Devra Davis is the widely respected research scientist who has been been calling attention to the dangers of EMF's for decades. As the founder of The Environmental Health Trust, she has sued the FCC for failing to update its safety standards since 1996 and focused on sharing her long-held conviction that EMF's affect our biology. Her book "Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation" was published in 2010, barely three years after the launch of the first smartphone and it remains one of the most important books on the subject.  Now, Devra has updated Disconnect with over 100 pages of new updated information, based on new and updated research. 

In this conversation, we talk about the book and what we can all do to best protect our families from the very threat represented by electromagnetic fields--the information carrying radio waves that power our digital devices.

Here's the book:  https://www.amazon.com/Disconnect-scientists-solutions-safer-technology/dp/0988359189

Website:  https://ehtrust.org/

The continually updated EMF Guide from Tech Wellness:  https://techwellness.com/blogs/expertise/emf-meaning-expert-guide-what-is-effects-on-body

EMF Protection Solutions from Tech Wellness:  https://techwellness.com/collections/best-emf-protection

Here is the transcript of our discussion.  Be Well!

TWT24-DEVRA POD TRANSCRIPT
AUGUST: [00:00:00 ] Hey there, welcome to Thriving with Technology, the science led podcast that's here to help you achieve mindful living in a digital world. And I'm your host. I'm August Brice from TechWellness. com. This show is designed to give you a practical approach on how to navigate the important tech toxins in our world.
We have real life stories, experiences, and non fear based facts about cybersecurity and EMFs, your online privacy, [00:00:30 ] internet overuse. What leads to addiction, blue light on so much more. So thank you. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show.
We're happy you're joining us for a very special edition of thriving with technology today. August sits down with Dr. Devra Davis, one of the first and most respected educators and [00:01:00 ] researchers in the EMF space. And you could say in public health in general for our generation. In fact, if you can remember the days when smoking was allowed on airplanes, you have Dr.
Davis to thank that that is just a very distant memory. Dr. Davis has authored more than 200 peer reviewed publications and written several important books on cancer, environmental pollution, and her newest, which is an update of a title first published in 2010, Disconnect, a scientist's solutions for safer [00:01:30 ] technology.
Dr. Davis is the founder of the Environmental Health Trust, one of the leading forces in EMF research, education, and advocacy, working to reform the laws that govern our exposure to EMF. There's a lot of wisdom in this episode. You won't want to miss a minute. Here's August. Okay. Devra Davis. Hello. Hello, August.
What an honor. I cannot thank you enough for being with me today. I am so excited to [00:02:00 ] share the new book. I'm excited to talk about everything that's happened since the original Disconnect was published. And of course, everyone knows I'm a huge fan of the Environmental Health Trust. If you subscribe to my newsletter or if you're on my Instagram channel or Facebook, you know that I'm consistently.
sharing links to the Environmental Health Trust because of the amazing work that they are doing. And they are led by Devra Davis. Thank you so much, [00:02:30 ] August. I really appreciate all that you're doing. Thank you. Well, we've both been in this space for so long. I first discovered that I was sensitive to EMF in about 1992.
And I know that your first book was published in 2010, but I was following your work before then you were publishing, you were doing research. You've led so much important research. And you know, Devra, I see myself as the [00:03:00 ] reporter and the communicator, and I see you as the educator and the scientist and together getting this information out.
Is wildly important and even more important today. I fully agree with you and I want to tell you, uh, I haven't been doing this alone. Uh, we've had an executive director, Theodora Scorato, and we're now bringing in, uh, three new people and reorganizing the Environmental Health Trust. Oh! I'm going to be stepping out as president, and [00:03:30 ] in my place will be Kent Chamberlain, who is professor and chairman emeritus of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of New Hampshire.
And we will have a vice president for and general counsel, Joe Sandry, who is rather experienced with, um, Going toe to toe with the FCC and winning, as he helped us win our lawsuit that we can talk about in just a moment. Yes. And we'll have a new vice president for science and clinical affairs, who is a [00:04:00 ] diagnostic radiologist with three decades of experience as a senior radiologist and member of the American College of Radiology, Rob Brown.
And we will of course have Theodora Scorato, who has been absolutely critical to what I've been doing over the past decade. She will become vice president for policy outreach and education. Uh, and we're going to have a great new expanded team, but I want to say it takes a [00:04:30 ] village. And August, you've been a really critical part of that village for us.
Oh, thank you, Devra. Thank you. It's always my honor to tell people about the Environmental Health Trust and especially your work. And you know, we've had Theodora on the podcast before, but this is such a big deal because of the book and congratulations on the expansion. Of environmental health trust. I know all the people that you're talking about and to have someone who was really central in the industry now on your team.[00:05:00 ] 
I can't wait to see what happens next. It can only be bigger, better, amazing. And so important for. Really the entire world. Thank you for doing this. Well, it's mutual August. It really is. Okay. So, you know, Devra, I have to tell everyone, and I explained this a little bit in the interview, but every time I get on a plane, I do think about you.
And I think, wow, if Devra, Hadn't done what Devra does, I might be [00:05:30 ] sitting next to someone and not just worrying about the secondhand Wi Fi radiation, but also worrying about the secondhand smoke. Can you tell us a little bit about why that change, why there's no smoke in airplanes? Well, in 1983, I was a young executive director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology at the U.
S. National Academy of Sciences. It's a And, uh, Senator Hayakawa from Hawaii wondered why he kept getting colds whenever he flew on [00:06:00 ] airplanes. Long flights. Many of your listeners may be shocked to know that smoking was allowed on airplanes. And he wondered about what that meant for his breathing. We, at the National Academy of Sciences, um, I organized a team, put together the first study that actually concluded that smoking was not a good idea for the plane.
Thank you for listening. because it gummed up the electronics, by the way. And by the way, it also affected the respiratory [00:06:30 ] tract of flight attendants and anyone else. What I did personally, and I tell this in my, uh, second book, which was called the secret history of the war on cancer. I took a small machine that looked frankly, like a bomb onto the, onto a long transatlantic flight.
And I went, in the smoking section and the non smoking section throughout the flight. By the end of the flight, I had a little congestion, as I have right now, [00:07:00 ] because I was able to show that by the end of the flight, even though there was a smoking section and a non smoking section, that the quality of the air in both sections was identical, that the level of ultra fine particulates, smaller, 50 times smaller than a human hair in the air was uniform, and that there was effectively no non smoking section.
And this study then was replicated by the National Academy of Sciences, [00:07:30 ] and it took us a while to get the report published because the pressure from the tobacco industry. Was quite, uh, impressive and I should state people don't realize this, but at the time of the U. S. National Cancer Institute was working on developing a safe cigarette with over 10 million dollars of funding from the tobacco industry.
I did not know that. There was a lot of close collaboration with the tobacco industry and [00:08:00 ] Harvard and Yale. They basically had funded major research programs at some of the top schools in the world. And they were regarded as a, and they were in fact serious in their support. In fact, in the disconnect book, I tell the story of how one scientist in Berlin, desperate for funding.
Became a major researcher for the tobacco industry in Germany. And when [00:08:30 ] he first reported that he thought that tobacco might actually cause cancer, they said, Hey, we'd like to give you another project to work on. We don't think you need to work on that anymore. , and they gave in the redirect, they gave in the project.
of studying cell phone radiation. And this was Franz Adelkofer. He studied cell phone radiation, a major multi laboratory, multi million dollar study for the European Union. And in 2002, he produced results. [00:09:00 ] Contrary to all of their expectations, including his own, he showed That cell phone radiation could in fact damage the brain cells in animals and could damage DNA.
He showed that. Right. So that result wa