Cell Phone Use Hazardous in Cars
Recent letters have suggested that hands-free cell phone use is safer than hand-held use while driving. Studies show that the two are equally dangerous, as dangerous as driving drunk. This isn’t just because your attention is somewhere other than where you are.
As it turns out, wireless devices don’t just distract you; they virtually do make you drunk, especially inside a vehicle, where the metal box you are in reflects the signal back on you and makes the effect 10 times stronger. The drunken buzz one gets from this helps to explain our addiction to these devices.
We know our cells communicate electrically with each other through chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. Since the electromagnetic fields associated with wireless communication boost the number of receptors your cells have, your cells then receive electrical messages from outside your body, messages from wireless devices your cells can’t understand. Your cells’ defenses break down, since they don’t know how to interpret these messages, leaving you susceptible to cancer.
The science is detailed in the book Zapped by Ann Louise Gittleman: “Provocative new research has uncovered one way cellular transmission is interrupted. Studies have found that even low-level EMFs [electro-magnetic fields] may rupture delicate cell membranes, releasing calcium from cells as well as changing the way calcium ions —electrically charged calcium atoms— bind to the surface of the membrane. &Since calcium ions are the glue that holds together cell membranes, which are only two molecules thick, the membranes are likely to weaken and tear, allowing toxins to enter and contents to spill out. They literally become unglued.
“Too many calcium ions in your brains cells may also impair your lifesaving ability to assess a situation correctly —as when you’re at the wheel of a car. Noted British scientist Andrew Goldsworthy, Ph.D., an honorary lecturer at Imperial College of London, suspects that the increase in accidents among cell phone users (in one in four crashes, a driver is on a call) has less to do with distraction than with delayed response caused by the flood of calcium ions into brain cells. This flood creates what he calls ‘a mental fog’ of false information obscuring the ability to react to, say, a child on a bike pulling out between two cars or a deer bounding from the woods at twilight.”
Please turn your wireless devices off before you enter a vehicle, and use the same restraint that you would with drinking and driving.
Tim McNerney
Northampton
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Bad PR for Meat Biz
Last year, 2011, was not a good year for the meat industry.
There were more reports of devastating health impacts. In May, the World Cancer Research Fund advised limiting meat consumption to reduce the risk of bowel cancer. The August issue of The Lancet projected that, on the current meat-based diet, half of the U.S. population will be obese by 2030.
Last August, salmonella contamination forced leading American meat producer Cargill to recall 36 million pounds of ground turkey. The University of Florida places the national financial burden of pathogens in meat products at $4 billion.
Then there were cruelty exposes. A March undercover investigation of the E6 Cattle Company in Texas showed workers bashing cows’ heads with pickaxes and hammers. In November, ABC News publicized atrocious egg production conditions at Iowa’s Sparboe Farms. Bills attempting to criminalize such investigations were defeated in Iowa, Minnesota, Florida and New York.
Accordingly, USDA projects that Americans will consume 12.2 percent less meat in 2012 than in 2007. Every one of us can welcome this trend by resolving to cut our meat consumption in 2012. Entering “live vegan” in our favorite search engine brings recipes and other useful information.
Eddie Buster
Easthampton
