REHAAN DASTUR 46, is an engineer and an industrialist. he
owns and runs a profitable Delhi-based boiler manufacturing
company called Universal Boilers. So, it is safe to say he
is a man of science and not prone to paranoia. Dastur was
one of the first users of the cell phone in India. he bought
his phone from airtel in October 1997, 15 days before it was
commercially released. Cell phone calls cost rs 18 a minute
then. Dastur spoke on his phone for hours on end at times.
He continued to use the phone even though it had fallen and
had developed a crack, because cell phones then were
expensive and the crack didn’t affect his phone’s
efficiency.
Three years after doing this, in 2000, Dastur suffered a
stroke that paralysed his body and distorted and froze his
face. The doctor treating him at Delhi’s Apollo hospital
told him he had Bell’s palsy, caused by Electromagnetic
Radiation (EMR) emitted from the antennae in his cell phone.
The emr travelled through the crack in the phone, into
Dastur’s ears, nerves and brain.
Four-fiths of delhi lives in unsafe zones. The October
Commonwealth Games could be most radiation-filled ever
After a month-and-a-half of treatment at the hospital and
home, he returned to 95 percent of his former self.
Ninety-five percent, because he is in danger of reverting to
a paralytic state if he goes near a cell phone tower, or
uses a cell phone for too long. “My body is the best device
for measuring emr,” he says. “If you take me blindfold
through the city, I can point out where the cell towers are
by the jangling I feel in my nerves as we pass them by.”
There is a cell phone tower on the roof of Dastur’s office
in nehru Place, south Delhi, and another one facing his
cabin windows from the other side of the road. so Dastur has
converted his cabin into a war bunker. The ceiling and the
wall with the windows have been sealed with sheets of lead.
There are cell phone towers near his home as well. So Dastur
has sealed his home too with lead sheets. “Lead is toxic,”
he says. “Continuous exposure to it might damage the brain.”
But, the EMR from the cell phone towers was too big a risk
for Dastur’s paralysis and besides, even his family was
dealing with increasing headaches, muscle twitching,
involuntary limb movement, sleeplessness and other nervous
system disorders. Dastur wrote often, asking the authorities
to remove the towers. They did not. so he had no choice.
Lead sheets were a lesser evil. “We are stuck between the
devil and the deep sea.”
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s home is a ‘borderline’ zone.
The headquarters of the Congress is highly unsafe
“People do not understand,” he says. “Because radiation,
unlike air, water and sound pollution, cannot be seen or
felt. most Indians have only started using cell phones over
the past 10 years.” Dastur says he notices that his
employees, like his family members, are already complaining
of increasing headaches and extreme fatigue. “In five years,
emr will be the number one killer after heart attacks.”
There is no other way to say this. Radiation levels of the
non-nuclear kind in Delhi may have reached way beyond what
humans can live with. Almost four-fifths of the metropolis
has people living in the midst of radiation levels ranging
from “borderline” to “unsafe” and “extreme anomaly”, which
are highly unsafe. Only about a fifth of Delhi lives and
works in the safe zone and that is almost entirely where the
vvips reside. The October Commonwealth Games, over 12 days,
could be the most radiation-filled sports event ever.
These are the findings of a TEHELKA survey of radiation
levels in 100 spots across Delhi in the first half of May
2010. The survey is of EMR, the dominant form of radiation
in human habitation. This is the first time such an
extensive survey of 100 spots has been done for radiation
anywhere in india, and it has been done in public interest
exclusively for TEHELKA
Bulgaria, Sofia
Barbados, Bridgetown
Bolivia, Sucre
Turkey, Ankara
Tunisia, Tunis
Iceland, Reykjavik
Syria, Damascus
Benin, Porto-Novo
Germany, Berlin
Guatemala, Guatemala City
Try any
Q-Link or
cell chip
for 3 months, absolutely
RISK-FREE If you do not feel Q-Link improves your
focus, energy, or well-being, simply return it for a full
refund.
Airtube headsets have
30 a day refund.