What is a glioma, how dangerous is the main instrument of vocal communication, the one we always put near the ear and sometimes even under the pillow, after the goodnight message. To Riccardo Staglianò, author of Toglietevelo dal testa, we asked a few questions about this with the aim of better understanding how to use mobile phones safely .
And we have come to discover that, in case of cell phone radiation, as in other situations of existence, distance can be our valid accomplice ...
How did the idea for this book come to you?
Reading the instructions of my smartphone. it was written to keep it at 1.5 centimeters from the body. an absurdity: nobody does or knows it. But other models say worse: 2.5 centimeters . no company dreams of advising to use their product moderately unless they have the gun pointed at their head.
And then I began to understand what could be such a serious reason. From there began the investigation that led me to make a long journey, half done in the United States, a quarter in Scandinavia and a quarter in Italy.
Wanting to use an evocative proportion, could you say that sugar is to diabetes as cell phones are to brain cancer?
Is the relationship so immediate and consequential? No, if the causal relationship were so clear and peaceful there would be no need for a book like mine. There is still no definitive answer to this story. But there are partial answers, not at all reassuring.
That is to say that, as the studies of the Swedish Lennart Hardell say, after 10 years of use for half an hour a day the risk of contracting a glioma, a malignant tumor, doubles . These are the same indications that also result from Appendix 2 of the Interphone, the largest international study ever conducted. But it was "sold" to the press as if it said "no problem". This is not the case and the evidence presented so far is more than sufficient to suggest a precautionary principle .
His book opens with a handbook for the safe use of the mobile phone. Could you indicate to the readers of Cure the action that, above all, really should be avoided as extremely harmful?
The general principle is very simple: distance is your friend. The farther you keep it from your head, the better. to do this you can use the headset (with the wire), or the speakerphone, or text messages.
Instruction manuals say to keep cell phones 1.5 to 2.5 centimeters from the ear. We didn't know. Many of us fall asleep with our cell phones near our temples, perhaps after sending a goodnight message. How harmful can this habit be?
Who wants to sleep with a radiation transmitter near the temple? Not me. Nor did any of the dozens of scientists from around the world I interviewed and then write the book.
On the web there is a webdocumentary you created that opens with a pack of cigarettes and a cell phone next to each other like a lethal picture. A person interviewed in the book says: “In the case of tobacco, there were studies, companies knew them and concealed them with the complicity of the media. Today we work upstream. Companies do not do the studies so there is nothing to hide. "The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a specialized branch of the World Health Organization in May 2011 has finally pronounced itself including cell phone radiation among the" possible carcinogenic. " In Italy nothing was known, except for a few newspaper articles and an investigation by the Report dated 27 November 2011. Why?
Repubblica wrote it, and it wasn't a short article. In any case, the reason why the newspapers and the media in general are not particularly enthusiastic about writing about it probably has to do with the fact that 4 of the 10 leading Italian advertising advertisers belong to the telephone industry.
Discover also Electro, the Australian flowers that protect against electromagnetic fields
Research to establish the dangerousness of an instrument must be funded. Louis Slesin, director of Microwave News, discovered how the mobile phone industry has funded research on mobile phones run by the WHO. The inspiration for the project was Australian researcher Michael Repacholi. In summary, Motorola was pouring money into a current account opened at the Royal Adelaide Hospital . This structure then made donations to the WHO to its headquarters in Geneva. Are there data on similar "recycling" cases in Italy regarding the relationship between telephony and research?
It cannot be said that it was recycling: it was known that money made that strange deviation. To me Repacholi said that it was for administrative convenience: he came from that hospital and left the economic management of the money he needed for his research. I still think this is at least suspicious . And that does not reassure regarding the independence of science . If the company whose products you need to control pays the controllers, then something is wrong.
Henry Lai of the University of Seattle in 1993 showed that the rats exposed to cellular waves for 2 hours presented DNA from frayed filaments. A biological effect that can cause cancer. The search was then blocked by Motorola, the results were ridiculed. The same happened to Jerry Phillips, who was asked to replicate Lai's study. Phillips data confirmed DNA damage - this time human - exposed to cell phone fields. Do we have information or data on Italian researchers opposed in this sense?
These are two serious cases of obstructionism of independent science . And there are several others. In Italy we work upstream, not financing studies. I asked but I did not know of subsequent interventions or in the course of work of the industry to favorably modify the outcome of a research.
He does not believe that the reduction in the use of mobile phones could go hand in hand with the stimulus towards the search for a new sense of human contact, which would therefore be like a Facebook click to renounce in favor of a tea looking at each other's eyes or a letter written in their own hand?
I am a big fan of technology, and I say this to clear up any objections ad personam compared to the book I have
written. I believe that technology allows us to do beautiful things and enrich our lives . But I am also aware that excesses can be disastrous.
I never believed for a moment that Facebook friends were real friends. They have usurped a very demanding term, emptying it of its original meaning. But if you ask me if I regret the letters by hand compared to the e-mails I answer no. I don't even know how to write by hand, but the emotions that have passed in these years in my e-mails are not dammeno of those I remember when I was young with the fountain pen.
