Are we immersing ourselves in an ever increasing, dense fog of mutagenic frequencies? Dr Martin Blank, of Colombia University, believes it to be far worse than we can imagine.
We all know that if you spend too long on our cellular, or even cordless telephones, that our face starts to get hot. Our tissues, quite literally, begin to cook. How many of us realise that the damage begins long before our cells get warm?
The Electromagnetic Spectrum is colossal. The frequency ranges may be infinite, but our current technology can measure from the Ultra-Low frequencies such as those emitted by power lines, to the Ultra-High frequencies of cosmic rays. Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, physicists have drawn a line to differentiate between ranges that have heating, or destructive capabilities (ionising radiation) and those which are deemed ‘safe’ to our bodies. They refer to dangerous frequencies as ionising, since it carries enough energy to displace electrons from atoms. Physics therefore categorise damage as a chemical change resulting in electrons being removed from atoms. These same physicists, along with a collection of engineers, also set the safety standards of electronic equipment that emit ionising and non-ionising waves. A device must cause living tissue to cook, before it is labelled harmful.
Biologists, on the other hand, are fully aware that our bodies are dynamic, sensitive systems, which rely on delicate chemical and electromagnetic balances. The tipping point of these systems can be minute, as in the concentration threshold of neuro-transmitting chemicals at the junctions between brain cells. With technology increasing in complexity and sensitivity daily, it is no longer appropriate to measure safety in terms of cooking capability. We need a biological safety standard.
Dr Blank and his colleagues were not satisfied with the over-simplistic statistical studies that correlated distance from and length of exposure to power lines and mobile phone towers, with clusters of childhood cancer, breast cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and miscarriage. They set out to prove that exposure to even low frequencies, creates a dramatic and measurable change at a cellular level in our bodies. Their extensive studies concluded that cells produce up to twenty different stress proteins, relating to cell repair, when exposed to EMF lower than published safety standards. For these proteins to be generated, our DNA must pick up environmental cues of distress and damage, uncoil the DNA helix, and signal the coding procedure for repair proteins to be synthesised in the cell. In other words, low levels of electromagnetic frequencies, causes our DNA to recognise cell damage and go into overdrive to affect repair.
Health and Safety agencies, such as the World Health Organisation, have determined and published warnings that Extremely Low frequencies associated with power lines, with an average of four milligals, are ‘possibly’ enough to cause leukaemia. Dr Blank, estimated that the lecture hall he was giving his presentation in, with its cabling and projections facilities, emitted approximately one milligal. Does that mean, that the IT suite that I spent fifteen years teaching in, exceeded that limited thus significantly increasing my risk of contracting cancer? Blank stated in his lecture that exposure to a constant barrage of one-point-eight mgals resulted in tissues being twice as likely to exhibit damage to DNA repair genes.
Another scientist, the late Dr Neil Cherry, from New Zealand, studied the offspring from mothers who had used electric blankets during pregnancy. Those who had not miscarried, went on to produce children with higher than average rates of asthma and obesity. A conclusion he drew from his twelve-year study, was that exposure to the electrical frequencies in vitro, appeared to have a damaging effect on foetal DNA. Other studies, into melatonin production, skin melanomas and growths in certain facial glands have all been linked to adverse effects of EMF exposure.
Why isn’t this being shouted from the rooftops? Economics. Our media rich lives dictate how much energy we consume, how broad our Internet bandwidth is, how addictive our mobile phones are. We are happy to ignore the risks, so long as we can stream the latest series of Game of Thrones to our enormous televisions, in surround sound audio, while tweeting on our 4G phones about the size of the dragons.
I don’t know about you, but I am seriously considering building a Faraday Cage around my bed and nipping to Argos to buy an old fashioned cabled telephone. In thirty-years time, will we look back at this era as one gigantic technological folly, as we do when watching the smoke-filled bar scenes of the film Casablanca?
Sam Nash is the author of the sci-fi conspiracy thriller, The Aurora Mandate. Release date TBA. You can find her at https://www.samnash.org or on Twitter @samnashauthor or Facebook.com/samnash.author.