Devra Davis: This is a tough issue. All of us now are dependent on this technology for our daily lives. There are people who would rather leave their house without their underwear than their phones. Oh, and more people do not even have a landline although they are safer and more secure. But it has become a part of life, and the addictive property of the technology, it's physiologically addicting because it gives you a dopamine hit, the same thing as drugs, sex, rock and roll, cocaine. You get the satisfaction in the brain and I think that the addiction is quite powerful and very, very difficult for people to overcome. At the same time, I'm not at all unaware that there are great values of this technology, but it has to be like every technology that's ever existed. We have to make it become a tool for us rather than we becoming a tool for it.
This is really a book for grandparents because it seems that grandparents are starting to wonder why can't they get their grandkids to talk to them, which has always been a problem, but now they have a third party in the room and that's the iPad or the phone or the video game or whatever it is that these young children are so preoccupied with that they can't look up and make eye contact or have a conversation.
Question: It seems that that's less a problem of cellular radiation than it is the dopamine effect.
Devra Davis: I think that's true, but it's the cellular radiation as well as the psycho-sociological addiction that this has created. They're both relevant. And we're hoping that this time around more and more people will be open to this important, and now, I think, undeniable fact that we've got to take a step back if we want to reclaim human aspects of relationships, which we are losing to the technology.
Question: Why did you start Environmental Health Trust?
Devra Davis: Originally, I started it to help the work of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute Center for Environmental Oncology as a way to get information out to the public. Then, when I left that post, It was obvious to me that there was a clear and pressing need for practical advice to be provided to the public about how to identify and avoid environmental health hazards.
Question: So it didn't really have anything to do with cell phone radiation, in particular?
Devra Davis: I think that was one of the top issues that we were working on at the time, as well as hazardous cleaning products and household materials and cosmetics and things that people use every day without realizing that they were exposing themselves unnecessarily to things that would increase their risk of chronic disease years later.
Question: But it seems like EHT is moving toward cell phone radiation exclusively. Is that true?
Devra Davis: No. We have concentrated on wireless radiation because we think it's one of the biggest unrecognized and underappreciated public health threats the world faces today. But the work that we've done in the past on air pollution and endocrine disruptors and other environmental hazards remains of interest as well.
Question: What does the future look like, in your mind, if things remain as they are?
Devra Davis: First of all, things are not going to remain as they are. I'm sure within the industry, there is a very lively debate taking place, and we know this because people have told me that that is the case. And because of people like Frank Clegg, who is a member of our board now, and former president of Microsoft Canada, who assures me that they have quite the capacity to make improvements that are needed. We are where we were with cars in the 1960s. We know we need the equivalent of airbags and seat belts on phones; that there are safer ways to design phones and routers so that they automatically go to sleep except when they're needed so they're not on 24/7. So that when they feel that they're in your pocket, which they can sense, that they go to sleep, that they wake up when needed and that those very simple changes in software can radically reduce the amount of exposures that we're all getting.