Boy
Oh, my God, what the…?!
NARRATION
You can’t see it or hear it, but wi-fi blankets our homes, our cities and our schools.
Dr Devra Davis
Children today are growing up in a sea of radiofrequency microwave radiation that did not exist five years ago.
NARRATION
Our safety agencies dispute that wireless devices like mobile phones cause harm.
Dr Ken Karipidis
Don’t think it’s good enough to say at the moment that mobile phone use does cause cancer.
Dr Devra Davis
Cell phones emit pulsed radiation…
NARRATION
But some of the world’s leading scientists and industry insiders are breaking ranks to warn us of the risks.
Professor Bruce Armstrong
There is an association between heavy mobile phone use and brain tumours.
Frank Clegg
I’ve been in the technology industry all of my career and I’ve seen the tremendous benefits technology can provide. My concern is nobody can say that it’s safe.
NARRATION
Do mobile phones cause brain cancer? And is wi-fi making us sick?
Dr Maryanne Demasi
In this episode, I investigate the latest research and advice about the safety of our modern wireless devices.
NARRATION
The digital revolution has transformed our lives. Phones, tablets, watches and laptops all connected to wireless networks. We use these devices to make calls, send texts, write emails, play music, take photos, and even watch TV. In fact, chances are you could be watching this on your wireless device right now.
Dr Devra Davis
We’ve gone from the equivalent of the horse-and-buggy to the jet in about ten years. The transformation in technology has been without precedence. The devices that are held directly next to the body, the mobile phone, the cordless phone, are the ones we’re most concerned about.
NARRATION
When US cancer epidemiologist Dr Devra Davis was first told about the risks of mobile phones, her reaction was predictable disbelief.
Dr Devra Davis
I said, ‘What are you talking about? There’s no problem. If there were a problem, I would know about it.’ ‘Cause of course, I was working at the National Academy of Sciences. I was working at the Cancer Institute, a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, and I frankly thought, ‘There’s nothing to this.’ Then, however, I began to look and the more I looked, the more concerned I became.
NARRATION
Dr Davis has had a distinguished career as a Presidential appointee for the Clinton administration and is recognised internationally for her work on environmental health and disease prevention. She was recently in Australia holding a series of public seminars.
Dr Devra Davis
People are assuming everything’s fine until we have evidence that we’re in the middle of a disaster.
NARRATION
Today, there’s over 6 billion phone subscriptions worldwide – many of them smartphones with apps that frequently receive and transmit electromagnetic signals. In a similar way, the human body has electromagnetic fields. Electrical currents flow through nerve fibres and muscle tissue and external interference can disrupt those signals.
Dr Devra Davis
Our heart and our brain are electric. We need to understand that exposing our electric body to mobile phone radiation for thousands of minutes a month, for hundreds of hours over a lifetime, it’s going to have a biological effect on you. In fact, the Blackberry comes with a warning. It says, ‘If you have a pacemaker implanted in your chest, keep the mobile device at least 20cm away. Well, your heart is a pacemaker whether you have a machine in it or not. So obviously you wanna protect your heart and the rest of your body.
NARRATION
Finnish radiation biologist Dr Dariusz Leszczynski is an internationally recognised expert in radiation safety and has been an advisor to the WHO on such matters. He says most people with a smartphone nowadays may be unwittingly breaching the safety limits of their device.
Dr Dariusz Leszczynski
Sometimes person puts cell phone in pocket which are connected to internet, then safety limits are being breached and this cell phone doesn’t comply with safety regulations once it is put in pocket.
NARRATION
Phones are manufactured to ensure the radiation they emit can’t overheat the body and cause thermal damage. It’s called the specific absorption rate, but during testing, the phone is positioned at a distance away from the model body. Therefore when you put your smartphone in your pocket directly against your body, you may be exceeding the safety standard.
Dr Dariusz Leszczynski
In order to comply with safety standards, this cell phone has to be at some distance from body.
Dr Maryanne Demasi
So it’s fair to say that sometimes people would be breaching the safety standard of their mobile phones every day.
Dr Dariusz Leszczynski
Yes.
Dr Maryanne Demasi
That’s quite shocking. I don’t think people are aware of this information.
Dr Dariusz Leszczynski
Because nobody’s talking about it, including radiation safety authorities. They simply don’t mention it.
NARRATION
Electromagnetic radiation is everywhere. We have always been exposed to natural sources like the sun, but there are some sources of radiation that are man-made. Today, with the proliferation of mobile and wireless technology and devices that emit artificial radiofrequency radiation, some claim we’re exposed to levels up to a quintillion times higher than natural background levels. The spectrum of electromagnetic radiation ranges from ionising radiation like X-rays which have enough energy to knock electrons out of their orbit and cause cancer, to non-ionising radiation like microwaves which have much less energy and considered to be safer. Mobile phones, tablets, phone towers, smart meters, baby monitors and wi-fi routers are all sources of radiofrequency microwave radiation. Professor Bruce Armstrong was part of an expert panel on radiation which gathered for the International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC. The panel was tasked with analysing whether radiofrequency radiation could cause cancer.
Professor Bruce Armstrong
Its decision was, essentially, that it possibly causes cancer.
NARRATION
That means radiofrequency radiation is now classified as a Class 2B possible human carcinogen.
Professor Bruce Armstrong
It was inevitably a controversial decision.
Dr Maryanne Demasi
What was your personal decision?
Professor Bruce Armstrong
I thought that IARC got it right based on the evidence.
NARRATION
Heavy users are defined as those who talk on a mobile 30 minutes a day for longer than 10 years. Journalists like myself, tradespeople, brokers, even teenagers would easily meet that definition these days. So I went to ARPANSA, our federal agency responsible for protecting us from the harmful effects of radiation. I asked one of their physicists, Dr Ken Karipidis, for his view on IARC’s decision.
Dr Ken Karipidis
On a personal level, I don’t think it should be a 2B. Other people say it should be higher.
NARRATION
Dr Karapidis says there’s no cause for concern.
Dr Ken Karipidis
We’ve been doing research in this area for a very long time and our assessment of the evidence suggests that although some studies do show effects, there is no established evidence that the low levels of radiofrequency radiation from tablets and phones and wi-fi and what have you causes health effects.
Dr Maryanne Demasi
So ARPANSA’s not actually saying these devices are safe.
Dr Ken Karipidis
We can only provide advice on assessment of the evidence. We do not provide guarantees of safety. I don’t think a scientist can do that.
NARRATION
In Ontario is the former head of Microsoft Canada, Frank Clegg. He has gained valuable insight into the machinations of the tech industry.
Frank Clegg
I’ve been in the technology industry all my career and I’ve seen the tremendous benefits that technology can provide. My concern is nobody can say that it’s safe. All my industry and all government agencies say is there is no proof of harm. To my mind, that’s not the same as saying it’s safe.
NARRATION
Mr Clegg points out that the safety standard only protects people from thermal damage that can occur through overheating. But scientists have demonstrated that radiation emitting devices can cause DNA damage without heating tissue. These are non-thermal effects.
Frank Clegg
Unfortunately, the safety standards in North America and Australia are based on this theory that’s many decades old that if tissue doesn’t get heated, then it can’t cause harm. That’s just out of date, and what the biologists tell us and have shown in many experiments, and again, peer-reviewed published papers, that there is damage done at the DNA level, and from a biological standpoint, non-thermal radiation can cause and does cause harm to humans.
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Smart Meter Harm 