricanes, a theory that was once dismissed but is now emerging as quite plausible, if not favored.

You might also care to note that the three independent researchers hired for the California EMF Project's metastudies were unanimous in their conclusions that EMF radiation was responsible for some adverse health effects, while they split their opinions about some other impacts. Since then, of course, quite a bit more information has been published. Now, I am sure you will be inclined to dismiss their conclusions in favor of your own rhetoric to the contrary, but for what it's worth, I'm finding your endless, uninformed, and uninformative rant on the subject boring and distracting. Let us know when you actually have something factually or logically interesting to add to the discussion.

[Braggi]

Touché Kunnskapping. Good post. It deserves a line by line response that I don't have time to give right now, but I will say that I did read dozens of the abstracts of the studies Sasu previously posted. Not a singe one of them had anything to do with Wi-Fi and most of them were totally irrelevant to the conversation.

The one I read most closely was the one you quoted from. That was the only one that actually studied humans and showed some kind of connection between exposure and harm. The language the authors used was pretty hard for me to understand. I'm not a statistics expert by any stretch. I wondered why they couldn't come out with numbers that made sense, like: there were some number of lesions per 10,000 subjects in the exposure group or something to that effect. In any case, the much larger Danish study pretty much overshadows that study. Cell phones are safe to use. We now know that. We can let that one go. There will be more studies so we can watch as the newer, larger and better controlled studies, such as the Danish one, come out.

My challenge was to Sasu, who seems to go with emotion rather than facts. If you are going to be a spokes person for your cause, you need to learn your facts and be able to share them.

Gotta run,

-Jeff

[Valley Oak]

Todd, are you a statistician?

Thanks,

Edward

No, there is nothing surprising about that. First of all, the ethical limitations on how the subject can be studied limits the results to statistical inference rather than the firm experimental proof you seem to believe would automatically emerge as a known fact if a causal link existed...