This Canadian broadcast on wi-fi dangers in schools features contentious school board meetings, students and parents concerned about radiation exposure, sharp criticism of current Canadian safety standards by a U.S. expert (standards in the U.S. aren’t any stricter), and a report on a community in France which has dismantled all its school wireless systems and replaced them with fiber-optic wired systems.

Germany has officially warned its citizens to avoid wi-fi; the French National Library in Paris removed its wi-fi system, and other countries and school systems have taken similar steps (the EMF Safety Network has a partial list here).

Other resources and links on the health impacts of wireless technology radiation:
The EMF Journal’s list of Bans or Warnings against Wireless Technology
The People’s Initiative Foundation

Dr. Magda Havas has been warning about the biological harm from wireless technology radiation for years. Her recent talk in the LA area was covered by Sunroom Desk. Days ago The Kingston Whig Standard in Canada published another feature on Havas’ work.

The incomplete list of experts and links on this blog, including Dr. Havas, Dr. Devra Davis (who just published Disconnect), Dr. David Carpenter (the U.S. expert mentioned above), and feature articles such as Are Cell Phones and Wi-Fi Hazardous to Your Health? in last week’s Huffington Post, is still enough to provide plenty of information that should make the Glendale School Board reconsider any continuing investment in wireless networks now installed, and go the route of replacing them with safer, faster, more secure, fiber-optic networks.

GUSD should avoid the “rush to all things wireless” and make a better, long-term investment in its students and educational technology using fiber-optic wired hardware.

The radio program “Industry-Censored Cell Phone Science” featured the new book Disconnect, and took a critical look at conventional wisdom that wireless technology is safe at radiofrequency emission levels set by the federal government.

Quotes from the interview:

“You have language that’s being expressed that the Interphone study is so confusing we can’t really find anything, so we’ll just have to wait for the next study. This is literally the spin machine of the industry working full time to hide the problem.”

“We’re living in a time which I call “the rush to all things wireless”, and it is utter madness. This is the greatest health experiment ever performed on humankind without informed consent. Every day you hear about a new technology, a new approach, and the total background radiation which organisms on this planet have never seen before is up a billionfold and more. Evolution has protected us against all sorts of things that existed naturally in the environment, but microwaves and all have never existed before. The U.S. government and the World Health Organization have declared the electricity field as a Class 2B carcinogen. We already have a finding that electromagnetic fields are a carcinogen yet we continue to roll out this new technology…”

The full interview, which focuses on cell phones, but also touches on cell towers, wi-fi, and smart meters, is available from KPFA’s audio archives.

Her compelling talk at the Commonwealth Club, with extended Q&A and testimonies from brain cancer victims and their families, has been uploaded in three segments to YouTube:

Part I – Devra Davis’ Presentation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HK-5wjAOww&feature=related

Part II – Q&A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7vqX5NI9QI&feature=related

Part III – Testimony from Brain Tumor Survivors and Families
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsf1ujR4pkU

Davis’ new book is Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family

The Federal Communications Commission has changed its guidance to cellphone users worried about the health effects of wireless devices, dropping a long-standing recommendation that concerned consumers purchase phones with lower levels of radiation emissions.

The move comes amid a growing debate over cellphone safety and coincides with efforts in some jurisdictions – most notably San Francisco – to require wireless providers to more clearly state the radiation emissions of the phones they sell.

The revisions were made last week, without any formal announcement, to a consumer fact sheet posted on the FCC’s Web site. Consumer advocates criticized the agency for what they called a lack of transparency.

Based on the reading I’ve done on the subject, both the FCC and CTIA are correct on this point: a specific absorption rate measurement taken by the manufacturer isn’t an accurate guide to how much radiation the phone will emit. How and where the phone is actually used determines how much radiation the user is exposed to, and there is no evidence this exposure is safe. Industry and the FCC continue to claim that there is no evidence of harm…

Dr. Davis’ book summarizes the decades-long industry effort to discredit warnings that many scientists and research studies have issued about the adverse biological impacts of microwave radiation. It also goes into detail on how officials with industry ties have influenced exposure standards mentioned in this current FCC website text:

Federal, state, and local government agencies and other organizations have generally relied on RF exposure standards developed by expert non-government organizations such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP). Since 1996, the FCC has required that all wireless communications devices sold in the United States meet its minimum guidelines for safe human exposure to radiofrequency (RF) energy. The FCC’s guidelines and rules regarding RF exposure are based upon standards developed by IEEE and NCRP and input from other federal agencies, such as those listed above.

Sunroom Desk featured the last substantive change on this FCC website page here. That post contains a link to an even earlier, cached copy of the same page here.

Raising one of the issues in Davis’ book Disconnect (small print warnings in cell phone user guides), and showing that this issue is a worldwide concern, here is a link from yesterday’s UK Mail: Hidden health risk in mobiles: Phone giants accused of burying warnings in small print
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Yesterday’s Sunroom Desk post contains two audio clips of interviews with Davis and others on dangers of cell phone, wireless device, cell tower, and smart meter radiation; they are well worth the time.

Plans for this year’s CTIA convention were already set when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance in June 2010 requiring consumer information about cell phone radiation at the point of sale. CTIA retaliated by announcing it would no longer hold conventions in San Francisco, and filed a lawsuit against San Francisco over the new ordinance.

Dr. Davis is speaking at noon today at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco; she appeared yesterday on two radio programs in the Bay area. Audio archives are available online:
1. KALW’s Your Call – Rose Agilar interviews Dr. Davis and Debbie Raphael of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment.
2. KPFA’s Your Own Health & Fitness – Layna Berman interviews Dr. Davis, Ellie Marks and Lloyd Morgan. Ellie Marks is founder of the California Brain Tumor Association and Lloyd Morgan is primary author of the report Cell Phones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern

Time Magazine posted a review of Davis’ new book on its EcoCentric blog: Health: A Cancer Muckraker Takes on Cell Phones.

But a very new concern has emerged in the past few years: long-term health risks from radiation emitted by mobile media devices. The city of San Francisco will be considering legislation on this issue next week.

Last Sunday, the San Francisco Library hosted a panel discussion on teens and cell phone use and premiered a new video aimed at teenagers, Cell Phones: Just Like Cigarettes?, which draws parallels between the long-term health effects of smoking and “electro-smog” (the radiation emitted by cell phones and their transmitters).

Featured speaker Dr. Devra Davis, a Professor in Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center and founder of The Environmental Health Trust, is “deeply concerned about troubling findings of serious health problems from cell phone use in countries where cell phones have been used for a longer period of time. Many governments, including Finland, Israel, Russia, China, France, Sweden and India recommend that children simply not use cell phones.”

Last September, Dr. Davis testified at a U.S. Senate hearing on cell phone safety. This month, the Maine state legislature will consider a bill requiring warning labels on cell phones. Next week, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will introduce legislation requiring retailers in San Francisco to post information on Specific Absorption Rates (SARs), wherever cell phones are sold in the city (a ranking of all cell phones by SAR rate is available from this Environmental Working Group webpage).

More on the proposed legislation in an upcoming post.