In this NEW, EXPANDED, and UPDATED edition of Disconnect, acclaimed and award-winning scientist Dr. Devra Davis shares a compelling cautionary tale, supported by a growing body of evidence surrounding alarming new scientific understandings of cell phones, other commonly used microwave radiating devices, and the new 5G network currently being built-out nationwide – all with limited safety testing!
Building upon the shocking revelations that Dr. Davis uncovered through research and interviews and shared in the 2010 first edition, this new, expanded edition adds recent studies that substantiate and confirm the radiation risks of the “connected world” that endanger our health and the world around us. Understanding that personal electronic devices are here to stay, Dr. Davis shows us the simple safety measures we must take. Sharing these researched solutions, she reminds us that now is the time to implement them — before it’s too late.
PRAISE FOR DISCONNECT
“Davis makes a strong case in her book that we’ve underplayed the possible threat from cell phones for too long. Time and again, she showed the way that industry has been able to twist science just enough to stave off the possibility of any regulation.”
—Time Magazine
“[Davis] picks apart many of the assumptions that continue to guide cell phone regulations. . . [and] makes a compelling case for U.S. authorities to update their standards, especially in light of how much we now use our devices and the number of teenagers who now have them.”
—Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post
“As Dr. Davis cogently summarizes in Disconnect, it is unconscionable that any medical professional would ignore the important implications of wireless radiation on human physiology, pregnancy, and reproductive health. The world is a safer place today because of Dr. Davis’ studies and advocacy.”
— Hugh Taylor, MD, Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences and Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
“Davis’s work is a must-read for anyone who uses a cell phone, and it is a powerful call to action for policymakers to take steps to protect public health.”
— 2013 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Medal for Courageous Investigation
“The story behind the story needs to be told. . . . For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we should promote simple precautions to reduce direct exposure to the brain by using headsets, speaker phones, and texting. This will protect us from whatever health hazards may emerge decades later and also encourage safer development of this revolutionary technology in the meantime.”
— The Huffington Post
“Disconnect. . . is just as courageous and groundbreaking as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. It could save even more lives.”
— Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, Green America
“This book should be required reading, particularly for parents. It will make you uncomfortable. But it may spur you to immediately change your cell phone habits and those of your children.”
— Diane Makovsky, The Free Lance-Star
“From tobacco smoke to chemical pollutants to climate change, Dr. Devra Davis has been in the vanguard of the environmental health frontier. Her experience shedding light on man-made preventable environmental hazards makes the 2023 reissue of Disconnect all the more compelling since her original warnings on the biological and environmental effects of cellular radiation are now raising the alarms that they warrant.”
— Mikhail Kogan, MD, PhD, Medical Director, George Washington University Center for Integrative Medicine, Associate Professor of Medicine, George Washington University, and founder and member of the Board, AIM Health Institute.
“Cellular radiation and the onslaught of 5G is more problematic than most people realize. As Devra Davis keenly explains in Disconnect, it is urgent that parents, school leaders, elected officials, philanthropists and even our environmental health warriors find the bandwidth to lean into this topic and demand safer alternatives to wireless and the thousands of mini cell towers now permeating our landscapes.”
— Lendri Purcell, Vice President of Jonas Philanthropies.
“Disconnect is an important book both for the general public and for scientists, researchers, policymakers, and politicians. Anyone who cares about public health must read.”
— Linda S. Birnbaum, Ph.D, DABT, Scientist Emeritus and Former Director of NIEHS and NTP; Scholar in Residence at the Nicholas School of the Environment of Duke University
“If you or your loved ones have wireless devices, then you should read Disconnect. With her background as a uniquely accomplished scientist and public health advocate who has worked both inside and outside of government, Devra Davis offers invaluable insights on how we are now surrounded by levels of electromagnetic exposures that a strong body of science demonstrates are highly risky to public health, especially to the youngest of us. Davis explains strategies that have allowed telecom and tech industries to enjoy extraordinary growth at great risks to humanity. While the narrative described in Disconnect might seem unbelievable to some, it is recognizable to those familiar with strategies that the tobacco industry used to effectively grow or protect profits as evidence strengthened that smoking cigarettes poses serious health risks. To help our children and grandchildren inherit the best society possible, please read Disconnect and talk about it with others. Disconnect shows us the path forward.”
— Sophia Ruan Gushee, author of A to Z of D-Toxing: The Ultimate Guide to Reducing Our Toxic Exposures, host of Practical Nontoxic Living podcast, and founder of Ruan Living, a nontoxic lifestyle ecosystem.
“By cogently detailing the profound disconnect between professional standards for measuring, monitoring and protecting wireless equipment from harmful interference, in contrast to doing the same to meet standards for exposure to humans and the environment, this critically important book provides a North star to guide us towards very real solutions to this ongoing dilemma.”
— Joseph Sandri JD, IEEE, President, National Spectrum, Frequency Management Association, and former Co-President of FiberTower Corporation.
“Through bipartisan legislation, the state of New Hampshire formed a commission of independent experts tasked with finding the truth about the effects of wireless radiation. The commission findings align closely with those of Disconnect, delivering a message we all need to heed.”
— Kent Chamberlin, PhD, Professor and Chairman Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering
EHT’S DISCONNECT SPECIAL OFFER
Help spread the word! EHT will provide books to libraries.
Tell your library to order Disconnect through Environmental Health Trust. EHT will make a dozen copies and reader’s guides available — at no charge — to the first 50 public libraries that organize discussion groups.
Book a speaker for your book club!
Share Disconnect with your friends and family and learn more firsthand from our experts. EHT’s own Executive Director Theodora Scarato will schedule live chats with book clubs that order a dozen or more copies.
Want to learn more? Contact EHT for details.
NEWS ABOUT DISCONNECT
FAQS ABOUT WIRELESS RADIATION
What Has Happened Since the Initial Release of Disconnect?
A lot has happened since Disconnect launched a decade ago, and evidence confirming the risks associated with cell phone radiation have mounted.
In 2011 — just one year after the publication of Disconnect — an expert review panel of the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (WHO/IARC) produced highly inconvenient science: it declared cell phones and other wireless radiation a “possible human carcinogen” — the same category as DDT and chloroform.
The Oceanic Radiofrequency Scientific Advisory Association (ORSAA) and the newly formed International Commission for the Evaluation of the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields have formed calling for updating of 27-year-old standards in Australia, Canada, and the U.S.
Professor John Wargo of Yale University issued a report for the Environment and Human Health Institute affirming the need to take precautionary steps to reduce cell phone exposure, especially in light of growing exposures to children, 2012.
In innovative experiments, Professor Hugh Taylor, Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale Medical Center, showed that prenatally exposed rodents developed offspring with shortened attention spans and serious behavioral problems, 2012.
A series of studies produced by the NATO-sponsored laboratories of Nesrin Seyhan of Gazi University in Ankara and Suleyman Kaplan of Ondokuz Mayis University in Samsun, Turkey, have documented reduced brain size and more brain damage in prenatally exposed rats, rabbits, and mice, 2010-2017.
In 2018, the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) produced state-of-the-art experimental studies confirming that current levels of cell phone radiation create very rare, highly malignant tumors of the brain in tested rodents. Other publications have confirmed that this same radiation can damage DNA in several different organs.
Studies from the Ramazzini Institute of Italy found evidence that base-station levels of radiation can also increase cancer risk in tested animals.
Learn more in the new and expanded edition of Disconnect, available now on Amazon.
What Does the Science Say?
Growing scientific evidence links RF to cancer (brain, breast, thyroid), memory damage, hyperactivity, behavior issues, headaches, oxidative stress, genotoxicity as well as impacts to sperm, the endocrine system, and brain development.
Here is just some of the science on human biological impacts of wireless radiation
Review papers
- A 2023 literature review entitled Wireless technologies, non-ionizing electromagnetic fields and children: Identifying and reducing health risks published in Current Problems in Pediatric and Adolescent Health Care by leading experts documents the growing scientific evidence showing harm and details best practices for hospitals and schools to mitigate risks to children.
- The European Parliament research report “Health Impact of 5G,” released in July 2021, concluded that commonly used RFR frequencies (450 to 6,000 MHz) are probably carcinogenic for humans and clearly affect male fertility with possible adverse effects on the development of embryos, fetuses, and newborns.
- A 2022 review entitled “Evidence for a health risk by RF on humans living around mobile phone base stations: From radiofrequency sickness to cancer” reviewed the existing scientific literature and found radiofrequency sickness, cancer, and changes in biochemical parameters (Balmori 2022).
Cancer
- A Yale study funded by the American Cancer Society found elevated thyroid cancer risk in heavy cell phone users with specific genetic susceptibilities (Luo et al. 2020).
- A 2020 meta analysis found that cell phone users cumulative cell phone use over 1,000 hours statistically significantly increased tumor risk (Choi et al 2020).
- Several publications assert that the current body of evidence has significantly increased and cell phone radiation is proven Group 1 human carcinogen (Miller et al 2018, Peleg et al 2018 Carlberg and Hardell 2017, Belpomme et al 2018,)
- The Environmental Working Group published a landmark study analyzing the findings of tumor and heart damage in the National Toxicology Program study and concluded that FCC limits should be strengthened by 200 to 400 times to protect children according to current risk assessment guidelines (Uche 2021).
Tumors
- A 2020 case control study found that women who used phones close to their bodies had up to five times more breast cancer.
- A 2023 case report documented tumor development in the leg of a man who carried the phone in his pants pocket.
- Published case reports document young women developing unusual breast cancers located directly underneath the antennas of where their phones were stored, directly where they placed their cell phones in their bra.
Reproduction
- Systematic reviews associate RF-EMF with impacts to sperm ( Kim et al., 2021, Yu et al., 2021) and decreased testosterone (Maluin et al., 2021) has led researchers to recommend “to keep the cell phone away from the pelvis as much as possible” (Hassanzadeh-Taheri et al, 2021).
- The paper on the association between reproductive health and nonionizing radiation exposure, published in the journal Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine, concludes “cell phone radiation harms male fertility by affecting the different parameters like sperm motility, sperm count, sperm morphology, semen concentration, morphometric abnormalities, increased oxidative stress along with some hormonal changes.”
- A Pusan National University review published in Environmental Research concludes that, “accumulated data from in vivo studies show that mobile phone usage is harmful to sperm quality.”
- A systematic review published in Environmental Pollution concludes that “mobile phone RF-EMR exposure could suppress sperm motility and viability.”
- A 2021 systematic review found that wireless can decrease testosterone.
Nervous System Impacts
- The American Academy of Pediatrics has long recommended that wireless radiation regulations be updated to protect children and pregnant women as U.S, regulations are based on an adult male (a 220-pound man’s head, not a child’s smaller head). (Ghandi 2012, AAP 2012 & 2013).
- Children absorb proportionately higher doses in the eyes and critical brain regions than adults due to their smaller heads, thinner skulls and higher water content (Ferreira and de Salles 2015, Fernandez et al. 2018).
- Children have more active stem cells and stem cells have been found to be more sensitive to exposure (Markova et al, 2010, Williams et al. 2006).
- Research on pregnant women has linked prenatal cell phone radiation exposure to emotional and behavioral problems (Divan et al 2012, Sudan et al 2016) and hyperactivity (Birks et al., 2017) in their children.
- Wireless exposure is linked to brain damage (Tan et al., 2017), memory problems (Shahin et al., 2018), hyperactivity (Aldad et al., 2012), cellular impacts (Fragopoulou et al., 2018), and impacts in brain regions critical to memory and learning (Dasdag et al 2015, Shahin et al, 2018, Obajuluwa et al 2017, Tan et al., 2021, Hasan et al., 2021).
- Cell phone radiation has been found to alter brain activity (Volkow et al 2011, Bin et al 2014), impact neurotransmitters, and alter neuron development (Kaplan et al, 2015, Li et al 2021, Chen et al 2021).
- A replication study on teenagers found memory damage to the area of the brain most exposed to cell phone radiation when the phone is held close to the head (Foerster et al 2018).
What Can Be Done?
Governments can develop RF safety standards that address biological impacts, long-term exposure, and children’s unique vulnerabilities. This includes implementing a compliance, oversight, and enforcement program for towers, base stations, cell phones, and devices as well as a nationwide RF monitoring system inside and outside of buildings, like schools, daycares, and parks.
Furthermore, RF compliance tests need to mimic real-world use positions of phones in direct contact and include child models. The heat-based SAR metric for RF compliance is not the only exposure to be measured and reduced. Non-thermal impacts demonstrate that we need alternative methods to assess and measure exposures from wireless radiation.
Cell phones and wireless devices must contain labels so that consumers know cell phones emit RF and should be distanced from the body. A post-market surveillance and reporting system for health impacts does not exist but should to track impacts from different units and models.
