What Every Woman Needs to Know
Germany, India, Israel, Belgium, and the U.K.
all discourage children’s use of mobile phones,
and France has recently banned the marketing
of cell phones to children.
Should pregnant women
ditch their phones?
So what should you do if you’re pregnant? Get
rid of your cell?
For most of us, that’s not an option. Or at
least, not an option we want to hear. We need
our phones for work… and… O.K., let’s face
it; we’re addicted to the convenience.
Fortunately, there are ways to minimize the
risk of exposure from our favorite devices. If
you absolutely can’t do without your phone,
Dr. Devra Davis, founder and president of
the nonprofit Environmental Health Trust,
ehtrust.org, recommends the following precautions:
• Keep your cell phone as far from your
body as possible during use. Put it on
speaker phone, or use a wired headset.
Texting is also fine!
• Avoid carrying your phone on your body.
If you can’t avoid it, then make sure the
back of the phone is facing away from you.
Better yet, turn it off or put it on airplane
mode. And don’t carry the phone in your
bra – there have been reported cases of
cell-phone induced breast cancer in women who do.
• Limit the length of your cell calls. Reserve
your phone for quick communications,
and switch to a landline for longer calls.
• When possible, text instead of calling.
• If you have to hold the phone to your head,
switch sides frequently.
• Avoid using your phone in a moving vehicle, or where the signal is weak, since
it works harder and emits more EMF’s in
these situations.
• Choose a “safer” phone. The Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) is a measure of the
amount of energy absorbed by the body
when using a particular phone. A lower
SAR indicates less radiation. For more
information, visit the Federal Communications Commission’s SAR page.
• If you are pregnant, invest in a radiation
barrier. In south Asia when a woman is
pregnant she is immediately given a pregnancy smock. In the U.S., you can purchase one for yourself. One popular brand
is Belly Armor, bellyarmor.com.
The Environmental Health Trust offers free
information and printable posters, cards and
infographics you can use to help spread the
word about cell phone safety to schools, doctors, and friends. You can find them at www.
ehtrust.org/resources/.
What about ultrasound?
Ultrasound imaging has become a routine
and, for many expectant moms, enjoyable part
of pregnancy. Doctors use it to make sure the
pregnancy is progressing normally, and moms
look forward to the first fuzzy pictures of their
babies with the same excited anticipation as
they do the first little kicks. But ultrasound is
a type of EMF, just like cell phone radiation. Is
it really as safe as we think?
Dr. Davis recommends moderation. “It’s really
important that the person doing the ultrasound be a specialist in pregnancy, because
you want to minimize radiation,” she says. “In
Finland, they do just one in the 11th or 12
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