Believe Big Podcast

SUMMER REPLAY 5 - 11-Devra Davis - Health Risks of Cell Phones and 5G

• Ivelisse Page & Dr. Devra Davis

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EMF radiation.  5G exposure.

 In a world that cannot exist without the latest technologies, what can we do to protect ourselves and safely use our mobile devices?

Join me as I talk with Dr. Devra Davis of the Environmental Health Trust about HOW we can use our technological devices and HOW we can reduce our radiation exposure for our health.  it's an episode you won't want to miss!

Learn more about Dr. Devra Davis at the Environmental Health Trust:
https://ehtrust.org/

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Ivelisse Page:

Hi, I'm Ivelisse Page, and thanks for listening to the Believe Big podcast, the show where we take deep dive into your healing with health experts, integrative practitioners, biblical faith leaders and cancer thrivers from around the globe. Welcome to today's episode on the Believe Big podcast. My name is Ivelisse Page, and it's an honor to spend this time with you. The use of technology continues to increase in our modern world. But how do these technological enhancements affect our health? What is the latest research showing? Today, you will hear from my friend, Dr. Devra Davis, who is one of the leading experts on the effects of cell phone use and 5g, and how it affects your body. Dr. Devra Davis is the founder and president of the Environmental Health Trust, an award-winning Washington DC based think tank, whose mission is to educate policy makers and the public about science based environmental health hazards, specifically exposure to wireless radiation. Dr. Davis, in an award-winning career has spanned from academia, public policy and public service. She has written more than 220 peer reviewed scientific articles and books and journals. Her works have been featured in publications like The Lancet and the Journal of the American Medical Association. She has authored three books, her most recent of which called Disconnect, and we're gonna be talking about today, was selected by Time Magazine as a topic in 2010 and received the silver medal from Nautilus Books for courageous investigation. Welcome, Dr. Davis to the show.

Dr. Davis:

Thank you very much for having me.

Ivelisse Page:

Our listeners are always interested in discovering what our guest's favorite health tip is. Can you share yours with us?

Dr. Davis:

I think you've already shared many good ones from what I understand, but one that people might not appreciate is that when it comes to wireless devices, distance is your friend. Remember that they should not be kept close to your body or your head. And in fact, there are fine print warnings that say this that very few people ever read. They used to be in a little magazine, tiny print that they would put in the box. Now they put them in the operating system online that you can find that will tell you information about the fact that phones are tested up to an inch away from the body.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow.

Dr. Davis:

And people are unaware of that.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow. I know. I didn't realize about the warnings until I had spoken to you previously. And, before we get into that today, and I'm so fascinated by all the research you've done. At Believe Big, we talk about the influences on our health that can be seen like the food we eat, but I'm excited to talk about the unseen influences like EMF radiation, and cell phone use. For someone that this is their first time hearing about EMF radiation, can you just share briefly what is EMFs and where are they found?

Dr. Davis:

Okay. Electromagnetic fields cover everything from the stuff that powers your lights in your home, all the way up to the microwave, a frequency, which is just about close to radar. And a microwave oven uses the same frequency as your cell phone, be about 2.4 billion cycles, a second, 2.4 gigahertz, and the waves are continuous. And it, as it can boil a cup of water in a minute, because it's using a thousand watts of power. And it used to be believed that because phones used on average, less than one watt of power, they could have no effect, but it's not the power of the microwave that has the effect. It's the pulse and the pulse of the signal that's coming out of phones, with five to six different antennas, checking 900 times a minute with the tower for an electronic handshake: where are you? Here I am. That pulse is like this. And that irregular pulse over thousands of minutes, over dozens of months over the lifetime, particularly of our children, is what adds up, weakens membranes of every cell in your body. Every cell has a membrane, it keeps it intact, and this radiation can weaken the membranes, can cause the release of damaging oxidants that will go around and pick off the weaker cells and damage them, reactive oxygen species. And can cause a chemical cascade of reactions. So it's non-ionizing, but that doesn't mean it's safe. And the fact that it's weak in power is not the point. It is the pulse that we must be concerned about. So your cell phone is a two way microwave radio.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow. I remember reading in your book and you had shared that, cell phones have not been evaluated for how radio frequency exposure limits for humans, how it affects us since 1996. So how, what have you found as it relates to cancer? The use of cell phone use.

Dr. Davis:

Yale University published a study last year that found a case control design that people who had a certain type of genetic alteration, a common one, a single nucleotide excision, enzyme snip, those people that carried that common snip had between two to four times more thyroid cancer if they were heavy users of cell phones. Now heavy user cell phone is a changing definition too, because in the World Health Organization study of cell phone use a heavy user was someone who used a phone 30 minutes a day,

Ivelisse Page:

No way.

Dr. Davis:

Yes. Yes. And a person was considered a cell phone user if they made one call a week for six months. So you've got this very broad definition of exposure. And even so with this very broad definition of exposure, they found clear evidence of an increased risk of glioma, in people who use phones. And in fact, in Sweden, what they showed is that those who begin to use phones as children have four to eight times more brain cancer, by the time they reach their adulthood.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow! Four to eight times!

Dr. Davis:

But that finding you see, the tragedy, and it is a tragedy, is that we are not doing any studies now in the United States. The last study in the United States on this topic was published in 2001.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow.

Dr. Davis:

But the United States government did do an animal study. Now we study animals to predict harm in humans. That's how all drugs start out being developed. We take an assay for rodents: mice and rats and we study what happens to them under controlled conditions. These studies that have been done with animals in the United States government, that study was requested by the FDA approved by the FDA, reviewed for statistics and pathology and subject to an unprecedented independent peer review with toxicologists from Mobile and Proctor Gamble, and they all concluded that there was clear evidence of cancer in animals with this protocol. The exposure chambers were developed by Swiss engineers, who worked for the Swiss government and the U.S. to develop the exposure chamber, chambers. After the results were in, the FDA suddenly decided that animal research like this wasn't relevant to humans.

Ivelisse Page:

Interesting.

Dr. Davis:

Now that's so preposterous because we know this, every chemical that causes cancer in people will produce it in animals when adequately tested. Now, do you want to test rats and mice or, and see what happens to them. Or do you wait and expose your children and wait, because you see brain cancer has a long latency. It's thought to be up to 40 years. We know that because people who survived the Hiroshima bombings developed brain cancer, but only 40 years afterwards.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow. What about cell phone towers? Is, what is the risk being, living near them or in a, you know in our neighborhoods and communities?

Dr. Davis:

Again, distance is your friend. So the closer you live to a tower, depending on the plume of the radiation, and it's not the tower itself, but the antennas that are on the tower. Right? So if the antennas are located at your ground level, that's a really bad idea and it should be illegal. It should be illegal to have an antenna that is really close to people's residences. And in many countries, it is. And in many countries they have public notice about the radiation levels and the limits in the United States are much higher than they are in other countries.

Ivelisse Page:

Yeah. I think with so many things, even, chemicals that are allowed to be used in our beauty products or in our cleaning products, there are so many that are allowed here in the United States, but not in the European Union. So, we have a lot of catching up to do here in the United States to make sure our kids are safe, our families are safe, environmentally. And do you think that is why 5g is worse than 3g and 4g that's coming out?

Dr. Davis:

5g is worse. First of all, we have even less information on it that we had on the earlier G's, but it's worse because of proximity. If distance is your friend, the 5g systems in many cities are allowed to be eight feet above the ground and they're allowed to be right smack next to where you live in your bedroom. Now there is a, there's a proposal now to put set aside, so they can't be more than 1,640 feet away. Which Environmental Health Trust completely supports. It's not that we're gonna get rid of towers, but they need to be located where it makes sense, in terms of reducing exposure. In many countries, it's illegal to put a cell tower on a school ground, not here.

Ivelisse Page:

What can be done to change that? As a parent, as someone in the community that's concerned, are there things that we can do? Resources you have in the Environmental Health Trust that we can then go to our congressmen and senators, and say, we want this changed.

Dr. Davis:

We have webpages, at, EH Trust ehtrust.org. There'll be many resources for parents and teachers to use. Some of the ones that, that we give out in Spanish, protege a quienes amas, protect the ones you love.

Ivelisse Page:

Protege a quienes amas, I'm Puerto Rican. So I, yes. Okay. Protege a quienes amas, protect those you love, yes.

Dr. Davis:

Protege a quienes amas, right? And this also, then we have this for the women.

Ivelisse Page:

So there are a lot of resources that people can go onto your website.

Dr. Davis:

Yes.

Ivelisse Page:

I went on them and there are checklists for low EMFs and things like that cause, in this podcast, we can get overwhelmed and discouraged by all this exposure that's happening. And, I am for the improvements of our society and I use technology, but I have to use it safely. And so I wanna give people practical things that they can do today that can keep their family safe and themselves safe. So I know those fact sheets are on there and they can get more specific, but how can we practically minimize our wire wireless exposure?

Dr. Davis:

Frankly, you can turn your routers off at night or you can program them. You can go into your I ISP and you can program them to be at the lowest power. In China, Huawei was making what they called a baby safe router. Now what you might ask, what is that? That's a router that turns itself off when it's not used and turns itself back on when it's needed. And that's a router that works at the lowest power necessary. Think about it. Why shouldn't all the routers be like that?

Ivelisse Page:

Yes.

Dr. Davis:

We don't need most of us to be able to access our router at three in the morning. Now with the exception of fire and police, of course. So the idea that we are burning all these fossil fuels to make electricity to power, all these devices has actually captured the imagination of the economists in Australia and in Belgium. And they' recently been analyses indicating that we could save a lot of greenhouse gases, if we simply powered down, turned things off. Steve Jobs famously didn't want to make it possible to turn off the iPhone. We just saw the problems. If you can't turn off your computer, it has to restart and clear out your cache. I like you, I use technology, but I want it to be safer. And what I think you can do is get educated, get motivated and work with people in your community so that things will become safer. That's what we need to do.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. I completely agree. We've set our wifi to turn off, at midnight except for when my kids are home, they seem to stay up a little later, but we turn it off because we're not gonna be using it. I also keep my phone in the kitchen. I don't even like it to be in my bedroom. I know that you share to put your phone in airplane mode, if you are gonna have it in your bedroom. What are some other things that you can do to create a sleep sanctuary?

Dr. Davis:

Certainly you need to sleep in the dark, and so all lights, all blue lights, all lights of any color will interfere with sleep because what we do in the dark is our body naturally produces melatonin. Melatonin is a natural hormone that is clearly a antioxidant that helps to repair cells and that we need, for a variety of essential processes. And if you have light at night, it interferes with this. In fact, women who are exposed to light at night have higher rates of breast cancer and women who are blind have lower rates because they're in darkness all the time. So you don't wanna interfere with the production of melatonin. Blue light blocking glasses can be very helpful. Particularly if, when you're working later on and on your computers, because blue light, at 440 nanometers, can interfere with the production of melatonin.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. Yeah. And I know that there are, several other things that you can do at home in order to minimize it.

Dr. Davis:

Unplug.

Ivelisse Page:

I unplug. When we purchased our new home, we were able to have them wire so that our wifi can go through ethernet cables. And so we are getting that set up.

Dr. Davis:

Having cables to to connect means you're gonna be faster. It means you're gonna be safer. And it's gonna mean you're more secure from hacking, because it's harder to hack a system like that. So you're absolutely right.

Ivelisse Page:

I love that. Yeah. And I know, we weren't able to decline a smart meter. What do you recommend for people who have a smart meter?

Dr. Davis:

Make sure it's not your near bedroom. That's I it's really quite important. And you can, there people are organizing now to decline smart meters and that information on that can be found on our website as well.

Ivelisse Page:

Okay.

Dr. Davis:

And they have been some successes. So just remember distance is your friend, right?

Ivelisse Page:

Distance is your friend.

Dr. Davis:

You want to make sure that you're not close to something that's a wireless device. If it cannot be avoided? Certainly children's, I don't think children in classrooms should be wireless. I think they should use wired devices. You would need fewer of them. And as we all know, children learn best with hands on reading books, crayons in their stubby, little fingers, learning how to write and learning how to type at five and six is actually gonna interfere with their ability to write.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow. Yeah I agree. I carry, distance is your friend, so I remember that. So carrying, I carry my phone in my purse. I also have a safe sleeve phone cover and I'm very sensitive to EMFs. I can't have an apple watch. It gives me headaches immediately. And this safe sleeve has prevented my headaches. So I know that it works for me because when I don't have it on I get headaches and that's my test for those products that say, oh, EMF mitigation. And I always test it with myself.

Dr. Davis:

That's really interesting. And, I think we could probably partner in trying to invite more people to report the sensitivity to the watch. I have I heard a similar story from a friend of mine in and where her housekeeper came with a watch and she was working closely with her and she was suddenly getting a big headache and she couldn't figure out why. Yeah. And it turned out. That was the watch

Ivelisse Page:

I know. And I was so disappointed cuz I really wanted it. yeah, but actually it's actually better.

Dr. Davis:

Yeah, there might, there may be other types that, that, that can work. It's not that we don't want the technology. We want the technology to be made as safe as possible. Yes. And my friend Frank Clegg, former President of Microsoft, Canada, has said, you tell the engineers, they have to do something and we will get it done.

Ivelisse Page:

That, that gives us more an.

Dr. Davis:

And that's gonna happen when more and more people like you help. We organize this is gonna be a national and international movement to demand safer products.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes.

Dr. Davis:

I think it should be a girl caught, we girl caught means yes, we want to buy safer products. We wanna use the power of the purse, which women control most spending decisions in households. We wanna use the power of the purse to buy safer, healthier products, cosmetics for our girls and safer products for everybody. That's what we do.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. We, as women have the benefit of having a purse, right. But I have three boys and a husband that don't, and so they're usually putting it into their pocket, and so I recently found a company I think it's called Lambs, EMF mitigating clothing. And I've been testing that out as well. But they have even underwear for men. Based of the materials that they use for NASA to protect their astronauts from radiation, the radiation. You know what, if people don't have this special clothing or what, what are something that men can do practically, to keep it away from their bodies?

Dr. Davis:

They can start carrying a murse.

Ivelisse Page:

A purse? I'll tell my boys.

Dr. Davis:

Right? No. Or put it in their backpack or, you know what I'm saying, or Fanny pack or whatever. But generally you have to retrain yourself to put it in your pocket only on airplane mode.

Ivelisse Page:

That's true.

Dr. Davis:

And that and certainly, guys running and stuffing it into their skimpy shorts or young women I'm with the, in the tight clothing we are seeing, unfortunately, unexplained, and sudden increases in rectal cancer in American adults under the age of 40.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes.

Dr. Davis:

It has quadrupled in the past decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow.

Dr. Davis:

My colleagues and I published a paper about this last year. And the fact is it's a quadrupled since 2010.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow. Wow.

Dr. Davis:

Now you tell me what has changed in our society in the two thousands, so radically, has it been obesity? Has it been diet? Has it been lack of exercise? Because a fourfold increase, it went from a small number to another small number, but like from 0.6 to 2.4 per hundred thousand, but that's a huge increase. It's a rate that has quadrupled.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow. I, that's a message that really needs to get out to protect our men and young women who are using these all the time and not for the 30 minute use, heavy use in quotes that is stipulated into the warning labels. Okay. So that is okay. In on the person we've discussed the home. What about traveling in a car? I read that a mobile phone in a car or in an airplane that is not in airplane mode or powered off automatically goes into higher power in traveling vehicles. Whether they're being used or not. Why is that?

Dr. Davis:

Your smartphone is on, at working, whether you're talking on it at all, it's updating your apps constantly. And every time it does that, it goes to max power. When you're moving through space with a mobile device, it's constantly checking to the tower up to 900 times a minute. Where are you, here I am. Where are you, here I am. And that's how smart they are. But whether you, and now you turn off all your apps and only use it as a phone so that you only use your app, when you want to, when you personally want to use it, that's a way to save your battery, and save your radiation. You're not gonna be exposed as much because there's gonna be less radiation as a consequence, but you're absolutely right in a car moving through space, if the phone is not going through the car radio, then it's like a mini base station moving along and constantly updating. And because you're inside a small metal container called a car, even with the glass windows, the signal's gonna be pinging around off the metal, just like in an oven. Now the signal is not as powerful as an oven, but again, it's not the power that is damaging. It's the pulse. And so I do not recommend using a phone in a car unless it's going through the car radio.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow. Okay. I use mine for navigation.

Dr. Davis:

Yeah.

Ivelisse Page:

So how that's, how can you safely do it?

Dr. Davis:

You can use it for navigation cuz that's satellite. The GPS is satellite signal. It's not a wireless signal.

Ivelisse Page:

Gotcha. But if you're speaking in a phone, it should be going through the car.

Dr. Davis:

Yeah.

Ivelisse Page:

Okay. That's great. Wow. I can't believe how fast our time is gone and we have just a few minutes left. Is there anything that I have not asked you that you think would be important to share with those who are listening today before our time is up. I think

Dr. Davis:

it's important for people to understand that the last time safety standards for phones were set was 25 years ago. 25 years ago. Now, would you like to fly in an airplane with 25 year old safety standards?

Ivelisse Page:

No.

Dr. Davis:

Would would you drive a car with 25 year old safety standards? No.

Ivelisse Page:

No.

Dr. Davis:

So why are we putting our children in a situation where they're using a technology they're proposing to use the same effective standards for testing 5g that didn't exist in the 20th century? Now, so you have a 20th century test standards applying to a 21st century technology. We sued the FCC and we challenged them on this grounds. And we won because the court said, yes, the FCC has not shown reasoned record of rational decision making for the thousands and thousands of peer reviewed studies. Many of which Environmental Health Trust submitted to the FCC since 2013. From 2013 to 2019, there was a record that submitted and during that time, the FCC did not hire contractors to review it, did not analyze it. Now, they don't have to agree with the evidence, but they have to at least show that they've read it and they did not even read it. They simply said, ah, forget about it.

Ivelisse Page:

That's great news. That's great information.

Dr. Davis:

And I really think that you need to understand that many countries, Israel, France, Belgium. India have much more stringent standards for phones and towers than we do.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. Is there any advice you would, you've mentioned children a lot and we have a few minutes here. What would you suggest parents whose children love to play games on their iPads and iPhones? Is there any alternatives or anything they can do to minimize the effect?

Dr. Davis:

Look I'm a grandmother and I understand. Sometimes you have to give your children something on a long car trip to distract them. If you wanna give your child an iPad, you can do it. As long as it's on airplane mode, download the game, download the book, whatever it is, and then give it to them so that they're not constantly getting the radiation into their little bodies. The iPad is tested with a big tall fat guy with a big head. 12 pound head weighing 220 pounds. It's supposed to be kept eight inches off the body. You give an iPad to a little child, their arms aren't even eight inches long when they're holding the device and they hold it right next to them. There's a reason these things are called tablets. They belong on tables. And they do not belong on little bodies. So think about that. And you, if you wanna give this to your child, because they are wanna play a game. Games are okay, up to a point. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time, except for calls to grandma, for children under the age of two none. And yet there are 10,000 apps for infants.

Ivelisse Page:

Wow.

Dr. Davis:

More than 10,000 apps for infants. So people are, have to start to think, what are we doing to the young developing brain?

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Davis, this is a subject that we could speak on for hours, and I am going to put links in our notes in regards to the resources that you have for parents, for individuals on how to mitigate cell phone exposure, EMF exposure, and so many other resources that you have there and I just really wanna thank you for taking the time out of your very busy schedule, to speak with us today and educate us on this important topic.

Dr. Davis:

I'm delighted Ivelisse, you are a blessing.

Ivelisse Page:

Oh, thank you.

Rebecca Arcarese:

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Ivelisse Page:

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