Your podcast discovery platform
Curious minds select the most fascinating podcasts from around the world. Discover hand-piqd audio recommendations on your favorite topics.
piqer for: Global finds Health and Sanity Doing Good
Bangalore-based Rashmi Vasudeva's journalism has appeared in many Indian and international publications over the past decade. A features writer with over nine years of experience heading a health and fitness supplement in a mainstream Indian newspaper, her niche areas include health, wellness, fitness, food, nutrition and Indian classical Arts.
Her articles have appeared in various publications including Mint-Wall Street Journal, The Hindu, Deccan Herald (mainstream South Indian newspaper), Smart Life (Health magazine from the Malayala Manorama Group of publications), YourStory (India's media technology platform for entrepreneurs), Avantika (a noir arts and theatre magazine), ZDF (a German public broadcasting company) and others.
In 2006, she was awarded the British Print-Chevening scholarship to pursue a short-term course in new-age journalism at the University of Westminster, U.K. With a double Masters in Globalisation and Media Studies from Aarhus Universitet (Denmark), University of Amsterdam and Swansea University in Wales, U.K., she has also dabbled in academics, travel writing and socio-cultural studies. Mother to a frisky toddler, she hums 'wheels on the bus' while working and keeps a beady eye on the aforementioned toddler's antics.
Cancer Risks Of Cellphone Use: How Big Wireless Is Fooling The World
Big Wireless is conning us all, just like big oil and big tobacco. And you and I may end up with more carcinogens than we like in our bodies. Sounds sensational? Indeed, but as this deep investigation reveals, the facts may be more Hollywood than Hollywood itself.
Investigators Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie showcase how large wireless companies have systematically manipulated the public understanding of the debate around cellphone safety and its possible health risks, including the increase in the likelihood of various cancers in users. In fact, in 2011, the WHO had classified cellphone radiation as a ‘possible carcinogen.’
At the very outset, they make it clear that they are not claiming conclusively that cellphone radiation causes cancer; what they are saying is wireless companies are creating an atmosphere of scientific uncertainty about the health risks, to blunt any cause for concern and keep the debate going. This, as their investigation reveals, is being done by industry-funded studies, bought scientists and clever manipulation of media coverage and policy makers’ opinions. The article reveals the long history of how the wireless industry’s scientists privately warned about the risks, but publicly, the information was deliberately cloaked in ambiguity.
As Hertsgaard says in the podcast, the purpose is not to win the scientific argument but to keep the debate going, thus buying time and keeping the “products alive for as long as possible.”
This is frightening, especially because of its “eerie parallels” with the most notorious cases of corporate deception – the tobacco and fossil fuel industries’ campaigns covering the dangers of smoking and climate change. One professor talks about how funding magically dries up when the results show that cellphone radiation has biological effects.
With the imminent roll-out of 5G without any safety testing whatsoever, the investigators are imploring the world to think about the “smog of radiation it will bathe everyone in”.
