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Weighing in on Interphone and the Media
May 24th, 2010Waking up to the media reports last week was absolutely fascinating. If I didn’t know any better, and didn’t have absolute faith in the scientific experts I had interviewed, I might have taken Full Signal off the market, with a very embarrassed apology.
“No Link Between Mobile Phone Use and Brain Cancer” is the headline many of the newspapers screamed in the variety of languages that I saw thanks to friends of mine (in disbelief at the biased coverage) that forwarded me articles that morning.
And acquaintances I met during the day and for a few days later touted the media reports as justification for continued use of their phones (no, not everyone I know has jumped onto the Full Signal bandwagon, as it were).
Why were so many people around the world so willing to listen to these media reports? I know not everyone has the access to the scientific experts Microwave News does…but I mean haven’t we learned from other, non-mobile phone-related, experiences that “mainstream” media is not always the most accurate? I used to be part of that system, and I know it’s usually not intentional, but with deadlines, budget cuts, etc, journalists often don’t have the time or money to do the proper in-depth research that needs to be done…but I digress…
People embraced the Interphone report as the gospel of mobile phone research for the same reason that the regulation of this technology is so difficult. Not because they are all in the pockets of the industry (unlike much of the mainstream media that covered the Interphone report, which was, in turn, funded largely by the industry). But people love this technology so much, they have bought it for themselves, given it to their children, discarded their landlines (for those that even had them to begin with), adopted WiFi and cordless phones, baby monitors, wireless headphones, the list goes on and on and…wait, now they’re saying it’s safe!
They’re even saying that moderate users were found to have a lesser prevalence of brain tumors than non-users…see we should use this technology!
Ignore the fact that scientists that were part of the Interphone study were screaming about biased results. Ignore the part of the article beneath the fold that says that heavy users were found to have a higher risk of developing brain tumors, ignore the fact that due to the prevalence of this technology the majority of users are heading into the category of heavy users, and ignore the fact that when we started researching for this film in the spring of 2008, there was already a whirlwind of controversy surrounding the Interphone study…
…People just want to go on believing that this technology can’t not be safe.
My hat goes off to the Australian government that upheld a warning against the young using cell phones, and at the end of the day, my hat goes off to the mobile phone industry for quite successfully winning this “battle” in the “war” of awareness. More independent research needs to be done. More research will be done…
…let’s just hope that by the time those results come out, we’re not looking at a larger number of “casualties” thanks to the false sense of security the mass media has put into the minds of so many mobile phone users around the world.
FCC Regulations
January 13th, 2010These are excerpts from an FCC Press Release dated November 18:
The Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) [has established] timeframes of 90 days for collocations and 150 days for all other tower siting applications reviewed by state and local governments.
This action will assist in speeding the deployment of next generation wireless networks. The deployment of next generation mobile broadband networks promises tremendous benefits for American businesses and consumers and realizing these benefits will require new physical networks, including many new towers.
The FCC found that there are many instances of unnecessary delays.
Full Press Release Can Be Found At http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-294711A1.doc
Lessons by…the director
December 14th, 2009The answer to all of these questions is a resounding “no”.
No because you are directly impacting your health, your child’s health, and the health of the people living near the infrastructure.
And while I haven’t gotten rid of my phone, I’ll tell you what I have done. I have stopped carrying my phone as often, or answering it as often…and I have eliminated WiFi from my home which was a painful blow on a convenience level, but not when you have a baby in the house.
It starts with one small step: awareness…and that is what Full Signal is about.
Electro-Hyper Sensitivity (EHS)
December 8th, 2009JFK-ARN
December 3rd, 20092. Ericsson the cell phone producer is there. This is a giant corporation that at one point employed around 70,000 people out of a population of just over 7 million. If a corporation like that existed in the US it would employ about 2,800,000. That is more than the populations of Alaska, Delaware, Vermont and Washington, DC…COMBINED.
3. They are traditionally known as an open society with many of the freedoms and liberties that many other societies are lacking.
Well it turns out that even in this open society, money talks the loudest.
a. Scientists have not received adequate funding for research.
b. A group of people known as Electro-hypersensitives, a condition recognized by Ericsson in the early 1990s (in a book they published), and a group considered by the Swedish government as a disability group, are now neither recognized by Ericsson nor the government.
c. Cell phone antennae crop up undeterred in this country as in every other country we visited for this film.
New York, New York
November 22nd, 2009Now here is a challenge. If you live in New York City (or the boroughs), as you are walking to work or school or the corner store, look up at the roofs of the buildings around you.
How far do you actually have to go between spotting one antenna and then another?
NYC was where we managed to find the least regulation and the most upset voices, and while this is only one city among the hundreds of cities that dot the globe, we chose the city to serve as our global paradigm.
What you see on the streets of NYC, you can also see on the streets of Sydney, Tokyo, Cairo, and Paris.
Enlightenment, Confusion, Frustration, and Elightened Decisions.
October 22nd, 2009But with more interviews came more opinions. And this ultimately led to a tug-of-war between those that are for, and those that are against. Who do you listen to? Who is right and who is wrong?
But out of this confusion and subsequent frustration comes one bottom line:
There is growing evidence that cellular technology is harmful to us. This has not been proven, but by the time it could be proven, it could be too late to do something about. So now is the time to err on the side of caution.
There might be something here…
October 22nd, 2009One person we met and interviewed: Dr. Stelian Gelberg, the representative of the Ministry of Environment in Israel seemed like someone who was stuck in a weak position between trying to keep an eye on health and bending to the enormous weight of a very wealthy industry.
More interviews, lots of B-roll shoots and we had completed the production phase of “Full Signal”, a short documentary film, filmed in Israel, about the impact of cell phones on the lives of people in whose midst they had been placed.
But then again, this is a global issue. There are approximately 3.5 billion cellphone subscribers. That is more than half the world’s population!
So with that in mind, we headed to the US and production on Full Signal, the feature documentary, began.
End of Phase 1 and now it is Lights…Camera…aaaaaaand long production days!
October 22nd, 2009I decided on a style…I would film all my interviews outdoors in natural light…with cell towers in the background (where possible)…after all this is a film about cell towers, and it is a film about people…and you don’t find either of those in people’s living rooms or offices.
And so September 1st 2008, I met up with Dr. Zamir Shalita who has been doing research on the dangers of Electro-Magnetic Radiation, and who has quite vocally called for a strong reduction in emission levels…and together we went to Issifya, an Arab village in the North of Israel.
Issifya is beautifully located in the Carmel Mountains overlooking an extremely large part of the country. This made it an ideal place to install military, maritime, commercial and cellular towers over the years, and people started to get ill.
What is fascinating about this village, is that it is now free of cell towers (other than a few sneaky people who hide them in their homes trying to make some easy money).
Chapter 1: The Forum for Sane Cellularity
October 22nd, 2009My first stop starts with a man called Avi Dabush in Jerusalem…a very helpful man who tells me about the battles of the organization he represents: the Forum for Sane Cellularity, and how difficult it has been to get any legislation passed in Israel to really limit people’s exposure…
And basically I discover that my neighbor has no obligation to inform me of that little structure on his roof, nor did he even need a permit for it…oh, and that he’s making around $2,000-$3,000 a month off it.
