Sabine El Gemayel, director and producer of Generation zapped, highlights her solution oriented documentary film investigating the growing body of research on the alarming health risks associated with wireless technology, as well as what the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Telecom Industry don't want you to know.
I became aware of cell phone dangers about 6 years ago when I had a cranial nerve inflammation for 2 months and I would get shooting pains when my phone would ring. But I hadn't made the correlation with all wireless technologies. About 3 years ago, I was visiting a private middle school for my 7th grader. One of the school's touring staff opened a classroom and proudly said that each student had their own tablets and the teacher used a smart board.
I looked at all the students and had an epiphany: If tablets communicated wirelessly like a cell phone, then all theses devices were emitting radio frequencies and this class was like a microwave oven! I needed to tell the world about this invisible convenience! It's only when I started to do the research that I found the analogy of Dr. Magda Havas of a classroom using wireless technology by all students at once was like a microwave oven set at very low power
In California, children have 175 days of school and spend about 4 to 5 hours in a classroom often with a router inside the classroom. We needed a a graph to illustrate the amount of exposure that our children are exposed to. So I thought, if I can't do anything about it at school, what can I do to reduce my children's exposures?
That's when I decided to make a documentary about it that would explain the science, underline the lack of updated regulation but would also give solutions because, in my opinion, there's nothing worse than exposing terrifying facts about an environmental disaster without giving any solutions of what can be done about it. That's why it's a solution oriented film because let's face it, technology is amazing, it's changing the world on many levels and it is here to stay.
Going forward is how to develop safer technologies, better monitoring and know how to reduce our exposures. I tell people: it's as if you can't eat an organic apple, then peel a regular one! That's a way to minimize pesticide ingestion.
I'm putting together a school curriculum. I did a talk to middle school and high school students thanks to an Electro Sensitive teacher who requires students to turn off their cell phone and place them in a rack with students names on it during her class time.
You can imagine my anxiety addressing myself to this age group! They love their cell phones or ipods because it represents their connectedness to the world and their social network. We don't call them friends anymore but networks. I was expecting them to be reluctant and dismissive. But the response warmed my heart! At the beginning of the lecture, three quarters of the classroom was putting their cell phones on silence mode in the other classes. At the end of the lecture, when they understood the concept of second hand radiation like second hand smoke, they all said that from now on they would either put their phones on airplane mode or turn off their phones in classrooms. That is only one of the solutions I present to reducing their exposure. It's all a matter of developing new habits
I'm extremely careful about using shielding and protective products because they may actually double your exposure if they aren't used with knowledge. But some of them are amazing and the Swedish government actually recognizes EHS (people experience Electro Hyper Sensitivity) as a functional impairment and provides shielding products when one lives next to a cell phone tower for example. I also think that we should consider what Europe is doing in this matter like banning Wi-Fi in nurseries in France or setting the legal age to own a cell phone at 12 years in Belgium.
"From May 24-31 2011, a Working Group of 31 scientists from 14 countries has been meeting at the World Health Organization of International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, to assess the potential carcinogenic hazards from exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields. They classified radio frequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on an increased risk of glioma, malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless cell phone use". IARC press release #208, may 31, 2011.
Going forward is how to develop safer technologies, better monitoring and know how to reduce our exposures. I tell people: it's as if you can't eat an organic apple, then peel a regular one! That's a way to minimize pesticide ingestion.
I'm putting together a school curriculum. I did a talk to middle school and high school students thanks to an Electro Sensitive teacher who requires students to turn off their cell phone and place them in a rack with students names on it during her class time.
You can imagine my anxiety addressing myself to this age group! They love their cell phones or ipods because it represents their connectedness to the world and their social network. We don't call them friends anymore but networks. I was expecting them to be reluctant and dismissive. But the response warmed my heart! At the beginning of the lecture, three quarters of the classroom was putting their cell phones on silence mode in the other classes. At the end of the lecture, when they understood the concept of second hand radiation like second hand smoke, they all said that from now on they would either put their phones on airplane mode or turn off their phones in classrooms. That is only one of the solutions I present to reducing their exposure. It's all a matter of developing new habits
I'm extremely careful about using shielding and protective products because they may actually double your exposure if they aren't used with knowledge. But some of them are amazing and the Swedish government actually recognizes EHS (people experience Electro Hyper Sensitivity) as a functional impairment and provides shielding products when one lives next to a cell phone tower for example. I also think that we should consider what Europe is doing in this matter like banning Wi-Fi in nurseries in France or setting the legal age to own a cell phone at 12 years in Belgium.
"From May 24-31 2011, a Working Group of 31 scientists from 14 countries has been meeting at the World Health Organization of International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, to assess the potential carcinogenic hazards from exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields. They classified radio frequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on an increased risk of glioma, malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless cell phone use". IARC press release #208, may 31, 2011.
This article first appeared in Prevent Disease