We received an email a few weeks ago from a woman who had visited our BabySafe Project website. She
wondered how concerned she should be about wireless radiation in her apartment
building in New York City.
As far as we can determine from the evidence we have, the greatest
risk comes from very close exposures - holding a cell phone against your head,
for instance, or keeping it in your pants pocket if you’re a man, or keeping it
close to your developing baby if you’re a pregnant woman.
You don’t want to have your wireless router on your desk, or within
a few feet of where you spend a lot of time. Certainly not in your
bedroom, close to your bed.
No doubt, city dwellers also face other difficult obstacles when it
comes to reducing their exposure. There's usually no need to worry too much
about picking up the wi-fi signals from other apartments, unless you determine
the neighbor’s router is directly on the other side of the wall from where you
or your kids sleep. But banks of smart
meters on exterior walls, cellular repeaters on rooftops (or directly across
the street), and wi-fi “hotspots” on lighting poles directly outside apartment
windows may be cause for concern.
The best way to achieve some peace of mind is to get a meter and do
some readings around your apartment. You may or may not have a problem that
needs to be addressed.
A few weeks ago the National Toxicology Program of the National
Institutes of Health released the first findings from its $25 million study on
the health impacts of radiation from cell phones. Not surprisingly, there was
immediate controversy over what the data showed.
But one fact stands out, even to the casual observer: 46 of
the 540 rats exposed to cell phone radiation developed cancer or pre-cancerous
cells, as compared to none of the 90 rats which were not exposed.
Therefore, we can conclude that, at least in this
experiment, the radiation from the cell phone caused the cancer. That should
put to rest any question as to whether or not cell phones are capable of
causing cancer. Clearly they are.
Exactly what other impacts cell phones may have isn't clear
yet, but independent scientists around the world are building the evidentiary
case for caution, particularly for young children.
The bottom line is there's no risk in being careful.
Scientists would say we need to employ the Precautionary Principle. Or as we tell
our kids, better safe than sorry.
