Magda Havas – The Extreme Dangers Of Cell Phones, Power Lines, Dirty Electricity & How To Protect Yourself!

JUSTIN: A very pleasant good evening or a good afternoon to you everybody. I hope you’re having an excellent day out there, whatever you’re doing right now. It’s a beautiful day here in Southern California and thank you for joining us. We have a really great show for you today. We’ve got Magda Havas on the line and she’ll be talking about electromagnetic radiation, so this is going to be a really, really good show. So, thanks for joining us.

We are currently doing three shows a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Today is Monday, October 22, 2012 and this is episode #25, and you can find this show at extremehealthradio.com/25 and on that show page, there will be transcription and show notes with websites and reference materials and all that good stuff. So, please check out that show page. Also, if you have a question for our guest, or for me, email them to me, [email protected] as I’d love to hear from you. Or, you can call our voicemail line, which is 949-391-7363 and I will play your message to our guest live on the air.

Also, I wanted to let you know that this show is brought to you bylessemf and they are a great website selling lots of great electromagnetic radiation items, over 300 items, so check that out at extremehealthradio.com/lessemf. They are sort of a one-stop shop for this type of information.

Before we introduce Magda Havas, I want to give you a brief rundown on the upcoming show schedule. We’ve got Dr. Mark Sircus out of Brazil and he’s a prolofic guy, the director of the International Medical Veritas Association. He’s written some amazing books on cancer and heart disease. We have Dr. Jack Tips next Friday, who is a prolific individual himself. We’ve got Danny Roddy on the following Monday. He talks a lot about stress and he’s a big fan of Dr. Ray Peat and looking into his work, so that should be fun.

I would like to introduce Magda Havas. She is the Associate Professor of the Environmental and Resource Studies at Trent University. She teaches and does research on the biological effect of environmental contaminantes. She received her Ph.D from the University of Toronto and she completed a post-doctural research at Cornell University and taught at the University of Toronto before going to Trent University in Peterborough, Canada. She is the author, with Camilla Rees of Public Health SOS: The Shadow Side of the Wireless Resolution.

So, thank you so much Magda for joining us today.

MAGDA HAVAS: My pleasure Justin.

JUSTIN: You are calling in from Canada, is that right?

MAGDA HAVAS: That’s right.

JUSTIN: Excellent, when did you publish that book. It sounds interesting, The Shadow Side of the Wireless Resolution.

MAGDA HAVAS: A few years ago, after we held the Commonwealth Club meeting in San Francisco. It was based on questions that the audience had. We asked them to write their questions on little cards and there was so much interest that we didn’t have a chance to answer all of their questions at the meeting. So, Camilla and I decided to put the questions in a book, answer them there and make them available to anyone interested.

JUSTIN: Wow, so people can get that book on Amazon or where can they buy it?

MAGDA HAVAS: Amazon.com and the price is $20, so it’s not very expensive at all.

JUSTIN: Great, now you’ve been involved. I was going through your website recently and you’ve got a lot of great videos on there, and articles. So, you’ve been involved in this for many, many years.

MAGDA HAVAS: Yes, I have.

JUSTIN: What initially got you involved in this type of research?

MAGDA HAVAS: The research I was doing prior to electromagnetic radiation was on chemical toxicants in the environment and environmental toxicologists and I worked on air quality and water quality, particularly the effects of acid rain on aquatic ecosystem. I worked with Cornell, as you mentioned, and I worked in the Canadian artic and I worked in Ontario at smelter sites, and one of the courses I teach at Trent University is called Polution Ecology, where we deal with different types of environmental contaminants and teach the students, you know, where they come from, how they’re transformed in the environment, what effects they have on the environment and what can be done to mitigate those effects.

I was reading some studies on childhood leukemia, kids who live near power lines have a great risk of developing leukemia. The authors thought that it was associated with the electromagnetic fields coming from power lines. I thought that this would be a totally new topic to introduce into the course than reading the literature, and I found that it was really all over the place. This was back in the early 90’s, and then some people were saying that this is a very serious problem and other people were saying, well all the studies that have been done are flawed in some way. I felt that the science wasn’t yet at a stage, you know, where I could teach about it in a way that really made sense to the students, apart from introducing them to a lot of controversy, which can also be useful.

One day, my husband went to visit his brother in Wales, who is an engineer, and one night while walking his dog, mhy brother-in-law pulled out a fluorescent tube when they were walking near a power plant, and he held it up under the high voltage transmission lines. The tube lit up and he was doing this to impress his younger brother.
My husband came home and told me about it and I got quite excited, so we went out to the nearby transmission lines and I did the same thing and it lit up. It was really fascinating to me as it only lit up to where my hand held it. If you point it towards the sky and you grab the tube in the middle, only the top lit up and the bottom part ……6.40….I wanted to understand what was going on and I went to a physics professor at my university, a friend of mine, and I explained it to him. He said that everyone knows that. I said, well, not everyone as it was new to me.

He began to explain to me what was going on and I recall asking him a specific question. I said, do you think that this could contribute to childhood leukemia? It was really his answer that caused me to look into this a lot more carefully, and his answer was definitely not. It definitely can’t contribute to childhood leukemia, and when I asked him what he based that information on, he said that the frequency is too low to cause any damage to the cell. If that’s where the theory is, that it’s theoretical not possible for this relationship, but if the evidence is showing something contrary, then we have to readjust the theory and that’s what I decided to do.

I went and scoured the literature, I went through all the childhood leukemia studies and indeed, there was a relationship that was worth examining in greater details. The studies were not bogus that were finding these adverse effects. I then went through the literature on occupational safety, you know people who worked on power lines, and in fact, low and behold, they also had a higher risk of leukemia, as well as brain tumors and breast cancer, among both men and women. That brought me on to this and I began to teach about it and now I’m actually doing research. So, that’s my answer to your very short question.

JUSTIN: It’s fascinating. Would you say that childhood leukemia is caused by this or is it definitely, at the very least, a correlation?

MAGDA HAVAS: That’s a very interesting question as well. I would say that it doesn’t cause leukemia, in the sense that it doesn’t cause the original damage to the cells, but it seems to promote the growth of cells, and that’s if they’re cancerous cells or non-cancerous cells. So, if a child develops leukemia, for whatever reasons, somehow the body’s immune system is not effectively able to deal with it, if they’re exposed to electromagnetic fields. So, it gives the leukemia a bit of a boost over the body’s immune system, and I think that’s the reason that the rate of ……..9.17…..for kids who actually are exposed at their homes to power lines.

JUSTIN: So, leukemia, or damage to the cells, be caused or be related only to power lines, or to maybe dirty electricity in the wall, or what’s the correlation there?

MAGDA HAVAS: We talk about dirty electricity, and probably most of your listeners don’t know what that is. Let me just go back a little bit, as we’re sort of jumping right into the middle of the pocket. If you look at the electromagnetic polution, I call it polution, but in Europe it’s called electro smog. We’re talking about electromagnetic energy that is non-ionite, so we’re not talking about x-rays or radon gas or gamma radiation, or even ultraviolent radiation. We’re really talking about levels on the electomagnetic spectrum that are non-ionizing. That includes radiofrequency in extremely low frequency and it can also include light and infrared, but I tend to focus on the microwave for radiofrequency and the extremely low frequency.

Within that band, if you look at the biological consequences of this type of exposure, they fall into four different categories. The first category is called extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields, or EMF, and this is where the childhood leukemia was first associated with, the low frequency magnetic fields coming from power supplies. They weren’t measuring power quality and they weren’t measuring anything else. The second area that seems to be important, is an area with higher frequencies. This is the ……. 11.03…..of thousands of cycles per second, and let’s recall power quality and dirty electricity. This is something that flows along your wires, and the closer you …11.19….these wires, the greater your exposure inside a work place or inside a school. The third area is radiofrequency radiation going up to the microwaves. Microwaves is part of the radiofrequency spectrum, but at a higher frequency, about 300 million cycles per second or megahertz, and here we have radiation flowing through the air at very high frequencies, so these three areas are really quite distinct.

Now, there’s a fourth and that’s ground current. This is radiation or electricity that goes through the ground. It comes into your home through your plumbing, because everything is grounded to plumbing. Or, if your walking on the ground, it can actually go into your body. That’s how we first learned about it, on farms, where cows were standing on the ground, the electricity was flowing through their bodies and it interfered with their milk production, and actually caused all sorts of health problems as well.

So, these four areas are critical and you measure them differently and you treat them differently. The effects are slightly different, although there’s a lot of overlap.

JUSTIN: Which one of those four would you presume to be the most dangerous? Is that a valid question or are they just different?

MAGDA HAVAS: I don’t think that’s a totally valid question, I think they’re just different. They all cause problems and they’re not all present in the environment at the same time, or in the same way. So what you have to do, if you’re concerned about exposure, you would have to measure your environment and you would measure your environment for those four different aspects, using different meters and diffent methods of measurement. Then, depending on what you were exposed to and what the levels were, people can recommend what you can do to minimize your exposure. Some things virtually cost you nothing to minimize your exposure and other methods are quite expensive, depending on what the source is.

JUSTIN: Okay, so on top of that, there are diffent appliances, right, that emit some sort of frequency, like hair dryers and vacuum cleaners and things like that? Are those emiting harmful frequencies as well, or are they pretty innocuous?

MAGDA HAVAS: You picked two good ones actually, Justin. The hair dryer has a very high magnetic field and it’s the same magnetic field that has been linked to childhood leukemia. Now, the amount of time that someone uses the hair dryers is quite limited, so for home use, I wouldn’t be too concerned about it. However, if you’re suffering from a brain tumor or breast cancer, or even leukemia, I would minimize exposure to things like hair dryers, computers and other devices that emit the low frequency electromagnetic fields. If you’re a hair stylist, that’s quite different, because you’re going to be exposed for much longer during the day. So, occupationally, it’s much more damaging.

When it comes to the vacuum cleaner, vacumm cleaners produce something called dirty electricity, and that’s been linked to cancer and various types of symptoms that we now classify as electrohypersensitivity. If you happen to vacuum your home once a week, it’s probably not a big issue, but if you’re in the business of house-keeping, for example, and you’re using the vacuum for hours each day, then your exposure might be considerable.

There are ways of dealing with the dirty electricity. You can filter it, for example, and basically minimize your risk.

JUSTIN: Later on in the interview, I’d like to get into all the different ways we can mitigate some of these issues. If people feel like they’re exposed, because there’s cell towers everywhere and there’s basically no way to get yourself away from these things, as they’re basically everywhere. What would you suggest that the first thing someone should do? Maybe get some meters and start looking into what their exposure actually is?

MAGDA HAVAS: Before we even go to meters and before we spend any money, there are a number of things we know can make your home more electromagnetically toxic. And that means, if you have energy efficient light bulbs in your home, contact fluorescent lights for example, they produce a lot of dirty electricity. They emit radio frequencies through the air and they generate ultra violet radiation, which is a carcinogen, linked to skin cancer. If you use compact fluorescent light bulbs that our government is promoting, can actually make a lot of people sick. Normally, the types of symptoms we see are skin problems that don’t clear up, headaches, dizziness, nausea and difficulty concentrating, the symptoms we’ve classified as under the broad umbrella of electrohypersensitivity, and that’s not to mention myalgia, chronic fatigue and insomnia and all sorts of things like that. If you happen to have those light bulbs in your house, my recommendation right now, is to go out and replace them with incandescent light bulbs. I know they’re not nearly as energy efficient, but when you have an energy efficient device, it can make you sick and I don’t think it’s worth it.

So, my recommendation is to stock up on the incandescents until the LED light bulbs become more affordable and better quality. That’s coming.

JUSTIN: So, with the compact fluorescents, don’t those contain mercury as well? Am I correct on that, or not?
compact fluorescent bulbs do contain mercury. The mercury is not a problem until unwrapped ….. …….16.52 ….breaks the bulb. The mercury is contained within the glass envelope and if you break it and it shatters, or if you drop it and it explodes, some of these light bulbs are not really well made and have exploded, then you have mercury in your home. A light bulb has approximately 5 mg of mercury, which sounds like a very, very small amount, but mercury is an amazing neurotoxin and you don’t to be exposed to any of it. It’s in a vapor state so you basically inhale it when you break the light bulb.

The EPA, if you visit their website they have information on what to do if you break one of these bulbs in your home. The first thing is to open all the windows and walk outside for at least 15 minutes, until the air begins to clears up. If you’ve dropped it on carpeting, unfortunately it absorbs into the carpet and it will be a regular source. If you’ve dropped it on a hardwood floor, you can clean it up. All the material, including the broken glass, can be put into plastic bags and taken to a toxic waste site to be disposed of.

We’re talking about something that really shouldn’t be in your home in the first place with ……..18.08….that can actually break.

JUSTIN: Wow, I recently listened to an interview with Dr. Hal Huggins and he said that 1 atom of mercury is too much exposure.

MAGDA HAVAS: The problem is, is that it gets transformed in your body and if it’s methylated in your body and your digestive system, for example, it can get into your cells. And, if it gets into your brain, then we’ve got some real problem. You certainly don’t want neurotoxins in your body. We have enough with the mercury fillings, which is horrible. One of the things we recommend is that people have their mercury fillings replaced by a doctor who understands how to do them safely. Eating a lot of fish can increase your mercury content as well. There are ways of reducing mercury in your body once you have it, but the best thing is to minimize getting it into your body.

JUSTIN: A lot of people use microwaves. What are your thoughts on the damaging effects of microwaves?

MAGDA HAVAS: Well, there are two aspects of microwaves that are important. One is that microwave radiation does not stay within the microwave oven. I have measured quite a few microwaves, and have only come across one oven that didn’t leak. So, if you’re in a kitchen where you turn on a microwave oven, if you’re within 10-15 feet of it, you’re being exposed to microwave radiation. Even if you’re on the other side of the wall that contains the microwave oven, you’re exposed, because this energy goes through walls. The cell phones are microwave radiation, as we can get a reception inside our house, even though the antenna is outside of the house.

So, one bit of bad news is that microwave ovens leak and it’s best to go as far away from them as possible if you’re going to use it to heat your food. Another concern about microwave ovens is that it ……..20.01…..
Because it’s working at the molecular level, it can destroy enzymes and if you’re eating dead food, then you’re not getting the same nutritional bang for your buck, basically. So, some people refuse to use microwaves for that reason alone, because it adversely effects the quality of food.

I’m less concerned about that aspect because I know less about it. I’m really concerned about the fact that as soon as you turn it on, you’re exposed. And, standing in front of a microwave oven and watching your cup of coffee go around and around, you know when you’re heating it up for the 10th time, is probably not a good idea, because the part of your body that is most sensitive to microwave radiation are your eyes and your testicles. Your eyes are very, very close to that oven and the consequences of that are premature cataract formation, so you don’t want to have that either.

JUSTIN: Didn’t the Russians do a lot of research on microwave radiation and things like that, because I don’t think the Russians use microwaves.

MAGDA HAVAS: The Russians have done research on this for much longer than we have, and they started looking at the therapeutic effects of microwave radiation, so they started at very, very low levels. We started with microwaves looking at the effects of radar and very high levels, for military exposure mostly, and then eventually occupational exposure. The Russian guidelines are 1% of our guidelines. They don’t allow you to be exposed to as high levels as we do. So, our 24-hour exposure, in Russia you can only be exposed to that for 15-minutes a day, whereas we can be exposed to it for 24 hours. Because of their research, they actually didn’t allow their population to use microwave ovens for cooking, they just thought it was too damaging. They still have better guidelines than we do and they certainly know a heck of a lot more about the biological effects, which seems to be the case here in North America.

JUSTIN: That’s fascinating. I wish everyone knew about this information.

We have to take a quick break, but will be right back. We’re with Magda Havas and her website is magdahavas.com, so make sure to check that out. We’ll be right back.

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JUSTIN: Okay, thank you everybody for joining us. We have Magda Havas here, talking about electromagnetic radiation. Magda, I wanted to ask you about some of these things that people have in their houses, dimmer switches. What are some of the effects of those dimmer switches on the lights they have in their rooms.

MAGDA HAVAS: Well, dimmer switches increase the amount of dirty electricity that you have, so as you dim the light, what it’s doing is it’s chalking the electricity to reduce the amount of light you’re getting. This seems to be making some people sick. So, if you happen to be electrically sensitive, the best idea is not to use these dimmer switches or to plug in filters that can reduce them at the electrical outlet.

JUSTIN: Interesting. So, you can measure the effect of the dimmer switches as well, right?

MAGDA HAVAS: Very easily. The meters are inexpensive, approximately $100, give or take. You plug it into an electrical outlet, right close to where your dimmer switch is, and then you turn your dimmer switch up and down and you can see the meter change. It just so happens that some of the dirty electricity that comes into your home through the devices you have, like these dimmer switches and energy efficient light bulbs, can actually go into your neighbor’s home or come into your home from your neighbor’s home. We’ve had people who live close to each other and we’ve had someone change the dimmer switch in their home and we can pick up the reading in the neighbor’s home. So, that’s how much it tends to go along electrical wires. If you’re on the same transformer, you’re sharing some of this dirty electricity as well.

JUSTIN: Wow, that’s fascinating. Recently, I’ve been having the idea that electromagnetic radiation could be similar to what smoking was 30 years ago.

MAGDA HAVAS: Very much so, very much. I think that’s a perfect analogy, in that a lot of doctors are unaware of this and they are using their cell phones. The cell phone industry takes advantage of this. In the past, if you look at any of the old commercials on smoking, you’ll see that doctors recommended Camel for example, which is one of the tactics they used in the past. They’re using the exact same thing today. Even with smoking, there’s direct smoking and there’s something called second-hand smoke, and that’s true with this radiation as well. You know, if you happen to be using your cell phone, it’s like smoking. But if you’re in the same room as someone using their cell phone, or if you happen to live near a cell phone antenna, then you’re exposed to second-hand radiation.

JUSTIN: Yes, and I’ve heard that it can even be amplified if you’re with someone who is using a cell phone, in a train, car or maybe a plane, right?

MAGDA HAVAS: That’s right. Metal objects reflect the radiation, so the more metal you have around you, the more reflection you’re exposed to. For example, you asked about the microwave oven earlier. If your kitchen happens to have stainless steel appliances, then your exposure to microwaves is going to be higher when you turn on your microwave oven, simply because of the reflection.

If you happen to sleep in a bed that has metal frames, or a spring mattress with coils in it, and you’re exposed to radiation from other sources, then those coils act like antennas and increase your exposure. That’s one of the reasons that your bedroom should be as clean as possible, electromagnetically, so that you have minimal exposure while you’re sleeping and rejuvenating.

JUSTIN: What you said right there just made me think of when people have metal in their mouth, like braces or fillings. Do those types of things act as a conduit for electricity.

MAGDA HAVAS: They do, and actually there’s two really important points here. If you happen to have braces, and they’re metal braces rather than plastic or some other compound, that wave will cause the microwave to be verbally in your head and will increase the exposure to your skull. So, young kids who have braces and are holding a cell phone up to their head, is probably the worst thing they could possibly do.

I have a story about this. There was a young girl who was attending a private school in Toronto and she passed out in the hallway while she was talking to friends. She had never had any health issues of any concern, and, a few days later it happened again in the same hallway and it turned out that her head was very close to one of the wireless routers, the WiFi routers they had in the school, and, she had a mouth full of braces. Her parents had the braces removed and replaced with non-metalic braces and now she is fine, although they don’t like her being exposed to this radiation, for obvious reasons.

Regarding fillings, if you happen to have mercury fillings in your mouth, the mercury is actually mobilized. It dissolves when you have microwave radiation exposure. We found this out because a friend of mine had the unfortunate duty of serving in Vietnam, and he was dealing with radio frequencies there. One of the things he told me that the radar operators have to have their fillings replaced, the mercury amalgam fillings, every six months, because the mercury would dissolve and the filling would become loose. It wasn’t because they had bad dentists there, it was simply because of what they were exposed to.

There have been a number of studies now showing that mercury levels will increase in your saliva after an MRI scan, magnetic resonance imaging scan, and it will increase in your urine if you use a cell phone, simply because you’re mobilizing more of it.

JUSTIN: Golly….now what do you make of all the pregnant women who have their cells phone on them. I’ve seen women who are sitting down at a coffee shop and have their iphone next to their belly. What’s happening to the child in the womb, do you think, from being exposed to that?

MAGDA HAVAS: Well, we know that the fetus is very, very sensitive, especially during the early stages when the major organs are developing. Doctors will tell their patients not to smoke, not to take drugs and not to drink alcohol while they’re pregnant. One other thing they should tell them is not to use any kind of wireless device while they’re pregnant, or to minimize the use and certainly to keep it as far away from the fetus as possible. This should just be regular practice now.

JUSTIN: Hopefully, it’s become more main stream, but it doesn’t seem like it when you’re out in the world and you just kind of watch what’s going on.

I want to ask you about the role of electromagnetic radiation and blood sugar, because I’ve heard that it has an effect on your blood sugar levels.

MAGDA HAVAS: We’ve actually done some work with some diabetics. When I got into this, I came from a chemical toxicology background, so I had to learn everything from scratch. It was a very …….30.17…..believe me.
This is fairly complex physics and fairly complex biology, the biological changes that are happening in your body. I listened to people, as that was where I was getting my information. One of the things I was told, is that some diabetics have problems regulating their blood sugar and the blood sugar seems to spike when they’re exposed to this radiation. I thought that this is great information and is something that’s very easy to test, because we know how to measure blood sugar.

So, I began to work with diabetics. One of the people we worked with, I think this is a really good case example, was a woman in New York who was electrically sensitive. She was also a type-2 diabetic. She regulated her blood sugar to exercise, so she wasn’t yet on any medication. We had her do different things, so if she walked for 20 minutes, her blood sugar came down to normal. It didn’t matter how high it was, it came to a normal level. So, walking was a really good way for her to regulate her blood sugar. On days that she didn’t feel like going outside and walking, she would work out on her treadmill and would walk on the treadmill in her basement. And, whenever she’d get back, her blood sugar would spike. So, instead of going down, it would actually go up. This is contrary to our understanding of what should be happening, because you’re exercising your body, it requires the sugar for energy, so it should be burning the sugar rather than increasing it.

It turns out that some diabetics are also electrically hypersensitive and this produces stress on the body. When a diabetic patient is stressed, whether it’s physical stress or emotional stress, the way they respond is their blood sugar goes up rather than down. So, the doctors who are prescribing exercise to their patients who are diabetic, thinking that they’re doing good, should actually tell them to exercise in a clean environment and to minimize their use of any kind of technology that’s plugged in, because that might have the opposite effect. It turns out that you can actually use this to determine if you’re electrically sensitive. So, if you are diabetic and your working out on a treadmill and your blood sugar goes ……..32.34 inaudible…..chances are you’re not sensitive. If it perks up or doesn’t move and stays high, then you probably are electrically sensitive……..
..32.35 …diagnostic.

JUSTIN: So, in what other ways do you think it effects the body, I guess it’s hard to say, other than leukemia and blood sugar …….32.53….diabetes, but what other ways do you think it has an effect on the body?

MAGDA HAVAS: Well, we’ve also worked with people who have multiple sclerosis. There was a school in Wisconsin that had, what we would now call ‘sick building syndrome’. The students were constantly ill and the teachers were constantly complaining and the School Board basically did nothing about it for quite a long time. The teachers threatened to call the Union then, because the symptoms were really quite severe. When these people went home and when they were away on the weekend, or during the sumnmer, many of their illesses went away, so they realized it had something to do with the school. And so the school decided to take this seriously and what they did is that they cleaned up the chemicals and the mold and other types of toxins in the environment. The teachers and students came back in September and they got sick again. So, whatever was causing the problem was not removed with this cleanup.

So, they called in a power quality expert and he measured the power qualities and said that it was high and that it was bad. He plugged in filters to improve it. These are special filters that you can use inside buildings. The utility is aware of filtering no power quality when they have a problem, so this is technology that has been around for a very long time. So, he cle