Today my guest is Ellen Marks 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. Today we will be talking about their victory in Berkeley, California, where there is now a right-to-know ordinance regarding cell phones, and the recent death of Beau Biden from a brain tumor. Ellen entered into the cell phone/brain tumor world when her husband was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008. After examining her husband’s cell phone and medical records worldwide experts confirmed that her husband’s glioma was “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 and has appeared on the Dr. Oz Show, Larry King Live, The View and many national newscasts. www.cabta.org
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
You Have the Right to Know About the Dangers of Cell Phones
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Ellen Marks
Date of Broadcast: June 11, 2015
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio, where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free. It’s Thursday, June 11, 2015. And it’s a beautiful day here in Clearwater, Florida. We’re having lots of thunderstorms which is what happens here in the summer time. Right on schedule, we have thunderstorms. They are beautiful and cool us down. I love thunderstorms.
Anyway, today, we’re going to be talking about cell phones again. I want to keep talking about the dangers of cell phones and other wireless devices because I look around and so many people don’t know what’s going on. We really need to be talking about it. I hope that all of you will take what we’re going to say to day to heart and tell other people about it.
I ask people for landline phone numbers a lot and people often say to me, “I don’t have a landline phone number.” And yet, on the other hand, I have friends that if I call them on their cell number, they say, “Hold on. Just a minute. Can I call you right back from my landline?” And it’s so refreshing to hear that.
And so today, we’re going to be talking with Ellen Marks. She’s been on this show before. She is the 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.
And we’re going to be talking today about the new Right to Know ordinance in Berkeley, California and other things related to cell phones.
Hi, Ellen. Hello? Hello?
ELLEN MARKS: I appreciate it.
DEBRA: Hi, there you are. I can hear you talking, but I wasn’t hearing you. Now, we’re on.
ELLEN MARKS: Okay, I was thanking you for having me on. Thanks!
DEBRA: You’re welcome. So let’s start with—where would you like to start?
ELLEN MARKS: Well, it’s been an interesting couple of months in the cell phone arena. I don’t know, but your listeners might know that several years ago, San Francisco was the first city in the nation to pass what we call the Cell Phone Right to Know Legislation, which basically gives people information at the point of sale about how to use their cell phone as safely as possible.
What this did is it took language that’s already there, that’s required by the FCC, and instead of hiding it in the phone or hiding it in the manual that nobody reads, it would give this information to the consumer at the point of sale so that they can make an informed decision as to how best use their phone for themselves and their children.
But I think many of your listeners and you understand that after that passed unanimously in San Francisco, the cell phone industry, CTIA, Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, came in and sued. And their claim in San Francisco was that it violated their first amendment rights, that it was compelling speech that they didn’t want to give out.
And they didn’t win. That was the interesting part. They went to district court and the city did really well. And then it went to federal court and it was an unpublished decision by the federal judges that it did violate the first amendment, that it was controversial and not factual.
So it was going to go back to district court in about six months. This was back in 2013, I believe. And instead, the new mayor in San Francisco is very tech-friendly and he convinced everybody to repeal the law.
So that was very upsetting, and the industry is running around saying they won the lawsuit, which they really didn’t.
So what we did since then was we were fortunate enough to have Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Lawrence Lessig interested in this issue. And he’s just fabulous. I can’t thank him enough. He has offered his services and a team pro bono to any city or state that will take this on again.
So what we did was we worked with him and he brought in Yale’s Dean of Law School, Robert Post. And we crafted language that he feels will stand up in court. There were some things wrong with San Francisco that did go a little bit too far like telling people to turn their phones off when not in use and the children probably shouldn’t be using cell phones. So it did go a little bit too far.
So with the help of Lawrence Lessig and Robert Post, we crafted language that we hope will stand up in court and Berkeley did pass this a couple of weeks ago unanimously.
DEBRA: Yes, Berkeley.
ELLEN MARKS: Yes. We were thrilled. And I have to say, Max Anderson, the city councilman who had been working on this for three years, they had put it on the backburner when San Francisco was sued, is just fabulous. He was in tears after. He was so happy. They’re doing this because they really care about people and about their health and about their children and their community.
But unfortunately (well, maybe fortunately), we expected it, the CTIA filed their lawsuit the other day against the City of Berkeley. And even though the language is pretty much what they’re telling you in their own manual, they are suing. I thought it was funny. There has been a lot of media about this, which is good because the media, by Berkeley’s own law and then about the lawsuit, raises awareness for the public, which is what we are trying to do.
So one of the quotes by Max Anderson, the city councilman, in one of the articles the other day was, “It’s their own language. Maybe they should be suing themselves.”
DEBRA: I like that. I was just sitting there and thinking how could they sue you over simply taking language that they’ve hidden in their little pamphlet and just putting it out there where people can see it.
ELLEN MARKS: It’s mind-boggling. It really is and it makes you really wonder. I remember Senator Mark Leno when we tried doing this at the California State level (but that unfortunately lost out to campaign contributions to the democrats), he stated after getting to know this industry he’s more fearful on what they’re hiding from us. So that’s how we feel about this.
To make it really clear, the language isn’t exactly verbatim. Every phone is a little bit different. On an iPhone, you have to go through five or six steps on your phone to get to the language where it tells you not to hold it to your body. And then in the Blackberry, it tells you a little bit something different. It says, I think, to keep it 0.98 inches away from your body including the lower abdomen of a teenager and the abdomen of a pregnant woman. That’s a little frightening. So everyone is a little bit different.
So what we did, and I’ll read it to you, the notice that would be given on a piece of paper to the consumer at the point of sale would say, “To assure safety, the federal government requires that cell phones meet radiofrequency RF exposure guidelines. If you carry or use your phone in a pants or shirt pocket or tucked into a bra when the phone is on and connected to a wireless network, you may exceed the federal guidelines to exposure to RF radiation. This potential risk is greater for children. Refer to the instructions in your phone or use your manual for information about how to use your phone safely.”
DEBRA: That’s it?
ELLEN MARKS: That’s it and they’re suing.
DEBRA: They’re objecting to that.
ELLEN MARKS: They’re objecting to that. And basically, every manual has to tell you that the phone must be kept away from the body because that is how they are tested and people do not know that. That’s why my colleagues and I do what we do.
The government accountability office had in-depth report on this in 2012, and they said that exposure and testing requirements for mobile phones should be re-assessed and here, I’ve got it right here it says, “Some consumers may use mobile phones against the body which FCC does not currently test and could result in RF energy exposure higher than the FCC limit.”
So most, I’m sure your listeners, many of them probably keep it in their pants pocket or in their shirt pocket. A lot of women are keeping it in their bra because of convenience and we have a study that came out (and we actually have a case series that came out on that) by several breast surgeons who are seeing this and there are some young women who kept it in their bra and they had tumors developed exactly in the shape of their cell phone, same exact size.
DEBRA: Yes, it’s amazing
ELLEN MARKS: It’s just incredible. So basically, that’s it. That’s what Berkeley was going to be telling people to point of sale. The industry is suing. And even funnier than that (or not funny really), they hired Ted Olson. Are you familiar with Ted Olson?
DEBRA: No, I’m not. But we need to go to break. And we can talk about Ted Olson and other things when we come back.
ELLEN MARKS: Okay, thank you.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Ellen Marks. She’s the founder and director of the California Brain Tumor Association. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Ellen Marks. She’s the founder and director of the California Brain Tumor Association, and we’re talking about the association between cell phone use and brain tumors.
Ellen, we’re going to pick up where we left off before the break. But I want to just tell you that about a month ago, I was having lunch with two of my friends, a man and a woman. They’re very intelligent. They’re very well-informed. And both of them suddenly started talking about cell phones.
I think one of them had a cell phone sitting on the table. It turned out that both of them – and I didn’t ask them this question. Both of them said by themselves, they said that they had had a negative experience with putting their cell phones in their pockets. They don’t do that anymore. They actually had a reaction in their body that caused them to no longer carry their cell phones in their pockets. Two people out of just the small number of people that I know, two of them had a response.
I don’t carry my cell phone in my pocket at all, ever. I carry it in my purse. But if I don’t think that I’m going to need it, I’m one of those people that don’t feel like I need to be reachable all the time. And so I carry my cell phone when I think that I’m going to need it for an outgoing call or if I know somebody is going to need to reach me and I’ve given them my number or if I’m traveling and it’s the only way to reach me or something like that. But most of the time, my cell phone just sits on a table.
ELLEN MARKS: It’s interesting. I have this conversation with people often about the need for cell phone use and as much use people are using it. And what your friends experienced, a lot of people tell me that. They tell me when they hold it to their face or to their head that they feel the heat. One woman told me the other day she had a burn on her face. I was actually shocked by that.
But you’re right. And people are experiencing different physical ailments, not just – I mean, brain tumors obviously are pretty awful and there are salivary gland tumors and breast cancer and damage to fetuses and all this stuff that we’re hearing now. There are lots of good science about this.
But another thing is called electro-hypersensitivity. And people who are around cell phones or around wireless radiation of any kind like Wi-Fi, cell towers and that, they’re becoming ill from it. And it’s a real thing. I think in Sweden they’ve made it a disability. But we need people in the United States to take action about this. We need our legislators to realize that this is a real problem.
DEBRA: I totally agree. Do you remember – I don’t know how you are. But when I was a child, all we had was a telephone. We didn’t have answering machines. We didn’t have answering services. And if you weren’t actually there sitting next to the telephone or in the house, then somebody could not reach you.
ELLEN MARKS: Well, you’re absolutely right. I just had that conversation with my 28-year-old daughter the other day. I said, “It’s so amazing.” And [inaudible 00:17:02] I mean, I know the ramifications of cell phone use. I’m talking to you now on a wired landline, not cordless. By the way, your audience should know that cordless phones are probably just as dangerous as cell phones. And my daughter is like, “Why do you guys still have one of those? Does anybody really call you on that?” I said, “Yes. I use it all the time.”
The third generation, they don’t have them. They don’t have landlines. But then, I even have a sister who is older than I am, she’s 70, and they’ve given up their landline. I was appalled when I heard that.
We rely on our cell phones too much. There are so many negative health defects from them. And I think historians are going to have a field day with this, 20 or 30 years from now. It’s just terrible what we’re doing to ourselves.
But many people have become addicted to this. And why is it that when you go into a restaurant, everybody’s got them on the table? Why can’t we detach from it? Why can’t we unplug for a little while? And why can’t we be by ourselves and think instead of looking at the phone all the time?
DEBRA: I think that’s a very interesting question. don’t know the answer to it. Well, first of all, I think that we are social people and we want to connect. But the balance to that, from my viewpoint, is that you also need to be alone. You need to spend time doing whatever it is you need to do for yourself, to think your own thoughts and then be able to be yourself and go and connect with other people.
And when you’re constantly at the effect of answering the phone, of receiving communication from anybody that wants to talk to you at any time, then you’re not being positive over your own life. You’re just –
ELLEN MARKS: Exactly. It’s a problem socially, but it’s also a problem health-wise. And I think it’s just going to take more science and more illnesses and all that for people to realize the health effects are real.
DEBRA: Unfortunately.
ELLEN MARKS: And then as far as the social ramifications, I’m hearing more and more about that. I’m hearing about marriages that are suffering because people are addicted to their laptop and to their e-mails or to their phones. I think it’s affecting a lot of people. I even see it with my own kids sometimes where they’re not really there. They’re texting underneath the table.
DEBRA: On the flipside of that, I know that I’ve heard husbands or wives say, “I have to take this call because it’s my wife or my husband” and that there is a convenience to be able to always reach the other responsible person. If a child is in an accident or something, you want to be able to reach your husband.
ELLEN MARKS: You’re definitely right. Cell phones definitely make our lives a bit easier. They do. There’s no denying that this is a good technology. However, we have to know when to stop. I go in and I speak to a lot of high school students and college students. We’ve been showing our movie, Mobilize, our documentary on this issue and we talk to the kids. And one of the first things I always ask is, “How many of you feel that you’re addicted to your cell phone?” Every hand goes up in the room.
DEBRA: Really, they feel that way?
ELLEN MARKS: Yes. And it’s surprising to me that they feel that way and that they admit it. And so I don’t think they’re liking it either.
DEBRA: Well, immediately, what I thought of is when you’re in a store and the phone rings and the clerk picks up the phone and talks to the person on the phone instead of talking to you – you know how that is –it’s like the person who is in front of you should be the person that you’re interacting with. You should just be able to give your time and attention to that person and have the telephone be secondary, I think. That’s my opinion.
ELLEN MARKS: Exactly. It’s a whole social problem. It really is. It’s a whole different issue.
DEBRA: We need to go to break again and when we come back, we’ll talk about Ted Olson.
ELLEN MARKS: Okay, thank you.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Ellen Marks. She’s the founder and director of the California Brain Tumor Association who educates and advocates about cell phone use. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Ellen Marks. She’s the founder and director of the California Brain Tumor Association.
Okay, Ellen, tell us about Ted Olson.
ELLEN MARKS: Well, it was interesting. Lawrence Lessig, who I told you was helping us with this case (he helped draft the language that Berkeley passed) and Robert Post, we knew that a lawsuit would probably be coming because this industry does not have liability insurance. They can’t let the cat out of the bag.
So anyhow, it came the other day and the first lawyer on there that is defending them is Theodore B. Olson. He was picked by Time Magazine, I think it was in 2010, as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
DEBRA: Wow!
ELLEN MARKS: Yes, he has been before the Supreme Court 60-some times. He was the one who supported legalized gay marriage before the Supreme Court. And also in Florida, he was the one that was responsible for George Bush to be president for eight years. He was involved in the Bush-Gore election issue.
So this man is quite well-known. He’s one of the top lawyers probably in the world. I think we scared the heck out of the CTIA that they went and hired him, which is good, because Lawrence Lessig and Robert Post have a team put together and they’re ready to fight him all the way to the Supreme Court on this.
He did lose. I was talking to Dr. Stanton Grant about this who has worked on tobacco issues for years. And Ted Olson did defend Phillip Morris against the University of California concerning Stanton Grant’s work on tobacco research. And he did lose that case. So he doesn’t win them all. We’re hoping that he doesn’t win this one.
So we do have many cities in the States who are on board to do what Berkeley has done. However, now, they’re going to put it away for a while and see what happens here. But we do want them to write damages briefs to support the City of Berkeley.
And it’s really nice to see. The tide is changing a bit. Legislators are starting to see that this really is an issue, that this industry is despicable, that this industry is hiding this information that people need to know, and more and more people are becoming ill and dying.
We’ve lost two of our wonderful advocates. Jimmy Gonzalez was an attorney in Florida, 40 years old. He died from a brain tumor probably about nine months ago. And Bred [inaudible 00:29:18] was an attorney in Palo Alto who recently passed away at the age of 50, left three small children behind, who died from a brain tumor attributed also to his cell phone.
So they’re just two of many. And there are concerns about [inaudible 00:29:33]. We don’t know for sure, but a GPM at the age of 46 is rare. And radiation is the one known thing to cause brain tumors. So we just wish some public figures who have been affected by this would go public about it. It’s a very, very serious matter.
DEBRA: One of the things that concern me just about the world at large is that it seems to be allowable for new things to come on to the market without knowing what their health effects are. I think that there probably are some laws in place for some products needing to be tested or following regulations. But it seems like instead of saying, “Okay, prove that it’s safe first, then these new technologies are allowed” and then people get sick and then we have to fight to have them taken away.
ELLEN MARKS: You’re right. Corporations run our country, unfortunately. In the case of the cell phone, you’re absolutely right. There was never any pre-market safety testing done on a cell phone. I think when they came out in the mid-80s, nobody had any idea. We’ll give them a little bit of slack here how ubiquitous this will become and that even children would have them and be sleeping with them and all that.
So there was no pre-market safety testing. What they did was because they had tested microwave ovens to be safe, they just used that. And it’s a bit different.
DEBRA: It is a bit different.
ELLEN MARKS: You’re not holding a microwave oven to your head and children are using it. So it’s shocking to me also that they can get away with this and that we have to prove that they’re not safe.
DEBRA: In the world of chemicals, there is something called the precautionary principle. I don’t know if you all talk about that in the cell phones.
ELLEN MARKS: Oh, we do.
DEBRA: Yes. And I think that there’s enough evidence – I’ve been doing this work for more than 30 years and many years ago before anybody started talking about any of this, I had to say, “Well, what do I want as an individual? How do I evaluate what’s going to be safe for me?” And because I got sick, I said, “Wait a minute. I can’t do things to my body. If I want to live and be happy and earn money and have fun, I need to do things that support my health and not things that are going to make me lie in bed sick every day.”
And so I had to figure out, draw the line, where was my tolerable line of what I was willing to accept? And what I decided for myself was that if there was any concern about the chemical at all, it didn’t have to be really proven without a doubt, if there’s any concern (this was way before the precautionary principle was written), if there was any concern, I wasn’t going to use. I was going to find another way.
And the thing that seems to horrific to me about this whole cellular technology (not just cell phones, but the whole thing) is there’s no place I can go where I’m not being bombarded by this technology. In my own house, I can’t shut it out. If I turn on my computer, it asks me, “Do I want to hook up to this Wi-Fi, my neighbor’s Wi-Fi?” because I don’t have Wi-Fi. There’s no place to go. The whole planet is surrounded by these waves.
ELLEN MARKS: It’s a terrible. It’s really a terrible problem. Children are being exposed to Wi-Fi at school. Then they go home, they’re being exposed to it. And no one is measuring the cumulative effect. You might have an exposure limit for a phone, an exposure limit for a router, exposure limit for a cell tower. But when you put it all together…
DEBRA: That’s right. That’s exactly the point.
ELLEN MARKS: You can’t get away from it. So it’s very difficult for people who especially are sensitive to it. It’s terrible. There are people that are having to leave their homes because of the smart meters that are being put on their homes and things like that. So it really is an awful problem. Like I said, I think historians are going to have quite a time with this. I think we’ve advanced too far, too fast. We have not used the precautionary principle.
And what’s really infuriates me is that there is so much science now, established peer-reviewed, published science about cell phones, about Wi-Fi, about damage to fetuses from wireless radiation. And it’s being ignored and the industry is going on and they’ve got this mantra that there is no established science.
Well, at this point, they’re lying. I don’t mind saying that because they are. There is established science. We have the data to show the correlation between wireless radiation and damage to fetuses, damage to the sperm and cancers all over the body.
So yes, the precautionary principle should be taken, but they are more concerned about their bottom dollar.
DEBRA: Yes, and we should live in a world where the precautionary principle is provided at every level. And it’s not. It’s there. We can choose it, but it’s not being applied. I think that is a big mistake.
We need to go to break. And when we come back, we’ll talk more about this. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Ellen Marks. She’s the founder and director of the California Brain Tumor Association. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Ellen Marks, founder and director of the California Brain Tumor Association.
Okay, Ellen, what else would you like to tell us about brain tumors?
ELLEN MARKS: Well, I think that your listeners probably would like to know what they can do to protect themselves.
DEBRA: Good! Let’s talk about that.
ELLEN MARKS: Because this technology is not going to go away in the near future. And we don’t really want it to go away. We just want this industry to make safer equipment and fess up to what’s really happening.
One thing I try to stress to people is I love my phone and all that, but I try to limit my use. I think that’s something that we all need to do. If we all start limiting our use, maybe we won’t need as many cell towers and all that.
But another thing is just to keep it off when it’s on your body. You can even put it on airplane mode if you have it tucked into a pocket or in your bra. Just have it on the airplane mode which stops the wireless radiation from being transmitted.
And don’t sleep with them near your head at night. A few research did a study. Eighty-seven percent of teenagers sleep with them on underneath their pillows at night. That was very, very dangerous.
DEBRA: Wow. They want to be awakened in the middle of the night by having their cell phone?
ELLEN MARKS: They’re texting until all hours of the night. And then they use it for their alarm clock also. So this is a problem. I tell people if they have any control over their teenagers, get their phone out of their room at night.
And use the speaker phone, text more often, which is good. I think more and more people are texting a lot. Just don’t hold it to your head or body.
And as far as Wi-Fi goes, Ethernet is faster. So we have gone back to Ethernet.
And the other thing I’d like to stress is this is very, very real. The science is coming out of Yale, Harvard. It’s overwhelming. It’s coming from other countries also. There are very negative ramifications to wireless radiation. And it’s very real and when you hear otherwise, it’s the industry speaking that you’re hearing.
So we’re scaring people, I apologize. However, it’s something that people really need to know because everybody’s using this daily. Like you said, it’s hard to get away from it.
DEBRA: It is hard to get away from it. So I know that tablet computers are also – it’s any wireless device.
ELLEN MARKS: Right. iPads, I think in the manual it tells you to keep it at least eight inches from your body. And I know a lot of people fall asleep with those things. I have friends and family members who do that. It’s very dangerous.
I know a woman who did that and she did develop a brain tumor and she has passed away. And she was in her 40s. So it’s very frightening. So people need to be aware that—
DEBRA: Now, these new watches that people have, they’re putting it right on their wrist and wearing it all day long.
ELLEN MARKS: The wearable wireless devices are just horrendous. The Google glasses, I think have taken most to market now for other reasons, but it’s a horrible idea to keep microwave transmitter right by your brain like that all the time. And the watch too! It’s definitely not something that we think people should be wearing.
DEBRA: And e-book readers.
ELLEN MARKS: I really don’t know too much about that, but I would assume – I really don’t know.
DEBRA: I don’t know either that’s why I’m asking you.
ELLEN MARKS: Actually, I don’t so I’m not going to say because I really don’t know. I think if it’s not transmitting radiation, you’re okay. So I’m not sure if those do.
DEBRA: That’s something I want to find out about actually.
ELLEN MARKS: I think if it’s just downloaded, I don’t think that it is transmitting.
DEBRA: Well, I’m glad that I asked that because so many people read e-books now.
ELLEN MARKS: No, I think Kindle and things like that are okay.
DEBRA: I don’t have a reader but I have an iPad. And so if I am going to read an e-book, I read it on my iPad or I read it on my computer. Mostly, I read it on my computer.
ELLEN MARKS: Now, if you were to disable wireless on your iPad when you’re reading, would you still be able to read the book?
DEBRA: I have wireless disabled on my iPad anyway because an iPad, it comes in – it’s not a wireless. It’s like a cell phone.
ELLEN MARKS: So I think you’re okay. I really don’t know the answer to that.
DEBRA: Well, I’ll have to do more research.
ELLEN MARKS: Yes, please do and let me know. The other thing I’d like to say is we did make a movie. Dr. Joel Moskowitz of UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and I and Dr. Deborah Davis who is a worldwide leading expert in this issue, we did make a documentary called Mobilize which has been showing around the nation – actually, around the world. It was shown in New Zealand last week. And if people would like a link to it to show it in their community, they can e-mail me. Can I give my e-mail out?
DEBRA: Yes, you can. And actually, during the break, there’s a website, MobilizeMovie.com. You can go to the MobilizeMovie.com and you can order a copy there. I think it has different levels of rights. So you can order one if you want to show it. It costs one price and if you want to have a DVD, so you can just watch it yourself, it’s $15 I think on the site.
ELLEN MARKS: And it’s well worth it. People are really enjoying it and they’re really telling us that they’re changing their habits after seeing it.
DEBRA: How long is the movie? How many minutes?
ELLEN MARKS: The movie is about an hour and 20 minutes.
DEBRA: So it’s a movie “movie”?
ELLEN MARKS: Yes. And we did win an award for it. We won the Slade Award for the Best Documentary. We were up against the Hollywood producer for their documentary at the California Independent Film Festival. So we’re excited about that.
It’s basically about the science, about the collusion between our government and this industry, and the industry corruption. And that’s what people need to know to keep themselves and their family safe. So I hope that more and more people will view it.
DEBRA: I hope so too. I will put that link on the website with the links to this show.
ELLEN MARKS: That would be great, thank you. And my e-mail is CA, for California, BTA, for Brain Tumor Association, SF, San Francisco, at Hotmail dot com. So CABTASF@hotmail.com.
DEBRA: Okay, good. So we only have a few minutes left. Anything else you’d like to add?
ELLEN MARKS: Well, we were talking about cell towers before. And one of the things that’s happening right now in California (it’s the first state to do this and it’s horrific), is one of the assembly men got a bill passed before the assembly and now it’s going to the senate to take away local authority and cellular facility placement. And that would be done at the state level.
It’s horrific because it takes all authority away from cities and it basically denies them the rights to concerns about aesthetics, concerns about environmental issues, about safety.
So if any of your listeners are from California or they are concerned that this could happen in their state, we encourage people to contact California state senators to vote no on AB57. It’s a terrible law and it’s just a power grab by the telecom industry to get things done quicker. They have more antennas in – for instance, in San Francisco, they want to put them on a utility pole, on sidewalks and things like that. It’s just a terrible idea not only for aesthetics, but we know for health reasons, which we’re not allowed to talk about because of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. But we’re really concerned about this AB57 getting through the senate.
DEBRA: Well, lots of going on in the world. We need to be vigilant. It seems to me that there is some basic goodness in the world that people want to do the right thing, for that they want to be healthy. And then there are all these other things going on and that we have to fight it. Even though it seems to me it’s like our natural state to be healthy if we’re not being bombarded by all these things. We have to fight to have our natural environment. We need to fight to have pure products, even the food we eat or the water that we drink.
It’s one thing that I’ve said many times in the past on this show is that I think that we should be able to buy applesauce, for example, and the label would say, “apples and water” and we would know that that was apples and water and nothing else. And that the ones that are not that should say, apples, pesticides, chlorine, all the things that are actually in it.
ELLEN MARKS: Yes, unfortunately, like we said before, corporations have the upper hand in our country right now. And that’s one reason that Larry Lessig took on this issue with the cell phones. He would like to see corporations out of politics. They shouldn’t be making campaign contributions and all that. It’s a huge problem. You’re absolutely right. And the American people are suffering because of that.
DEBRA: I think so too. I’ve done a fair amount of study about our founding fathers and the American Revolution and what they were fighting for. And freedom is a basic thing. The Right to Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The first one is life. This country was founded on that we have the right to life and our very lives are being threatened. And we should all be standing up for this. We should all be standing up and saying let’s have life.
ELLEN MARKS: You’re absolutely right. It’s so sad to me because I’ve gotten to know these people who have been affected by cell phone radiation. There are young women that I know who have breast cancer that’s spreading throughout their body now because they didn’t know they shouldn’t keep their cell phone tucked into their bra while it was on.
And like I said before, I know people, men and women, who have died from this. And it doesn’t get much worse than that. And it’s so sad and this is so real.
DEBRA: I know that when I found out about toxic chemicals because I got sick, when I found out about it, I made a decision that I had to spend my life telling people about it because I can’t heal the damage these chemicals have caused my body and I didn’t know about it. And so I just dedicated to making sure people know.
We need to go. So thank you so much. It’s such an important subject.
ELLEN MARKS: Okay. Oh, gosh! Thank you for the work that you continue to do and for raising awareness. I really appreciate it.
DEBRA: Thank you. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. Be well.
