Less Radiation

I recently bought a Sony PS3 for my son & I to use. I’m grateful to note that if you use wired USB controllers & a wired Ethernet connection it’s an Electrosmog free experience.

I ordered up a 2nd  DUALSHOCK WIRELESS controller (which I use wired) and was puzzled by the document that comes with it. It states that the use of WLAN is governed in Italy & Norway. Wow, I think, this IS progress!

I didn’t investigate the Italy story yet, but the Norway angle is fascinating. The instructions state that the PS3 game controller is not to be used within a 20km area around the centre of Ny-Alesund, Svalbard. What possible harm can a controller with a range of maybe 3 metres do 20km away ?

I briefly imagined that this must be some kind of forward thinking eco-town. But it isn’t, it’s a research station of some kind. You can read more about it via WikiPedia

Taken from an article by Lisa Adams of the Scottish Daily Record about Electrosensitivity – published 08/09/2008 :

IT’S called an allergy to modern life and half of Scots in the next 10 years could be at risk from this crippling illness, according to scientific research.

Victims of the condition, which is triggered by electromagnetic waves from mobile phones, power lines, microwaves and computers, suffer headaches, crushing chest pains, nose bleeds and a loss of feeling in arms and legs.

Experts report that up to 1.5million people in the UK already have their lives blighted by electro-sensitivity, with symptoms that also include heart palpitations, tiredness, fainting, light sensitivity and skin problems.

Mike Bell, chairman of the Radiation Research Trust, said: “We are seeing a significant increase in enquiries from individuals suffering from these symptoms.

“We’re concerned that many people could be living with health-related electro-sensitivity symptoms without realising the cause.

“Doctors in the UK are not trained to recognise this condition. They could be misdiagnosing patients and treating them with drugs rather than investigating the cause.”

One victim has compared the condition with life as a human aerial – their body overreacting to electrical waves in the environment. Today, as a scientific conference opens in London, public health expert Dr Gerd Oberfeld will predict that if current trends continue, up to 50 per cent of people could suffer from electro sensitivity symptoms in the next 10 years.

The World Health Organisation is also backing research, stating that: “Electrical hypersensitivity is a real and sometimes disabling condition.”

Sufferers are particularly vulnerable to the £2.5billion police communication system Tetra – Terrestrial Trunked Radio – which has been introduced throughout the UK. In the past three years, more than 1000 masts have been erected in Scotland. They pulse at 17.6hertz – above the 16Hz frequency the Government’s Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones warns might affect brain activity.

Experts say radio waves at this frequency can cause calcium to leak from the brain, causing damage to the nervous and immune systems. If the masts are less than 15 metres high, they don’t need planning permission.

Former Norwegian Prime Minister Harlem Brundtland suffers from electro-sensitivity.

She said: “I felt a local warmth around my ear. But the agony got worse. It turned to discomfort and headaches every time I used a mobile phone.

“Some people develop sensitivity to electricity and radiation from equipment such as mobile phones or PCs.

“If this can lead to adverse health effects such as cancer or other diseases, we do not know yet. But I think we should follow the precautionary principle.”

The Nintendo DS must be one of the most popular handheld games consoles of all time. My six year old son absolutely adores his.

Maybe you’ve got kids and they love their DS’s too?

Okay, I have a question for you. Would you let your six year old child sit 12 inches away from a constantly transmitting wireless access point for 1 hour?

Would you let them sit 1 metre away from three full-on data swapping access points for an hour?

It’s a kind of sick question really. We know there may be a risk and it’s sensible to adopt the ‘precautionary principle’ advocated by the Stewart Report of 2000 (They said kids under 8 shouldn’t have mobiles, full-stop. WiFi & mobiles are exactly the same at this level).

Okay, here’s the thing. When a Nintendo DS is being played by a kid on his own it gives out no WiFi signal at all. But when you have two or more children playing against each other, in multi-player games – they turn into ad-hoc wireless access points. One DS becomes the pseudo access point, and the other clients. Large amounts of data are being transferred – much more than an average little-used regular WiFi point would emit. In multi-player mode the Nintendo DS can be a source of potentially dangerous Electrosmog.

Studies carried out in 2008 have conclusively revealed that mobile phone radiation wrecks the quality of sleep in adults an hour before bedtime. The WiFi in the DS will produce the same effect in your kids.

By all means let your kids use their DS before bedtime, but don’t let them play multi-player games against their siblings!

If you’re really concerned, don’t let them use the wireless features of the DS at all.

If your children are having trouble sleeping, trouble concentrating at school & showing unexplained signs of Autism, then this is one more thing you could try eliminating for a short time, while hunting for the solution.

Of course, if you live in a home jam-packed full of DECT phones, DECT baby alarms, WiFi routers & PCs, Video Senders, you can safely ignore our advice, as it will make very little difference…

Today’s Mail on Sunday magazine ‘You’ poses the question: ‘Are you sleeping with the enemy?’

Yes, another mainstream magazine dares to link Mobiles, Wifi routers and other electronic devices with poor sleep. In the article Dr Chris Idzikowski, director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, says that, ‘ There’s more than sufficient evidence that mobile phone exposure an hour before bedtime adversely affects deep sleep ‘.

Others in the article report the classic fuzzy-mindedness that over-use of RF emitting gadgets can bring on. The article suggests that you turn off your mobile at bedtime.

While this is good advice, not a single mention is made of the danger from DECT cordless phones. The article states that a Mobile left on the bedside table will talk to the cell tower every ten minutes or so – well in our experience it’s more like every half an hour, for a five second burst. That isn’t going to disrupt your sleep. However, having a DECT cordless phone near your bed almost certainly will.

If you didn’t already know: the DECT cordless phone’s base station – the main docking point, if you have several handsets – gives out a constant pulse of RF, all the time. Even when you’re not talking on the handset. Keeping it a few feet from your head, while trying to sleep, is not such a good idea. Nor should you have a DECT base unit next to the home PC you use for hours at a time. All those hours you spend feet from a DECT cordless docking station really could leave you feeling completely ‘Spaced Out’.

So, while the article in the Sunday Mail is undoubtedly well intentioned, it could have payed more attention to DECT.