Monday, November 15, 2010

ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP CELL PHONE RADIATION GUIDE

Cell phone radiation is a fairly new thing in today's modern world. Today, everyone has a cell phone, young children included. I don't think we will truly know the effects for another ten or twenty years. Until then, it is better to be on the safe side.

Anything that emits radiation is potentially dangerous and therefore should be handled with care. Cell phones are no different. I am sure the cell phone industry is doing their best to spread lies and misinformation about the potential dangers. Common sense tells me that holding a cell phone that emits radiation that close to the brain is bound to cause problems. This list may be helpful to limit radiation exposure as much as possible.



EWG’s Guide to Reduce Cell Phone Radiation Exposure

Cell phones emit radiation to send voice and text messages to the other caller. Health risks aren’t confirmed, but some (not all) studies of frequent cell phone users suggest increased risks for brain and mouth tumors and children’s behavior problems.

To be on the safe side, follow the tips below to reduce exposures.


1. BUY A LOW-RADIATION PHONE
Look up your phone on EWG’s buyer’s guide. (Your phone's model number may be printed under your battery.) Consider replacing your phone with one that emits the lowest radiation possible and still meets your needs.

2. USE A HEADSET OR SPEAKER
Headsets emit much less radiation than phones. Choose either wired or wireless (experts are split on which version is safer) using our cell phone headset guide. Some wireless headsets emit continuous, low-level radiation, so take yours off your ear when you're not on a call. Using your phone in speaker mode also reduces radiation to the head.


3. LISTEN MORE, TALK LESS
Your phone emits radiation when you talk or text, but not when you're receiving messages. Listening more and talking less reduces your exposures.

4. HOLD PHONE AWAY FROM YOUR BODY
Hold the phone away from your torso when you're talking (with headset or speaker), not against your ear, in a pocket, or on your belt where soft body tissues absorb radiation.

5. CHOOSE TEXTING OVER TALKING
Phones use less power (less radiation) to send text than voice. And unlike when you speak with the phone at your ear, texting keeps radiation away from your head.


6. POOR SIGNAL? STAY OFF THE PHONE
Fewer signal bars on your phone means that it emits more radiation to get the signal to the tower. Make and take calls when your phone has a strong signal.

7. LIMIT CHILDREN’S PHONE USE
Young children’s brains absorb twice the cell phone radiation as an adult’s. EWG joins health agencies in at least 6 countries in recommending limits for children’s phone use, such as for emergency situations only.

8. SKIP THE “RADIATION SHIELD”
Radiation shields such as antenna caps or keypad covers reduce the connection quality and force the phone to transmit at a higher power with higher radiation

ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP PESTICIDE GUIDE

http://static.foodnews.org/pdf/2010-foodnews-data.pdf

The link above is the Environmental Working Group's data on pesticides on fruits and vegetables consumed in this country. I have provided other lists similar but this is by far the most comprehensive list I have seen. This is the most thorough chart in regards to the number of pesticides used per fruit/vegetable, how many pesticides were used on the entire commodity, pesticides in parts per million found on the fruit/ vegetable etc...

This list is insane! Celery was found to have the most pesticides used. The samples tested were found to have 13 different pesticides. Eating 13 different pesticides is suicide. Many pesticides tested on their own have been linked to many health problems in humans. However, it is nearly impossible for anyone to tell the harmful effects of mixing 13 different pesticides and the danger it poses to the human body.

Strawberries and peaches were also amongst the fruits and veggies with the highest pesticide content. Stay away from all non organic fruits and veggies that are high on the list at all cost. Eating these is like sprinkling rat poison on your food before eating to add flavor.( 13 different rat poisons for some tested) Fruits and vegetables with the lowest amount of pesticides are asparagus and onions. This is a useful list to use when choosing to buy organic or non organic. Obviously buying organic as much as possible is ideal. This list includes all NON organic fruits and vegetables. These pesticides are not found on organic crops. Pass this list along. I often hear the arguement that organic foods are much more expensive and not worth the price. Prevention is much cheaper than treatment for serious disease!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

OPT OUT OF BODY SCANNERS AT AIRPORTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Many of you will be flying over the next month for the holidays. Some will be flying multiple times and I believe it is important to know the new health dangers at airports. Many of you have probably read in the news about the new TSA body scanners now being used at most major airports. There is a lot of controversy surrounding these devices. The machines expose you to very high levels of concentrated radiation which we already know is a major cause of cancer. Not to mention these machines seem to be very invasive. Do some research and make your own decision as to whether you want to walk through them. You have the option to opt out of it and be groped by a TSA agent instead. Many of the major airlines as well as pilot unions have urged their pilots to opt out of these because of the exposure to radiation. I would advise all of you to follow suit. Below is part of an article from the website prisonplanet.com talking about the dangers of the devices.


Airport body scanners could lead to an increase in skin cancers according to scientists at Columbia University, who warn that the dose emitted by the naked x-ray devices could be up to 20 times higher than originally estimated, in another clear example of how the scanners are completely illegal, dangerous to public health, and need to be removed immediately.

Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University’s centre for radiological research, warns that children and people with gene mutations whose bodies are less able to repair damage to their DNA are most at risk.

“If all 800 million people who use airports every year were screened with X-rays then the very small individual risk multiplied by the large number of screened people might imply a potential public health or societal risk. The population risk has the potential to be significant,” said Brenner.

Brenner’s research shows that the scanners will likely contribute to an increase in a common type of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma which affects the head and neck.

“If there are increases in cancers as a result of irradiation of children, they would most likely appear some decades in the future. It would be prudent not to scan the head and neck,” added Brenner.

Brenner has urged medical authorities to look at his work, pointing to the dangerous notion of mass scanning millions of people without proper oversight.

“There really is no other technology around where we’re planning to X-ray such an enormous number of individuals. It’s really unprecedented in the radiation world,” said Brenner.

Similar concerns to those explored in the Columbia University study were voiced back in February by the influential Inter-Agency Committee on Radiation Safety, who warned in a report that the scanners increase the risk of cancer and birth defects and should not be used on pregnant women or children.

Despite governments claiming that backscatter x-ray systems produce radiation too low to pose a threat, the organization concluded in their report that governments must justify the use of the scanners and that a more accurate assessment of the health risks is needed.

Pregnant women and children should not be subject to scanning, according to the report, adding that governments should consider “other techniques to achieve the same end without the use of ionizing radiation.”

“The Committee cited the IAEA’s 1996 Basic Safety Standards agreement, drafted over three decades, that protects people from radiation. Frequent exposure to low doses of radiation can lead to cancer and birth defects, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” reported Bloomberg.

In the United States, people can refuse the body scanner and opt for an aggressive and intrusive hand-search, but people traveling out of the UK and other areas of Europe don’t even get the choice – they are forced to go through the scanner if asked and cannot refuse or they are banned from traveling. Despite the media reporting universal acceptance of the scanners, in reality 600 formal complaints had been made about the devices in the first two months of their usage alone.


The alarming health concerns surrounding body scanners have been equaled by the shaky legality of the devices. In the UK, the scanners break child porn laws which forbid the production of indecent images of children, but the UK transport authorities have broken the law and mandated that children be required to pass through the machines.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) also wrote a letter to the UK government warning that the scanners broke privacy laws.

As we have highlighted, not only do the body scanners pose health risks but they also violate the fundamental human right of the innocent to be protected against strip-searches.

Despite official denials that the images produced by the devices show details of genitalia, journalists who have investigated trials of the technology have reported that details of sexual organs are “eerily visible”.

Indeed, as we have previously highlighted, when the scanners were first introduced at Australian airports in 2008 it was admitted that the X-ray backscatter devices don’t work properly unless the genitals of people going through them are visible. “It will show the private parts of people, but what we’ve decided is that we’re not going to blur those out, because it severely limits the detection capabilities,” said Melbourne Airport’s Office of Transport Security manager Cheryl Johnson.

Attempts to keep this under wraps by lying about the images produced are an effort to head off challenges to the legality of the devices. Historically, civil lawsuits where an individual has been strip searched by a member of the opposite sex have proven to be successful in North America.

Courts have consistently found that strip searches are only legal when performed on a person who has already been found guilty of a crime or on arrestees pending trial where a reasonable suspicion has to exist that they are carrying a weapon. Subjecting masses of people to blanket strip searches in airports reverses the very notion of innocent until proven guilty.

Barring people from flying and essentially treating them like terrorists for refusing to be humiliated by the virtual strip search is a clear breach of the basic human right of freedom of movement.

Several examples of airport security staff abusing the use of the devices have already come to light since their introduction earlier this year.

Indian film star Shahrukh Khan told a BBC talk show that naked images of his body from the scanner were printed out and circulated by airport staff at Heathrow in London. Heathrow denied the claim but Khan himself never retracted the story, and had no apparent motive for making it up.

Heathrow authorities were unable to deny a later example of the scanners being abused, when it emerged that a Heathrow worker had perved over a naked image of a female colleague after she passed through one of the devices, before commenting, “I love those gigantic tits”.

Jo Margetson, 29, reported John Laker, 25, to the police after she had entered the x-ray machine by mistake and Laker took the image before making lewd comments.

In Miami, a TSA worker in Miami attacked a colleague who had made fun of his small penis after he passed through a scanner device. The story again emphasized the fact that authorities were brazenly lying in claiming that the images produced by the devices did not show intimate details of genitalia.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

RECOVERING FROM SURGERIES

It is time for an update, its been a little while. I am in the process of recovering from the two surgeries in the last few weeks. The first surgery was to remove the large legion on my leg. The surgery was done by Dr. J Raj who is the chief of plastic surgery at Fairview Hospital. The melanoma site was completely walled off to the rest of my body just as Dr. Buttar had predicted. There was no spreading to any other parts of the leg. Dr. Raj was initially concerned that the tumor had grown onto the tendon of my leg and that could pose a major problem. This was not the case, the surgeon said it could not have gone any better.

The surgery went well, although a much larger chunk of skin was taken than I had anticipated. I had a hole in my leg the size of a softball for about a week. Extremely painful!!!! Dr, Raj told me had I gone through the "traditional" treatment the area would have been at least twice the size. Having an open wound for a week on that part of your body was some of the worst pain I had ever experienced in my life!

After about a week of the wound being open, Dr. Raj went back in and performed a skin graph. The donor site was taken from my right thigh. The doctor compared the graph to a cheese grader. The skin that is taken off of the leg is so thin you can see through it if held up to a light. The wound from the donor site is a 5 by 10 inch rectangle which has a thin piece of gauze as dressing to cover it up and that is it. My right leg where the graph was given is in a half cast just below my knee. I have been totally immobilized since last Wednesday. I was instructed to not move at all. The graphed area is wrapped in a cast, as well as hooked up to a wound vac. The wound vac is a sponge attached to the wound with a tube connected to a little pump. The pump sucks out all of the drainage to expedite the healing process. The doctors and nurses have all raved that this can cut the healing time in half.

The doctor was very happy with the results of the second surgery as well. I have an appointment on Thursday to hopefully remove the splint and the wound vac and get back to some sort of normalcy. I am confidant that the process will continue to go in the direction we had initially anticipated and by Christmas of this year I will be free and clear of this nonsense forever. I am scheduled to go back to Dr. Buttar's clinic in the next month or so and get one last round of the AARSOTA shots as a precaution. He was concerned that any time you cut into something with cancer, it tends to spread. My immune system is back working properly so this will not be an issue but a worthwhile precaution to close out this process.

I will continue to update more in the near future. I have been in a lot of pain and taking a lot of pills ( which I tried to refuse until the pain came on) and have not felt much like typing. I appreciate all of the calls, e mails and texts. If I have not responded I apologize. These last few weeks have been difficult and talking has not been on the top of my list. I want to thank everyone who has been so helpful in the last few weeks. Lots of good food and love have come to the house and that has been a blessing. I want to thank all of my helpers, I am sure I have been a total pain in the ass and I sincerely appreciate all you have done!!!!!!!

Please take some of the information in the previous posts and put it to good use. This year has been totally crazy and I believe had I known what I know now I would not have had to have gone through all of this. Cancer is mostly preventable!!!!! Use the information wisely and don't let this happen to you. The crazy thing is the way I went is most likely much less physically taxing and probably much less painful than the traditional route and this has not been fun!!!!!