Indian Communications Minister Calls for Doubling Penalty for Violation in Cell Tower Radiation Levels

"The industry will have to demonstrate that radiation exposure limits prescribed by the Department of Telecommunications are being adhered to." 

Communications Minister Kapil Sibal

Sibal calls for doubling penalty for violation in cell tower radiation levels.

KOLKATA: Mobile phone companies will soon have to shell out Rs 10 lakh per site as penalties for any breach in cell tower radiationlevels. Communications minister Kapil Sibalhas recommended doubling the penalty for any violation in cell tower radiation levels from the present Rs 5 lakh per site per telco to Rs 10 lakh per site per telco, according to documents reviewed by ET.

"Penalty for non-compliance of actual radiation norms may be two times higher," says Sibal in an internal telecom department note, a copy of which was reviewed by ET.

But Sibal is learnt to have advised DoT officials during a recent meeting with telecom industry representatives "not to treat penalties as a revenue generation exercise but as clauses to facilitate compliance," said a top executive of a GSM operator who was present in the meeting. This is since the telecom department was pressing for a three-fold jump in the penalty for any violation in cell tower radiation exposure level.

Sibal has also urged the telecom department to "levy only a token sum" if a telco is found radiating from a new site without having submitted the necessary documents or installed the required signages on such towers.

Till recently, such non-submission of documents relating to new sites were also being treated as cell tower radiation violations by DoT and attracting the Rs 5 lakh per site penalty, which will no longer be the case.

Sibal called for a review after representatives of COAI and AUSPI -- the industry bodies representing telcos operating on the GSM and CDMA technology platforms -- apprised him that merely 1.2% of radiation-related penalty notices issued by DoT pertained to actual non-compliance, while a majority were triggered by faulty documentation or non-availability of signages at tower sites.

But the minister has ruled out easing the rules for non-compliance on cell tower radiation limits, and urged telcos to furnish a comprehensive data-base on current radiation levels at tower sites by July 15. "The industry will have to demonstrate through this computerised database that radiation exposure limits prescribed by DoT are being adhered to," says the department note with ET.

Effective from September 1, 2012, DoT had lowered the permissible radiation limit to 0.45 watts per sq metre -- which is one-tenth of the ICNIRP guidelines - for Indian operators.

Germany-based International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection or ICNIRP puts out norms on permissible radiation limits for tower firms: 4.5 watts per sq metre in the 900 MHz frequency band. Some countries (notably the United States and Canada) are above it. While several including India, are below it.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/telecom/sibal-calls-for-doubling-penalty-for-violation-in-cell-tower-radiation-levels/articleshow/20384997.cms

Mobilize - An Investigative Documentary

Mobilize is an investigative documentary that explores the potential long-term health effects from cell phone radiation including brain cancer and infertility. This thought-provoking film examines the most recent scientific research and the challenges politicians face trying to pass cell phone safety legislation. Through interviews with expert researchers, major mobile associates, and prominent politicians, Mobilize presents a balanced and insightful observation about this unspoken health issue.

Mobilize - Official Trailer - 2 mn.

Filmed over three years and edited together from over 2,000 hours of footage, Mobilize features interviews with individuals from the following organizations and universities: Apple Inc., the World Health Organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the National Cancer Institute, the Cellular Telecommunications Internet Association, Yale University , Harvard University, USC, UCSF, UC Berkeley, and Virgin Mobile. The documentary also includes personal accounts from brain tumor patients and activists who urge people to get educated and answer the call.

http://www.MobilizeMovie.com

Can Vitamins Protect You From Electrosmog?

Lloyd Burrell, who is electrosensitive, explains why vitamins do not protect one from electrosmog.  His site, ElectricSense, gives excellent advice on ways to protect oneself.

We live in a world where everything is constantly changing. Things are moving so fast. TV and now Internet mean we have access to information like never before. Many of us spend our time zapping from one thing to another, from one TV channel to another, from one website to another. What are we all looking for?

Usually it’s the answer to a question. Sometimes we are not even sure what the question is. Other times we know the question and we are looking for a speedy solution. A quick fix.

In medical terms this invariably means swallowing a pill. Pills are a phenomenal quick fix. They come with all sorts of pseudo guarantees, they have a powerful marketing machine behind them and they generally have the seal of approval of the medical community in general and your family doctor in particular.

To address the issue of EMFs and/or electrosensitivity there is no pill that can make it go away. If there was I would know about it.

But there are vitamins, or more precisely synthetic vitamins.

For many, vitamin pills are the key to protecting yourself from EMFs and staying healthy.

For me they are not. Here’s why.

SYNTHETIC AND FRACTIONATED VITAMINS

When you go into the store, 90% of the vitamins they carry on the shelf are either synthetic or fractionated. Synthetic means that they cook them up in the lab. Fractionated means that they maybe natural, as they occurred in nature, they definitely may have a natural source but the vitamin has been separated from its cofactors that normally occur with it in nature.

The synthetic vitamins have the components of what the vitamin actually contains but they do not have the same molecular structure. There is something different about the functional architecture of the synthetic vitamins as compared to the natural vitamins.

SYNTHETIC AND FRACTIONATED VITAMINS DANGERS

These synthetic vitamins and fractionated vitamins create deficiencies in your body when you take them because they need cofactors to be able to be utilized by your body. They rob from the other stores in your body to create the molecule and make it available to your physiology and anything that is not used is flushed out.

If you’ve had bright yellow pee after you have taken some of your vitamins this is a good indication of this. So we know you are going to create a deficiency in your body by taking these kinds of vitamins. You need to rob Peter to pay Paul; the end is worse than the beginning, essentially.

THE SOURCE OF THE VITAMINS

The other thing that is disconcerting is the source of some of these synthetic vitamins. For vitamin B most of the brands you get off your average store shelf are synthesized from coal tar. That’s also another reason why when you take these vitamins on an empty stomach and they make you feel so, they are not meant to be in your body. Coal tar is not a food.

Another example is vitamin E, the largest supplier of vitamin E, which is then capsulated and packaged by people who place on it their own personal labels, in America is Eastman, as in Eastman Powder. It is actually synthesized from the waste of the film processing. But Eastman aren’t going to get me onto their Vitamin E because they call it mixed tocopherols, they call that vitamin E whereas vitamin E in nature has a whole host of cofactors and synergistic factors in concert with it to make it the best ever.

ARE NATURAL VITAMINS THE ANSWER

Natural is a term to be treated with care because it is so poorly regulated. In the US for example, a vitamin has only to be 10% natural to call itself natural, guess what the other 10% is?

Many vitamins labeled as natural have synthetics added to increase their potency or to standardize the amount in a capsule. Often a salt form (this can be bitartrate, chloride, gluconate, hydrochloride, acetate, nitrate or succinate) is also added to the increase stability of the nutrient. So vitamin pills can never be truly natural.

HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM ELECTROSMOG

I know there are circumstances, for instance fighting a cold, that vitamin C can be helpful. So as a short term temporary measure vitamins can be of value. But taking vitamins long term is a whole different matter and this is what I’m talking about. It is unnecessary and harmful.

They are actually being flushed down the toilet anyway whenever you go to the bathroom. The high doses are an insult to your body. Your body just fights to get rid of them.

You don’t feel good when you take them anyway and that should be a sign and if you do feel more energetic that is probably an adrenal reaction to the toxin that you are taking into your body. The deficiencies these vitamins create are much worse than the original reason why you are taking them in the first place.

Nutritionally, what I recommend is not the quick fix of a vitamin pill but a varied and balanced diet, with plenty of whole grains and vegetables, some fruit and as much organic food as you can. Stay away from processed foods.

That and some basic EMF protection around the home can go a long way.

We are all living in a world with increasing levels of EMFs. These EMFs are a toxin. Why take vitamins which potentially bring you into contact with more toxins?

http://www.electricsense.com/1713/can-vitamins-protect-you-from-electrosmog/

The women allergic to modern life

Julia Taylor

Her headaches were constant and vice-like. So extreme was the pain that it ruined any chance of a decent night's sleep, and left Julia Taylor reduced to little more than 'a walking zombie'. 

A sensible, rational woman, the 53-year-old nutritionist went to her GP for an explanation - only to be told her repeated headaches were simply the countdown to the menopause. Yet every conceivable brand of painkiller, alternative remedy, and even hormone replacement therapy failed to help. 

'I felt like I was going crazy. Doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me, I was fit and healthy in every other way - a battery of tests proved that. And yet my head felt like it was about to explode. I couldn't work properly because I was so exhausted all the time. Once, I didn't sleep for four nights in a row. I felt like I was living in a nightmare.' 

So why did nothing help? Julia is convinced it's because she suffers electro-hypersensitivity (EHS). She believes she is allergic to atmospheric man-made radiation caused by wi-fi, phone signals, mobile phones, TV screens and fluorescent lights. In short, she is allergic to modern life. 

The symptoms reported by sufferers of EHS range from headaches to nausea, sickness, severe abdominal pain, heavy bleeding and even blackouts. Yet EHS is a controversial condition. While some countries, such as Sweden, recognise it as a 'functional impairment', here the Health Protection Agency says there is no scientific evidence linking ill health with electrical equipment. 

So can you really be allergic to all the technology that comes hand-in-hand with modern living? Are Julia and other sufferers sadly misguided - or are they on to something? Certainly, some distinguished experts have linked disrupted sleep to a proximity to power lines. 

Denis Henshaw, emeritus professor of Human Radiation Effects at the University of Bristol, points out that many people who live close to high-voltage power lines suffer sleep disorders and depressive symptoms, as seen in a number of studies. 

'This could be explained by the fact that magnetic fields, such as those found near power lines, disrupt the nocturnal production of the sleep-inducing hormone, melatonin,' he says. 

'Whether other symptoms of EHS occur in this way is not known, but researchers are looking at a number of ways in which electric and magnetic fields may adversely affect health.' 

Two years ago, the European Assembly passed Resolution 1815, which, among other things, calls for restrictions on wi-fi in schools and the use of mobile phones by children. And the World Health Organisation has classified electromagnetic fields of the kind used in mobile telephones as potentially cancerous. 

Julia believes her symptoms were triggered when her home town of Glastonbury switched on a new wi-fi network, known as WiMAX, in 2008. 

'I was fine before then,' she says. 'And I felt fine if I was away from home. But as soon as I got back, my head would start banging again. I couldn't bear it.' 

In the end, Julia and her family - husband, Kevin, 64, who runs his own building business, and their children, Chris, 26 and Katie, 16, moved. They now live in East Devon, a place characterised by a sparse and ageing population - and by a low uptake of mobiles. While Julia still suffers headaches, they are much milder, and her life is more tolerable. 

She is not alone. Many thousands of people - some reports estimate up to five per cent of the population - attribute a raft of debilitating symptoms or poor physical health to EHS. 

Indeed, according to Dr Erica Mallery-Blythe, a former A&E doctor who works as a consultant to various organisations researching EHS, many of us may be electro-hypersensitive and not realise it. 

'Everybody has the potential to become electro-hypersensitive. Every cell in our body, in our brain, or nervous system is dependent on electrical signals,' she says. 'But some people have that extra sensitivity, and though they may not know it, it is causing their asthma, flu-like symptoms or insomnia.' But the symptoms of EHS can be sporadic, making them difficult to track. 

Hannah Metcalf

Hannah Metcalf, however, is in no doubt about the cause of her ailments. The 35-year-old says she is so severely sensitive to electromagnetic waves that she cannot go near a phone or pick up a tablet device, such as an iPad. 

She rarely leaves her home, a 200-acre farm near Canterbury, in an attempt to limit her exposure to radiation. She also strongly believes the difficulty she has had getting pregnant, as well as a miscarriage she suffered three years ago, are down to her condition. 

Any exposure to technology with radiowaves, like a mobile phone, gives her headaches, stomach cramps, bloating and flu-like symptoms. 

According to Dr Erica Mallery-Blythe, a former A&E doctor who works as a consultant to various organisations researching EHS, many of us may be electro-hypersensitive and not realise it 

Her condition manifested itself ten years ago when she started work as a trainee solicitor after completing a law degree. When she sat under the fluorescent lighting in her office, she developed pains in her head and stomach, as well as fatigue. At around the same time, she developed pounding headaches whenever she used her mobile phone. In 2010, she suffered a miscarriage and decided she had no choice but to quit work. 

Like Julia, she researched her situation on the internet. When she read about EHS, everything fell into place. 'I loved my job. But my symptoms intensified every time I was in the office,' she says. 'In the end, I couldn't jeopardise my dream of having children.' 

Over the past few years, her symptoms have become more acute: she can't go anywhere that has wi-fi, as even brief exposure leaves her sick and unable to function. 

She lives a semi-reclusive rural life with her partner, Mark, a 38-year-old farmer, and their children Olly, four, and Ebony, four months. All gadgets are banned in the house and Mark has to do all the errands in town so she can avoid wi-fi. 

Despite such vivid testimonies, there are those who feel EHS could be psychosomatic. They include Dr James Rubin, a senior lecturer in psychological medicine at King's College, London, who has reviewed more than 50 studies and found no evidence of sensitivity to microwave radiation. While he doesn't question that what sufferers experience is real, he does query the cause of it. 

'There are various explanations for what people believe to be behind EHS. A third may have a recorded medical condition such as asthma, or even depression, which they think has been triggered by, say, mobile phone usage, but which they would have suffered anyway,' he says. 

'There are those who don't have a medically defined reason for a set of symptoms - perhaps headaches - so they come to their own conclusions. The point about EHS is that it is all based on self-diagnosis. 

'There is no specific medical test for it. It can also be down to a self-fulfilling prophesy, where an individual can worry themselves sick. The expectation triggers the physical symptoms.' 

Yet, despite the scepticism of much of the medical community, many sufferers are so sure of the source of their problems they go to great lengths to protect themselves from modern life. 

Jessica Sapphire

Jessica Sapphire, 57, from Worthing, West Sussex, has given up her job and is living on her savings after finding it impossible to work in the office of a charity where she was company accountant. 

She says: 'We moved to new premises in March 2011 and as soon as we did I began to feel a prickling and tingling of the skin, as well as terrible pains in my stomach. Looking outside, I also noticed that there was a digital aerial directly above my desk. 

'I felt run-down and in pain, so I took few days off and was fine. But as soon as I returned to work, I felt awful again. I had a strong metallic taste in my mouth, my head was on fire, I started wheezing.' 

Jessica suspected the connection because she had suffered a reaction to mobile phones when she bought one in 2001. 'When I held it to my face I felt pains like hot knitting needles pricking against my skin. But the feeling went away as soon as I stopped using it. 

'It happened again when I had a digital aerial put on my house. This time I got pains in my stomach and prickling skin. I took the aerial down and the pains went away.' 

So what can sufferers do if they believe the world is poisoning them? According to Dr Mallery-Blythe, there is no cure. 'The only way to alleviate symptoms is to avoid the electromagnetic waves they feel cause them. Don't keep electronic devices in the room you sleep in, and switch off as many devices as you can in the house.' 

Jessica uses sheets threaded with silver on her bed - specifically developed for EHS sufferers - to earth any surrounding charges. She doesn't keep electrical equipment plugged in, apart from her fridge. She doesn't use a TV or a radio, and covers her windows with aluminium at night to deflect radiation. 

Hannah tries to see the positive side of her predicament. 

'At least I'll never be one those mums in the park who are glued to the phone when they should be watching their children play. But I'm afraid to even think of what the future holds for my children in this technological era,' she says. 

And as we become ever more dependent on technology, anxieties grow. More than a billion people worldwide own mobile phones and, in the UK, there are more mobile contracts than people, making it ever more difficult for those allergic to modern life to escape. 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2331369/The-women-say-allergic-modern-life-Blinding-headaches-Violent-sickness-Even-blackouts-So-wi-fi-mobile-phones-TV-screens-blame.html 

9th Grade Class Experiments with Cress Exposed to Wi-Fi Attract International Attention

It's a recipe for a biology test so brilliant in it's simplicity and remarkable in it's findings, that it has attracted attention among acknowledged biologists and radiation experts around the world. Behind the experiment are five girls from class 9b in the Hjallerup School in North Jutland in Denmark and it all started when the girls found it difficult to concentrate in class. 

"We all think we had experienced having difficulty concentrating in school, if we had slept with the phone next to your head, and sometimes also experienced having difficulty sleeping', explains Lea Nielsen, who is one of the five aspiring researchers. 

But how could they show the effects of radiation from mobile phones and wi-fi transmitters, without expensive technical equipment?  The answer was karsefrø, or cress seeds to you and me.

The experiment was as simple as it is brilliant!  The girls took 12 plastic plates, onto which they put some tissue paper soaked in water, and then sprinkled 400 cress seeds on each plate.

Six trays of seeds were put into a room without radiation, and six trays were put into another room next to two wi-fi routers which broadcast the same type of radiation as an ordinary mobile phone. Both rooms were the same temperature and the seeds were given the same amount of water and sunlight over a twelve day period.

During the 12 days, the girls observed, measured, weighed and took pictures of the progress of the cress in both rooms.  And the results were astonishing!

The cress seeds with no EMF influence grew normally.  However, the cress seeds next to the router did not grow, and some of them were even mutated or dead.

'It is truly frightening that there is so much influence, so we were even very marked by the result', says Lea Nielsen.

Reactions 

The experiment secured the girls a place in the finals in the competition "Young Scientists", but this was only the beginning. Renowned scientists from England, Holland and Sweden have since shown great interest in the girls' project and its startling results.

The renowned professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Olle Johansson, is one of the researchers the girls have impressed. He is now going to repeat the girls experiment with a Belgian research colleague, Professor Marie-Claire Cammaert at the Université libre de Bruxelles.  It is a trial that according to him, is absolutely brilliant: 'the girls within the scope of their knowledge and skills implemented and developed a very elegant test. The wealth of detail and accuracy is exemplary, choosing the right cress is very intelligent, he says.. 

He has also says the five girls have a bright future ahead of them, "I sincerely hope that they spend their future professional life in research, because I definitely think they have a natural aptitude for it. Personally, I would love to see these people in my team!"

No mobile by the bed 

The five girls from northern Jutland haven't yet decided their future careers and are still reeling from all the sudden attention.

"It has been such a constant sum of the stomach. I still can not understand it", says Lea Nielsen.

And Mathilde Nielsen says, "It's totally overwhelming and exciting. It's not something you just experience every day".

But there have also been other consequences of the remarkable cress trial, "none of us sleep with the phone next to the bed anymore. Either it is far away, or in another room. And the computer is always off", says Lea Nielsen.

Source: http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Indland/2013/05/16/131324.htm

Eleanor R. Adair, Microwave Proponent, Dies at 86

Edward A. Ornelas

Eleanor R. Adair, a scientist who studied microwave radiation, at a test chamber at an Air Force base in San Antonio in 2000.

Eleanor R. Adair, a scientist who spent decades exposing monkeys and eventually people (including herself) to microwave radiation to determine whether it posed serious health risks — she concluded, emphatically and somewhat controversially, that it did not — died on April 20 in Hamden, Conn. She was 86.

The cause was complications of a stroke, her daughter, Margaret Adair Quinn, said.

In the early 1970s, Dr. Adair, who had done her doctoral work in sensory psychology, was pursuing an interesting but not necessarily provocative topic: how people and animals react physiologically to external heat sources. Yet over the next three decades — after her research led her to study heat generated through microwave radiation, which is used in microwave ovens and emitted at low levels by things like cellphones and electrical transmission lines — Dr. Adair became an increasingly prominent and firm voice of assurance that microwave radiation posed no health risk.

“All the emphasis that we need more research on power line fields, cellphones, police radar — this involves billions of dollars that could be much better spent on other health problems,” Dr. Adair said in an interview with The New York Times in 2001. “Because there is really nothing there.”

For some people close to the issue, those were fighting words.

Even as numerous studies have found that microwave ovens are safe and many scientists say there is no evidence that cellphones cause cancer or other health problems, the rising use of cellphones, wireless Internet signals and some medical and military devices has continued to raise questions about their risk. Last year, a panel of the World Health Organization listed microwave radiation as “possibly carcinogenic.” In March, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it would review its standards for cellphone use for the first time since 1996.

Some scientists do not use the term microwave radiation because they are concerned it is misleading and scares people unnecessarily. Microwave radiation is far weaker than the radiation in X-rays or gamma rays.

Advocates for more research count Dr. Adair in to a camp that focuses too much on heat or thermal effects from microwaves and is too quick to dismiss other ways microwaves might affect health.

“There’s something going on, and the question is what that is and whether it’s dangerous,” said Louis Slesin, the editor of Microwave News, a Web site that is often skeptical of the role industry and the military play in influencing health standards related to the issue. “Don’t let anyone tell you they know the answer to that question.”

Although Dr. Adair said she did not receive money from cellphone makers or industries whose products released microwave radiation, she served for five years late in her career as a senior scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory in San Antonio. The Air Force uses radar that emits microwaves.

Dr. Adair was indisputably an innovator in studying microwave radiation, work she began in the mid-1970s while a fellow at the John B. Pierce Laboratory in New Haven. First with squirrel monkeys and then with human volunteers, she placed subjects in a chamber into which she released relatively high levels of microwaves for about 45 minutes, followed by a cool-down period. She focused on what impact the heat generated by microwaves might have — and she said she never found much more than perspiration. She said the monkeys and the people mostly enjoyed the experience.

“Particularly if the environment is cool, they love it when the field comes on,” she told The Times. She said: “It is very easy to sense it and it feels good. If they are in a warm environment, and the field is strong they may start to sweat and they may feel quite uncomfortable. They always have an option of getting out of the chamber at any time, saying, ‘I’ve had enough.’ ”

Richard A. Tell, who consults for cellular companies and other industries and who served with Dr. Adair on a committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers that helps set standards for permissible microwave levels, said she “did the first and only studies that have ever been done so far in which humans were studied under controlled conditions.”

Eleanor Campbell Reed was born on Nov. 28, 1926, in Arlington, Mass. Her father owned a Dodge dealership near Boston and her mother worked as a fashion illustrator before she married. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1948 and received her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in 1955. In 1952 she married Robert K. Adair, who would later become a prominent physicist at Yale. Mr. Adair became involved in his wife’s work in her later years and sometimes appeared with her at conferences.

Besides her daughter, survivors include her husband; her son, Douglas; two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

“She would always be the first human subject in all of her experiments,” including those involving exposure to microwaves, her daughter said. “She said it was absolutely the most comfortable heat that she ever experienced. She described it once as like having the sun come out — you just suddenly feel all warm and cozy. You’re warm on the inside, not overly hot on the outside.”

Sourfce: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/science/eleanor-r-adair-microwave-safety-researcher-dies-at-86.html?_r=0