The cost of connection

There has always been a need for community. It is how we learn, socialize, and develop as human beings. Our need to connect has only grown with technology, from the advent of the telegraph to the massive interconnected worlds of facebook, twitter, even tinder… we have always wanted more. More ways to connect, more ways to express ourselves and more ways find communities that will accept us for who we are… but what have we given up in the process?

Have you ever stopped to think about how it all works? How digital information can move across the world in seconds. It is powerful technology and as we push the boundaries of what technology can do, we require more energy to do it. We need more and more information to pass through cell phones, wifi, cable lines, etc to support the connections we have made online.

For the first time in history, we have become attached to a constant source of radiation. A radiation that brings you cat videos, text messages, and calls from your mother. A radiation that passes through every cell of your body, causing constant changes to human biology and expressions of our cellular information through epigenetics.

One researcher has devoted her life to understanding this technology and its implications on human biology. Dr. Devra Davis is internationally known for work on disease prevention and environmental health factors. She served as the President Clinton appointee to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board from 1994 to 1999, having won bipartisan Senate confirmation. She was Founding Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology, the first of its kind in the world, and presently acts as President of Environmental Health Trust, a non-profit organization focusing on drawing attention to man-made health threats. She lectures at American and European universities and her research has been covered in major scientific publications as well as being highlighted on major media outlets like CNN, C-SPAN, CBC, BBC, and public radio. In recent years, her attention has become focused on the health hazards of exposures to man-made sources of electromagnetic radiation, especially those from wireless devices such as cell phones and iPads and the antennas and cell towers powering these devices all of which emit radiofrequency/microwave radiation.

She is the author of books such as Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Is Doing to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family and The Secret History of the War on Cancer.

In an interview with Razi Berry, Devra Davis explores ways to best practices for cell phone use and ways to mitigate exposure to radiofrequency/microwave radiation. Together they also touch on: