Page 16 - The Wave Holistic and Metaphysical Journal March/April 2016

fields. Those workers exposed to average fields of 13 V/m or more for 25 years or longer had seven times the expected rate of brain tumors. Goldberg also saw an unexpected association with colon cancer.
The link between AD and EMFs in the workplace was also raised in a broad study of occupational mortality in 27 states over a ten-year period conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in Cincinnati and at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
In the September 1996 American Journal of Public Health, they reported higher death rates from AD and motor neuron diseases “among occupations that could have exposure
to EMFs,” such as radio and TV station employees, power plant workers, electricians and telephone installers
LEUKEMIA
Two studies in 1997 from the U.K. and Australia show elevated rates of leukemia near television and FM radio broadcast towers. The results support past studies pointing to leukemia risks due to exposure to radio frequency and microwave (RF/MW) radiation from communications and radar transmitters.
Rates of adult leukemia were nearly twice those expected within two kilometers of a TV and FM tower operated
by the British Broadcasting Corp. in Sutton Coldfield
near Birmingham, England. Writing in the January 1997 American Journal of Epidemiology (AJE), Dr. Helen Dolk and colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked at leukemia rates in concentric circles around the Sutton Coldfield tower. Within a half kilometer, there was nine times the expected number of cases. In the area within the next half kilometer, the rate was double that expected. At greater distances from the tower, the leukemia rate declined steadily, until it reached background levels some eight kilometers away.
An Australian study published in the Medical Journal
of Australia indicates a greater risk of leukemia among children living near four TV stations located on three broadcasting towers in Sydney. Dr. Bruce Hocking, an occupational medicine consultant based in Melbourne and the former chief medical officer at Australia Telecom (now called Telstra) reported that children living within four kilometers of the towers had a 50% greater incidence of leukemia and more than twice the expected mortality rate due to leukemia. For children and adults combined, there was a 25% increased incidence of leukemia.
INFORMATION SECURITY
Many schools throughout the US now require the use of Google Classroom, Gmail, and similar applications for posting assignments and logging into Chromebooks, and for class registration. Many of these school electronic systems and other related mobile applications store all student and family records.
Every time a student uses this technology, the software provider (vendor) gains access to the student’s data: who the student is, log-in information (passwords), the exact geo-location of the student, what school and computer they are logged from, how quickly they perform a task, what websites they visit. If students post photos on Google for
a class project, Google can perform facial recognition and later identify the student in photos posted by others. If a program asks students to vocalize words, the software can record and identify their voices in the future
Such information reveals a lot about a child and his/her family: interests, income, demographics, politics, ethnicity, racial identity, health status, disabilities etc.
Many commercial online service providers, however, rely on collecting and selling the users’ data to third parties as a major source of revenue. These third parties can use this personal information for targeted advertising towards the student, and for other non-educational purposes. For instance, families in need could be targeted with ads for payday loans with very high rates.
Many state and local student privacy laws prohibit vendors from selling student data. However, many contracts with Google and Pearson (which administers the PARCC test) predate these laws. Google and Pearson can collect, study and sell your children’s data without your knowledge and consent. The data could then be used for building student psychological profiles or for tailor-made behavioral advertising.
The only thing that stands between a vendor and your child’s personal data is the voluntary commitment of the vendor not to abuse the data. These third party private corporations have a trove of extremely sensitive information about each and every student and family who use these information gathering programs: grades, health records and IEP to disabilities, income level, addresses, Social Security Numbers.
It should be of great concern to parents that a private, for-profit firm has access to all their family and child’s information. In the privacy policies of many of these for- profit vendors of software that students are required to use in school, they openly state that they track, collect and sell the user data. Parents have no say and no way of knowing how this data is used, by whom and for what purposes. Yet, in most schools, this technology is not optional and parents have no way of protecting their data from being disclosed, sold, used and abused.
WHAT CAN PARENTS DO?
1.Petition your school and local school board to severely limit the information about students that is made available to private software companies that provide software to the schools.
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