Masters of Health Magazine November 2023 | Page 14

Question: You had great success with your previous books but Disconnect didn’t have that same pickup. Why do you think that is?

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: So what improvements, if any, as far as cell phone radiation goes have occurred since Disconnect was published?

Devra Davis: I'm not sure you can call it an improvement but when Disconnect was first written, there were very thin pages of 6-point font type. Pamphlets that included information about the distances that phones were tested from the body up to an inch off the body. And once the book was published, the industry decided that they would put that

information buried inside operating systems, where it is now in all of the devices. You no longer have those pieces of paper to throw away when you open up your phone box. In addition, I think there is a growing appreciation on the part of some in the industry that they need to use the software and hardware fixes that are available to reduce radiation whenever possible. But the pushback has come from the lawyers because of course, eventually there will be billions of dollars paid to the people who have been harmed by cell phone radiation. But that's going to take decades to slog it out through the courts and again the industry is well fortified with attorneys to protect them.

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.