Dhru Purohit Show - #235: The Latest Science on the Link Between Cancer and Cell Phones with Dr. Devra Davis

Starting point is 00:00:00 I think most people don't realize that a cell phone is a two-way microwave radiating device. It sends and receives messages in order to function, and it has multiple antennas on it, which are emitting and receiving microwave radiation. Because it can damage DNA, this can lead cells to proliferate out of control, which results in cancer. Today we're talking all things cell phone radiation, electromagnetic frequencies, and 5G. Should we be concerned or is it a bunch of hype? Well, we have a leading scientist in this field with over four years of experience investigating this topic and other environmental toxins. Dr. Debra Davis and we're going to separate fact from fiction when it comes to cell phone

Starting point is 00:00:50 radiation. Stay tuned. If you haven't noticed already, I'm pretty obsessed with optimizing my sleep. Over the past few years, I've been incorporating simple, affordable techniques to guarantee a great night's sleep. What took me a while to learn when I first got started was that my daytime habits were affecting my ability to get deep rest, namely screen time. But let's be real, there's no way around screen time for many of us who operate our whole lives with a laptop or phone, myself included. The key is to minimize the effects of blue light or junk light, which actually suppresses

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Starting point is 00:02:57 bluebox.com backslash Drew and use the code Drew 20, all one word. That's B-L-U-B-L-O-X.com slash D-H-R-U with the code Drew 20. I hope you'll check them out and give them a try. So when I was younger, I used to snack on a lot of processed foods. Sugary snacks to keep me fueled for sports in school, and I remember feeling I'd have this huge sugar rush followed by a major crash. I'd pass that on the couch for hours, totally exhausted. And by the way, I and everybody around me thought this was completely normal. So here's the thing. Most snacks on the market, even the ones labeled natural or gluten-free, are so carb and sugar-heavy

Starting point is 00:03:44 that they spike your blood sugar and leave you feeling like crap. That's why we've done so many episodes on blood sugar. The key is to find a snack that has the right combination of protein and fats to keep you energized without spikes in your blood sugar. That's the name of the game for balanced energy. So I feel super fortunate that I finally found the best snacks from a company called Paleo Valley that hit my protein and fat needs. I love, love, taking their products with me when I'm traveling or I'm out for the day shooting

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Starting point is 00:05:35 PaleoValley.com backslash Drew. It's in the show notes as well. Check out this fantastic deal today. Welcome to the Drew Perot podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Dr. Debra Davis, and we're talking about the latest growing concern

Starting point is 00:05:57 and science around cell phone radiation, electromagnetic frequencies and radiation, and of course, 5G. What's fact and what's fiction? Dr. Davis is probably one of the leading scientists in the world to bring on the podcast to discuss this subject. A little bit about Dr. Debra Davis. She's an internationally acclaimed award-winning scientist and author of more than 220 scientific publications and three popular books, including when smoke ran like water, the secret history of the war on cancer, and disconnect the truth about cell phone radiation.

Starting point is 00:06:37 Dr. Davis was the United States Senate confirmed presidential appointee to the National Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation. board and served as an advisor to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the World Health Organization. She was one of the scientists who was the lead author on the intergovernmental panel on climate change and was part of the team of scientists awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Vice President Al Gore. Dr. Davis was formerly a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and was one of the founding directors of the world's first center for environmental oncology. She is currently the president and the founder of the Environmental Health Trust, a nonprofit scientific organization focusing on drawing attention to man-made health threats.

Starting point is 00:07:28 Environmental health trust is considered a major resource for those wanting to learn more about environmental toxins and about the current push to depend on 5G and 5G towers. Dr. Davis lectures at American and European universities and her research has been covered in major scientific scientific publications as well as being highlighted on major media outlets like CNN, C-SPAN, CBC, BBC, and public radio. Dr. Davis, it's an honor and a pleasure to have you here on the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's a delight to talk with you.

Starting point is 00:08:03 I can't wait to dive into it. So let's jump right in. I want to start with something that our podcast audience is a little bit familiar with because we did an entire newsletter and episode series on EMFs. but I want you to expand on it. So in 2011, the World Health Organization and the IARC, they classified EMFs as a group to be possible carcinogen. Now, that was in 2011.

Starting point is 00:08:31 Now, what a lot of people don't know is that since that time period, there has been a lot of additional research that has come out. And I'd love for you to expand on it, specifically the links between EMFs. cell phone radiation, non-ionizing radiation, and the link to cancer slash carcinogens. So can you start us off from there? I certainly can try. I think most people don't realize that a cell phone is a two-way microwave radiating device. It sends and receives messages in order to function, and it has multiple antennas on it, which are emitting and receiving microwave radiation. Now, this radiation is too weak to directly break the DNA bonds that are in every cell of every living thing. But it does break the DNA bonds

Starting point is 00:09:21 through indirect means. So it doesn't do it like ionizing radiation, like x-rays, which we're all familiar with, is damaging, but it does damage the DNA indirectly. And because it can damage DNA, this can lead cells to proliferate out of control, which results in cancer. Normally, we get damage to our DNA all the time from sunlight, from just being alive. And because we have healthy cells with healthy DNA, that damage gets repaired. But what we know now from studies that have been done since 2011 is that this kind of radiation could be damaging cells. Let's talk about the kind of evidence that we have.

Starting point is 00:10:05 We've really got studies done in cell cultures, experiments done in petri dishes, with cell cultures taken from humans and animals. We have studies done in whole animals where we follow them over a period of time using controlled studies with designs that have been standardized over many decades. And then we have studies in human beings where we look at people who, for example, have brain cancer or thyroid cancer. And we compare them with those who do not have the disease, but are the same age, same experiences.

Starting point is 00:10:39 And we find out whether their cell phone history differs. And that's where we have the most problems because the data are difficult to get. People don't live in cages. We don't control them like we can with animals. But those studies also show in effect. So if we look at the experimental studies in cell cultures, those studies which were around in 2011 are now much more robust. There are many more of them. Most recently, an expert group advised the Swiss government that looking at all,

Starting point is 00:11:12 all of the in vitro evidence and in vivo evidence, there was clear evidence that cell phone radiation can increase what we call reactive oxygen species. Now, these are free radicals that can be like the cures of the cells. They roam around and wherever they see a free electron, they grab it and they cause damage. And the reactive oxygen species proliferate with cell phone radiation, which is also omitted by your laptops, your baby monitors, and other devices, which is why we at Environmental Health Trust recommend wiring your devices for use in your home and limiting your use of cell phones and certainly explain to your children that cell phones are not toys

Starting point is 00:12:02 and should be used by children for emergencies, but not for everyday use. You know, you said something very important, which is that normally, under most circumstances, is our body has a repair system, even our brain. You know, our podcast started off as being more brain specific. Our brain has its own detoxification system, repair system, the glymphatic system. And when we go to sleep, we go into deep DNA repair. Our body sends out all the cells to go through that repair process. But one of the things that we're really talking about here is the volume of total exposure

Starting point is 00:12:38 that's out there and not just self directly related. related to cell phones, but also one thing I really appreciate about your organization is that anything electrical plugged in that we are in close proximity to also emits an amount of EMF. Is that correct? It certainly is correct. And you want to be careful about it because obviously we're living in the modern world. We're not going to be Luddates and go back into caves where we don't have electricity, but we need to be smarter and safer about how we use these things.

Starting point is 00:13:11 and that's what we're promoting at Environmental Health Trust, safer technology. Yeah, that's exactly it. Here we are. We're so thankful and lucky to be able to use Zoom. I have a microphone. I have an Apple MacBook Pro, a monitor. And really, it's not about going backwards. It's about we can actually live in harmony with technology and use policy, sometimes public pressure and awareness, which is what this podcast is trying to do in educating people, to see the things that we can do ourselves, the things that we can ask government in a healthy way, right? We have to be mindful of regulation, but in a healthy way that can be protective. And more importantly, to get at the root of disinformation that's happening in the industry.

Starting point is 00:13:55 So let's talk about that for a second, because when you talk to a lot of leading experts in this space, or just if you ask even non-experts doctors, you know, researchers that are out there who maybe aren't aware of this, but are semi-open-minded, even from their standpoint or articles that are on the internet, it seems that the data is sort of inconclusive, that, hey, some studies show and some studies don't show, so let's wait and see. So let's talk about that. Why is that the current view when it comes to EMF and its impact on human health? A number of researchers have asked that very good question. Why do we have so much wide-ranging studies? Well, let me tell you there's been an industry involved here that makes the tobacco industry look like amateurs.

Starting point is 00:14:46 They manufacture doubt. As long as you're uncertain, you can continue developing the industry, continuing proliferating it. And that is exactly what's happened here. The manufacturing of uncertainty has taken the following form. Let's say you want to study whether a certain type of cell is damaged by EMF. We know, we know from experiments that have been done, that the more immature a cell, the more vulnerable it is. So studies that I've published with researchers from Austria and have shown that when you expose younger cells, stem cells, to electromagnetic fields, you can damage them and affect their ability to repair damage.

Starting point is 00:15:30 But when you take mature lymphocytes and expose them to this radiation, they're not as easily damaged. So when you look at the studies that have been done and we contributed a machine learning analysis with Halka Haugemu from Australia, that's Malka Haugamu from Australia. We showed in that machine learning exercise that the in vitro studies clearly predominantly do show in effect the same results which were found by the Swiss government expert group led by Mikey Meveson. And we concluded that if you looked at sponsorship of the studies, who pays for a study really influences the results dramatically. Where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit and who has bought your chair. And the bulk of the industry studies are finding very few effects and the bulk of the independent

Starting point is 00:16:26 studies find effects. Now, most studies have been done and supported in the past by industry. More recently, unfortunately, the best laboratory in the world was at Motorola, and that laboratory shut two decades ago, basically closed down their operations and stopped doing what had been really important work. And I know from an industry insider that the reason they shut the lab is that they were starting to show results that were very inconvenient. So if you don't want the results known, you kill the funding. And that has been a pattern that I documented in my book, Disconnect, the Truth About Cell Phone Radiation. When researchers in Vienna showed that there was an effect, they had a laboratory, they coordinated a multi-million dollar study for the European Union with laboratories in Finland, working with the Finnish Radiation Authority, with laboratories across Europe coordinating a study of whether or not cell phone radiation could damage DNA. And the industry first attacked the researchers, then attacked the funding. But ultimately, most recently, that research was confirmed to be correct by other studies.

Starting point is 00:17:43 And the courts in Austria ordered, ordered the researchers that had been spreading false stories about this to stop doing it or pay fines for having spread false information. attacking this research. It took 10 years. There's a chapter in my book called The Doctor who danced with the Devil about Franz Adelkofer, who was a leader of that study. And Lawrence Lessig at Harvard held a seminar with us where he discussed this, discussed it in one of his books as well. And it was an example of the manipulation of science that has gone on on this issue for decades. And that is why doubt exists. It has been deliberately managed. It has been deliberately manufactured. So long as you can say we're uncertain, then nothing happens. And you continue with the industry as it is. The fact of the matter is, this is a complex set of issues. And the complexity

Starting point is 00:18:42 has been used, like across to the vampire. It's uncertain. Therefore, we better wait. Well, while we wait, billions of people have become addicted to the technology in ways that are unsafe. you know, we talked about cancer and that's how we opened things up, but an area that you have shared in previous interviews that is probably one of your biggest growing concerns, although they're all growing concerns, is fertility. So let's talk about fertility and why is that one of the things that you're really trying to sound the alarm on. What do we know about EMFs and their impact on both male and female fertility? Well, I published work with a very talented, Iranian scientist who's now in the United States, Massoud Sephiromanish, and we have shown that when you expose

Starting point is 00:19:34 sperm to cell phone radiation, you cause damage to the testicular proteome as publications. Studies done at the Cleveland Clinic have taken test tubes and sperm from healthy men who are having fertility problems. Now, one in every five couples that tries to have a baby when they want to fails. One in 20 in the United States. As you know, there are many different reasons for this, ranging from tight underwear to other things. But the failure of couples to be able to have a baby when they want to may have an important link to cell phone radiation. Because the study at the Cleveland Clinic that took these test tubes of sperm found the following. A test tube of sperm exposed just for two hours to normal cell phone radiation, has sperm that die three times faster with three times more damage to the mitochondrial DNA, which is the engine of the sperm, compared to the healthy sperm in the same test tube not exposed.

Starting point is 00:20:40 So these two test tubes of sperm, one exposed to cell phone radiation, one not exposed, clear evidence that cell phone radiation damages sperm. And in my TEDx talk, I explained this, you know, we need a quarter of a million sperm to make a healthy baby. The reason we need so many is that sperm don't know how to ask for directions. The reality is you want the healthiest sperm to fertilize the egg. And what we're shown in research done by many different researchers around the world, including Sir Richard Aiken, in Australia is that sperm are vulnerable to cell phone radiation. Yeah, and you know, you've made the analogy before that is on a microscopic level, sperm or swing the distance in sort of people distance, it'd be swimming from Los Angeles to

Starting point is 00:21:41 Hawaii. That's right. And quantity matters and quality also matters. So if our sperm are going through insults of one could be cell phone. radiation, right? As you're mentioning here, there's other insults that are there, insulin resistance, too high blood sugar, chemicals that are in the environment. As one of your colleagues, I'm blanking on her name right now, but wrote a book on, is that right? Right. And we'll both remember it shortly. Yes, yes, yes. Welcome back to us shortly. So it's, and as you, if you have made very clear in your

Starting point is 00:22:16 podcast, there are multiple insults we have to talk about. There's sugar. There's pesticides. There's endocrine disrupting chemicals, which are unfortunately still proliferating in plastic containers for food and things of that sort. And of course, there's also cell phone radiation. And it's the combined effect of these insults that has resulted in the major problems we are having with infertility in around the world today. Yeah. And we talked about men, but also with women.

Starting point is 00:22:46 There was a study that was featured on your website that we linked to in a recent newsletter to our audience. And it was from Kaiser Permanente's research office, and it was a doctor, Dekun Lee, who talked about inside of there, the non-ionizing radiation exposure during pregnancy increases miscarriage risk. And there was a follow-up study that I believe. If you remember that study offhand, can you give us a couple of all points? Yes, that study was done in China where you would never be able to do any study like that in any other country. They took women who were scheduled to have an abortion.

Starting point is 00:23:20 Remember that China had very tight control over women's reproduction. They're now rethinking that. And they looked at the length of the embryo that was removed after they had the abortion. So this was a deliberate investigation. They looked at the electromagnetic exposures the women had prior to the abortion. and what they found is that women with the highest level of exposure to electromagnetic fields produced embryos with shorter length and smaller buds. The bud at the top of the length of the embryo is what becomes the brain.

Starting point is 00:24:04 Think about this. They start out with one month with a smaller brain if they've been exposed to higher electromagnetic fields. What we know is that the embryo that becomes the thing, fetus that becomes the baby, that the brain grows most of any organ and continues to double in the first year of life. And if the brain cells are fewer in number starting out, then of course we're going to see children with more problems. And studies done by our colleagues in Turkey, Suleiman Kaplan and others looked in animal studies where they looked at animals exposed prenatally to cell phone radiation. And what they showed is that those animals produced

Starting point is 00:24:52 offsprings with damage to their hippocampus. Now, the hippocampus is the part of the brain. They're responsible for balance and memory and impulse control, a very important part of the brain. And his studies showed consistently that prenatally exposed animals developed impairment to their hippocampus. Now, tie that with other studies done, Yale University by Professor Hugh Taylor, who has been the chairman of OBGYN at Yale. He took whole animals, exposed them prenatally, and then using standard methods for measuring behavior showed that the animals that were exposed to cell phone radiation had problems with impulse control and effectively attention deficit disorder.

Starting point is 00:25:42 That experimental study in a whole animal then corroborated. the work done in Turkey. More recently, more recently, studies have found that children of mothers who are using cell phones more also have more attention deficit disorders. And then in Korea, studies have shown that children themselves that are using cell phones have in their brains something that is characterized by the MRI in Korea as digital dementia. This is an eight and nine-year-olds. This is showing that children that are using cell phones regularly have effects in their brain that you can measure. And as a consequence, Korea and China to some extent also have digital detox camps that can be pretty tough where they take these devices away from the children and try to

Starting point is 00:26:39 train them in more reasonable uses of them, because we are creating around the world today. E-zombies, children who are unable to function without these devices. And when you withdraw them from the children, you get all the symptoms of withdrawal that we know about in a child that can take the form of tantrums and freaking out. You will even find if you go to YouTube and you look for babies on iPads, crying. There are young parents who are ignorant of the fact that an iPad should never be given to a baby. And they're laughing as they take the baby and take the iPad away from it and the baby starts to cry. Because babies are attracted to all those fast-moving things on the iPad.

Starting point is 00:27:29 And there is evidence that the radiation itself triggers dopamine in the brain. And we know sugar, cocaine, other drugs, and cell phone radiation. If you trigger dopamine, it creates addictive behaviors. Yeah. I mean, it's so much to absorb for people. And first of all, for any parent that's listening, I'm not a parent. I know you have been a parent. And there's just so much in our modern times, especially this big social experiment of parents

Starting point is 00:28:03 raising kids on their own, not with. the help of other people, right? And then on top of that, you throw a pandemic where a lot of people were sort of alone. So I know a lot of parents are just trying to get by. And then you hear another thing and you think like, man, this is something else that have to do. And really, the way that I would say, if we zoom out and look at this conversation is that this is just part of being aware of different insults. If in the 50s, somebody told you, hey, look, like, even if you don't smoke, if you're around this smoke that people are doing on the planes and restaurants, other things, it could have serious impact on your health and actually make you more likely to

Starting point is 00:28:39 develop cancers later on. You would want to know about it, right? You'd want to know. And it doesn't mean that if you ever smell secondhand smoke, you're immediately going to get cancer. It's just reducing the total exposure and total risk and especially being protective of kids. Now, one of the things that you've been super, I've been a super advocate of is that our body can handle a lot of different stressors. One version of stress is EMF non-ionizing radiation. That's a stress on the body. Now, as we get older, our skull gets thicker, so it's more protective over

Starting point is 00:29:17 our brain, but kids' brains are very thin and malleable. So can you chat about that on how exposure to kids is different than exposure to adults? I'm so glad you raised the issue of smoke, because when I worked at the National National Academy of Sciences in the early 1980s, we did the first study that recommended a ban on smoking on airplanes. And at that time, when we looked at the data, we saw information about children, and we saw that children were much more vulnerable. A child of a smoking parent had four times the chance of being hospitalized with bronchitis and even dying of an asthma attack. And that evidence drove us in the 80s to recommend that children should not be exposed to smoke.

Starting point is 00:30:05 Precisely because, as you just said, their brains are more vulnerable. Their bodies are growing rapidly. And their brains are not as protected. Their skulls are thinner. Their brains contain more fluid. Now, to go to radiation, we know that the radiation from a cell phone or from other devices gets through a thinner skull much more. Studies done by industry and by my colleague, Claudia Fernandez and Alvaro DeSales and Brazil, with us at Environmental Health Trust, have shown when you model the brain of a child,

Starting point is 00:30:41 that you can get the absorption goes more deeply into the brain, and 10 times more exposure gets into the bone marrow of the skull of a six-year-old than an adult. Now, by the time they get older, as you're right, the thicker skull is protective. There's no protection for the abdomen. There's no protection for the colon and the rectum with the phones in the pockets of so many young people all over the world today. And that's why we're so concerned about this increase

Starting point is 00:31:09 in rectal cancer that we're seeing in people under the age of 40. We never would have seen that before. The numbers are small, but the increase has gone fourfold since 2010. And that's publications from data from the National Cancer Institute, and the Sear program in the United States and Iran,

Starting point is 00:31:30 I've learned that subsequently similar increases in rectal cancer are showing up in Brazil and UK and Egypt. And again, there are multiple factors, including pesticides and sugar, that could be playing a role here. But the fourfold increase in rectal cancer, you talked before about Chad with Bozeman and the terrible tragedy of the loss of such a talented artist

Starting point is 00:31:55 at such a young age, And he's an example where there were probably multiple factors that could explain that. But as you point out, children are not small adults. They need special protections. And for cell phones, as well as sugar and other things, we really need to step up our ability to protect them. I want every parent to understand something. No matter how much you've been using your phones now, if you have to give your kid a device to look at, download what you want them to look at and put it on AirPathes.

Starting point is 00:32:26 plane mode. Let them talk to grandma and grandpa, set up a stand so they don't have to hold the device in their hand. It's not that you can't use technology, is that you've got to learn to use it more safely. And information on that is available on our website. The Environmental Working Group has recently re-entered this issue as well. And I'm sure through your work, Drew and Dr. Hyman, we're going to get more of the message out about how you can wire your life and use phones and technology more safely. That's what we want to encourage. That's beautiful.

Starting point is 00:33:00 And it's an important reminder. One sort of tangent note, I have a lot of friends that do have kids. My older sister has kids. I don't have yet, but I hope to have kids soon one day. And I've been encouraging a lot of my friends who have young kids who have iPads, you know, let's say like in the age group of, you know, 4 plus that are using iPads and even a lot of schools, right? schools will buy iPads and give them out to the kids. We'll get to schools in a second.

Starting point is 00:33:28 And then the kids naturally are going to want to play games. I played a ton of video games when I was younger. I've been a big advocate of getting parents to actually consider getting their kids a console. And for two reasons, because the iPad games that a lot of parents get, they're free. And they're totally hijacking the brain because they have all these sounds and noises and tokens and other stuff. They have to be connected to the internet to play. You can't play by downloading it. And it's like, actually, if you're going to be.

Starting point is 00:33:54 to let your kid play a video game, then it might be better to have a console and something wired that isn't right up next to their head. You see a lot of kids these days laying down on the couch and sort of watching very close to YouTube and other things. Again, we've got to just do our best, but maybe a wired console system might be a better solution in that case. I agree. And there are, you know, there are other alternatives to the iPad as well. the iPad comes with directions in the operating manual. It says it has to be kept certain distance away. I think we should mention something about how these devices are tested.

Starting point is 00:34:32 These devices are tested by 25-year-old rules that were set when the average call was six minutes. The average speaker was a medical or military person, usually a male. They were modeled on a man who was at the 98th percentile, of US military recruits in the 1980s. His brain, his head weighed 12 pounds. His body weighed over 200. And those were the standards that we still test devices today, including the iPad and the phone.

Starting point is 00:35:09 And the iPad comes, if you go to the operating manual online, it says it can cause seizures, be careful. It says it should be used eight centimeters away from the body. And now they make them with an accelerometer that supposedly reduces exposure when it gets close to a body. But children should not be using these things except on a table. They're called tablets because they belong on tables. They do not belong on short bodies and small arms close to the reproductive organs and the brains. Again, we've modeled this and we've shown using industry models that are approved by the FDA with DeSales and Fernandez available on our website.

Starting point is 00:36:01 We can clearly show what happens with an iPad on the body. It gets into all of the reproductive organs. There is no skull to protect the lower part of the body. And as a consequence, exposure to children can be very high. Yeah. And again, I just want to acknowledge how just really just tough that is for so many parents. I mean, some parents, they literally cannot even have a date night out because they don't have maybe help. So they're taking their kid with them. And I feel for parents, right, in this situation, because their child would not sit at the table without an iPad in front of them to watch something. And so I know it's very complicated, as you've mentioned. I just want to acknowledge it because it's not like we are unaware of the fact that this is. is a multifaceted uphill battle that requires education and personalization for each family, but we don't want to ignore it. That's not the goal. We have to address it. Let me say this. If you give your child the iPad at dinner, put it on airplane mode,

Starting point is 00:37:05 there are things you can download for them to do. Even that right there is a simple hack, right? It's very, yes. It's a simple hack. And it's, I understand, I said before, dopamine, right? It's an addiction. So like anything, you have to withdraw slowly. And there are games that children can play. There are puzzles you can give them that they can play with that are small that you can bring to dinner. And there are simple things you can do. And I'll tell you something else that's rather sad, recent research has shown that children of parents that rely on phones and other devices more than others. By the time they're three and four have delivered.

Starting point is 00:37:47 delays in speech acquisition. Parents that are using these devices more for themselves and their children are not talking to their children. Starting in infancy, when a baby babbles, go-go-go-gag-a, you're supposed to speak back to them because they learn to interact with you. And by the time a child is a year old, the kinds of baby babble they make differ in different languages. If you're not talking to your child and talking back to them. then they will not learn to talk to you as well. And there are also studies indicating a lack of empathy because the ability to look you in the eye,

Starting point is 00:38:32 the ability to understand me and you, that's fundamental to development of the child's psyche. And if that's being impaired because in between you and me is a machine, that's a problem. we know that children who are on the spectrum, on the high functioning spectrum for Asperger's, prefer to interact with machines. They're more comfortable with machines than they are with people.

Starting point is 00:39:02 Yeah. You know, this reminds me of it's really highlighting the importance of and, you know, we can live with technology and it's important to have these other things too. often though, what happens, it's an or parents give their child an iPad, and it's that versus also including the communication, also including the deep interaction, also including the outdoor time. There was the famous study that was done, and I'll pull up the journal and include it in the show notes so everybody can follow along. I'm blanking in it right now.

Starting point is 00:39:40 But the one that basically showed that, you know, sugar is as addictive as cocaine, right? that's a very common one that people know. Now, what a lot of people don't know is there was a follow-up study that was done with also rats. And instead of putting rats in a cage where they just had the option of sort of sugar or cocaine and their normal water and food, they put rats in a rat playground. And in a rat playground, there was wheels, there was opportunities for exercise. There was the opportunity to interact with other rats or mice. You know, again, I don't know what the proper term is, but one of the two. And they found that in that instance, sugar was not as addictive as cocaine when there was other

Starting point is 00:40:20 options that were included. And I think, again, why I really appreciate your approach with everything that you talk about individually in your books and inside of your organization is that you are not suggesting that we all wear a tinfoil hat and shun technology forever. It's that we need to have informed consent on the devices and the technology that we're using. And in addition, we're prioritizing time in nature, time disconnected from our phone, which separate from the impact of that technology and the EMS on our brain, our sperm, our fertility, our body, cancer, you're going to get all the benefits of just being outside, all the benefits

Starting point is 00:41:00 of just disconnecting. So this is very much an and conversation. Like we can have it all. And that also includes fighting and raising awareness of why this is such an important topic. So that's little monologue that I just wanted to share because I feel like it adds context to the discussion that we're having. That's beautifully said. And let me add, as you know, the Japanese have a prescription for forest bathing. They actually write medical prescriptions for people who are stressed or dealing with some of the chronic diseases that we all know are increasing. And they write a medical prescription for forest bathing. And people are then paid to go into the forest. Well, it turns, turns out that studies have shown that there are phytochemicals released from trees that actually

Starting point is 00:41:49 have a beneficial effect on how you feel. I'm really privileged to live here in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and we have an amazing environment, although I must say the influx of people right now enjoying it is a bit overwhelming, and we have to go hack into backwoods areas where nobody knows where the trails are yet. But we live surrounded by some of the most. most majestic, magnificent mountains in the world. Recently, the National Park Foundation, with a generous grant from one of the telecom industries of a quarter million dollars, developed an app for children for augmented reality in order that they would be in the park, look at their iPad, and be able to visualize

Starting point is 00:42:35 a grizzly bear in front of them. Virtual reality. Can you imagine a child is in. the park and they are going to look at their iPad to see a grizzly bear or a moose. Now, I think this is a terrible idea on many levels, starting with the fact that the radiation from the iPad is not something children should be exposed to regularly. But it also fundamentally undermines the experience of being outdoor in the natural world where you can encounter some of the most amazing things by looking down and seeing even

Starting point is 00:43:12 the little ants and how they are building their nests and how they work together or watching the hummingbirds with their wings beating 80 times a second. I mean, these are things that you don't see if you're looking at an iPad while you're actually in the natural environment. So I wrote a letter that I'll share with you. It's just published yesterday in the local newspaper here about why we should rethink this idea that we're going to have apps so people can experience the National Park. through their digital devices while they're there.

Starting point is 00:43:46 Now that's different than saying we should have the ability to experience the parks for people who are in wheelchairs and who cannot, who are homebound. I think that's a good idea. But to encourage it for people who are actually walking around, trying to experience it, I think undermines the fundamental encounter with the natural world, which the Japanese have shown

Starting point is 00:44:10 in publications is beneficial to your health. Yeah, I think it's important to have the discussion around these and also the education because I don't know who's behind the app, but I'm sure there was well intentions. You know, they look at things like Pokemon Go, which was a big hit and got a lot of people outside and walking and other things. And then they're probably thinking like, how can we get some of that? But it needs to be, we need to have the discussion in context. And that's a big part of it. So let's zoom out a little bit more and kind of build on some of the questions you add in terms of safety. Here in America, we have a few agencies that are there that a lot of people are aware of that have been involved in pivotal sort of safety standards when it comes to all sorts of different aspects and interventions and drugs and medicines.

Starting point is 00:45:05 Talk to us about the EPA, the FDA, the FCC. what is it that they don't get and how is it that there could be, in some instances, a hijacking of these organizations from industry? Well, I think you've hit the nail on the head here. What we have, and I've documented this in my book, Disconnect, is a history where first the Office of Naval Research, then the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, then the EPA and then the FDA all had at different points of time really good research programs with brilliant researchers showing effects from electromagnetic fields. Alan Frey for the Naval Research Office, Carl Blackman at EPA for years led important efforts. The last survey ever conducted by the U.S. government on the proliferation of electromagnetic fields was conducted in 1980.

Starting point is 00:46:08 1980, there's been no attempt since then. And what happened to EPA in the 1990s was when Carl Blackman and his team showed effects on the chick embryo from electromagnetic fields in brilliant research that has since been replicated. The Congress defunded the entire program. Telecom industry is one of the most generous in the world, with our Congress. They support Republicans and Democrats. And they've supported a lot of environmental organizations as well. And so Congress decided to defund the research. It continued on for a little bit of time and then finally was completely cut. Fast forward to 1999. When Christopher Portier, who left to become the director at the CDC of the Center for Environmental,

Starting point is 00:47:08 Environmental Health, nominated through the FDA cell phone radiation to be tested in 1999. At that time, cell phones were not as common as they are now. Remember, in 1993, when they first came out, a phone at that time cost thousands of dollars, which really meant very few people used them. The price of phones has dropped. Their access has increased. So studies nominated in 1999 to study cell phone radiation. That study doesn't really get started until 2009 after Environmental Health Trust held

Starting point is 00:47:49 a national meeting in Washington, D.C., worked with senators Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter to hold a major hearing, which was standing room only, where the National Toxicology Program talked about their plans for the study. been asked to do 10 years earlier. The study results came out in 2014 and immediately industry got a hold of them and started to put pressure on the National Toxicology Program, which produced the results of a $30 million study that ultimately took arguably 15 years to get released, to get done and released, I should say. And that study showed clear evidence. evidence of cancer. What did the industry do? They subjected that National Toxopology Program study, which was a state-of-the-art study of rats and mice, males and females. They subjected it to an

Starting point is 00:48:49 unprecedented three-day-long peer review, where they brought in toxicologists from Procter & Gamble and ExxonMobil and other places to review the study. They thought, well, with these people, we're going to get a free pass. They were very surprised. They were very surprised. The toxicologists that were brought in to independently review, the NTP results were shocked. They said not only was there clear evidence of cancer, there was multiple evidence of DNA damage in different organs. And this was in rats and mice. There was evidence of DNA damage. There was also evidence of low birth weight in animals in some of the earlier studies.

Starting point is 00:49:31 And so this review, which ultimately got released in 2019, concluded that there is clear evidence that cell phone radiation at current levels, and that would have been 3G at the time, can cause rare cancers of the heart, tumors inside the heart and in the brain. Now, these are rare cancers. That's the good thing. But they're terrible cancers. That's the bad thing.

Starting point is 00:50:00 And we are seeing when we start to look closely at younger people in the United States, brain cancer has now become the leading cancer in children, overtaking leukemia, which had been the leading cancer. Now, there are many different causes of these things. That's the problem. I'm not telling you that cell phone radiation is the only cause of poor health. Of course not. But it might well explain why we have an increase in atrial fibrillation

Starting point is 00:50:30 in athletes in the United States. It could be a factor. with all the wires and things that young people are using as they work out nowadays? We don't know. Nobody's asking the question because research in the federal government has been cut. In 2012, Harvard University Center for Ethics, the Safra Center for Ethics, issued a study written by Norman Ulster. And the title of the study was the FCC, a captured agency.

Starting point is 00:51:03 In that study, he documented the fact that for decades already, the people leading the FCC have come from and gone back to the industry. The most recent leader, Ajit Pai, under President Trump, was a member of the industry and has gone back. The Tom Wheeler, who was the Obama appointee, also came from industry. He was the leader of the cell phone technology industry association, the cellular technology industry association in the 1990s and became the Obama appointee to lead the FCC. So this is not a question of Republicans or Democrats, although I must say the Republicans gave us quite a surprise

Starting point is 00:51:53 because what they did right before Christmas of 2019, right before the pandemic hit, They issued a rule that said, we are going to reissue our, at that point, 24-year-old standards for testing phones. And we are dismissing the thousands of submissions that we received telling us that there was a problem here. Thousands of scientific submissions of peer-reviewed publications, many of which came from our organization, many of which came from experts from abroad.

Starting point is 00:52:31 and we are closing the record, well, they made a mistake because there's something called the Administrative Procedures Act. It's been around for more than 50 years. It requires federal agencies to make a systematic, rational record of decision making. So the FCC did not do that. It basically closed the record. It provided a few page comment from the FDA that was hastily put together, anonymously, a review of the literature after they closed the record. And the Environmental Health Trust is in the midst of one of the most consequential and monumental lawsuits on this issue that has ever been filed. Our case is currently before the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, right below the Supreme Court.

Starting point is 00:53:24 And when the judges heard our lawyers argue and say, where there's no record of decision making. There's no proof that the FCC ever looked at all of the thousands of pages of submissions. The judge said to the attorney for the FCC, you're going to have to tell me why I shouldn't rule against you. We are waiting for that ruling. We expect, but we don't know, because there are a lot of legal issues here, that that may go in our favor.

Starting point is 00:53:57 And that will then tell the FCC they've got to redo their standards, which are 25 years old. Now, that puts it back to the FCC and gets back to your question of the federal government. We think the federal government at this point has been missing in action. And it's been a deliberate effort on the part of industry to defund the research that the Chinese have a proverb. If you don't want to know, don't ask. It's a very trying time and nothing changes without awareness, which is why I'm so happy that we had you on to talk about this because it's multifaceted. There's things that we can do to protect ourselves and we'll get into a little bit more of that, simple things that we can all do immediately. And you have some really great sayings and suggestions to help people with that. There is pressure that we can place on governing bodies by superiors. supporting organizations like your own in the process through litigation, through advocacy, to protect people who, for the most part, as we get into 5G, which we'll talk about in a little

Starting point is 00:55:12 bit and increasing aspects of technology proliferation, generally speaking, just like the processed foods industry, the people who are the most vulnerable are most often the ones that are most effective because they affected because they don't have the means. They don't have the time when you're working three jobs to listen to an hour and a half long podcast. And, you know, they may not have the disposable income to donate. You know, so we are not just looking after ourselves. This is not a privileged conversation.

Starting point is 00:55:50 This is also, hey, we have to look out for the people who can't do things just like in Flint, Michigan, when you had a whole group of individuals who are exposed to such high amounts of lead and the advocacy that was required amongst many individuals, including our friend Aaron Brokovich, saying there are hundreds of Flint, Michigan's around the country where lead is being exposed to people. And once that damage is done, it cannot be reversed. And very similarly, there are parallels here when it comes to EMF. Sorry, were you going to chime in? Well, I want to say that's, I'm so glad you mentioned that because that's, in fact, what motivated me to get started on this issue. When my first grandchild was born, very, very bright boy, he really is.

Starting point is 00:56:36 At nine months of age, he could crawl over to a phone, turn it on, and play Rick Bay, a game, at nine months of age. He's now a concert pianist at age 16. I first, like every grandparent, I was so proud, look how much how. smart this little baby is. But I had been on the CDC lead advisory committee. So I understood what you just said. You're absolutely right. The child brain is most vulnerable of any organ we have. The next is the testis. And the child brain grows fast with a thinner skull. If we fail to protect it, the damage that goes in from lead, which competes with calcium and can stay in the brain permanently, the damage from lead in the first two years of life is forever. You can try to reduce it,

Starting point is 00:57:29 but you can't completely mitigate it. I worked closely with Herb Needleman when he first published findings showing that this happened not just in black and brown children, but in white children. And he had huge pushback from the industry, lead in gasoline, lead in paint, etc. But ultimately, he prevailed, although they tried basically to kill him professionally by attacking. his work, attacking his funding. It was a terrible thing. And I've written about that in my first book when smoke ran like water. The lead story is exactly relevant to what we're dealing with today. Because the lead in Flint, Michigan, as Aaron Brockovich pointed out, is just one example. Lead is a problem all over the country. Now, the good news is the stimulus package that it probably

Starting point is 00:58:20 will pass, does include substantial funding for reducing lead in water around the country. It's long overdue. It's something that my colleagues, Phil Landrigan and I have been talking about for 30 and 40 years. Really, it's a huge, it's a huge problem. The problem that's unrecognized here is that electromagnetic fields also promote damage to the brain of children. And we know from studies in Korea that children with a little bit more lead in their brain who also use cell phones have substantially more damage to their brains and attention deficit disorder. These are published studies. Again, Korea was one of the first countries to be adopting cell phones and now they are rethinking what they did with children in their exposures because they're showing an interaction.

Starting point is 00:59:16 The reason there's an interaction, and this is very important, I hope I'm not drilling too deeply here. No, we love the depth. The audience is with you. The electromagnetic radiation weakens membranes. It weakens membranes. Membranes surround every cell. You've got the nucleus in the center.

Starting point is 00:59:35 You've got the cytoplasm around the cell. There's a membrane. You weaken the membrane with electromagnetic fields. And so any toxicant in the body, whether it's increased sugar or lead, can get more deeply into the cell because the membrane is weakened. And studies have shown when you take a known carcinogen and expose it with electromagnetic fields to rats, you get an increase in the amount of tumors they would develop.

Starting point is 01:00:05 So they develop tumors from the known carcinogen. You can measure that. But if you add to the known carcinogen, a small amount of electromagnetic fields, you get a threefold increase in the number of tumors. and that study is available as are others showing the synergy on our website. The good news part of this, and there is good news, is that Israeli scientists have figured out that you can use a type of electromagnetic field

Starting point is 01:00:33 to treat brain cancer. If you have brain cancer, you can use a type of electromagnetic field and then put chemotherapy agents more deeply into the brain with that electromagnetic field. So think about that. Think about that. Apple has issued a warning that if you have a pacemaker, the Apple 12 should not be kept close to the heart. But what is our heart after all, but our natural pacemaker? We really need to rethink these things. And there are some simple things you can do, starting with four words. Distance is your friend. Distance. When we talked before and we were troubleshooting, you had your phone like this. I had my phone. on speaker phone, speakerphone and headset will protect you. And the headset should be wired, not wireless. And the ear pods, even though the exposure is less and the power is less, this is important point.

Starting point is 01:01:33 It's not the power of the device that we think is most biologically active, but the pulse. The pulse meaning how fast it moves, okay? 3G, 4G was 900 to 2.2. billion cycles a second. 5G will be 5 billion up to 100 billion cycles a second. That's why you can download a movie in three seconds. But it also means faster exposures. And faster exposures means that the pulse is more rapid.

Starting point is 01:02:10 And what we know from studies is the pulse of the radiation, how fast it goes and how irregular it is. may be more important biologically than the power. And that is why we're able to use electromagnetic fields for this whole new field of electrocyticals where you can put electricity into a swollen joint. You can put electricity into an unhealed bone fracture. And you can promote healing because it speeds up cell growth.

Starting point is 01:02:41 Well, that's wonderful. But what if you speed up cell growth for cells that have started to be initiated from the sun for skin cancer? What does you speed up cell growth for cells that are quiescent in the breast where so many young women are keeping their phones in their breasts? This is a bad idea. And that is why distance is your friend. Use the devices away from the body and frankly use them less.

Starting point is 01:03:09 Yeah. And when you can, airplane mode. And especially as we've covered in the podcast, pretty extensively, and you guys have tried it about as well too, when it comes to sleep and our body going into deep DNA repair, which is really one of the main reasons why we sleep, being very careful to limit exposure of not just cell phones. I mean, some people literally keep their cell phone underneath their pillow because they want to hear their alarm when it rings, right? I think a lot more individuals are becoming aware that that's not a good thing. You know, you want to keep

Starting point is 01:03:45 your cell phone away from you. But in addition to that, anything plugged in next to your bed when you sleep, like an alarm clock, like, you know, sometimes people have electric blankets or other high voltage devices. If we can move them away from our bodies at night, especially our brain, which is so sensitive at night, we're going to do ourselves a favor. And that's something that everybody can do today. You know, we may not be able to implement government change. We may not be able to, you know, do clinical trials on our own. But this is something we can do today to protect ourselves is especially at night, watch out when things are close to you or nearby your body that are plugged in or are emitting EMFs. That's excellent advice. And we understand why you need

Starting point is 01:04:31 to sleep in the dark. I'm using a blue light blocking glasses right now. Right. And I recommend that people generally do that when they spend time on a computer as, as I do from time to time. But the reason I'm blocking it is that we know that the body needs to be in the dark in order to make melatonin. Melatonin is what is a natural hormone that repairs damage does occur because we're alive. We can't avoid the damage. If we get into a deep sleep in a dark room with no lights flickering and with things unplugged, our body produces more melatonin naturally.

Starting point is 01:05:10 And melatonin repairs damage. Interesting studies were done in Sweden that showed women who are blind naturally have higher levels of melatonin. They have about half the rate of breast cancer as women who can see. That's because we think they're making more melatonin at night. The World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer a few years ago concluded that light at night interferes with melatonin and is a cause of cancer. Being exposed to light at night, women and men who work late at night through the night, your cleaning crews and other people have significantly elevated rates of breast cancer, probably from the fact that they don't produce as much melatonin.

Starting point is 01:05:59 Light at night is considered a carcinogen by the World Health Organization. So you want to avoid any blinking lights, any light that you can, get it out of your bedroom. And if you can't avoid it, for one reason or another, put a sleep mask on that will block light as best you can because melatonin is very, very important for repair. Now, having said that, my studies in Turkey have done, have my colleagues, sorry, my colleagues in Turkey have done studies where they took electromagnetic fields, cells from humans, and added melatonin. And what they showed is this. If you took the electromagnetic fields and the human cells, you could accelerate their growth. That's not a good thing. If you added melatonin, you did not get the same effect.

Starting point is 01:06:50 So melatonin and omega-3 fatty acids, things I know you know very well, can prevent damage that will occur from electromagnetic fields. And in addition to that, you've talked about the importance of eating an anti-inflammatory diet, you know, keeping sugar at bay, added sugar. sugars, especially, all these things help because it's very rarely, the human body is a complex system. It's not a vacuum where things operate sort of individually. So anything that we can do to allow our body to function the way that it's meant to or add in protective layers are all going to be things that help us. You know, the challenges sometimes for people, they go down this rabbit hole of 5G, electromagnetic radiation, heavy metals, toxins in our water, fluoride, etc. And you feel, or some people feel, that a little bit of doom and gloom, that it's not worth it.

Starting point is 01:07:46 It's just like we're surrounded by so much crap. We can't do anything and they can feel a little bit depressed. But the reminder here is that there's so much that we can do. And by starting on those things, even if it's today, if you haven't been doing them before, there's still one step in the right direction. I think that's very well said. And I think it's important that what you're doing, is really helping to save the world, whether they know it or not yet. Because what you're doing is taking information that is often found in obscure journals and hard for people to understand and really explaining it in a way that is quite approachable.

Starting point is 01:08:22 And I really appreciate the chance to chat with you because that's so important right now. I like to say, especially to parents of young children during the pandemic, if you weren't depressed or anxious, you weren't paying attention. I mean, this was a very, very tough time for all of us. And I think that it's understandable. The world is coming out of a very depressed time. The economy was depressed. Our personal lives were depressed.

Starting point is 01:08:50 We had limited interaction with people. I was very fortunate, really blessed to have my son and his family here at a time when a lot of people were just so isolated. They developed COVID early and they decided, well, they're going to come out and keep us from getting it. And that worked really very, very well for us. most people were so isolated and so alone. And then when you deal with all of these different things that can affect your health, it can feel overwhelming. So like in most things, I say, please just pick your battles.

Starting point is 01:09:23 Start out with one or two things that you can control. Sugar is absolutely one of them. Recognize that there is an addictive property of it. And like everything else, you want to take yourself, you want to detox. And there are lots of advice that you and Dr. Hyman have given people about how, to go about doing that. And that's the same with this, with this technology. You know, people, most people can't think of going out of their house without their phone. I can't imagine it. But try going for a walk sometime without your phone. You'll see more things and you won't be

Starting point is 01:09:57 constantly interrupted. What phones do is they create a sense of emergency. And having said that, the truth is, when you are in an emergency, a phone is a great thing. but most of life should not be thought of as an emergency. Emergencies increase cortisol, increased stress, and really can be quite damaging to our overall health. I want to tell you about a study that was done by Nora Volkov, who is the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Starting point is 01:10:32 Brilliant study done by a woman who has an MD and PhD who helped develop the PET scan herself, the technology. She used PET scanning technology, which can show you three-dimensional pictures inside the brain. And she had volunteers put on headsets, and they did not know whether or not the headset had an activated phone signal or not. They just sat there. There was no sound. She showed 50 minutes, 5-0 minutes of cell phone radiation exposure, increased glooply. in the brain in the part of the brain that was exposed most to the cell phone radiation. Wow.

Starting point is 01:11:16 Now, brains like glucose, right? We need it to think, to function. But this is showing you that there is a glucose hit from the cell phone radiation itself. That is part of the explanation for the addiction we see of the technology. That and the things we learned from that wonderful documentary, the social dilemma, which showed that the software itself, the likes and the hits that you get are designed to be addictive. You're designed to want to have them to see how many people you can like and how many will spread your message around. And while you and I use the technology to get the message out of how to be safer, we want to empower people about the ability that they can do without it when they experience the natural world.

Starting point is 01:12:07 and to try to detoxify themselves from the dependency that we all have right now. It's so key and it's hard, but you know what? It's worth it. The question isn't, is something hard. Yes, it's hard to sometimes clean up your diet. Yes, it's hard to, you know, study for something that you want to get better at or to get a degree in something, but that's not the question. The question is it worth it? And usually people who do right now, a dear friend of mine, Dr. Rungan Chatterjee, who has one of the top podcasts in the UK in Europe in health, he's on a full month-long social media detox on on Instagram. And, you know, he is a bestselling New York Times, bestselling author.

Starting point is 01:12:50 He's written four books. And yes, you know, he does still have some team members that are keeping it up to date. But then those team members, I'm sure at some point in time will take a break. So this is possible. It's possible to still run your business. It takes work. It takes community support. It takes strategizing with other people.

Starting point is 01:13:08 So it is hard work. We are acknowledging that. But the real question is, is it worth it? And I think you're really helping us to understand that it is worth it in this instance. I want to talk about, you know, just a couple more things while I have you, while I have you here. One of them is, you know, you talked about headsets. And I would be remiss if I didn't get into this topic.

Starting point is 01:13:27 Because I want to acknowledge, you know, Apple for making an incredible, probably what a lot of my peers, especially entrepreneurs, other things like that. They've made the AirPods, which are wireless, right? Their Bluetooth. And I used them for a short period of time when they first came out. They literally one of the best headphones I've ever used. And I would get a constant buzzing in my ear. And I would feel a little bit of a headache. And I very quickly, this was a few years ago when they first came out, made a decision not to use them. I mean, they're so successful. They're, I think they do $22 billion a year in sales on these devices. That's bigger than most companies that they do just in AirPods sales.

Starting point is 01:14:11 And what I'm getting to is that the challenge is for a lot of people, it's sort of twofold. One, yes, I'm acknowledging that they work really well for what they're trying to accomplish. The challenge on the other hand is even though I've had friends anecdotally say like, you know what, that's weird. You mentioned you got a buzzing in your ear. You didn't feel good. a little lightheaded, your head, you know, and it's not just the Bluetooth, they also have a very powerful battery inside of the device that then sits in your inner ear as you use them.

Starting point is 01:14:41 So you're getting that EMF hit from multiple sides. You're getting it from the Bluetooth side. You're also getting it from the battery and electronic device, which sometimes actually emits even more electromagnetic radiation than the Bluetooth itself. But the challenge is if somebody wanted to go measure that, right? Like the same way that you get a blood test, the same way that you get a blood test, the same way that you get, you know, some other thing. I find that one of the challenges in the space, hoping you can shed some light on it, is that devices to measure this and standardization

Starting point is 01:15:12 has been a little bit tough. Like, so could somebody go and measure that response to see? And what are your thoughts about how testing needs to evolve to be a little bit more sensitive so that people can see instantaneously before they get cancer 30 years down the line, that these things have an impact on their body in real time. Environmental Health Trust wants to work to make every public library provide testing devices like this one that I have right here that people can use so that they have information about what's going on in their homes. You can see mine is flashing moderate to slight.

Starting point is 01:15:56 That's because right here, green, let's see. get it in the screen, moderate to slight. That's because I have no wireless radiation right here. I'm plugged in. I'm talking to you, okay? People should have access to that kind of thing at the public library. They should be able to take out a device that can measure their exposures. Do you feel comfortable saying the name of that device?

Starting point is 01:16:23 Is that something? There's many different, no, there are many different ones. I'm looking to see if I have others right here, yes. Here's a, here's, I use several different ones. So you feel that the off the shelf devices, you know, there's a lot of them on Amazon, are good enough and that people could use those. Some indication. However, there is no way to measure 5G. And the industry acknowledges that. This one is, is the safe and sound pro. It comes from a company in Canada and does a very good job. job. This one is a little less accurate. It's from Cornette. And I'll just turn. And it's again

Starting point is 01:17:09 showing you can see very low where we are right now. And it's not quite as accurate. But the point is, to your question about the AirPods, I don't know how to measure that because the battery is emitting a magnetic field. Right. The other part of the device has a microwave radiation. electromagnetic field. Electromagnetic fields are complicated, and the complexity has kept a lot of people from being able to understand it. And the fact that it's invisible, you know, that's a problem too, right? The fact that they're invisible, we can't see it, but you felt it, and you're not alone.

Starting point is 01:17:52 A lot of people have told me that they cannot use AirPods because it has an effect on their, they get this buzz. But think about this. You're sending microwave radiation. Low amounts is going through the brain. How can that be a good thing? And how have those devices been tested? I think that it's a really bad idea. And I know it's a huge industry. And I really think that the ideal thing is that Apple steps up to the plate and says, look, we're going to make this technology as safe as possible. they have done is they allow you to lower the power and lower the volume because you've got several different things going on here. One of which is that children are showing up with eye problems and hearing problems now because of these devices. Eye problems because they're constantly going in

Starting point is 01:18:44 to look and holding things close when they should be outside and changing their focal distance. But hearing problems because often they're listening to noise too loudly and because some people are more sensitive, and we didn't talk about this very much, but there are people who have electromagnetic illness. They cannot tolerate what most people can tolerate. It's a small percent of the population, but they are basically disabled by the modern world. And it's a very, very difficult situation to live with. And it's part of why other groups have formed to to try to advance their concerns. Why should people who have electromagnetic illness not be able to live in the modern world?

Starting point is 01:19:37 Yeah, that gets into a whole other topic that I'm sure we could chat about. A couple other anecdotes. A whole other hour. Yeah, that's a whole other hour. A couple of anecdotes that I want to mention that you've been really, really great at. I won't go into it, but I'll link it in the show notes. I had somebody fly out to, you know, where I live in Los Angeles. And one of the things that I found is that I was, you know, because you mentioned it's so complicated,

Starting point is 01:20:00 I was having them test at different levels. And one of the things that was found is that I have an electric car. A lot of people sit in their electric car when the car is charging. That was the highest amount of exposure out of anything in my life, including being next to a laptop, a cell phone, in terms of total radiation exposure. So now when I charge my car, I don't sit inside when I'm when I'm charging the car. And I found that very helpful. Do you have, do you have a record of that? Actually, we are, we are starting to launch a new study to measure exposures to the baby in the car seat of the back of the electric car using the iPad while the car is charging while, well, they're exposed. And we know the exposure is going to be high. And nobody,

Starting point is 01:20:50 nobody that I ever talked to had ever measured what you just told me. So please, I need to get what you did, and we're doing this study with researchers in Portugal, Israel, and Brazil, because those countries have excellent researchers, and we can do this study in those countries for $150,000. We could never do it in the United States for a lot of reasons. Yeah, I'm happy to send you some details, and I might have somebody that has access to some more database of information. I just want to be clear, mine wasn't while I was driving. Mine was when it was charging.

Starting point is 01:21:23 Oh, of course. No, I understand. a supercharger. I have a Tesla and I was sitting next to a supercharger and obviously those are very powerful machines to charge a wireless charger then? No, it's a wired charger. So it's a wired. But it's a super, but it's a high voltage one. High voltage. Yeah. Yeah. And already we know it's almost similar to a power line, right? We already know that power lines can increase exposure to total radiation that that's there. And the other one that surprisingly for a lot of people, a little hack that I incorporated in my own life is I try to charge up my laptop and use,

Starting point is 01:21:59 if I use a laptop, not on my lap on the table, when I'm not using my laptop continuously plugged in, or if I'm using a desktop that it's away from me, right? Distance is your friend. That's your advice. My exposure was more to the laptop when it's plugged in than not. That would make sense, right? Because the laptop is directly plugged into the outlet. So I got into a habit of charge your laptop, then unplug it, then use it for that period of time.

Starting point is 01:22:26 When the charge is done, you know, take a break, reload it. But even things like that can have more exposure of radiation than cell phones just in themselves. So I just want to make sure that everybody's aware that this is a multifaceted issue. And there's other aspects. That's a very important hack that you just said, because it does two things. By charging your device and using it when it's disconnected, you're avoiding exposure to the the electromagnetic field, you're also saving your battery life. Batteries last longer that way.

Starting point is 01:22:58 Whether you should not use your phone or any device when it's plugged in, because it is you're going to get more exposure from that electromagnetic field. Absolutely. You've got some very important hacks. I'm really thrilled to hear about it. Well, I'm standing on your shoulders because you're really a pioneer in the space to really bring to light the evidence and you're involved in a lot of these trials that you've mentioned and you're connected with a lot of the research.

Starting point is 01:23:21 around the world that are paying attention to space. Last sort of question, because I think this is important because there are companies that are out there that are very gimmicky and trying to take advantage of this opportunity by selling all sorts of different stickers and devices. Does any of that stuff work? You know, you slap a sticker on your phone, you slap a sticker on your headphone or your laptop, and it's supposed to all of a sudden remove the EMF exposure to your body. Set the record. Does any of that stuff work in your opinion and your awareness so far? If it's too good to be true, then it's not true. And I have not seen any device that works.

Starting point is 01:23:58 There are some cases that have been developed that do reduce radiation. And the names of the companies keep changing. They have test data. They have shown it. You can't reduce the radiation. But the best thing is distance is your friend. And just understand wired headsets or speakerphone. Do not use your device.

Starting point is 01:24:21 when the signal is weak because it's smart and it will use more energy to reach the signal and half of that energy gets into you if you're carrying it on your body. Those are some simple pieces of advice that we give that I think can make life a lot easier. Before we close, I do want to talk a little bit about California and 5G. Please, please. The floor is your... Because your listeners need to know that right now, as we speak, The California legislature is on the verge of passing a bill that will allow them to put a cell tower on every street light that could be within six feet of your home, especially in the urban environment.

Starting point is 01:25:05 In order to install 5G, one of the things that the stimulus package has in it is billions of dollars to close the digital divide. That's good. we need to close the digital divide. But we don't need to do it with 5G wireless. We need community broadband control. We need fiber hoods like in St. Louis, where the whole city became wired. And this provides access to people who can then plug in.

Starting point is 01:25:37 It's more efficient. It's cheaper. With 5G, in order for 5G to work, you need a 5G phone, a 5G phone, a 5G router, a 5G computer, a 5G baby monitor, a 5G coffee pot. And while a lot of appliances are being manufactured with this capacity nowadays, it's not going to close the digital divide. What 5G is is a major marketing plan for the industry.

Starting point is 01:26:06 It's the next generation. We want safety. We want whatever the next generation is to be safer than what we have now. and frankly, we need to improve what we have now to close the digital divide. So we need to take the technologies and make them as safe as possible. If we're moving to electric cars, we need to make sure that there's a carbon layer that protects people inside the car from the exposure to the electromagnetic field from the battery, which is often in the back where the child sits.

Starting point is 01:26:42 That's why we really want to have this study done as soon as possible. And it will be very important for the design of the future that we know about this because where we are with these devices today is where we were with cars in the 1960s. When Ralph Nader and a few others said, look, we've got to make cars safer. We need seatbelts. We need airbags. It's going to save lives. we need the equivalent of seatbelts and airbags on our phones and our computers today. And there are simple hacks such as the ones that you've mentioned and others that are available on our website of what you can do.

Starting point is 01:27:24 It's not that complicated. It really isn't. And I think with the conversation that we've had today, hopefully we'll start more people along the road of thinking, what can we do to reduce our exposures to this agent at the same time. while not reducing our ability to use these amazing devices. A powerful reminder. And I want to thank you, Dr. Davis, for coming on the podcast and really continuing to spread your message and advocacy. Anybody who cares about these topics, they really need to know about your name because

Starting point is 01:27:59 you are at a central point of the intersection of policy, the history of having been involved with the other movements that are there that are similar in parallel, which also gives you the respect of your reputation in those areas and the awareness that industry would be using some of the same tactics that they used before to try to defeat, confuse, or pollute the idea around safety for these areas. And the other component, because you are an advocate of health yourself, the practical tips and the reminder that there's things that we can do today. but we do also need to support the organizations that are out there. So I'm going to throw out a little plug for your organization,

Starting point is 01:28:45 the Environmental Health Trust, and you guys have this lawsuit. Lawsuits cost money. You're doing all this research that's out there too. I don't make a lot of requests to my audience, but just this morning I signed on to be part of your Patreon group, and I'll put a link to that inside of the podcast. I would really encourage folks that are listening that if you want to see that there's a difference being made,

Starting point is 01:29:09 please participate. 5, 10, 15, 25 bucks a month makes a difference to a nonprofit on a huge level for them to do the work that they need to do. Anywhere else, Dr. Davis, that you want to send our audience or bring awareness to them? Just on this 5G issue, if you live in California, contact your representative, ask them not to vote on it or to vote no. and frankly, we're going to ask Governor Newsom, if the bill does pass, to veto it. And for that to happen, we need the public to weigh in and say, look, we don't need to have more antennas close to our bedrooms right now. We need the basic infrastructure to work. We need community control.

Starting point is 01:29:51 The California League of Cities is on record as opposing these bills right now that are going through the legislature. And we need people to get involved, to understand there's a site. for Americans for responsible technology. And that group has been pushing hard on this issue. And I would urge your listeners to check them out as well for information about what you can do in California. We have that information on our website, which I'm sure you will feature.

Starting point is 01:30:18 And we'd love to work with you to make sure that Californians end up with a protected environment. It's kind of ironic that the state that has been such in the forefront for controlling, from cars and controlling air pollution and controlling all mineral extraction and so many wonderful things and protecting the natural environment, which is so unique in California, it's rather ironic that they're poised now to desecrate all of that without even understanding what lays before them. And that is why this podcast is so important because it gives people a chance to hear,

Starting point is 01:30:56 look, get involved, get informed and understand, as Margaret Mead once said, The only thing that changes public policy is when a small group of citizens gets together and starts to act. And I want to thank you, Drew Probit, for really making this come about. Thank you so much. Well, I appreciate you. If I was there in person, I'd give you the biggest hug ever. Thank you for your work, for your advocacy. Dr. Devere Davis, appreciate you being on the podcast.

Starting point is 01:31:25 Thank you. It's a pleasure, Drew.

Dhru Purohit Show - #235: The Latest Science on the Link Between Cancer and Cell Phones with Dr. Devra Davis

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