Safe ICT NZ
Safe Information and Communications Technology for New Zealand
Inform and protect yourself about the health risks of your tech use
"The stakes are very high. Human beings are bioelectrical systems. Our hearts and brains are regulated by internal bioelectrical signals. Environmental exposures to artificial EMFs can interact with fundamental biological processes in the human body.
In some cases, this may cause discomfort, or sleep disruption, or loss of wellbeing (impaired mental functioning and impaired metabolism) or sometimes, maybe it is a dread disease like cancer or Alzheimer’s disease." —Authors of the international BioInitiative report
Come to our 2 talk event
this Saturday 6th April
4-6 at the Collective Hub
33 Johnsonville road
Environmental Blindspots & Protecting Mitochondria.
Tech usage affects biology in ways that might surprise you
Safe ICT NZ (Safe Information and Communications Technology for New Zealand) wants you to know the basics of how your devices work and how they affect your biology. If you apply this knowledge to reducing unsafe use and choices, you may well find current and future health problems averted or at least lessened. It is vitally important to realise that our technologies are a major threat to insects, plants, and other living things and that an Electronic Silent Spring is likely unless we make changes rather than accept this status quo. ​ At the very least, we believe you have a right to know the levels of risk you may be subjecting yourself to. You should not have these risks foisted upon you without warnings, choice, or debate. A community should be able to protect their children from a cell tower being close to a childcare centre or a school. In some parts of the world, such a thing is no longer legal. If a phone needs to be a certain distance away from the body to comply with international safety regulations, this should not be buried information (even if, as Safe ICT NZ believes, they are not safe enough). A visit to an infertility specialist should not be the first time you receive information to store your phone away from your body. Australian Neuro-surgeon Dr Charlie Teo, who faces children coming to his hospital to be diagnosed with malignant cancers, believes that Australians should have the right to know about the dangers of cell phone radiation. We advocate New Zealanders should also have this right. Recent exposures by Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks' Julian Assange have alerted many of us to at least some—though not quite all—of the unconsented privacy, security, and Artificial Intelligence invasions from our use of digital devices, and others' use of these on us. As with health effects, Safe ICT NZ believes these privacy incursions should not be happening, and full understanding must be ensured before consent is given. ​ We also believe that there are now enormous difficulties in negotiating the current world, for some people who have become electro-sensitive. These people, may well be "canaries in the coal mine", having often been exposed to a lot of wireless radiation though their employment, and become very sick when further exposed. For example people are developing headaches that last for days, after driving certain brands of late model EVs. A headlong plunge to make all of our interactions wireless and digital, without other options, is tormenting to those with this condition. Making digital processes a requirement for each and every interaction, often without viable alternatives, needs to be thoroughly questioned. Who is driving the decisions to do this, and why are they? What do they have to gain, and what are the risks inherent in this practice? A large number of elderly people are being shut out from their normal participation, such as using cheques, without their consent. The Citizens Advice Bureau has been inundated with people hurt by this. It is a conceit to assume that elderly people have to change. When we have a combination of a requirement to do everything digitally, at the very same time as we are all trying to manage our fight against the deliberately addictive parts of our digital interaction, there is a problem. This requirement also exposes us to some form of electromagnetic field and potentially effects of unbalanced blue light. The environmental cost of requiring the latest device for our interactions is surprisingly huge. Many elements in each one each have to be mined. For example the batteries in each one require mining lithium, which creates water scarcity in places that can ill afford it. The screens require yttrium; a rare-earth element, the mining of which leaves a radio active waste tail.
Contact us if you want to have a speaker present to your group on either of these subjects.
Scientists used to believe the radiation emitted from a cell phone was safe
This is because It is true that this radiation isn't powerful enough to knock an electron off an atom in our bodies. Non-ionizing electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) come from our devices like cell phones, laptops, tablets, smart meters, Wi-Fi routers, and also from electrical appliances, power lines, and even our in-house wiring. Now, even though they’re significantly weaker in strength than ionizing radiation used in x-rays for example, research studies say that prolonged exposure to non-ionizing EMFs can cause major health problems ranging from sleep disorders to chronic illnesses like cancer.
Meter readings, what do they mean?
You can't see, hear or feel non-ionizing radiation, but fortunately you can measure it with an EMF meter. While units of measurement aren't ones we use every day, so they the readings are a bit useless if you don't know what the mean in terms of risk. We would like to encourage you to go to the Shield your Body website https://www.shieldyourbody.com/fx/ where you can use an interactive web page. You type in a meter's unit of measurement, and its reading, It will produce some of the science papers are available for that type of exposure. There are more than a thousand papers in the application, including in levels below what our Safety standards allow. If you want to know how to use a meter correctly we recommend downloading "How to test EMF for yourself" from the same website.
Also, the question of what is a safe radiation exposure level​? is answered on our page here.