Today I have two guests speaking on the health effects of cell phones and the problem of insufficient product labeling.
I invited Ellen Marks to be a guest today after posting a press release last week about how she and others protested cell phones at a San Francisco store by placing warning labels on the phones. Ellen is founder and director of the California Brain Tumor Association which focuses on prevention and on the wireless radiation issue being a possible cause of deadly brain tumors. Ellen entered into the cell phone/brain tumor world when her husband was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008. Her husband and Senator Kennedy had their seizures and same diagnosis 10 days apart. Ironically, her son had worked for the Senator. Her suspicions concerning both her husband’s and the Senator’s long term cell phone use to the same side of the head where the tumors developed led her to worldwide experts. Upon sending them her husband’s cell phone records and medical records they confirmed that her husband’s glioma is “more likely than not” attributable to his long term ipsilateral cell phone use. Ellen has testified before Congress on the health effects of cell phone radiation, attends International Expert Conferences on this issue and has appeared on the Dr. Oz Show, Larry King Live, The View and many national newscasts. Not only is she educating others but by “going public” many other victims have reached out to her and she has brought the victims together to have their collective voices heard. www.cabta.org
Ellen then invited Representative Andrea Boland to join us as well. Rep. Boland serves in the Maine House of Representatives and is considered a national expert on electromagnetic radiation health and safety hazards of cell phones, smart meters, and other wireless devices. She introduced the first legislation in the world to ask for warning labels on cell phones to alert users to keep them away from the head and body, especially those of children and pregnant women. She has spoken on the subject in Washington, Vermont, Portland, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She received the 2011 National Health Freedom Hero Award for her work supporting nutritional supplementation, advancing wireless health and safety, and promoting the public’s right to know.
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Cellphones, Brain Tumors, Labeling & Your Right to Know
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest:Ellen Marks & Andrea Boland
Date of Broadcast: April 28, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and to live toxic-free.
It’s Monday, April 28th 2014. And I have two wonderful guests today. We’re going to be talking about cellphones and brain tumors and your right to know what’s toxic and EMF’s.
The reason that we’re doing this is that I was so inspired by my first guest—actually, we’re going to have both of them on at once. But I originally contacted my first guest because she and others sent out a press release about how they did a demonstration at a cellphone store in San Francisco. They just walked in and put warning labels on their cellphones, little stickers with warning labels on the cellphones. And I actually don’t have the sticker right here in front of me, so I can’t tell you what it says (but she can probably tell you).
But I was so impressed by this because I have often had the thought that labeling is just so inadequate that I just want to walk into a supermarket with a roll of stickers that have skull and crossbones on them and stick them on everything that’s toxic, walk into Walmart and all these big stores that still have toxic things on the shelves and just put stickers on them, shelf-talkers that just would say, “Caution: This is a toxic product. Use it at your own risk.”
Ellen actually walked into a store and did that. So she caught my attention.
Anyway, we’re going to be talking about what she did, but we’re also going to be talking about why she did it and what we can do to improve our right to know and the labeling.
So, my first guest is Ellen Marks. She is the director of the California Brain Tumor Association. And I also have with us today representative Andrea Boland. She’s a representative in the Main House of Representatives. And she’s considered a national expert on electromagnetic radiation and safety hazards in cellphones and other things.
She introduced the first legislation in the world to ask for warning labels on cellphones to alert users to keep them away from their head and body, especially those of children and pregnant women.
So, hello, Ellen and Rep. Boland. Thanks for being here today.
ELLEN MARKS: Hi, Debra. Thank you so much for having us.
ANDREA BOLAND: Yes, thank you.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. So I want to ask both of you how you got interested in this subject. Ellen, why don’t we start with you?
ELLEN MARKS: Okay. Well, if somebody would’ve asked me ten years ago, I never would’ve thought I’d be doing this. But unfortunately, about almost six years ago, my husband had a seizure in the middle of the night.
He was diagnosed immediately at the local hospital with a large tumor glioma in his right frontal lobe.
At the same time, my son had been interning for Senator Kennedy and the same thing happened to him about a week later.
My son was the one that brought it to me. They’re both on their cellphones all the time. And it was true. My husband was a heavy cellphone user for nearly 20 years. He’s what we call an “early adapter.”
So, started researching it and I was shocked to find things. At first, I thought, “Oh, if this was true, our government would’ve told us.” I was kind of naïve, wasn’t I?
DEBRA: Well, I thought that too. When I first discovered about toxic chemicals, I thought, “Well, how come there are toxic chemicals. Isn’t the government watching out for us?” They aren’t.
ELLEN MARKS: No, they’re not unfortunately. I mean, there are some good legislative such as Rep. Boland and Sen. Leno […] There are some good legislators. But unfortunately, we can’t get enough done. The status quo is not good enough anymore. We need to change this.
So anyhow, I did find out. I sent my husband’s medical record, cellphone record to experts around the world. And they did get back to me and said that, more likely than not, his glioma which was on the same side of the head to which he held the phone was attributable to his cellphone use.
So, I have since testified at Congress and involved in trying to get legislation passed from Maine to Hawaii. I’m very active in the San Francisco Right to Know legislation because I want people to know—and many others.
Trust me, I have a list a mile long of people who are dead or dying that are much younger than him. Had he known, he never would’ve risked his life by holding this to his head.
And that’s what we want people to know. And unfortunately, even though we’ve tried giving labeling laws across the nation—and Rep. Boland had been fabulous with this, I can’t thank her enough—this industry is beating us up.
They’re not telling people the truth.
And unfortunately, our government, from the very top, from President Obama down, is involved in this collusion between the FTC and and the CTIA, the wireless industry.
So, that’s how I got involved. I’ve dedicated my life to this because I see the devastation of the brain tumor, and they are on the rise.
DEBRA: Yes, I understand. I have a very dear friend who—let’s see, I think he’s in his early 40’s. Very brilliant, a very kind and caring person. He spent so many years just with the cellphone glued to his head. I sat there and watched him do that.
And he called me about a year ago and said he had a brain tumor.
ELLEN MARKS: Oh, I’m sorry.
DEBRA: He had an operation. I’m thinking that he’s fine. I haven’t heard from him since. But I heard that he’s survived the operation. He was 40 or 42, something like that, when this happened.
ELLEN MARKS: Yeah!
DEBRA: I can’t walk around saying, “Well, my friend…”—I know for a fact that my friend used his cellphone for hours on end every day, and he got a brain tumor.
But you had put together evidence. And so I’m so glad that you’re doing what you’re doing. I understand how you feel because when I found out about toxic chemicals and consumer products, and I was made so sick from them, I said, “Wait a minute! If somebody had told me that there were toxic chemicals in all these products that have no labels on them, then I wouldn’t have used them.”
I think that everybody has that sense that if we know there’s a danger, we’re not going to put ourselves in harm’s way. The biggest problem is that we don’t know where the harm is. People are making controversy out of it and—anyway, you understand.
ELLEN MARKS: You’re right. And the controversy with this issue (and Senator Boland will tell you in a minute also), there is a lot of good science. When they separate the independent science from the industry science, there’s excellent science showing that there is an increased risk of brain tumors from cellphone use and from cordless home phones.
People need to be aware of that. They need to get rid of their cordless home phones and go back to the wired landline—if the cellphone industry is going to keep the wired landline. That’s another issue.
DEBRA: That’s a whole other issue.
ELLEN MARKS: Exactly!
DEBRA: Well, Rep. Boland, tell us how you got involved in this issue.
ANDREA BOLAND: Well, actually, it was brought to me by someone in California—Ellie actually, I didn’t know, but someone, a retired college teacher, who had been looking at that issue. He saw a story about me in a magazine and thought that I might be one who might take it up.
And when I heard about it, I just sort of groaned, “Oh, my goodness. I have enough things on my plate.” But he sent a lot of good information, even information from Europe and he translated it (in this case, from French to English). So you couldn’t ignore it. I didn’t have any personal connection to the effects of cellphones that I knew of. But anyway, the evidence, to me, was overwhelming, that certainly a warning label is called for to let people know we may have some serious problems here.
So, I went ahead with the legislation. We designed the label. And it had a graphic on it as well because we knew at that time that cigarettes in other countries had graphics with them showing […] and that sort of thing. So we put a graphic on, showing the brain of a 5-year old receiving the—70% of the brain was receiving the emissions from the cellphone.
DEBRA: Yeah. We need to go to break. But when we come back, we’ll talk more about cellphones and their health effects with my guest, Ellen Marks who’s the founder and director of the California Brain Tumor Association and Rep. Andrea Boland from Main. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Ellen Marks. She’s the founder and director of the California Brain Tumor Association and Rep. Andrea Boland from the House of Representatives in Maine.
Wow! So, tell us something more about the health effects.
ELLEN MARKS: Well, I could start a little bit. First of all, in 2011, the World Health Organization did classify radiofrequency electromagnetic fields—that includes cellphones, cell towers, anything that emits non-ionizing radiation—a possible human carcinogen based on an increased risk of glioma associated with wireless phone use. So, they did this after they studied the findings, the science for […] France.
And the health effects are not just brain tumors. That’s something that people need to be aware of. Just recently, they’re finding out (there was a study done) that women who keeps cellphones in their bras are getting unusual breast cancers at young ages.
And there are salivary gland tumors. There was a study out of China which showed a huge increased in salivary gland tumors […] And those can be length.
And we’re talking about prostate cancer and all sorts of things. Now, they’re saying—I think it was Martha Herbert from Harvard who was a neuroscientist. She came out with a report that she believes that Wi-Fi is causing an increase in autism.
So, there’s a lot of different health effects. And the problem is that it’s from the non-thermal emissions. And the FCC, when they’re putting out their guidelines through these cellphone safety standards are only taking into considerations the thermal effects. And this needs to be changed. This is a terrible, terrible mistake. It’s going to affect just about every man, woman and child in America using a cellphone. How many future cancers and deleterious health effects are we looking at?
And one thing I want to say also is something that got Andrea and I and others involved in this is the language in the manual. Andrea, you can talk a little bit more about this too.
The cellphone industry is required by the FCC to put in what’s called a safe distance precaution. And they’re hiding them in tiny, tiny font on page 250 of the manual or they’re not even giving the manuals out anymore. I don’t know.
Many people use the iPhone. Do you mind if I take a minute to go through what you have to do to find out the warning?
DEBRA: Please. Please do that, yes. Go ahead.
ELLEN MARKS: It’s quite amazing! Who would know this other than us? You have to hit ‘Settings’, and then you have to hit ‘General’, then you have to hit ‘About’, then you have to go all the way down and hit ‘Legal’, then you have to hit ‘RF Exposure’. And in print that you cannot make bigger—like you can on most iPhones—it tells you (if I can read it with my glasses on, which is not easy), “to reduce exposure to RF energy, use a hands-free option such as the built-in speaker phone, the supplied headphones or other similar accessories. Carry the iPhone at least 10 mm. away from your body to ensure exposure levels remain at or below the tested levels.”
So they’re hiding information like this. The Blackberry says to keep it almost an inch from the abdomen of a pregnant woman and the lower abdomen of a teenager. Every cellphone has a warning like this somewhere, but Americans aren’t seeing it. Other countries are warning their citizens, but we’re not doing that here.
So Andrea, do you want to talk a little bit more about the manual?
ANDREA BOLAND: Well, the thing about the manual, of course, is that people don’t see it. They can’t even find it sometimes if they want to. You might have to go online or dig deep into the phone—as Ellie said, to dig deep into a manual, it’s very tiny print.
My daughter recently got an iPhone 4 I guess it was. And there was a very thin, little piece of paper that floated out of it that she wasn’t even going to pay any attention to. She looked at it and there was some information there about finding the warnings or the safety advisories, whatever they want to call. The print was so tiny that when I copied it to show the legislators, it was absolutely unreadable. So, that’s the kind of trick that they pulled.
But when you talk about the health effects—there are others too. There are effects to soft tissue—for instance, the eyes, the testicles, the reproductive organs. So, in the Blackberry, it was saying to keep away from the abdomen of pregnant women and the lower abdomen of teenagers, they’re talking about birth effects.
All I can think of is parents who are anticipating the birth of a child not knowing this information and then finding out too late that they, themselves, cause birth defects or traumas to their newborn baby or their developing child. I just really think it’s criminal.
And in fact, it probably is. Looking at Risk Management Magazine, which is a magazine that corporations go to, it talks about how there is actually requirements that—for instance, manufacturers have often been held liable with their warnings who are deemed not conspicuous enough or placed in the wrong location or fell off of the product by accident. Well, my daughter’s would probably be called “falling off” or “falling away.” There are requirements for these.
And so, not only are the health effects and not only are the warnings hidden, they are actually flirting with the law to not have them obvious.
So, there’s really so much there. And yet, what happens is children may develop and not have good brain function. They’re not able to learn easily. People could have difficulties with vision. I believe I do because of a problem with glaucoma where one eye has huge, huge high pressure and the other one didn’t (a little bit, but really essentially didn’t). The doctors was so shocked. They couldn’t understand where it came from. It was suggested to me that it came from my cellphone use. So, I lost 90% of my vision in that eye.
DEBRA: So many things we don’t know about this.
We need to go to break. We’ll be right back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guests today are Ellen Marks, founder and director of the California Brain Tumor Association and Rep. Andrea Boland from the Main House of Representatives. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And today, we’re talking about cellphones, brain tumors, labeling, your right to know. We’ve got Ellen Marks who’s the founder and director of the California Brain Tumor Association (they are at CABTA.org) and also, Rep. Andrea Boland. She’s got a long URL for a website. Just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. You can look at the description of the show and find out how to reach each of these guests (and any other guest) and find out that we have all over a hundred past shows that you can listen to also in the archives.
Let’s talk about right to know and labeling. Rep. Boland, why don’t you go first? Okay, go ahead.
Ellen: I think at about the same time—and Andrea, correct me if I’m wrong—Maine was starting to look at this, the City of San Francisco was starting to look at this issue. Originally, it was then Mayor Gavin Newsom. The San Francisco Department of Environment was fabulous on this.
What I heard was that Gavin Newsom became concerned when his wife was pregnant and she was holding the cellphone to her abdomen.
And by the way, I want to say something about that, what Andrea was just talking about. There are studies showing damage to sperm. There’s a wonderful couple here in Marine whose young child, at four, died from a GPM, the worst type of brain tumor imaginable which is very unusual in a child. And she does blame herself. She was a realtor and kept cellphones in two pockets while she was pregnant.
So, it’s really important that pregnant women keep this thing away from their bodies—well, that everybody keep it away from their bodies, but especially pregnant women.
So, anyhow, what happened in San Francisco was that we came up with the Right to Know law. It passed unanimously in 2010. But it was to post the SAR, which is the specific absorption rate at the point of sale. Each has a different one. And the limit is 1.6 watts per kilogram.
So, anyhow, the CTIA did come in and sue. The deputy city attorney who was in charge of this case wanted to repeal it soon thereafter because he said he could not defend the […] in court.
Cindy Franklin and I—she is the fellow advocate up in Washington. She has a non-profit called Consumer for Safer Cellphones were very upset by this. We had worked hard to get this done. We knew that it was something that needed to be done. And we got hold of then Lt. Gov. Newsom and he got in touch with the interim Mayor Lee, and said, “No, this is not going to be repealed. This is needed.”
So, what we did was we had Supervisor John Avalo introduce new Right to Know legislation which passed unanimously in 2011. Basically, it was to hand out a fact sheet at the point of sale, talking about the World Health Organization classification and some precautions that people could take.
The CTIA continued to sue. This is what they do. They threaten everybody with litigation across the nation who has wanted to do something. They did continue to sue.
The bottomline is that California, San Francisco did not lose in court. But it wasn’t looking good in federal court, but they did put out a non-binding ruling that this did violate the industry’s—Andrea, what was it—the industry’s first amendment rights. It was compelling speech.
DEBRA: Well, now, wait a minute. Don’t we have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
ELLEN MARKS: Oh, that’s exactly the words that I use all the time, that my family and others have been robbed the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, yes.
ANDREA BOLAND: And those public servants who swear to uphold the constitution swear to uphold those rights. And they too are not doing it.
DEBRA: So to me, life—that’s the very first word that’s used—we have the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So anything that violates life, to me, is unconstitutional. And not only is it unconstitutional, but it’s unethical.
There are such things in the world as ethics, which means that you do the thing that promotes well-being. You don’t do the thing that is harmful.
I’m going to make a really strong statement here. People are found guilty of murdering people, and yet, at the same time, consumer products that actually kill people are allowed to continue to sold.
ELLEN MARKS: And I cannot agree with you more. I’m angry. That’s why I continue to do this. This is why we fought back in San Francisco. We had this changed. It’s pathetic, what is going on. It goes as high as President Obama (and I’ll explain that to you in a minute).
What happened was that in 2013, while the lawsuit was still going on (but the city was doing pretty good with it actually), the new mayor wanted no part of it. He’s a text-friendly guy, and he wanted no part of it.
So the deputy city attorney was right behind us, lobbying that it should be repealed if we were lobbying that it should not be repealed.
And I’m going to tell you something now. I don’t think—and many of us do not think—that it was a coincidence that one month later, the deputy city attorney in charge of this case for three or four years was appointed to become a federal judge by President Obama.
We had about 20 other cities and states who wanted to do this Right to Know law. This collusion and corruption is coming from the top. And it is sickening.
You are so right when you say this about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. My family has been robbed it, and I can’t tell you how many families has been robbed of this. And Obama recently appointed the ex-FTC head, Tom Wheeler, to head the CTIA.
The revolving door continues. Last week, an ex-FCC commissioner was appointed to head the FCC. I think maybe I said that backwards before. Tom Wheeler, head of the CTIA, now he heads the FCC. And now we have the ex-commissioner of the FCC heading the CTIA.
This revolving door is going around and around. The corruption is starting at the top. Our hands are tied because whenever we try to do something, this industry who is fueling our global economy and has so much money and is buying politicians, buying science, trying to [… ] their product—it’s tobacco all over again. But this is worse because everybody is using them and it’s a valuable technology.
So, as much as wonderful people like Rep. Boland and Lt. Gov. Newsom, Dennis Kucinich, even representatives […] who wrote to the FCC, the American Academy of Pediatrics—even the Department of Interior last week wrote a letter to the Department of Commerce saying that these FCC guidelines are inapplicable—it’s pathetic what’s going on out there.
And this is why I took the action that I did. I think that we need a National Labeling Day. I hope Andrea is with me on it.
DEBRA: Well, we’ll talk about that when we come back from the break. We need to go to a break. We’ll talk about that when we get back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my two impassioned guests today are Ellen Marks from the California Brain Tumor Association and Rep. Andrea Boland from the Maine House of Representatives. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guests today are Ellen Marks from the California Brain Tumor Association and Rep. Andrea Boland from the Maine House of Representatives.
So, Ellen, tell us what happened in San Francisco. Why did you take labeling into your own hands at the Verizon store?
ELLEN MARKS: Well, after the law was repealed—and it was the saddest day at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Meeting […] They had their heads down. They were just embarrassed by what they had to do.
And then, we had—Andrew will tell you what’s happened in Maine. We had this happen in Hawaii just the last couple of weeks where Senator Josh Green of Kona got a cellphone labeling bill passed through the Senate Health Committee, and then the representative, Sen. Roz Baker of Maui refused to hear the bill. It was the same week that she refused to hear the GMO-labeling bill. So there are some industry manipulation going on there.
And then, Andrea will tell you what happened in Main, which was just awful and sad.
We decided we were going to take the law into our own hands. I don’t call it “civil disobedience.” I call it “civil obedience.” We’re trying to save lives.
My colleagues and I went into a Verizon store and we started labeling the phones. We made sure that they were going to come off easy. I have to admit, I was a little nervous. I’ve never done anything like this before. It said something to the effect of “This device emits radiation which the Whole Health Organization says can cause cancer. Do not hold to the head or body, especially pregnant women and children.”
We were in there for about an hour, putting the labels on. They followed us around, taking them off. They were on the phone, waiting for the police to come. And they did not come. And we made some…
DEBRA: But they didn’t stop you from doing it? They just took them off.
ELLEN MARKS: No, they couldn’t stop us. I think they were probably informed not to touch us or anything like that. We kept doing it. We wanted to make a statement that this is what is needed, and we’re going to take it into our own hands if we have to. And like I said before, I hope that we can do a National Labeling Day.
And I think there’s enough outrage, people across the United States right now that feel the same way that we do, that this does not violate their civil rights or their first right amendment, but it violates our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
This is affecting children. And we’re horrified about the effects. And it’s not just cellphones, like I said before. It’s cordless phones. It’s baby monitors. It’s toys that are being made for 6-month old where you can put your eyes on them for them to play with.
I would love for Andrea to tell you also about what happened in Maine.
DEBRA: Okay.
ANDREA BOLAND: Well, what happened in Maine was the legislation I brought was announced with a press release in December 2009. It went to the Associated Press and it just went viral. It was really incredible.
It was all over the country and other countries.
I was sitting on the phone for about three days with all different media outlets—the first one being CNN, which was startling to me. But anyway, people couldn’t believe that there was a problem with cellphones. They were angry at me and they were shocked. Some people did know and weren’t surprised. But for the most part, it really caused a huge uproar.
And from there, I think there’s a lot more that came out in the press and news magazines and everything. And that was just kicking the door open. I had a lot of these folks from California who had been giving me some advice on it and all too. So we just kept bringing it forth.
Anyway, the first label that I asked for actually said “Warning: This device emits electromagnetic radiation, exposure to which may cause brain cancer. Users, especially children and pregnant women, should keep it away from their head and body.” And it had that graphic of the penetration (which has been modeled by a professor at the University of Utah) showing the effects of the emission penetrating the brain of a 5-year old.
All of that caused a lot of uproar.
From that, I’ve had two more iterations of it to tame it down because it couldn’t have graphics and everybody was all nervous about the wording. This year was the third time it’s been voted on in the Maine legislature and all it said was, “If you have advisories in your manual for the user, put them on the packaging so the purchaser can see it or some kind of a label that tells them where to find it.” And the wording would just be “Information on RF exposures can be found at page such-and-such” or “on our website, such-and-such,” so that people have a fighting chance of finding it if they want to. But at this point, people know there may be some kind of an issue.
It was so tame we didn’t use warning, we didn’t use “safety.” We were careful to use no words that could be called “compelled speech.” We only wanted to use the word of the industry itself. Very, very tame, “For information, go to…” That’s all it was.
Well, it passed decisively in the house. It passed decisively in the senate. And then, there’s a final vote. It’s called a “vote of enactment.” And usually, nobody even pays attention to it. It just goes under the hammer and they’ll roll call, no discussion. But the cellphone industry put a whole bunch more lobbyists on the job in that last day and scared the devil out of some of the legislators just enough to turn it so that it didn’t pass on what we call “enactment” that final vote, which was, of course, very disappointing. But they had the help of the leadership of the House of Representatives.
People who, before, had voted in favor of it (it did pass the house the year before), this time, they all voted against it. What was that about? And they let people know they were voting against it. And it was a much tamer label.
Also, the attorney general was lobbying against having that bill passed. She was saying it was unconstitutional even though we had a great constitutional scholar and a Harvard Law professor saying he would just send it all the way up to the Supreme Court if the state of Maine didn’t want to. He contested there was no way it was unconstitutional.
But to see the leadership –and that’s my own party, I’m a Democrat—turn against it after they’ve voted far in a prior year and to have the attorney general working against it really shows you (as Ellen was saying) how deeply the problem goes—how high it goes, how low it goes, how deeply it goes for people who are anxious about the power of this industries.
And in fact, the first year I brought it, I’ve been working with the AG’s office all the way through with it. The assistant AG who’s a constitutional scholar, we had to work with it, it had to be as careful as we could make it, he had told me that the industry had come to him the very first time around. They said it subtly, but he said it was very clear, that they would sue the state of Maine.
Well, we’re a small state economically, and that’s a very threatening kind of thing to say. But like in San Francisco…
DEBRA: I’d hate to interrupt you, but we’re getting near the end of the show. We only have a few minutes left. I want to make sure that you tell us what people can do to be safer with this technology.
ANDREA BOLAND: Well, as Ellen was starting to say, basically, keep it away from your head and body. Use it on speaker phone or a wired headset. Children, really, shouldn’t be using them at all because they’re so much more vulnerable.
And really, that’s it in a nutshell I would say. Texting is better than having it up to your head, but your hand is still exposed.
DEBRA: And also, you’re still exposed to it even when you’re not using it, just having it in your pocket or, as you said earlier, in your bra or in your purse.
ELLEN MARKS: Yeah, you’re right. If you have to have it on your body, keep it in airplane mode, turn it off. Something people have to realize, I do not advocate against this technology. However, we do have to—and some of the manuals even say this—limit our use. User a corded landline when you can’t. Don’t stream videos. I mean, we’re also talking about cell tower radiation which is harming people and the environment.
We need to be responsible starting with ourselves, with our families at home and in school. Wi-Fi’s in schools is starting to be a huge problem.
So turn them off when you can.
ANDREA BOLAND: And you need to hold your representatives responsible. You’ll need to call them. You tell them.
ELLEN MARKS: Absolutely!
DEBRA: Yes. I’m sure both of you remember when we were all children. There was no such thing as Wi-Fi or cellphones or anything like that, and we all got along just fine.
ELLEN MARKS: You’re right. I hate to say it though, this technology is not going to go away.
DEBRA: Well, I know it’s not going to go away. You really can’t escape it because…
ELLEN MARKS: We need to make it […]
DEBRA: …all the cellphone towers and all those things, even if you’re not carrying a cellphone—I mean, I can pick up my neighbor’s Wi-Fi on my computer and I don’t even have Wi-Fi in my house.
ELLEN MARKS: Right, right, right. It’s a very sad state of affairs that we let this get out of control. But right now…
ANDREA BOLAND: But we can push back on it. I mean, it’s still early on in the industry. It probably can be a whole lot safer than it is.
ELLEN MARKS: Well, I’ve heard that they do have patents on safer equipment.
DEBRA: Okay. I have to interrupt you now as much as I don’t want to. I have to interrupt you now because the music is going to come on and it’s going to cut you off.
ELLEN MARKS: We can talk for hours.
DEBRA: I need to say “thank you so much.”
ELLEN MARKS: Oh, my gosh! Thank you. And Andrea, thank you. And by the way, Andrea is running for state senate.
DEBRA: Yehey! Good. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can find out more at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. Be well!
