Did someone say "addiction"?
"In January 2001 alone, over 900 million text messages were sent in the UK."
[BBC May 24/01]
"This text messaging train just keeps on running on its tracks. We reached $80 billion worth of revenues out of mobile phone simple SMS text messaging last year... Now it's clear this year we will pass the 100 billion dollar mark… Oh, in absolute numbers, we'll hit about 2.8 trillion. What is that per day? 8 BILLION texts sent every day. Or 92,000 text messages sent every second of every day." -consultant Tomi T Ahonen [communities-dominate.blogs.com Sept 21/07]
"Cell phone dependency is now called compulsive communicating. Chain dialers call continually to get another 'fix'. [Spokesman Review Nov 12/05]
"Mobile phones are replacing nicotine as the foremost addictive obsession in Great Britain." [British Medical Journal Apr/06]
"75% of British teenagers said they literally could not bear to be without their phone." [London Telegraph Dec19/04]
"A London detox clinic specializes in helping patients deal with behavioral addiction related to cell phone use." [Courier-Mail Oct 7/03]
"2006 was the turning point when the industry started focusing not just on teenagers and adults but also on tweens - children between middle childhood and adolescence, usually 8 to 12 years old - and even children as young as 5." [New York Times Mar 8/08]
"A Eurobarometer survey of almost 1,000 children in 29 countries found most had telephones after age 9." [New York Times Mar 8/08]
"Grotesque." -Dr. George Carlo's comment on marketing strategies aimed at children during a New Zealand prime time TV news show. [IsraCast Technology News July 29/05]
It's "open season on kids." -investigative reporter Amy Worthington
"Nine out of 10 children under the age of 16 have a mobile phone." [Guardian June 29/01]
"Children may be more vulnerable because of their developing nervous system, the greater absorption of energy in the tissues of the head and a longer lifetime of exposure." -renowned British biochemist and president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Sir William Stewart after completing a UK government report on "Mobile Phones and Health" in April 2000.
"My daughter has had her phone for 2 years, she is now 12 and so far everything is great. " -mommyneedssleep [online blogger Dec 23/08]
"Parents should take their children away from that technology." -Wolfram Koenig head of federal authority for radiation protection in Germany. [Journal of the Australasian College of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine Sept /01]
"Children who talk on a cell phone may not be able to cross the road safely… The seemingly simple act of crossing the street actually involves complex brain processes. And 'unintentional pedestrian injury' is a leading cause of death in middle childhood." [Health News medicinenet.com Apr 11/08]
"Childhood leukemia is the most frequent childhood malignancy… This peak seems to have been newly evolved in the early quarter of the 20th century and may be due to electrification. [Bioeffects Initiative report]
"I believe that 30% of all childhood cancers are associated with EMF exposure." -Dr. David Carpenter, Dean at the School of Public Health, State University of New York.
[Sunday Mirror Apr/04]
"We're pretty bullish on increased usage by teenagers." -Adam Guy, Strategist Group senior analyst. [London Telegraph Oct 9/07]
"A whole generation of teenagers face premature senility in the prime of their lives due to the use of mobile phones and new wireless technology." [RFSafe.com Nov26/03]
"If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, his reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver." - David Strayer, University of Utah psychology professor and principal author of the Transport Research study.
"It's like instant aging." -UK chief medical officer
"Because hands-free phones use up to 10-times more power to operate, they are even more dangerous than holding a phone to your skull while driving. Medical studies show that hands-free devices actually raise the amount of radiation being directed into the head by three times." [Inter@ctive Week Apr13/00 ]
"Here's the key point. These radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation, much like the energy that heats your microwave oven or is used for radar. Sounds worrisome, but the good news is (this does) not damage DNA and is not felt to harm living tissues at the levels of heat induced by a cell phone." [blogs.webmd.com]
"The conclusion that if health effects of commonly encountered RF exposures exist, they must be small is wrong. The evidence points to a quite substantial hazard." [Bioeffects Initiative report]
"I find it quite strange to see so many official presentations saying that there is no risk." -Professor Mild, co-Swedish researcher after carrying out some of the most extensive original work into tumours among long-term mobile phone and portable phone users.
"It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that some adverse health effects occur at far lower levels of exposure ... some at several thousand times below the existing safety limits." [Independent Oct 7/07]
"University of Washington researchers funded by the U.S. military demonstrated that 2.4 gigahertz radiation increases the frequency of single-strand DNA breaks in the brain cells of live rats after only two hours of exposure at only 1/5th of the FCC's so-called 'safety' limits." [rfsafe.com Nov 2/05]
"Physical testing to verify compliance is relatively rare." -FCC [Radio Frequency Safety]
Funded by Vodafone, the Mobile Operators Association and other cell phone manufacturers, the study results failed to mention that 12 of 56 - or more than one-in-five - volunteers became too ill from the microwave exposure and had to drop out of the tests. [mastsanity.org]
"FCC officials are bribed by the industry with such perks as expensive trips to Las Vegas." [capitolhillblue.com May 22/03]
"There is no research being done in the United States at the present time, even though we started this field back in the early 1970s. All of that research has been stopped because of industry." -Dr. Om Gandhi [Uncensored (NZ) Nov 9/06]
"These days in the committee (that sets the standards), one co-chair is from Motorola (C.K. Chou) and the other is from the Navy, the military-industrial establishment (Dr. John D'Andrea), and they are suddenly loosening their standards." -Dr. Gandhi [Uncensored (NZ) Nov 9/06]
"There are more than 15,000 scientific studies reporting the cell phone health hazards. At least 66 epidemiological studies show that electromagnetic radiation increases brain tumors in human populations." [Cell Phone Convenience or 21st Century Plague? by Dr. Nick Begich and James Roderick earthpulse.com]
"Studies show there has been a 40% across-the-board increase in the number of brain tumors in the past 20 years." -Australia's Senator Lyn Allison, after brain tumors became the leading cause of death in children under 15. [ Observer Mar14/99]
"11,000 Scandinavian cell phone users were studied and they showed significant neurological effects in a dose response manner… There is also a higher incidence of cardiac problems… The neurological effects are noticed within minutes of using a cell phone." -Neil Cherry biophysicist at Lincoln University in Christ Church, New Zealand
"Perhaps putting a mobile phone repeatedly to your head is something that might not be good in the long term." -Professor Leif Salford, longtime cell phone researcher into impacts on brain through the blood-brain barrier [BBC Feb 5/03]
