Warning: Using a Mobile Phone While Pregnant Can Seriously Damage Your Baby
May 19th, 2008Via: Independent:
Women who use mobile phones when pregnant are more likely to give birth to children with behavioural problems, according to authoritative research.
A giant study, which surveyed more than 13,000 children, found that using the handsets just two or three times a day was enough to raise the risk of their babies developing hyperactivity and difficulties with conduct, emotions and relationships by the time they reached school age. And it adds that the likelihood is even greater if the children themselves used the phones before the age of seven.
The results of the study, the first of its kind, have taken the top scientists who conducted it by surprise. But they follow warnings against both pregnant women and children using mobiles by the official Russian radiation watchdog body, which believes that the peril they pose “is not much lower than the risk to children’s health from tobacco or alcohol”.
The research – at the universities of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Aarhus, Denmark – is to be published in the July issue of the journal Epidemiology and will carry particular weight because one of its authors has been sceptical that mobile phones pose a risk to health.
UCLA’s Professor Leeka Kheifets – who serves on a key committee of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, the body that sets the guidelines for exposure to mobile phones – wrote three and a half years ago that the results of studies on people who used them “to date give no consistent evidence of a causal relationship between exposure to radiofrequency fields and any adverse health effect”.
The scientists questioned the mothers of 13,159 children born in Denmark in the late 1990s about their use of the phones in pregnancy, and their children’s use of them and behaviour up to the age of seven. As they gave birth before mobiles became universal, about half of the mothers had used them infrequently or not at all, enabling comparisons to be made.
They found that mothers who did use the handsets were 54 per cent more likely to have children with behavioural problems and that the likelihood increased with the amount of potential exposure to the radiation. And when the children also later used the phones they were, overall, 80 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties with behaviour. They were 25 per cent more at risk from emotional problems, 34 per cent more likely to suffer from difficulties relating to their peers, 35 per cent more likely to be hyperactive, and 49 per cent more prone to problems with conduct.
The scientists say that the results were “unexpected”, and that they knew of no biological mechanisms that could cause them. But when they tried to explain them by accounting for other possible causes – such as smoking during pregnancy, family psychiatric history or socio-economic status – they found that, far from disappearing, the association with mobile phone use got even stronger.
They add that there might be other possible explanations that they did not examine – such as that mothers who used the phones frequently might pay less attention to their children – and stress that the results “should be interpreted with caution” and checked by further studies. But they conclude that “if they are real they would have major public health implications”.
Professor Sam Milham, of the blue-chip Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and the University of Washington School of Public Health – one of the pioneers of research in the field – said last week that he had no doubt that the results were real. He pointed out that recent Canadian research on pregnant rats exposed to similar radiation had found structural changes in their offspring’s brains.
The Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection says that use of the phones by both pregnant women and children should be “limited”. It concludes that children who talk on the handsets are likely to suffer from “disruption of memory, decline of attention, diminishing learning and cognitive abilities, increased irritability” in the short term, and that longer-term hazards include “depressive syndrome” and “degeneration of the nervous structures of the brain”.
While on one level I applaud this “official” outing of mobile phones as a mini-microwave applied directly to the siude of ones cranium, at once I am absolutely and utterly appalled at many of the statements — and omissions — made within:
“The scientists say that the results were ‘unexpected’, and that they knew of no biological mechanisms that could cause them.”
“…to date give no consistent evidence of a causal relationship between exposure to radiofrequency fields and any adverse health effect”.
Putting the lie to the former and the latter is only a matter of reading something slighty more challenging than daily fishwrap. AS only the first of multiple examples, abundant evidence exists within official government research into the effects of RF radiation on soldiers and US government personnel.
Not to mention the small mountain of training films and materials I witnessed while training for my “black hole” MOS in the Marine Corps (ECM/EA-6B’s). Or the history of the US embassy in Moscow and the documented Soviet-era bathing of the place in low-level RF.
In addition, the labeling of this study as “authoritative”, on the heels of a platoon of literally dozens of preceding studies offering a demonstrative connection between irradiating your brain/corpus and bad mental/physical effects, leaves me wondering: how many of these scientists would stick their head in a microwave oven if a study said it was safe? Whose perceptions are they trying to manage here?
I have owned a mobile phone on and off for a number of years, and given my early background in high-output RF technology, I have always regarded it as an “emergency” device, to be used only when absolutely necessary — and then only for short bursts of exposure. I was always enamored of the Motorola phones, as they had a speaker function that allowed me to keep the thing away from the side of my head.
I still have one today, as ever stored separately alongside the battery, which receives a charge cycle about once a month. I have used this particular phone a grand total of about ten times in the last five years. We have no need of a plan — only a few minutes on account “just in case”.
I don’t know how many times I’ve casually mentioned my technical background and experience — and what it demonstrated — to folks when discussing mobile phones. It is always offered in the hopes that it will flip a proverbial lightswitch in their head. I have also used the microwave oven comparison. All to no real effect. I expect one of the other major effects is best described as “cognitive dissonance”, as more than one of these situations was interrupted by an incoming call…
…AND last but by far and away not least, is the food connection.
In the modern media, the stove-piping of information and the inability to recall stories of previous studies which might correlate (i.e.: British delinquents given ONLY cod liver oil supplements along with their daily bread showed great improvement, et al.) is yet another excellent demonstration of perception management and the billions spent annually keeping the Mighty Wurlitzer wheezing harmoniously.
One day soon, a vast number of folks will be awakened by the inarguable mountain of evidence that they’ve been guinea pigs since birth, and they will also realize it is far too late to save anyone — including their children.
And we, the American escapees and ex-pat nutjobs cranking out the evidence while getting as far from the source as we can manage, will sigh an inevitable sigh and go right back to our organic gardens and permaculture and raw milk, as untainted as we can manage by the noxious soup of truth and lies known as news.
I would rather be a nutjob in the service of life and living than a perfectly “normal” guy serving atomized evil all tarted up in fancy duds and on parade. As a result, there’s almost no one left to talk to from my previous life — unless I want to discuss inane subject matter while having my rather simple priorities pushed to the “fringes” yet again by the programmed ones I love.
I have reason to suspect this study hasn’t taken OTHER factors into account.
It simply could mean that families
with a yuppie like,totally connected all the time feminine wage slave who follows the dictates
of all the corporate states(daycare in the hands of STRANGERS,early propagandizing indoctrination of their rug-rats via programs such as headstart)simply are not there for
their developing children.
Fine recipe for behavioural problems.
No doubt their could also be some link to near field emf,eme.
Uh, how big does the sledge hammer have to be? I guess PRETTY BIG.
I have a co-worker who is pregnant. She is looking in the mirror and saying to herself, “boy am I FAT.” The worst half of this story is that the woman – who is extremely intelligent- but extremely stupid in common sense- is beating herself up because she LOOKS FAT.
Now you tell me. Is someone like this going to understand that her cell phone causes damage to her baby?
In this case, I think it is this woman’s perception of herself as FAT, WHILE SHE IS PREGNANT, will do more harm to her baby, than any cell phone radiation will ever do.
Message from this woman’s brain to child in womb: you make me look FAT, so you are BAD NEWS.
Cell phone radiation: under the radar.
SAD..SAD..SAD.