TRANSCRIPT: 5G, Wireless Radiation and Health: A Scientific and Policy Update: Dr. Devra Davis

But another that we have to acknowledge has been the deliberate manipulation and war games that have been carried out over many years that I and others have documented.

Policy Formulation and Types of Evidence

We are here hosted by the Department of Public Policy, which is entirely appropriate, because when it comes to formulating ideas about policy, we don’t have the luxury of saying, “Come back in five years and we’ll tell you what we think.” We have to base our decisions about what are appropriate policies on several different types of evidence.

The first being exposure and modeling studies. Who is exposed and what are they exposed to? We know that we can use anatomically-based models in order to set standards for practicing surgery, and we can make some real-world measurements and observations. We are less certain about what those exposures may mean, and that’s where the work of scientists comes in.

The Importance of Animal Studies

I want to stress, as the title of my talk is, “What the Animals Try to Tell Us,” that if we’re really smart, we will interpret animal experiments in order to prevent human harm. But we have become, I think, twisted in our reliance on science when it comes to many issues of public health. Instead of using animal evidence to predict and prevent harm, we are increasingly asked to prove that human harm has already taken place.

But I want to stress that every agent that we know for sure causes cancer in humans also produces it in animals when adequately studied. It’s important to realize that. The question is, what do we do? Do we predict and prevent the future, or do we rely on the much more limited data that we have from human studies?

Limitations of Epidemiological Studies

We have epidemiologic evidence, controlled studies, case-controlled studies are the gold standard, so to speak. But keep in mind that epidemiology can only confirm the past. Epidemiology only confirms the past. It should not ever be used to set future policies because what we are enjoined to do as experts in public health and those policymakers who must make these tough decisions is to prevent harm rather than prove that harm has already happened.

The Electromagnetic Spectrum

So when it comes to understanding what electromagnetic fields are, I think it’s instructive to look at this illustration of the range of the spectrum that goes all the way from the electricity that powers the lights in your room at 50 cycles a second in Israel, 50 hertz, 60 in the United States.

[Technical difficulties with slides are addressed here]

Types of Evidence and Policy Making

When it comes to understanding what electromagnetic fields are, I think it’s instructive to look at the broad spectrum of what is non-ionizing radiation. It extends from the electricity that turns on the lights all the way up to and through ionizing radiation, X-rays, gamma, and cosmic radiation.

The broad spectrum of radiation and the point I want to make about the electromagnetic fields is that they are genuinely complex. We can talk about them in terms of energy. We can talk about them in terms of the wavelength or distance they have to go.

The Complexity of Electromagnetic Fields

When we talk about 5G, I want to make sure that you understand that there’s not one size fits all. In fact, the specs for 5G are still being written as I speak. In the United States today, in some football stadiums, you can get 5G so that you have the opportunity to simultaneously take a video, beam it to a friend, watch the game, eat your popcorn, all at the same time. But it’s working at 700 megahertz as a carrier.

It means that 5G antennas have to have within them 3G and 4G because most of the devices in this stadium are in fact 3G and 4G. Very few people have 5G ready devices. The high frequency cells are being used right now for some environmental monitoring and frankly for surveillance activities in a number of cities. And finally, the millimeter wave of 26 gigahertz and above will be used for some other connections.

Public Health Risks

The question we have to ask ourselves, among many, is: Is this a public health risk? And the answer, in my opinion, and that of Dr. Paul and others, is yes, it is. We have evidence that it could be, that it is a risk.

Characteristics of Electromagnetic Signals

A signal is many complex things. It has frequency. It has power. It has beats or pulse per second. It has power density. It has polarity, information content. All of those different things characterize what a signal is. It’s very easy to confuse people by not clarifying what aspect you’re referring to when you present it.

More importantly, we know from new research just published, supported by the American Cancer Society and carried out at Yale, that genetic factors such as single nucleotide SNPs make a difference in whether or not people are more or less susceptible to certain environmental exposures, in particular cell phone radiation.

The Importance of Signal Characteristics

If you look here, what I’m showing you is that in terms of power density, which is measured in volts per meter on the y-axis, you see that through a four-second phone call, you get these huge swings in power density over time. And it’s thought that the constant change in peak exposure is what makes the biological impact. So it’s not the power, but the pulse.

As Dr. Cindy Russell has said, “Pulse is poison.” And it’s the repeated exposure to these pulses that is important.

Historical Context

Now let’s take a step back and ask, what has not changed since the 20th century? Well, interestingly, radar ranges were first introduced in the middle of the 20th century. Women didn’t like the idea of cooking with radar, so they changed the name to microwave. That is the origin of the term “microwave,” by the way.

The original cell phones weighed about two and a half pounds, cost at that time $3,900, which would be about $9,000 today. You see Maxwell Smart there with his shoe phone. And they were sold at a time when gas sold for about $1.30 a gallon. Those things have changed in some way. But what has not changed is the standards that we use to test phones today are the same standards that have been used since 1996.

I want to share with you this statement from the FDA website. There is no premarket safety testing for phones.

FDA’s Stance on Cell Phone Safety

There could be premarket safety testing for phones. That is, their authorizing statute could allow it. But the FDA website says they do not review the safety of cell phones. The FDA website further says, and I quote:

“They have the authority to take action, if cell phones are shown to emit radio frequency energy at a level that is hazardous to the user.”

In that case, they could require manufacturers to repair, replace, or recall the phone. They could do this. But they are not doing this. I submit that they are missing in action and have been, unfortunately, for some time.

Outdated Testing Methods

Another thing that hasn’t changed is that the methods for testing phones are based on this guy. We call him SAM. It’s short for Standard Anthropomorphic Mannequin. He’s got a big, empty head, and we pour homogeneous fluid into it. He doesn’t talk a lot because we only measure what happens during a six-minute phone call.

DNA: The Foundation of Life

One thing that will never change is that the base of all of our cells is DNA. The nucleus of every cell. We have DNA, this exquisite double helix of nucleotide bonds, and that is what holds us all together.

Identical Twins and Environmental Factors

Now, identical twins don’t have precisely the same DNA. Although they come from one egg that splits in two, they are shown here with these methylation patterns, that fluoresce green, from chromosomes that have been identified in identical twins from studies done in Scandinavia. But look at the same twins at age 50. They do not look like they’re even related to one another.

So as identical twins age, their chromosomes begin to look less similar. And what this is telling us is that the environment is critically important. Genes may give us the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.

As an example of that, here are some more recent studies done in Denmark, also with identical twins, where they looked at the pattern on the top. These are the young identical twins, and this is showing a great deal of correlation between their chromosomal activation. But by the time the same twins are older, you see the spread here. Whether you know any science at all, this is clearly showing, again, that over time, even identical twins stop looking like they’re related to one another. Environmental factors ranging from stress, to exposure to chemicals, to a whole host of things, make a huge difference in the health of identical twins.

DNA Damage from Mobile Phone Exposure

With respect to DNA, Henry Lai and Vijay Singh developed a brilliant and innovative assay, and in a really fair world, they would receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine for this work. They showed that you could take the DNA and unravel it in a way that would form a tail, seen here, as it starts to unravel. This DNA unraveling occurred with the equivalent of 1,600 chest X-rays. This DNA unraveling occurred with one day of mobile phone exposure at a permissible level at the time.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we’re all doomed, because we have lots of repair. That’s one of the benefits. But it is important to recognize that while there are important differences between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, seen here, ionizing radiation is faster, with more energy, it can break chemical bonds directly. But non-ionizing radiation, with its lower frequency and lower energy and thermal effects, also can, in fact, damage DNA.

Studies on DNA Damage from RF Radiation

I’m going to show you why and how we know that from studies completed most recently at the U.S. National Toxicology Program that have been carried out there. But many other studies have been carried out around the world showing this increase of reactive oxygen species and the damage to male and female health.

Here is one of the studies from earlier in this century, the EU Reflex Project, originally led by Franz Adelkofer. It was a four-year project in 12 groups in seven European countries, well over $10 million of funding. They were able to show a change in the structure of the DNA and the function of the genes that were damaged. From intermittent exposures, you got breaks in single and double-strand DNA, and you got them in human fibroblasts. Most interestingly, you got them in stem cells, but not in mature cells.

Scientific Uncertainty and War Games

This study done in 2006 was immediately subject to war games. So a lot of scientific uncertainty was manufactured about it. Igor Belyaev, about a year earlier, had reached the same conclusion looking at a number of different studies that he had done at specific DNA repair genes, 53 beta and H2AX, foci in human cells. Looking at human cells, he showed DNA damage. And with the GSM, which was then the most common exposure, he also showed that some frequencies damage all cell types, while other frequencies only damage a few.

Synergistic Effects of RF Radiation

What we see again from earlier studies is that exposure to radio frequency below the current safety limit has caused damage synergistically. If you look at the graph on the right, you see that the black is the control cells that were exposed to a known chemical carcinogen. We know it causes cancer in animals, ethylnitrosourea. And then when you added that known carcinogen to exposure to cell phone radiation, you got an accelerated effect, a double effect or more, with a low amount of radio frequency radiation, which is consistent with the Ramazzini findings that Dr. Melnick is going to be talking to you about later.

The NTP Study

Now, the NTP study was requested in 1999. Dr. Melnick is going to go over it in detail. But again, I want to just stress the summary of it was that they found statistically significant increases in cancer and borderline significant increases in cancer and hyperplasia and dysplasia in multiple organs. They also showed DNA damage in both rats and mice, the male rat and the female and male mouse.

Nonetheless, for reasons that many of us do not understand, the FDA has rejected the findings of the NTP as not relevant to humans. Well, they point out, for example, that the animals weren’t making phone calls. No, that’s actually not quite what they say. They say that the whole body exposure was not relevant to phone exposure. Well, frankly, we object. That is, in fact, what people are getting all the time with phones in your pocket, phones close to your body, and it’s proximity to the body that is the issue.

Effects on Sperm Production

When it comes to sperm, humans need a lot of sperm to make a healthy baby. They are produced at the rate of 90,000 a minute. And in order to succeed, they have to swim the equivalent of from Los Angeles to Hawaii. It is truly survival of the fittest.

What we do know from really brilliant work that’s been carried out by Kesari in 2018, recently published, is that we have multiple exposures. The body does not differentiate. We know the highest exposure is from the cell phone. There’s no debate about that. But we know that depending on proximity to a tower, depending on your use of ovens, depending on whether you actually keep a laptop on the lap, which no one should do anymore, and where and how many routers you may be exposed to, all of that influences the development of LSH and FSH, the development of pituitary hormones, which in turn influence Leydig cells and have an effect on the quantity and quality of the sperm that’s produced, including that reactive oxygen species can be stimulated by this exposure and that those can directly damage sperm cells.

Mechanisms of DNA Damage

The effects have been shown to influence a whole cascade of proteins seen here with protein receptors. And these proteins can either tell cells to die, apoptosis, or they can influence the development of cancer. So again, it’s the structure or the function of DNA that can be affected by cell phone radiation. So that even though cell phone radiation does not have strength enough to break the basic nucleotide bonds, it can damage DNA. And it can do it through a variety of mechanisms that have been suggested here in this work by Kesari, including gene activation by free radicals that are formed, as well as interfering with calcium channels, as you will hear from Dr. Paul.

Studies on Mammalian Sperm

When it comes to experiments that have been done with mammalian sperm, it’s important to realize we actually have a lot of data here. It’s not often spoken about, but we do. And one study that I participated in with colleagues involved looking at the effect of cell phone radiation directly on testis. The slides are from an animal, but I want to direct your attention to this visualization here. You will see that the highest exposure goes into the testis. That is the hot source of highest exposure when a phone is in the pocket.

This is based on anatomically based modeling developed by Claudio Fernandez and Alvaro de Salas at Porto Alegre in Brazil. The control slide here shows you nice borders and cell walls. And the exposed show an absence of that integrity. Again, suggesting that one of the consequences of this exposure is to damage membranes, damage integrity.

Recent Studies on Mitochondrial Damage

This is a more recent publication showing effects on mitochondria. Again, the black bars are the exposed germline cells. And the white is the control. So over time, the white will increase because there’s going to be damage from time. Sperm are not meant to survive outside of the body for long. But what you see here is a very statistically significant difference with certain of these genetic alterations in sperm that are exposed to cell phone radiation. Damage to the mitochondrial superoxides. Mitochondria is the engine of the cell. Very significant effect.

Reactive Oxygen Species and Testis Weight

This is again an increase in reactive oxygen species shown in the germ cells here. With again, over time you see a greater effect. But if you look at the bars here, you’ll see that the exposure to radiofrequency radiation here dramatically increases the effect. And the weight of the testis is also affected.

In this new study from Houston, and again you see the control cells here at the top and you look at the exposed at the very bottom and you see again the loss of integrity. And over time, the mouse testis, the exposed testis, has significantly less weight. And that’s important because of course you want to have the healthiest organ that you can in order to ensure reproductive health.

Vitality and Motility of Sperm

Other studies have looked at vitality and motility. And again, not surprisingly, over time, this is the sham, that is to say they just were allowed to sit there for time, But when you get exposure here in the red, you see a substantial decrement in vitality, motility, and motility meaning the ability to swim. So if a sperm can’t swim, it’s not going to succeed in fertilizing anything.

Implications for Fertility

These are serious problems and they’re so serious that all fertility clinics now around the world recommend that men having problems impregnating their partners get their phones and other devices off their bodies. That’s standard advice.

Cellular Mechanisms and Calcium Channels

This diagram I think is relevant to what Dr. Paul is going to be showing you as well, which is that calcium channels, which are key to membranes, are absolutely key to cell phone radiation. And once that happens, you get a cascade of reactions that inhibit repair proteins like tyrosine phosphatase. It can inhibit the ability of kinases, which normally would have the job of fixing cells or telling them to die when they can’t be saved.

Factors Affecting Male Reproductive Health

All of these things can be affected by cell phone radiation. In this new paper by Sir John Aitken from Australia, who has published one of the most impressive bodies of work in this field, he has identified a number of explanations for the worldwide decline in male reproductive health.

I am not telling you that the decline in male reproductive health is due to cell phones alone. Pesticides, tight underwear and clothing, warm baths, radiation, all of these things are known to affect the quality of a man’s reproductive health. But cell phone radiation is certainly one of the factors that has to be looked at as well.

Reactive Oxygen Species and Male Reproduction

When it comes to male reproduction, we know that reactive oxygen species play a role, both a positive role and a negative role, like many things in life. You can get an increase in oxidative stress, which in turn damages lipids, which of course can damage membranes, which are largely lipids, and can damage DNA. So there are effects on capacitation and fertilization from both endogenous sources (those are inherent within the body) and exogenous ones.

I would add to the list here of radiation and smoking and alcohol, cell phone radiation as well.

Brain Development and Cell Phone Radiation

The brain is an amazing thing. There are about 100 billion neurons that get to be pruned, but the size at birth is about a third that of an adult. And it grows so fast that by age two it is more than doubled.

So the growth of the brain during pregnancy is hard to imagine because it starts with just a clump of cells at the top of the neural stem and then turns into this incredible complex whole of a brain with all of the pathways in it.

What we know from studies that have been done repeatedly by my colleagues at Andikuz Mayuz University in Turkey is that prenatal exposure to cell phone radiation in animals causes a downsizing and deterioration of brain cells. The slide on the left are healthy, with lots of nice boundaries and cell walls, and the slide on the right, exposed to EMF, have lost their integrity, largely. And so we see an increase in this damage to these cells.

I believe these were from the dentate gyrus, and that’s part of the hippocampus, which is critical to balance, impulse control, thinking, and essential things of this sort.

Children’s Vulnerability to Cell Phone Radiation

Now when it comes to understanding exposure, we have done work, again with our colleagues in Brazil, and we have shown that the child’s brain can absorb much more radiation. The head may absorb the same amount, but the brain of the child contains more fluid. It can absorb more exposure, seen here with the yellow-white, getting the highest exposure if a phone is held right next to the relatively thin skull.

Dr. Nora Volkow’s Study on Brain Glucose Metabolism

In 2011, the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, Dr. Nora Volkow, published this really important study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. She was able to show, using a PET scan (which she helped to invent), that this is a normal brain with the cell phone turned off. She had two phones on volunteers who did not know if the phone was turned on or not. So they had no sound at all. But with 50 minutes of phone radiation, there’s more glucose in the part of the brain with the highest exposure. That’s a pretty profound and important finding.

Unfortunately, her work on the epidemic of opioid poisonings and deaths in the United States and other factors have prevented her or anyone else from following up on this important observation.

Potential Protective Factors

Now, it’s not all doom and gloom, because other studies done by colleagues and others have shown that if you expose cells to EMF, you get damage. But if you expose them to melatonin or to omega-3 fatty acids, you can reverse and prevent that damage. So we need to pay attention to the ability of certain agents to help repair damage and understand that it’s not that we’re at risk all the time.

Evidence of Cognitive Effects in Adolescents

This was produced as a follow-up study in 2015 from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, and they showed decreased memory performance in adolescents with increased cell phone use, looking at phone records.

Human Studies on Brain Cancer Risk

Here is some proof of human harm. It comes from the Interphone Study, Appendix 2. This is the number of cases, the number of controls, and this is the odds ratio. That is the relative risk for people who have brain cancer and have not used phones very much, and those who have used phones for longer periods of time, indicated here.

Ten plus years of cell phone use, a doubled risk of glioma. And when that ten plus years was analyzed further, for the highest and heaviest users, there was a tripled or greater risk of glioma.

Recent Conclusions on Cell Phone Radiation and Brain Cancer

Anthony B. Miller, a very distinguished researcher who has published more than 600 articles, has concluded in an article we published in the past two years, that given all of the evidence I presented to you here today and more that you will be hearing about in the course of this meeting, cell phone radiation causes brain cancer. We can say that it is a definite human carcinogen.

Limitations of Some Studies

The types of studies that do not find an increased risk are cohort studies, meaning they follow a group of people through time. The Benson study, which is supposed to be a million women, was not a million women. The rate of brain cancer that you expect in the general population is 7 per 100,000. So studying a million women does not give you enough power to find an effect.

Other Studies Showing Increased Risk

In contrast, Leonard Hardell of Sweden has produced a number of studies that find only with 10 years or more of cell phone use a significantly increased risk. And for those few people that have used a phone for 25 years or more, a tripled risk of brain cancer.

More recently, Corot conducted a national study in France six years ago now and again showed with more than 10 years of exposure a 60 percent increase in risk. And if one looked at those with urban residence and exposure, there was a fourfold increased risk.

Recent Findings on Glioma Incidence

Here is new work from Alistair Phillips in the UK published. Phillips has shown this change in glioma, the same tumor we’re concerned about, and the change in glioma is occurring in all age groups. So if the increase in glioma were due to an improvement in diagnostic ascertainment, CAT scans made available to the elderly, for example, you wouldn’t expect to see any increase in glioma in young people. You’d expect to see it only in the elderly, but you’re seeing it in all age groups.

Genetic Susceptibility to EMF-Related Cancer

A more recent study has been done at Yale, as I mentioned, looking at nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs, and they have found that people with the four most commonly found genetic alterations were more than twice as likely to develop thyroid cancer, again, suggesting that there is a different susceptibility.

Concerns About Increasing Cancer Rates

We are seeing increases in thyroid cancer all over the world, and we don’t have a good explanation for it. Some of it might be due to increased ascertainment because thyroid nodules are very common, but cancer is showing up in younger and younger people. We are seeing rectal cancer as well as thyroid cancer in people under the age of 30, under the age of 40.

Studies on Blood Markers Near Cell Towers

Now, the data on humans is not, of course, going to be just cancer. There have been a few studies that have looked at blood markers in the blood of people who live close to towers. And this is one study that compared blood markers of those who lived 80 meters close to a tower. Those who lived 300 meters away were the controls. This is done in India.

Effects of Cell Tower Proximity on Human Health

They looked in the blood at antioxidant status and looked at different proteins that are involved in DNA repair that I mentioned before and showed a significant reduction in the repair enzymes and proteins and an increase in lipid peroxidation. Of course, that would mean an increase in cell membrane damage and in calcium-gated channels operation. So you’re going to get a number of effects. All of this has been shown statistically significantly worse in people who live closer to these mobile phone base stations.

Impact on Trees

Well, what about the trees? What about the rest of us? The trees have shown damage. This is a study published in the Science of the Total Environment. If you look carefully at this tree, these are the base stations here. The tree looks like it’s almost trying to go away from the towers. And in fact, they’ve done an analysis, a statistical analysis of these tree patterns. This is the Norway maple tree that they found. This is in 2015. And they are continuing to do this work. I think this is work that could be done in Israel as well.

And here is a more extreme example. Here, the tree is moving away from this. And obviously, this is the same tree, by the way. This is the same tree. This is a healthy part. This is not. I don’t know the exact distances here.

Effects on Insects

Finally, there’s been work on insects. And there was work done by the respected researchers at the ITIS in Switzerland. And this is a paper that actually made a model of the honeybee. And they showed 2 GHz and 24 GHz. This 24 GHz is what you’re going to be getting with 5G. And clearly, it resonates with the body and it increased the power density, which means the absorption into that body up to threefold.

More recently, look at this brief video. [Video description omitted]

That study has been followed up by other studies at beehives in Belgium. This was just reported very recently. And they looked at hives in rural areas and urban areas. And what they were able to show with a model that they made of the bees is the greater absorption, of course, is going to be in the queen bee, which is the largest body. But the workers and the drones and the larvae will absorb more power as the frequency goes up.

Implications for Agriculture

I think, again, that’s an experiment we don’t really want to carry out. Because without bees, we have no agriculture. These are the models that they made. And for those of you who are interested to look at the paper, because it’s really very elegant work to produce these models, it takes quite a bit. And the researchers who do this work are, of course, concerned. Because they believe that we could be unleashing an experiment with devastating impact on the environment.

Cell Phone Radiation Absorption

Most of us carry our phones next to our bodies. And why wouldn’t we? Science, gas, and the hidden message in your cell phone. Tests are all done. Tests are all finished. And? The number exceeded the limit. It went up significantly with each one of the phones. That’s right. The phones exceeded the safety limit when they were moved right against the body. The radiation absorbed increased three to four times. Radiation increased three to four times when the phone was tested directly next to the body.

Regulatory Inaction

Now, you would think that since the FDA can act when there’s evidence of a hazard, it would have acted. But no, it did not. You will hear later today from Theodore Escorado, who will share with you the results from the Chicago Tribune test where they publicized the results of their tests. Although we at Environmental Health Trust have been concerned about this issue and warned that no phone will pass the test if it’s really tested next to the body.

Recent Data from France

Here is the most recent data from France that we have graphed. If you look here on the bars on the bottom, 900 megahertz and 1800 megahertz tested at 5 millimeters and 10 millimeters away, they’re fine. There’s no problem. However, when you test them directly on the body, look at the difference in the amount of radiation.

Those results have led the French government to do something that I hope the Israelis will do, which is to test phones the way they’re used. When you test phones the way they’re used, most of them fail to meet the standard. When you test them the way the manufacturers advise, which can be up to 25 millimeters, almost an inch off the body, you get these stunning results.

iPhone 11 Radiation Levels

These are the results just released this week on the iPhone 11. It exceeds the FCC’s limit by double, double.

Call to Action

Now, what’s going to happen with that depends entirely. We in the United States do not have a fully functioning government, as I think you know, but then we can compete with you in that regard, I suppose. But you do have ministries with excellent people working in them who can take this information and do something with it. And you do have the capacity to get more information.

If you’d like to join with us, we’re going to hear from Theodore later. You’ll hear from Marco Razzi about the French in more detail. Please sign up at ehtrust.org/Tel-Aviv and get involved in what we’re doing. We have many podcasts and Patreon seminars.

Conclusion

But I want to conclude with this. This is an image that I took when I visited Auschwitz. And there’s a motto on it that I think is relevant to what we’re doing today. Remember, I said animals predict the future. But people in epidemiology confirm the past, often with death, unfortunately. And this statue says, “We honor the dead by warning the living.”

We warn the living. And I think we have enough information now to warn the living. And we also see a robust research program to clarify what is going on, rather than assume everything is fine until we find out that it’s not. Thank you very much.

[Q&A section omitted for brevity]

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