Cell phones: 50 percent increase in frontal and temporal lobe tumors in children

The Office of National Statistics in the United Kingdom discovered a 50 percent increase in frontal and temporal lobe tumors in children during the ten year span covering 1999 to 2009. Was this a result of cell phone radiation?

The Department of Health in the UK would appear to think so. One in three children under the age of ten currently has a cellphone in their possession. The governmental agency put out the following statement: "Children should only use mobile phones for essential purposes and keep all calls short."

The facts: while adults definitely absorb some radiation from using cellphones, children are at considerably greater risk. When compared to adults, children's brains can take in up to three times the amount of radiation.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) released their findings last year after going over huge amounts of data taken from dozens of studies: cellphones may cause cancer in humans. These findings were compiled from research that discovered using a cellphone for a decade increases the risk of developing acoustic neuromas in adults. It can be inferred from these findings the distinct possibility that similar, if not more devastating results, can occur in children due to:

• Brain tissue which is more conductive.
• A thinner skull.
• The ability for radiation to penetrate more effectively due to their smaller brains and softer brain tissue.
• A longer period of exposure due to use beginning at an earlier age.

Could this be why almost 400 children a year in Britain are diagnosed with brain and spinal tumors? This equates to 1 in four of all registered childhood cancers.

Cellphones and Big Business

MobileWise, a non-profit organization from the UK whose mission is to inform the public about the potential risks to children from engaging in cell phone use, released a report in 2011 in which researchers expressed concerns. Why have cell phones been deemed safe when more than 200 peer-reviewed studies convey an association between cellphone usage and serious health complications, including brain damage?

Dr. Russell Blaylock, neurosurgeon and editor of The Blaylock Wellness Report, may have the answer. Blaylock shares, "There is considerable evidence that cellphones damage the brain as well as other tissues and organs. In fact, two of the scientists cellphone companies backed to do these studies were fired when their studies demonstrated DNA damage in all cells exposed to the wavelengths and energy from cellphones."

Half the studies on cellphone use and cancer report a link and half do not, leaving researchers conflicted. It's important to note; approximately three quarters of the studies conducted on whether cell phones are linked to the development of cancer are backed and funded by the cellphone industry.

MobileWise suggests helping children and parents minimize cell phone use by forcing the industry to step up. The organization's recommendations call for the industry to put out more user-friendly warning labels, implement the use of functions that place time restrictions on calls, and halt the aggressive marketing tactics aimed at children.

How many more young lives will be destroyed before governments have the courage to do their job and protect public health? The telecommunications industry should not be able to manipulate the facts and practical everyday guidelines to help prevent and/or minimize possibly deadly exposures for children need to be made conspicuously available to the public.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.childrenwithcancer.org.uk

http://www.newsmaxhealth.com

http://www.scribd.com

http://www.express.co.uk

About the author:
Lloyd Burrell has spent the last 10 years researching the effects of electromagnetic fields on health, after becoming electrically sensitive in 2002. He now offers practical advice on "healthy living in our electromagnetic world". You can download his free EMF Health Report and subscribe to his newsletter by visiting his Cell Phone and EMF protection website.

So What Really Is In A McDonald's Chicken McNugget?

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan is a fascinating book that details the changing eating habits of Americans. I can't recommend it highly enough. It explains how, over the last 30 years, we have become a nation that eats vast quantities of corn – much more so than Mexicans, the original "corn people."

Most folks assume that a chicken nugget is just a piece of fried chicken, right? Wrong! Did you know, for example, that a McDonald’s Chicken McNugget is 56% corn?

What else is in a McDonald's Chicken McNugget? Besides corn, and to a lesser extent, chicken, The Omnivore's Dilemma describes all of the thirty-eight ingredients that make up a McNugget – one of which I'll bet you'll never guess. During this part of the book, the author has just ordered a meal from McDonald’s with his family and taken one of the flyers available at McDonald’s called "A Full Serving of Nutrition Facts: Choose the Best Meal for You." These two paragraphs are taken directly from The Omnivore’s Dilemma:

“The ingredients listed in the flyer suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leeches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There's some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola, or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market price and availability.

According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasiedible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but form a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed food possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the "leavening agents": sodium aluminum phosphate, mono-calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nugget from turning rancid.

Then there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the fry. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable. But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness."

According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: It can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.”

Italicized since I'm adding this to the original author's piece:
Chicken Nuggets: Chicken, water, salt, modified corn starch, sodium phosphates, chicken broth powder (chicken broth, salt, and natural flavoring (chicken source)), seasoning (vegetable oil, extracts of rosemary, mono, di- and triglycerides, lecithin). Battered and breaded with water, enriched bleached wheat flour (niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yellow corn flour, bleached wheat flour, modified corn starch, salt, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium lactate), spices, wheat starch, dried whey, corn starch. Batter set in vegetable shortening. Cooked in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, (may contain partially hydrogenated soybean oil and/or partially hydrogenated corn oil and/or partially hydrogenated canola oil and/or cottonseed oil and/or sunflower oil and/or corn oil). TBHQ and citric acid added to help preserve freshness. Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an anti-foaming agent.

(Dimethylpolysiloxane is a toxic ingredient. Google this to see it for yourself.)

Bet you never thought that was in your chicken McNuggets!

Source: http://www.alnyethelawyerguy.com/al_nye_the_lawyer_guy/2007/03/so_what_really_.html