1) An important study that was summarized and shared by Lynn McLean of EMR Australia.
(click on photos to enlarge)
Screen Time at Age 1 Year and Communication and Problem-Solving Developmental Delay at 2 and 4 Years
“Conclusions and relevance: In this study, greater screen time for children aged 1 year was associated with developmental delays in communication and problem-solving at ages 2 and 4 years. These findings suggest that domains of developmental delay should be considered separately in future discussions on screen time and child development.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10442786/
Babies’ screen time & developmental delays
What happens when one-year-olds spend time on screen devices?
To answer this question, researchers from Japan took a look at over 7000 babies to see how they developed over the next three years.
They recruited pregnant women and followed them up with questionnaires when their children were aged one, two and four. Questions related to the amount of time children spent watching screens (TV, DVDs, video games, internet, mobile phones, tablets or other electronic devices) and to the following five domains of development:
- communication (‘babbling, vocalizing, and understanding’)
- gross motor skills (‘arm, body, and leg movement’)
- fine motor skills (‘hand and finger movement’)
- problem -solving skills (‘learning and playing with toys’) and
- social skills (‘solitary social play and playing with toys and other children’).
The investigators found a link between screen time and developmental delays by age 2 in the areas of communication, fine motor skills, problem-solving and social skills. The more time the babies spent using screens, the greater the developmental delays they observed. For example, one-year-olds who spent four or more hours a day using screens had, by age 2:
- more than four and a half times the risk of delays in communication than babies who spent less than one hour a day on screens at age 1;
- more than one and a half times the risk of delays in fine motor skills than babies who spent less than one hour a day on screens at age 1;
- more than two and a half times the risk of delays in problem-solving skills than babies who spent less than one hour a day on screens at age 1;
- more than double the risk of delays in personal and social skills than babies who spent less than one hour a day on screens at age 1.
Some of these delays persisted over time. The authors said, ‘We also observed an association between screen time at age 1 year and developmental delay at age 4 years in the communication … and problem-solving … domains.’
The study also cast light on the characteristics of mothers of the high-screen-use babies. The authors wrote, ‘Mothers of children with high levels of screen time were characterized as being younger, having never given birth, and having a lower household income, lower maternal education level, and having postpartum depression.’
The authors noted that ‘…the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics have issued guidelines that recommend limiting screen time for children, including a limit of 1 hour per day for children aged 2 to 5 years. However, a recent meta-analysis reported that only a minority of children meet these guidelines.’
2) Please see 2 important letters below.
Letters:
From: Shelley Wright, Director of Canadian Educators for Safe Technology
I could really use some help boosting my numbers, so when Trustees, etc. check out my page they see this is an important issue for lots of people!
CALL TO ACTION: To increase our following, Please FOLLOW, LIKE, and SHARE Canadian Educators for Safe Technology’s Facebook page and posts.
FEATURE POST:
The Declaration on the Human Rights of the Child in a Digital Age
https://www.facebook.com/CanadianEducatorsforSafeTechnology
Canadian Educators for Safe Technology wants to urge school boards, trustees, parents, the Minister of Education, Senators, and other government representatives to give their immediate attention to extremely important, daily, safe technology issues in schools.
We need a strong following of concerned citizens who support safe technology in schools – to show that solutions are possible.
To demonstrate the magnitude of public concern and commitment, we need at least 1,000 Facebook Likes to show a strong public interest in this topic, and to bring this FB page to the forefront of visible posts.
Kind Regards,
Shelley Wright
URGENT APPEAL TO THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA to Suspend the 5G Rollout and to Choose Safe and Reliable Fibre Connections
https://www.appel5gappeal.ca/
APPEL URGENT AU GOUVERNEMENT DU CANADA
afin qu’il suspende le déploiement de la 5G et opte pour des connexions par fibre optique sécuritaires et fiables
https://www.appel5gappeal.ca/fr/
Canadians For Safe Technology is a national, not-for-profit, volunteer-based coalition of parents, citizens and experts.
__________________________________________________________________________
&
– https://rsc-src.ca/en/review-safety-code-6-2013-health-canadas-safety-limits-for-exposure-to-radiofrequency-fields
&
– https://rsc-src.ca/sites/default/files/SC6_Report_Formatted_1.pdf
From: Suzanne Schiller (name given with permission)
To: “Rich Hardy (Area B)” <RichHardyAreaB@gmail.com>, “Edwin Grieve” <edwingrieve@shaw.ca>, “Dan Arbour” <reachme@danielarbour.ca>
Sent: Sunday, December 3, 2023 2:25:46 PM
Subject: Public Consultation Process Stacked Against the Public
December 03, 2023
Hello CVRD Area Directors,
I am writing today in order to document on the public record some of the ways that the so-called “public consultation” process for siting cell towers appears to be rigged in favour of telecom and not the people who will be impacted by cell towers erected in their communities.
For one, CPC-2-0-03—ISED’s procedure for approving and erecting masts, towers and other antenna-supporting structures—does not even allow health concerns to be addressed as part of the public consultation process because ISED takes the position that if industry complies with Safety Code 6, then essentially there are no science-based health concerns associated with the equipment. Questioning the validity of Safety Code 6, which would include expressing health concerns, is deemed ”not relevant” for discussion (CPC-2-0-23, Section 4.2). This, despite the fact that there are literally hundreds of high-quality peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate the harm of chronic radiofrequency radiation (RFR) exposure at levels below Health Canada’s Safety Code 6. Yet Health Canada chose to essentially ignore these studies when Safety Code 6 was revised in 2015.
Through two Access to Information & Privacy Requests (files A-2022-001328/MC and A-2023-000889/JS3) and a Complaint to the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada (OIC file no. 5823-00370), the Vancouver Island Safe Tech Alliance (VISTA) has confirmed that the only studies that Health Canada relied on to establish Safety Code 6 were 10 studies of which the longest exposures were for 30 minutes. Some studies were for a few seconds or minutes. None of the studies looked at biological harms, only the outdated measurement of tissue heating. No long-term studies on exposures to emissions from 5G technologies were provided.
Nevertheless, Health Canada continues to claim that Safety Code 6, in the frequency range from 3 kHz to 300 GHz, “[provides] protection for people of all ages and sizes, from exposure to all forms of radiofrequency EMF on a continuous (24 hours a day/7 days a week) basis.”
Health Canada is surely aware of the International 5G Appeal for safer radiofrequency standards: http://www.5gappeal.eu Many of the 430 scientists and medical doctors who have signed this appeal have published hundreds of high quality original peer-reviewed research studies in scientific and medical journals. The fact that Health Canada is choosing to ignore this evidence of harm speaks volumes. And of course, this evidence of harm is not being shared with the public, which is a violation of the ethical obligation of informed consent. 5G is an experiment and we are the test subjects. And when we raise concerns, all we are met with is Health Canada’s assurances of safety and telecom’s assurances that they will comply with Safety Code 6. As environmental toxicologist Dr. Magda Havas has asked, “Whose health is Health Canada protecting?”
When the public does have a chance to come together to ask questions and hear each other’s views, we are forced to follow SitePath President Brian Gregg’s tightly prescribed format for a “public meeting”. His style of “public consultation” is to have dispersed individual conversations happening around the room but definitely not allow a public forum where community members can speak and be publicly heard. On November 9, 2022 at the public meeting about the proposed Dove Creek tower, community members tried to facilitate a public meeting where we could present our views, ask questions and educate each other in a very public way about wireless radiation (because the government certainly isn’t providing this education!). Brian Gregg practically had a melt down and started to pack up to leave until Area Director Grieve stepped in and facilitated the evening. Our questions and concerns about health and liability insurance were definitely unwelcomed and unanswered. These are questions that telecom and SitePath Consulting do not want to discuss nor are they qualified to answer.
The next evening, at the November 10 meeting for the proposed Ellenor Road tower, our attempt to have a similar public forum was shut down right at the start and we were made to follow Brian Gregg’s format –and told by one of the Area Director present that we had to follow Gregg’s format because he was footing the bill. But why is the CVRD not hosting these public meetings and ensuring that the format be a true public forum where members of the public can freely hear from each other about something that would be a permanent installment in our community?
And because of the apparently unacceptable display of public participation and voicing of concerns at the Dove Creek meeting, this is now being used as an excuse to bypass the CVRD’s own Telecommunication Antenna System Application and Consultation Process Policy (P89), which states in Section 5 – Public Consultation Requirements, that “The public information meeting: a. Should be hosted in-person. The meeting may be hosted virtually during times at which Public Health Orders affect in-person events, but in-person events are still encouraged when strategies to mitigate public health risks can be implemented”. However, without any Public Health Order preventing a face-to-face public consultation meeting, Brian Gregg, with the approval of you Area Directors, did not hold an in-person meeting for a recently proposed tower in Merville/William’s Beach, but instead had a “virtual” public meeting on Oct 5, 2023. Brian Gregg in an email to me wrote that “We wanted to ensure a process that is safe and respectful for all people to share their views.”
However, we have heard of at least two online meetings with Brian Gregg, one in Sorrento and another in French Creek, where community members were muted by Brian when they said things he did not want to hear. An email sent out by the Sorrento & Area Residents Association (S.A.R.A) on February 27, 2023 about Sorrento’s February 23 virtual “consultation” hosted by SitePath Consulting states that
“if Brian Gregg or the moderator did not like any questions, they would simply mute the person asking questions and talk over them for minutes at a time. Any communications sent through the digital platform by way of typed messages were also ignored, and since the host had turned off the camera function for the hall participants, they could not see the hall full of people. We did manage to project the image of Brian Gregg and his moderator onto the large screen, and his comments were played over the sound system for all to hear. A number of questions were asked to Brian Gregg by participants, but none were answered satisfactorily, or they were ignored, or Brian Gregg stated that it was impossible for him to answer as it would lead into legal areas of risk for Telus.”
Some members of the community do not want to participate in, or lend credibility to, virtual meetings like this because they believe that it makes a mockery of “public consultation”.
Another indicator that the process of approving cell towers is swayed towards telecom and not the public—and swayed towards industry profit and not health—is the outcome of the Ellenor Road tower. On March 6, 2023, VISTA members and supporters gave a 30 min presentation where we highlighted research demonstrating the harms of wireless radiation, even at levels below Health Canada’s Safety Code 6 and where we informed you that Canada has no established safety limits for RFR exposure for pollinators and other wildlife. Among the presenters were a Certified EMF Radiation Consultant, an Environmental Scientist with extensive background in EMF impacts on non-human organisms, and a medical doctor. In addition to the 30 minute presentation, we provided you with a follow up report with links to hundreds of high-quality peer reviewed studies. Brian Gregg, on the other hand, provided no proof of safety (and he is not required to). All he needs to say is that the towers will comply with Safety Code 6—and somehow that cancels out all the research we shared?? Brian Gregg has gone on to move the tower to another spot on the same property and is continuing his application process. In our view, this application to erect a cell tower in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) should have been tossed out and never allowed to proceed as no proof of safety has been provided for non-human exposure to RFR. And we now know from our ATIPS that Health Canada has no credible proof that long-term exposure to wireless radiation—below Safety Code 6 limits or above—is safe for humans, either!
If one actually cares about the science and is not just playing politics, then health is absolutely a relevant concern based on hundreds of studies showing evidence of harm from exposure to RFR at levels below Safety Code 6 limits. The government seems to be more interested in profit than in health. We have learned that ISED has just auctioned off another section of the radiofrequency spectrum—that belongs to all of us!—resulting in 4099 licenses sold for $2,157,696,532.
As Sharon Noble from Citizens for Safer Tech writes, “This is a prime example of a conflict of interest and explains why the wireless industry is expanding virtually like a cancer. Why would ISED or Health Canada acknowledge the harm being done to all living things when doing so would affect their bottom line? There is a rush for the telecoms to get wireless 5G to the rural communities before fiber optic cable reaches every home.”
Please heed the warning of hundreds of independent scientists and researchers. Please listen to constituents’ health concerns and stop facilitating the erection of cell towers in our communities.
Sincerely,
Suzanne Schiller
******
From: Edwin Grieve <edwingrieve@shaw.ca>
Date: Monday, December 4th, 2023 at 6:19 AM
Subject: Re: Public Consultation Process Stacked Against the Public
To: sschiller
Cc: Rich Hardy (Area B) <RichHardyAreaB@gmail.com>, Dan Arbour <reachme@danielarbour.ca>
Suzanne;
Thank you for your thoughtful letter.
As you are aware the regulations regarding the ISED and Health Canada’s safety code 6 are better addressed through the Federal Government.
As Local Government is not the “order of government” responsible I would suggest you contact your Member of Parliament (either MP Blakey or MP Johns)
Thank You again for your thoughts on the matter
Edwin Grieve
Sharon Noble, Director, Citizens for Safer Tech
“All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Sent from my wired laptop with no wireless components. Practice Safe Tech.