I'll do my best. I have sent the committee a lot of material containing scientific evidence, but what I want to do now is just summarize it, so I apologize for not giving references.
I had a lifelong interest in radio communications and was one of the first people I know to buy a mobile phone, but I'm afraid all is not quite right. As the number of mobile phones--cellphones--expanded, a whole series of weird health effects started to appear.
The cellphone companies had no idea what was causing them and still less of an idea on how to stop them happening. The only solution was to deny their existence, and this is what seems to be happening. They argue that because the results are not consistent, this is due to experimental error and can therefore be ignored.
But this argument is flawed because it doesn't take into account biological variability. We are all the product of thousands of genes that interact with each other and the environment in unpredictable ways. Each individual is unique. Not every smoker dies of cancer, we don't all have the same side effects from taking medicinal drugs, and we can't all be expected to respond in the same way to electromagnetic insults. Just because everyone is not affected doesn't mean that no one is affected.
They also say there is no plausible explanation for such diverse results. In this presentation, I've explained just how these effects, these multitudes of effects, are produced, and how modifications to the signal can put most of them right.
There are two mechanisms that explain nearly all of them.
The first one is based on the pigment cryptochrome. Plants use it to measure light and animals use it to navigate in the earth's magnetic field. Both animals and plants use it to regulate their body clocks.
Now, Ritz and his co-workers, in 2004, discovered that bird magnetic navigation was disrupted by a radio waves because of their effects on cryptochrome. This is also true for insects and probably causes colony collapse disorder in bees. The radio waves don't break chemical bonds, they just interfere with the transport of an electron between two parts of the molecule that is essential for its function.
Cryptochrome also controls circadian rhythms and the body clock, which regulates the sleep-wake cycle and also the immune system. The immune system works best at night. This explains the sleep disturbances found in people living near mobile phone base stations. It also increases their risk of cancer by reducing the ability of the immune system to cope with incipient cancer cells. It might also contribute to the decline of the bees, which are becoming increasingly susceptible to pathogens. As you all know, the loss of the bees would be devastating to our agriculture.
Fortunately, we can do something about it. According to Ritz, cryptochrome is sensitive to a broad range of frequencies, but they're mostly below 10 megahertz. These are well below the carrier frequencies used in mobile phones, but are generated when they are modulated to carry digital information. They are due to harmonics, they are not essential, and they can be suppressed. The cellphone companies should do this straight away.
Secondly, there are effects on cell membranes. Low frequency electromagnetic fields and radio frequencies that have been modulated with low frequencies can remove calcium ions from cell membranes. This weakens them and makes them more inclined to leak, which explains most of the other biological effects such as cardiac arrhythmia.
The heart muscle beats in response to electrical waves propagating through it. These are generated by ions moving across its cell membrane. If they leak, these ion movements are less pronounced and the heartbeat becomes irregular, which could result in heart failure--lack of information.
When cells leak into the surrounding matrix, it can cause inflammation. That which is beginning to show is early dementia. The brain is separated from the blood by what we call a tight junction barrier, in which the gaps between the cells are sealed to prevent the entry of unwanted materials. Cellphone radiation makes this barrier leak to let in toxic materials that can lead to early dementia.
Allergies, which are also on the increase--