Page 49 - Spring 2019 Journal

outlets downplayed the significance of the NTP study, word has gotten out to many parents about the risks that cellular and wireless technologies pose for children. In a brief survey conducted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), to which over twenty-one thousand people re- sponded, over 95 percent of respondents were “extremely” or “very” concerned about young children using cell phones and wireless devices such as tablets.11
CONSTANT BURSTS
When people use tablets to connect to the
Internet, they can go online in one of two ways: through Wi-Fi or by connecting to a cellular network. However, even when the user is offline, the radiation does not “automatically stop.” In fact, wireless tablets emit “constant bursts” of pulsed RF electromagnetic radiation—up to nine hundred times every hour.19 The same holds true for wireless-enabled laptops, which are “always ‛checking in’ and searching for a Wi-Fi connection.”20 Why is this the case? As the Environmental Health Trust (EHT)—an education and research organization focused on wireless technologies and other environmental health hazards—explains:19
Tablets “have up to five transmitter anten- nas emitting radiation as a beacon signal that transmits even when the internet is NOT being used.... The bursts continue because the tablet antennas ‛check in’ with what is called a ‛digital handshake’ to the base network which is usually a Wi-Fi router or hotspot, or a nearby cell tower. If the network signal strength is low, then the tablet’s radiation burst is higher. This digital handshake continuously repeats.”
As EHT and others point out, children do not usually heed the fine-print warnings that come with tablets and laptops. Tablet manu- facturers tell users to avoid direct contact with the transmitting antenna or to place the antenna away from the body, but instead, “many children will lie down on the floor with a tablet very close to their face, exposing their eyes and brain.”19 With small children’s heads more directly in front of the antenna, “the radiation will more
SPRING 2019
directly penetrate their head, neck and chest area.”20 Italian researchers who analyzed dif- ferent tablet and laptop exposure conditions (that is, “antenna at different distances..., in different positions and orientations”) for male and female preteens and young adults found that young people tended to absorb the most RF energy “in more sensitive organs such as eye, genitals, and breast.”21
Children (and many parents) are also un- likely to be aware of the Federal Communica- tions Commission’s (FCC’s) obsolete guidelines for human exposure to RF electromagnetic fields, which were last updated over twenty years ago, well before today’s more powerful devices had entered the marketplace. Even at that time, however, the FCC specified that mobile devices were “designed to be used... in such a way that a separation distance of at least 20 centimeters [about eight inches] is nor- mally maintained between radiating structures and the body of the user or nearby persons.”22 Yet as a children’s advocacy organization has commented, for small children “it is almost impossible to follow FCC recommendations and keep 8 inches from the body.”20 The AAP has criticized the FCC regulations for not being strict enough to protect children.
THE DIGITAL INVASION OF SCHOOLS With growing awareness of mobile devices’ powerful effects, discerning parents are taking steps to mitigate wireless risks at home. They have little control, however, over their children’s wireless exposure at school. Over an astonish- ingly short period of time, wireless tablets and lightweight laptops have inundated U.S. class- rooms. Cheery news accounts herald tablets and laptops as a way to “sustain students’ interest,” “reward their achievements” and keep students up to date on “the latest events or research.”23 By 2014 (just four years after the introduction of the iPad and three years after Google’s introduc- tion of its Chromebook laptop24), roughly three in five schoolchildren in grades three or higher had access to a tablet or laptop—as well as 41 percent of children in grades K-2.25 By early 2018, the Chromebook’s relative affordability and Google’s “robust partnership program” with schools had allowed the Chromebook to claim
Wise Traditions
Wireless tablets emit “constant bursts” of pulsed RF radiation— up to nine hundred times every hour.
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