Health Effects of Cellphone & Cell Tower Radiation: Implications for 5G
Speaker: Joel M. Moskowitz, PhD

Center for Occupational and Environmental Health Webinar

November 3, 2021

12 – 1 PM Pacific Time | 2 – 3 PM Central Time | 3 – 4 PM Eastern Time

The Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH) is one of 18 regional Education and Research Centers, funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The ERC supports traineeships at three UC campuses, UC Berkeley, UC Davis and UCSF. 

About the webinar:

97% of U.S. adults own a cellphone of some kind. The vast majority, 85%, own a smartphone. This presentation will summarize research on biologic and health effects from exposure to radio frequency radiation emitted by cell phones and cell towers. Learners will also discuss the implications of this research for 5G, the fifth generation of cellular technology.

Learning objectives:

At the completion of this activity, the learner will be able to:

– Describe what wireless or radio frequency (RF) radiation is, including 5G, and its relationship to ionizing radiation
– Summarize the biologic and health effects caused by, or associated with, RF radiation exposure
– Explain why current national and international RF radiation exposure limits fail to protect the health of humans and other species

Speaker: Joel M. Moskowitz, PhD

Joel M. Moskowitz, PhD, has directed the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley since 1993. Dr. Moskowitz has published research on disease prevention for 40 years. In 2009 he served as the senior author on a hallmark paper reviewing research on mobile phone use and tumor risk published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Last year he updated this meta-analysis in a paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. This year he co-authored a paper on electrohypersensitivity published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

Since 2013 he has translated and disseminated research on the biologic and health effects of wireless radiation through his website (https://saferemr.com). In 2017, with legal representation from the UC Berkeley Environmental Law Clinic, he won a lawsuit against the California Department of Public Health for suppressing its own scientists’ cell phone safety guidance for eight years. This resulted in the Department finally publishing cell phone health warnings. He serves as an advisor to Physicians for Safe Technology and to the International EMF Scientist Appeal which was signed by over 250 scientists who published more than 2,000 papers and letters in professional journals on electromagnetic fields and biology or health.

Free Registration

https://www.coeh.berkeley.edu/webinars/21web1103

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Highlights

•Anxiety was associated with problematic smartphone use and sleep disturbance among medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

•Problematic smartphone use could exert not only a direct path on anxiety but also an indirect path on anxiety through the mediating path of sleep disturbance.

•Professional assistance and timely intervention should be provided to alleviate anxiety among medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

•The detrimental impact of problematic smartphone use and the importance of sleep health on mitigating anxiety should be highlighted and incorporated into medical education.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032721010545

The post Anxiety and its relationship with sleep disturbance and problematic smartphone use among Chinese medical students during COVID-19 home confinement — A Structural Equation Model Analysis appeared first on EMFSA.

Abstract

COVID-19 has caused obstacles in continuing normal life almost everywhere in the world by causing the implementation of social distancing and eventually imposing the lockdown. This has become the reason for the increase in technology usage in daily life for professional work as well as for entertainment purposes. There has been an increased prevalence of technology usage in adolescents and children during lockdown leaving its impact on their lives either in a positive or negative aspect. The overall documented percentage increase of technology usage in children was about 15%, of which smartphone usage has 61.7% of prevalence. Disturbance in brain functioning is suggested to be originated by compromise of neuroplasticity of the nerves. The radiofrequency (RF) radiations emitting from the smartphone are of doubtful concern as a brain tumor risk factor in children. The increased usage can have effects on brain functioning that will compromise sleep and cognitive abilities and develop risk for certain mental illnesses including, but not limited to, depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s disease, and attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD). Despite being a threat for developing mental illness, video games are proven to reduce depression and anxiety, and increase creativity, skills, and cognition in children. The increased usage of technology can have a positive and negative impact on the mental development of adolescents and children depending on the trends in the usage. However, parents should be monitoring their children’s mental health and behavior in these difficult times of pandemic.

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/11/9/1126

The post Psychological and Emotional Effects of Digital Technology on Children in COVID-19 Pandemic appeared first on EMFSA.

Link to the article: https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/critical-metals-in-a-smartphone/

The post Visualizing the Critical Metals in a Smartphone appeared first on EMFSA.

Background: The evolution of the Telemedicine and e-Health is strictly related to the evolution of the mobile-technology. If today it is possible to successfully use a wide range of mHealth applications, playing an important role in Telemedicine and e-Health, health care has surely a gratitude debt with the smartphone. However, it is increasingly becoming clear that excessive use of the smartphone has implications for health in terms of risks and it is therefore necessary to tackle the various gaps and/or the role that Telemedicine and e-Health itself has in this field.

Methods: Through an overview to literature, Web and App stores the study faced the implications for health from the excessive use of the smartphone and therefore the various gaps and/or the role that Telemedicine and e-Health itself has in this area both in the prevention and in the monitoring with particular regard to the three components: eHealth, mHealth and eLearning.

Results: The study found (I) as emerging risks: the text neck, the risk of addiction and the risk in the use of deceptive Apps in mHealth; (II) as Telemedicine and e-Health useful approach: the design of Apps for the text neck prevention and the relevant acceptance and effectiveness assessment; the design and application of electronic surveys for tele-assessment of the addiction risk; the design and application of information and training path on the deceptive Apps in mHealth.

Conclusions: The key role of Telemedicine and e-Health in the prevention and monitoring of the risks from smartphone abuse has been clearly identified and the young people has been identified as target population and the relevant need to design specific teaching packages in this field focused on them.

https://mhealth.amegroups.com/article/view/63693/html

The post Health in the palm of your hand—part 1: the risks from smartphone abuse and the role of telemedicine and e-Health appeared first on EMFSA.

July 31, 2021

By Jonathan Haidt and Jean M. Twenge

The authors are psychologists who have spent years studying the effect of smartphones and social media on our daily lives and mental health.

As students return to school in the coming weeks, there will be close attention to their mental health. Many problems will be attributed to the Covid pandemic, but in fact we need to look back further, to 2012.

That’s when rates of teenage depression, loneliness, self-harm and suicide began to rise sharply. By 2019, just before the pandemic, rates of depression among adolescents had nearly doubled.

When we first started to see these trends in our work as psychologists studying Gen Z (those born after 1996), we were puzzled. The U.S. economy was steadily improving over these years, so economic problems stemming from the 2008 Great Recession were not to blame. It was difficult to think of any other national event from the early 2010s that reverberated through the decade.

Read the article at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/31/opinion/smartphone-iphone-social-media-isolation.html

The post NYT OPINION -This Is Our Chance to Pull Teenagers Out of the Smartphone Trap appeared first on EMFSA.

Link: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.600134/full

Extract only, kindly see the link above for the full study.

One significant lifestyle shift is the complete reliance on the internet and smart devices, like tablets, laptops, and mobiles. During the quarantine, with the necessary social/spatial distancing, the usage of these smart devices increased at an increasingly fast pace. Unfortunately, this total dependence has shown to be a form of addiction, i.e., a compulsive physiological need for and use of a habit-forming substance (10). Nowadays, addiction is not only restricted to extensive substance or drug abuse but also extends to the behavioral obsession with a specific activity that disturbs people’s healthy daily lives. Recently, internet-based activities, like online gaming, chatting, and communications through the different available applications, have shown similar addiction levels to those of drugs (11–13).

This is the first research that presents a large-scale study of thousands of Jordanian undergraduate students to assess the effect of COVID-19 extended home quarantine on smartphone addiction levels. This is assessed by collecting many exposures to cover the demographic, economic, and quarantine-related factors that might worsen the effect of quarantine on smartphone overuse.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Quarantine is a stressful situation with several challenges, casting its shadow over routine life. No previous study has assessed the relationship between quarantine and smartphone addiction levels during the quarantine period. Female gender, urban areas, apartment quarantine, higher income, and scientific and medical majors had higher and significant overuse scores. The SAS-SV scores are higher than previously reported scores for other countries, although they are comparable to other countries in the region (39). Whether an addiction or overuse, the high scores and prevalence reported are alarming and indicate the severity of smartphone dependence among Jordanian university students during the quarantine. A repeat questionnaire on a comparable study population with follow-up interventions is warranted.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.600134/full

The post Smartphone Use Among University Students During COVID-19 Quarantine: An Ethical Trigger appeared first on EMFSA.

Nature 595, 7 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01735-z

A low-carbon future rests on an essential, yet also problematic, technology. Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries — already widely used in laptops and smartphones — will be the beating heart of electric vehicles and much else. They are also needed to help power the world’s electric grids, because renewable sources, such as solar and wind energy, still cannot provide energy 24 hours a day. The market for lithium-ion batteries is projected by the industry to grow from US$30 billion in 2017 to $100 billion in 2025.

But this increase is not itself cost-free, as Nature Reviews Materials explored in a recent series of articles. Lithium-ion technology has downsides — for people and the planet. Extracting the raw materials, mainly lithium and cobalt, requires large quantities of energy and water. Moreover, the work takes place in mines where workers — including children as young as seven — often face unsafe conditions.

Policymakers, industry leaders and researchers need to mitigate these problems, and quickly, to reduce the unintended consequences of an important technology. One crucial intervention, which needs further study, is the acceleration of battery reuse instead of, or in addition to, recycling them or disposing of them in landfills.

Around one-third of the world’s lithium — the major component of the batteries — comes from salt flats in Argentina and Chile, where the material is mined using huge quantities of water in an otherwise arid area. Battery-grade lithium can also be produced by exposing the material to very high temperatures — a process used in China and Australia — which consumes large quantities of energy. There are ways to extract lithium more sustainably: in Germany and the United Kingdom, for example, pilot projects are filtering lithium from hot brines beneath granite rock.

Cobalt is an important part of a battery’s electrode, but around 70% of this element is found in just one country: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Around 90% of the DRC’s cobalt comes from its industrial mines (90,000 tonnes annually). But in a country where people earn, on average, less than $1,200 annually, the world’s demand for cobalt has attracted thousands of individuals and small businesses, called artisanal miners — and child labour and unsafe working practices are rife.

Read more at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01735-z

The post Lithium-ion batteries need to be greener and more ethical appeared first on EMFSA.

Linda M. Richmond May 14, 2021

Doctors have been quick to embrace the smartphone as an invaluable tool in the practice of medicine. These devices put information at your fingertips, allow you to check medical references, confer with colleagues instantly, and even access patient data and test results.

A report by the Boston Consulting Group and Telenor Group noted that the “smartphone is the most popular technology among doctors since the stethoscope.” Indeed, the share of Americans who own a smartphone—85%—represents a dramatic increase from just 35% a decade ago, reports the Pew Research Center. What’s more, smartphone uptake by individuals earning more than $75,000 a year is near universal at 96%.  

But the advancement and proliferation of smartphone technology also brings with it responsibilities and risks that physicians should consider. What follows are some of the most pressing concerns, according to recent guidelines, litigation, and an expert in the field of physician smartphone use.

Avoid ‘distracted’ doctoring

Human attention has a limited capacity. According to the American Psychological Association, talking on a cell phone causes a kind of “inattentional blindness,” whereby individuals can stare at objects but not see them due to an inability to process the visual information. In fact, cell phones are implicated in 1.6 million automobile crashes a year, according to the National Safety Council. More than one study has shown smartphone use to be as impairing as alcohol intoxication. (Think you might have a problem with smartphones? See Most doctors probably have this addiction on MDLinx.)

Similarly, when doctors use their personal smartphones in professional settings, they may experience risky distractions from clinical care. For example they may be interrupted by non-acute clinical concerns, personal communications, or even app notifications, according to a guideline on the use of personal devices in healthcare published by the Journal of Mobile Technology in Medicine.  

Read more at: https://www.mdlinx.com/article/how-smartphone-use-can-land-doctors-in-hot-water/5b9lHxwYAnDJFnBwE3pccU

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Abstract

Objectives: Effects of modern cellular technology on our lives is a relatively new topic of interest. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of smartphone use on daytime sleepiness, temporomandibular disorders (TMD), and bruxism (sleep and awake) among young adults in Israel.

Method and materials: Questionnaires on demographic variables, mobile phone use characteristics, anxiety, depression, daytime sleepiness, bruxism (sleep and awake), and diagnosis of TMD were filled in by ultra-Orthodox young adults (18 to 35 years of age) using a simple mobile device with no internet connection, religious young adults who use an internet-connected smartphone solely for work purposes, and secular young adults with an internet-connected smartphone for unlimited use.

Results: Various aspects of smartphone use, including being awakened at night by the phone, stress caused by information delivered by the phone, and stress from phone overuse increased the risks of daytime sleepiness, TMD, and bruxism. Those sequelae are associated with substantial negative effects on both the individual and society. High risks of motor vehicle accidents, chronic orofacial pain, and irreversible damage to hard dental tissue structures are some of those negative consequences.

Conclusions: The adverse effects of smartphone use on daytime sleepiness, TMD, and bruxism are substantial. Their influence on public health and health care costs are causes of concern.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33880912/

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