WINTER SALE
TRY EMF PAPERS
for 3 months
@ ONLY $100/month
New Subscribers Only
January 29, 2006
Is There a Ten-Year Latency for
Cell Phone Tumor Development?
Download a pdf of this
commentaryNovember 23, 2005
A Reproducible EMF Effect at 12 mG
Download a pdf of this
commentaryOctober 2, 2005
October 1, 2005
WHO and Electric Utilities: A Partnership on EMFs
As members of the WHO Task Group make their way to Geneva for next week’s
meeting to complete its Environmental Health Criteria (EHC) document on
power-frequency EMFs, new information has emerged showing that the
electric utility industry has played a major role at every stage of
developing the review document.
Microwave News has learned that Mike Repacholi, the head of
the WHO EMF project, recruited utility representatives to help write
the original draft of the document and later asked them to review the
completed draft. Then, as we reported last week, Repacholi invited
eight utility representatives to attend next week’s task group meeting
—the only observers who were invited (see
September 22
entry below). The task group and the industry observers will assemble
at a WHO conference room in Geneva on Monday, October 3 to recommend
exposure limits.
Documents show that Leeka Kheifets played a central role in drafting
the EHC document. Kheifets has had a long relationship with EPRI, the
research arm of the electric utility industry. She worked for EPRI
before becoming Repacholi’s assistant in Geneva. Now, back in
California, Kheifets recently disclosed to the British Medical Journal
that she “works with the Electric Power Research Institute... and
consults with utilities.” Among those who collaborated with Kheifets on
the EHC document include: Gabor Mezei, also of EPRI, Jack Sahl of
Southern California Edison, the U.S. utility and John Swanson of
National Grid, the U.K. utility.
Repacholi sent a draft of the EHC out for review in early July. Among those asked for comments were:
• William Bailey, Exponent Inc., U.S.
• Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC)
• Kent Jaffa, Pacificorp, U.S.
• Michel Plante, Hydro-Quebec, Canada
• Utility Health Sciences Group (USHG), U.S.
To be sure, a number of independent researchers were also participated,
but it is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a WHO health
document to be reviewed by so many with such strong ties to the
affected industry.
Not surprisingly, most of the industry comments seek to downplay potential health risks.
Here for example is an excerpt from those filed by Plante on the epidemiology chapter:
“The whole section on cancer seems more like a desperate attempt to
maintain some positive statistical association from epidemiological
studies alive than a factual and honest presentation of arguments both,
for and against, carcinogenicity.”
Plante, who will sit in on the weeklong deliberations at Repacholi’s
invitation, has been assigned to the epidemiology working group, where
he will no doubt continue to maintain that the link between EMFs and
childhood leukemia is inconsequential.
Plante has played a villainous role in the EMF controversy. A decade
ago, he was involved in stopping work on an epidemiological study on
possible EMF cancer risks to electric utility workers. The
Canadian-French study was the first —and the last— to investigate
whether exposure to high-frequency transients could lead the cancer.
The multi-million dollar study, published in the November 1, 1994 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology
was considered, at the time, a landmark event. The research team led by
Ben Armstrong and Gilles Thériault of McGill University found strong
cancer risks as well as dose-response. Members of the EMF community
were excited by the results and looked forward to follow-up efforts.
But, Plante worked with others at Hydro-Quebec to shut down the McGill
project by forcing Thériault to return the data he and the others had
painstakingly collected (see MWN, N/D94). Thériault was never allowed near it again.
Jack Sahl, another invited observer who will also sit in on the
epidemiological working group, was a leading member of the UHSG for
much of the 1990s. The USHG was the brainchild of Tom Watson, now of
Watson & Renner, a law firm based in Washington. In the 1990s, all
the major electric utilities in the U.S. —by one count, 76
participated— were members of the USHG. Watson was originally invited
to attend next week’s meeting, but his invitation was later withdrawn.
Still obscure is why Repacholi changed his mind and disinvited Watson.
It is not known who wrote the comments submitted by the USHG, but
it is possible that every electric utility that is a member of the USHG
was given the chance to review the WHO document and funnel its comments
back to the WHO.
What is clear is that the USHG attempted to weaken the EHC document.
For instance, while the draft states that, “evidence is increasing that
magnetic fields could interact with DNA-damaging agents, at least in
some cellular models,” the USHG suggested that for the “sake of clarity
and balance... it would be useful to include... ‘Any such effects on
DNA cannot, however, be considered as established’.”
USHG also proposed the following change in the chapter on protective
measures: “It should also be pointed out that ‘redirecting facilities
or redesigning electrical systems may be so expensive as to be
inconsistent with the low-cost and no-cost steps typically viewed as
prudent avoidance’.”
Nor was the USHG bashful about promoting the utility position, arguing:
“It would be useful for the summary to include a clear statement that
the scientific research does not establish ELF EMF as a cause or
contributing factor in any disease or adverse health effect, including
cancer.”
Very useful to industry, indeed.
Thanks
to Repacholi, the electric utility industry has been and continues to
be a full partner in the writing of the EMF document —a document which
will be the WHO’s official position on EMFs for years to come. The most
disconcerting part of all is that no one at the WHO thinks he is doing
anything wrong.
September 29, 2005
RF-Induced DNA Breaks Reported in China
Research scientists in China have found that relatively low-level RF radiation
can lead to DNA breaks, according to a briefing paper prepared for the
cell phone industry obtained by Microwave News.
At the 4th International Seminar on EMFs and Biological Effects,
held in Kunming China, September 12-16, Zhengping Xu of the Zhejiang
University School of Medicine reported that cells exposed to a pulsed
1800 MHz RF radiation at an SAR of 3 W/Kg for 24 hours showed a
statistically significant increase in DNA damage. The Mobile Manufacturers Forum (MMF), an industry lobbying group
based in Brussels, circulated the news in a September 22 Research Briefing.
Xu’s Bioelectromagnetics Laboratory now joins a growing number of other
labs that have found RF-induced DNA breaks. The effect was first
reported more than a decade ago by Henry Lai and N.P. Singh of the
University of Washington, Seattle (see MWN,
N/D94). From the outset, Lai and Singh’s work has been repeatedly
assailed by the cell phone industry and their consultants —most
recently by Sheila Johnston and Vijayalaxmi, two members of the board
of directors of the Bioelectromagnetics Society (see March 29 entry below.) They claimed to have refuted the Lai-Singh findings.
Last year, the European Union-sponsored REFLEX Project announced that 1800 MHz radiation could lead to DNA breaks. Those results were published this summer in Mutation Research.
The MMF also noted that C.K. Chou of Motorola (a member of the MMF)
complained at the meeting that it is difficult to publish “negative”
results in China. (WHO’s Mike Repacholi made a similar charge at the
last Chinese EMF seminar held in Guilin in 2003, according to the MMF.)
Xu disputed this, the MMF added.
September 22, 2005
WHO Welcomes Electric Utility Industry To Key EMF Meeting, Bars the Press<
The week of October 3 in Geneva, the World Health Organization (WHO) will
set its recommendations for public exposures to power-frequency
electromagnetic fields (EMFs).
A 20-member task group from 17 countries, assembled by Michael
Repacholi, the head of the WHO EMF project, will finalize an
Environmental Health Criteria (EHC) document, which is designed to
guide the development of standards
for extremely low frequency (ELF) EMFs all over the world. It will
likely represent WHO’s official position on EMF health risks for years
to come.
Last month, Repacholi gave eight observers the green light to attend the meeting —all eight either work for electric utilities or have direct and strong ties to the industry. Other than WHO staff, these are the only people on the Repacholi’s list of approved observers:
Kazu Chikamoto, Japan NUS Co., Tokyo
Rob Kavet, EPRI, Palo Alto. CA, U.S.
Michel Plante, Hydro-Quebec, Montreal, Canada
Jack Sahl, Southern California Edison, Upland, CA, U.S.
Martine Souques, Electricity de France-Gaz de France, Paris
Hamilton Moss de Souza, CEPEL, Brazilian Electrical Energy Research Center, Rio de Janeiro
John Swanson, National Grid, London, U.K.
Tom Watson, Watson & Renner, Washington DC, U.S.
Although
Watson is on the list, he will not be at the meeting. “I tried to
become an observer, but I did not succeed,” he said in a recent
interview. It is not clear why Repacholi changed his mind and
disinvited Watson.
Chris Portier of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) will chair the task group.
Very few other members of the EMF community are aware of the meeting. A
spot check, an admittedly unscientific survey, found that staff members
at U.S. health agencies knew nothing about it. The single exception
said that he had heard about it from colleagues in the electric utility
industry.
When asked whether Microwave News
could sit in as an observer, Repacholi dismissed the idea. “The press
is not permitted to attend EHC Task Group meetings,” he told us.
Did Repacholi invite the industry representatives? If not, how and when
did they first learn about the meeting and request observer status?
Have any of the companies or associations, other than EPRI, contributed
to the WHO EMF project or its activities? EPRI cosponsored a WHO
workshop on EMF risks to children held last year in Istanbul (see August 8
entry below), but it is not known whether EPRI’s Kavet has made other
contributions to the WHO. All these questions need answering.
While Repacholi has long said that the EHC would be revised
around this time, the specific schedule has not been previously
publicly disclosed. For instance, the October 3-7 task group meeting is
not in the listing of meetings on the WHO Web site nor is it included in the Bioelectromagnetics Society Newsletter conference calendar.
The WHO released its first EHC for ELF EMFs
in 1984. Repacholi chaired the task group that wrote that report. Back
then, 20 years ago, the panel recommended that: “efforts be made to
limit exposure, particularly for members of the general population, to
levels as low as can be reasonably achieved” (a policy known as ALARA).
Yet for the last ten years while he has been at the helm of the WHO EMF
project and while the health risks posed by power-frequency fields have
become much less uncertain, Repacholi has consistently refused to
endorse ALARA for ELF EMFs.
In addition to NIEHS’ Portier, the members of the EHC task group are:
Houssain Abouzaid, WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, Cairo, Egypt
Anders Ahlbom, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
Larry Anderson, Battelle Pacific Northwest Labs, Richland, WA, U.S.
Christoffer Johansen, Danish Cancer Society, Copenhagen
Jukka Juutilainen, University of Kuopio, Finland
Sheila Kandel, Soreq, Yavne, Israel
Leeka Kheifets, University of California, Los Angeles and EPRI, Palo Alto, CA, U.S.
Isabelle Lagroye, University of Bordeaux, France
Rüdiger Matthes, Federal Office of Radiation Protection, Oberschleissheim, Germany
Alastair McKinlay, Health Protection Agency (HPA), Didcot, U.K.
Jim Metcalfe, University of Cambridge, U.K.
Meike Mevissen, University of Berne, Switzerland
Junji Miyakoshi, Hirosaki University Faculty of Medicine, Japan
Eric van Rongen, Health Council of the Netherlands, The Hague
Nina Rubtsova, RAM Institute of Occupational Health, Moscow, Russia
Paolo Vecchia, National Institute of Health, Rome, Italy
Barney de Villiers, University of Stellenbosch, Cape Town, South Africa
Andrew Wood, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Australia
Zhengping Xu, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China
Those attending from WHO include Elisabeth Cardis (IARC); Chiyoji Ohkubo, Rick Saunders (on leave from the U.K. HPA) and Emilie van Deventer.
As we post this on the Web, we have learned that Michinori Kabuto of Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies will also be an observer at the meeting.
Five years ago, the Committee of Experts on Tobacco Industry Documents
issued a 260-page report documenting the tobacco industry’s strategies to undermine the work of the WHO. In response, the WHO issued 15 pages of recommendations on how to make sure its work is never subverted again.
Nevertheless, the WHO appears to be unable to apply the hard lessons it
learned from tobacco to other potentially harmful agents. Instead, the
WHO now simply invites the industry to be part of the process.
August 13, 2005
Keep That Laptop Off Your Lap
“demonstrate that domestic magnetic fields are extremely complex and cannot simply be characterized by traditional measurements such as time-weighted average or peak exposure levels.”
August 9, 2005... UCLA School of Public Health, Leeka Khefiets received $50,000 from EPRI for her work on the
WHO workshop on EMF risks
to children. UCLA calls it a “ joint WHO/EPRI” workshop.
That’s a lot money for a review paper
(250 hours @$200/hour). Or is this another way for Mike Repacholi’s EMF
project to skirt WHO rules prohibiting direct industry funding?
August 8, 2005
Money Talks and the WHO Follows
EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the electric
utility industry, has lots of money and is not shy about using it to
push its agenda.
Today, EPRI is the only source of research
funds on power line EMFs in the U.S. In recent times, practically all
of EPRI’s money has been devoted to pushing the idea, championed by
staffer Rob Kavet, that contact currents —not EMFs— are responsible for
the oft-observed increase in childhood leukemia. Kavet may be on to
something, but at the moment only Kavet himself and his contractors
embrace this hypothesis.
Actually, there is another: The WHO EMF Project in Geneva.
EPRI was one of the sponsors of WHO’s workshop on EMF risks to children, held in Istanbul last summer.
EPRI also paid Leeka Kheifets to prepare a review
of the epidemiologic evidence for the EMF-childhood leukemia link. She
presented a draft at the meeting; the final paper, “The Sensitivity of
Children to Electromagnetic Fields,” appears in the August issue of the
journal Pediatrics, which is posted on the Internet. (You can download a complete copy of the
Pediatrics paper for free.)
Most of you will remember that Kheifets was a coconspirator, with Mike
Repacholi, in the infamous flip-flop over applying the precautionary
principle to EMFs (see MWN,
M/A03 and M/J03). After announcing a decision to adopt precautionary
policies, they backed off without any explanation for the reversal.
Before joining Repacholi in Geneva, Kheifets worked at EPRI in
California for many years, where she was Kavet’s boss. She now has a
position at the University of California, Los Angeles. She continues to
do a lot of work for Repacholi.
Kavet’s non-EMF theory gets top billing in both Kheifets’s review paper, and the workshop report.
Kheifets and Repacholi, as they have done in the past, cast the
EMF-childhood leukemia association as still highly uncertain due to the
lack of a mechanism. They write:
“At present there is no experimental evidence that supports the view
that [the EMF-childhood leukemia] relationship is causal.”
What is left out of both papers is the fact that at least six different
labs have shown that power-frequency EMFs can break DNA. It’s true, we
don’t know how EMFs can do this, but it has been observed
experimentally over and over again.
Kheifets and Repacholi must be aware of the DNA work.
If EMFs can break DNA, EMFs can certainly play a major role in the
etiology of childhood leukemia. But this is an inconvenient fact for
both EPRI’s Rob Kavet and WHO’s Mike Repacholi. They have common
interests: In addition to both supporting Kheifets, neither wants to
endorse precautionary policies to protect children from EMFs.
Here’s the payoff —from the conclusion of the Pediatrics paper (with some emphasis added):
For ELF (power-frequency) fields, there is some evidence that exposure to environmental magnetic fields that are relatively high but well below guidance levels is associated with an increase in the risk of childhood leukemia, a very rare disease (even if the risk is doubled, it remains small at 5-8 per 100,000 children per year). Although the evidence is regarded as insufficient to justify more restrictive limits on exposure,
the possibility that exposure to ELF magnetic fields increases risk
cannot be discounted. For the physician faced with questions from, for
example, a couple planning a family and concerned about this issue, or
from someone pregnant and occupationally exposed to relatively high ELF
magnetic fields, standardized advice is not possible.
Instead, physicians could inform their patients of possible risk and
advise them to weigh all the advantages and disadvantages of the
options available to them (of which EMF reduction is but one consideration).
Some simple options include reducing exposure by minimizing the use of
certain electrical appliances or changing work practices to increase
distance from the source of exposure. People living near
overhead power lines should be advised that such proximity is just an
indicator of exposure and that homes far away from power lines can have
similar or higher fields.
This may read like it was written at EPRI, but the paper is signed by
Kheifets, Repacholi, together with Rick Saunders (on leave from the
U.K. Health Protection Agency) and Emilie van Deventer, all affiliated
with the EMF project at the World Health Organization.
How much money does EPRI give the EMF project every year? How much
support did EPRI provide for the Istanbul workshop? And how much did
Kavet pay his old boss Kheifets for the literature review? We don’t
know because Repacholi continues to refuse to open up his books.
But whatever the cost to EPRI, you can be sure that Kavet’s managers back in Palo Alto, California, are pleased.
One final footnote: Kheifets was recently hired to serve as a
consultant to the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) to help
develop state EMF policies. She will receive approximately $58,000,
plus expenses. In her application, she told the presiding
administrative law judge that, “I believe that rigorous application of
Precautionary Framework to EMF is appropriate.”
Hmmmm....We wonder how we should interpret the word “rigorous.”
Actually, it doesn’t matter. It’s doubletalk. The capital “P” and “F”
indicate that she is referring to Repacholi’s framework and we know
that neither of them has any interest in applying precautionary EMF
policies (see the July 5 entry, below).
When Kheifets applied for the CPUC job, she requested that her personal
financial information be kept confidential because its release “would
unnecessarily intrude on [her] privacy.” Maybe so, but it would reveal
how much EPRI and Repacholi are paying her, while she gives advice —on
behalf of the rate-paying public— to California regulators.
Most surprising of all is that, in his ruling
granting her request, the judge noted that not one of the many EMF
activist groups in the state of California challenged Kheifets’s
application.
August 5, 2005
August 3, 2005
“WHO has already said on a number of occasions that children’s exposure should be reduced. However the best way to achieve this is to ask them to use hands-free-kits.”
When asked by a Canadian who is electrosensitive for a response to our July 5 commentary, “Time To Stop the WHO Charade,” here’s part of what Repacholi replied:
“As you know WHO has built the highest possible reputation in public health
matters among the public and governments world wide and the EMF Project
will not be deviating from the sound science
course that sustains this high esteem, no matter what the pressures
from self interest groups or individuals. Louis appeals to people who
do not believe in the scientific method for resolving issues. He, like
others who are unable to argue a scientific case always claim WHO
decisions are industry biased—a completely untrue position.” [our
emphasis]
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, our criticism of WHO’s EMF
project has nothing to do with science per se, but how Mike Repacholi
sets policies based on the science—both what the science tells us and,
just as importantly, what it doesn’t tell us.
As we noted in the commentary, many national governments have looked at
the same body of scientific data and have promoted precautionary
policies. These include China, Italy, Switzerland and Russia. In
addition, expert panels in England, France, Germany and Russia have
issued advisories discouraging children from using mobile phones.
Perhaps, it is easier for Mike to single us out than to address those
who seek to protect the public health of well over a billion people,
including the national government of Switzerland, WHO’s host country.
As we have stated time and time again, the WHO should err on the side
of public health, not the interests of the wireless industry.
We should also highlight Mike’s use of the phrase “sound science.” As
Elisa Ong and Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San
Francisco, have pointed out, these seemingly unchallengeable words were
coined by the tobacco industry and other corporate interests to
manipulate public opinion. Here is some of what they
wrote in
the American Journal of Public Health in November 2001:
“Public health professionals need to be aware that the ‘sound science’ movement
is not an indigenous effort from within the profession to improve the
quality of scientific discourse, but reflects sophisticated public
relations campaigns controlled by industry executives and lawyers whose
aim is to manipulate the standards of scientific proof to serve the
corporate interests of their clients.”
The WHO has long been targeted by the tobacco industry in its continuing
efforts to water down control initiatives. Ong and Glantz have also
documented the campaign waged against the IARC study on second-hand smoke.
A detailed report on the tobacco industry’s nefarious activities was released in 2000. At that time, Nature ran an editorial calling for the WHO and other groups to “strengthen their guard against conflicts of interest.”
As we have reported (see MWN, N/D01),
a number of the players in the mobile phone controversy have also
worked for the tobacco industry —most notably, George Carlo.
Where does Mike Repacholi fit in to all this? No one will know until he
opens up his books and tells us who is paying the bills for the EMF
charade that he runs out of the WHO offices in Geneva.
Once again, we ask: Show us the money, Mike.
BEMS Editor Addresses Change in Jerry Phillips’s Paper
Microwave News has received a letter from Ben Greenebaum, editor of Bioelectromagnetics, concerning the claim that a sentence was added to a 1997 paper by Jerry Phillips without Phillips’s knowledge. Download a copy of the letter here. Greenebaum is addressing our July 11 entry below. July 12, 2005...
In the past, Repacholi has shunned precautionary policies. He has
steadfastly argued that children have no reason to protect themselves
when using mobile phones. For instance, in its last fact sheet on
mobile phones, No.193
revised in 2000, the WHO stated: “Present scientific information does
not indicate the need for any special precautions for use of mobile
phones. If individuals are concerned, they might choose to limit their
own or their children’s RF exposure by limiting the length of calls, or
using ‘hands-free’ devices to keep mobile phones away from the head and
body.”
Repacholi’s change of outlook comes with the opening of his
workshop, being held in Ottawa, on how to deal with uncertain risks and
the publication of a major series in the Toronto Star
on the potential health risks associated with use of mobile phones by
children, at a time they are being targeted by the marketing arms of
cell phone companies.
July 11, 2005... The Toronto Star
is running a series of articles on the growing use of mobile phones
among children and whether the radiation exposure may endanger their
health. The first, Kids at Risk?, appeared on Saturday, July 9, followed by Is Her Cell Phone Safe? on Sunday and Can We Reduce Cell Phone Risk for Kids?
today. They feature many familiar members of the RF community,
including Martin Blank, Om Gandhi, Henry Lai, Mary McBride, Jerry
Phillips, Mike Repacholi, Norm Sandler and Mays Swicord —as well as
Louis Slesin of Microwave News. In addition, there are a number of related stories posted on the newspaper’s Web site. July 5, 2005
In Sunday’s piece, Star reporters Robert Cribb and
Tyler Hamilton highlight the mystery of how language that downplayed an
observed biological effect was added to a 1997
paper published by Jerry Phillips in Bioelectromagnetics.
The last sentence of the paper states that the change in gene
expression following exposure to mobile phone radiation, seen by
Phillips, “is probably of no physiologic consequence.” But Phillips
says that he did not write those words. “I have no idea how that
statement got in there,” he told the Star. Phillips notes
that Motorola's Swicord had originally asked for that language to be
included in the paper, but he had refused. (Motorola helped pay for the
study.) For his part, Swicord dismisses the allegation that he had
interfered with the paper as “pure nonsense.”
The Toronto Star’s special report on cell phones is no longer available as a free download from the newspaper’s Web site.
Time To Stop the WHO Charade
Now we know what Mike Repacholi has been doing since the infamous
Mike-and-Leeka flip-flop of 2003. Back then Repacholi and his assistant
Leeka Kheifets decided that there was no need to apply the
precautionary principle to EMFs—soon after telling everyone that the
time for action had finally arrived.
It appears that for the last two-and-a-half years, when not
shuttling from one meeting to another, Mike has been cataloguing ways
the WHO can avoid taking precautionary steps to reduce EMF exposures.
Mike’s apologia will be presented next week at a three-day workshop in Ottawa,
July 11-13. He calls it a policy framework.
We call it a sham. Mike has assembled a list of reasons for doing
nothing. Electric utilities and telecom companies could have written
the WHO plan. They may well have played a leading role.
You can see where Mike’s sympathies lie from the workshop agenda:
the GSM Association, the U.K. National Grid, the American Chemical
Council, Shell Canada, have all been invited to speak, together with an
assortment of academics, risk consultants and a few of his WHO buddies.
Mike has not even made a pretense of having a balanced program.
Absent are labor, consumer and environmental groups, save one small
Canadian organization. John Swanson of the National Grid will be in
Ottawa, but Alasdair Phillips, England’s leading and most knowledgeable
EMF activist, will not be there—no doubt because he would openly
challenge Repacholi’s pro-industry sympathies.
Power lines or mobile phones are not really even on the workshop
agenda. Only Mike is slated to address the EMF issue. Instead, the
Ottawa workshop will address many of the major social risks that are in
the news: global warming, mad cow disease, and even a flu pandemic
which could wipe out many of us long before the ice caps melt. Mike’s
message is loud and clear: Don’t worry about a tiny—and unlikely—EMF
health risk when there are more important threats on the horizon.
Back in early 2003, there were enough reasons to invoke the
precautionary principle for power-frequency EMFs and for RF from mobile
phones. Over the last year, more studies have reaffirmed the need for
caution. Three different data sets now implicate long-term use of
mobile phones with acoustic tumors: Two from the ÷reboro group and one from the Karolinska group. The University of Vienna has found support
for Henry Lai and NP Singh’s studies showing that RF radiation can
break DNA—these results from the REFLEX research program indicate that
RF radiation may well be genotoxic after all. And even more recently,
an Australian researcher reported additional evidence that RF can break up DNA.
Just last month, a British team published a
paper in the British Medical Journal
showing that children living near power lines had higher than expected
rates of leukemia. The National Grid’s Swanson is one of the authors of
that paper, but at this point he is not slated to discuss it in Ottawa.
Mike has no use for any of this new information —none of it is
cited in his framework—because he has already made up his mind that
nothing needs to be done. When the REFLEX DNA work first hit the media,
Mays Swicord and his gang at Motorola didn’t have to say a word because
their man in Geneva, Mike Repacholi of the World Health Organization,
was ready to speak for them. Mike offered immediate reassurances that
the Vienna results are spurious and may be discounted. “One has to
question what went wrong, or was different, for them to get the results
they claim,” Mike told the New Scientist.
Mike wants us to believe that his is the voice of reason, but, in fact,
it is his views that are out of step with those of many national
governments. China, Italy, Switzerland and Russia have all adopted
precautionary exposure limits —directly rejecting Mike’s pleas for
harmonizing radiation standards. Expert panels in England, France,
Germany and Russia have all issued statements discouraging children
from using mobile phones.
To his shame, Mike was the only member of Sir William Stewart’s panel
to object when, in 2000, it was the first to call for children to avoid
cell phones. English kids, like others everywhere, love their mobile
phones and use them all the time. Neither they nor most of their
parents have ever heard of Sir William’s cautionary advice. But even
though largely ignored by consumers, Sir William, with this single
recommendation, underscored our ignorance about radiation health
effects and prompted continued health research. He set a tone for
others to follow.
Sir William’s imperative is to protect public health. That is also
supposed to be Mike’s mission at the WHO. But his words and action make
it clear that his principal interest is in the well-being of his
corporate friends.
As the old saying goes, “If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a
duck, then it’s a sure bet, that it’s a duck.” Mike’s actions and words
are those of an industry operative. And for all we know he may be one.
Mike has repeatedly refused to disclose who is paying for his EMF
project and all its conferences and workshops. We do know that WHO does
not foot the bill. Mike has to raise his own budget and travel funds.
We also know that he found a way to skirt the WHO rules that bar direct
industry support —the mobile phone manufacturers have said that they
provide him with $150,000 a year with additional money for meeting and
travel expenses.
But where does all the other money come from? What’s stopping Mike
from doing the right thing? Why doesn’t he issue a simple and clear
message that EMFs and RF radiation present possible health risks and
that, until more answers are in hand, we should try to reduce
unnecessary exposures. All he needs to do is to offer a single sentence
of advice: Be careful until we know more about the health risks. That’s
it. A simple public health message of caution from the World Health
Organization.
It's time for the Mike-and-Leeka charade to come to an end. Show us
the money, Mike. Show us who’s paying the bills. Maybe then we will
know who you are really working for.
April 13, 2005... Could
cell phone radiation actually protect against brain cancer? Could it
provide “vitamins for the brain”, as one irreverent epidemiologist
suggested recently? Such a possibility, however improbable, is not as
far fetched as it may sound.
This is not a new idea, but a new epidemiological study, published yesterday in Neurology
brings it back to mind. A team led by Chrisoffer Johansen of the Danish
Cancer Society in Copenhagen was looking at whether cell phones could
promote brain tumors. They did not see an increased risk but did find
that users had fewer aggressive tumors than non-users and that, in
general, the tumors that did develop were smaller among users. These
so-called “regular users” had only a little more than half as many
high-grade gliomas as expected. And the tumors were, overall, 25%
smaller.
The Danish study is the second brain tumor study to appear from the Interphone
project, which is being coordinated by IARC, the International Agency
for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France. (In all, 13 countries are
participating). Maria Feychting and coworkers at the Karolinska
Institute in Stockholm published their results last month in the American Journal of Epidemiology (AJE).
They also saw fewer gliomas among cell phone users, though this
difference was not statistically significant. While the Danes observed
the greatest protection for the high-grade gliomas, the Swedes found it
for the low-grade, or less aggressive, gliomas.
Since the Karolinska paper
appeared on March 15, there has been much talk among epidemiologists
about the fact that practically all the observed risks were smaller
than expected. Amazingly, in one table (Table 2) presenting
approximately 50 different categories of cell phone use, the Swedes
found only a single risk above unity. (A relative risk of one signifies
no effect; without a protective or deleterious effect, one would expect
to see the risks randomly distributed above and below one.)
Sam Milham, the well-known epidemiologist, was the first to spot the
skewed distribution of observed risks in the Swedish paper and has
pointed this out in a letter which will appear in the AJE.
If cell phones are not protective, then there was some kind of bias in
the way the Swedes collected their data. This could mean that the whole
study is faulty, calling into questions their conclusion that cell
phones are not linked to brain cancer. Indeed, Milham believes that the
Karolinska study points to a brain tumor risk on the same side of the
head as a phone is used.
What’s so tantalizing about these two sets of findings is that there is
some experimental evidence to support a protective effect. More than 15
years ago, Steve Cleary of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond
showed
that microwaves could either stimulate or suppress the growth of human
glioma cells exposed in a laboratory setting. The direction of the
effect depended on the intensity of the radiation (see MWN, M/A90)
To be sure, Cleary used some relatively high power levels in his experiments, but Jerry Phillips, in some
experiments
sponsored by Motorola, later showed a similar delicate balance between
beneficial and deleterious effects in experiments on RF-induced DNA
breaks. Phillips exposed human cancer cells at intensities that are
common for users of cell phones (see MWN, J/F98).
A number of animal studies have also pointed to a protective effect The most notable of
these was the experiment run by the late Ross Adey for Motorola (see MWN,
M/A96 and J/A96). In essentially all these cases, the protective effect
has been due to digital or pulsed microwave signals. (For an overview
of these studies, see MWN, S/O02.).
The Danes and the Swedes who participated in the newly published
epidemiological studies mostly used analog phones —at least in the
early years. So one should be careful before jumping to any
conclusions, but the results are provocative and should, we would hope,
stimulate some interesting experiments. That is of course, if there is
any money for follow-up work, always a dicey proposition.
The Danish group dismisses the possibility of a protective effect
because of a lack of a “biologic plausibility.” But we would counter
that many say that there is no biological plausibility for a
detrimental effect.
Until we better understand what’s really going on, we are in uncharted
waters and all possibilities should be considered. These two
epidemiological studies and the others due from the Interphone project
are only a preliminary picture of the long-term impact of cell phone
use. So far at least, they have included only a small number of
subjects who have used phones for ten or more years, with substantial
air time over that period.
[It is worth noting that the definition of a “regular user” of a cell
phone in all the Interphone studies is the use of a mobile phone on average once per week
during at least six months.” Today, mobile phone companies routinely sell plans that allow
thousands of minutes per month.]
The issues discussed here go far beyond hazard research. They raise
fascinating questions about basic science that need to be answered. We
shall see if anyone out there is interested in science or if this is
really all about telling people that it’s okay to keep using their
mobile phones.
April 8, 2005... Fire
fighters want to know if placing cell phone towers on fire stations
puts them at risk. Until a study can provide some reassurance that
there is no radiation hazard, the International Association of Fire
Fighters wants to ban antennas from fire stations.
We wish them luck, but we bet that the study will never get off the
ground. In any case, if an epidemiological study were to be done, this
is not the one to do.
The fire fighters’ appeal
reminds us what happened when, some 15 years ago, police officers asked
the government to look into allegations that radar guns could cause
cancer. The police had some powerful friends. Democratic Sens. Chris
Dodd and Joe Lieberman asked the NIEHS and the NIOSH for an
epidemiological study while the International Brotherhood of Police
Officers campaigned for a ban on the use of radar guns. At a Senate
hearing held on August 10, 1992, representatives from government,
industry and academia all voiced support for a study.
“Senator Dodd and I are going to stick with this until we get some
answers,” Lieberman promised that day. Space hero Sen. John Glenn
showed up and said that he was “extremely disturbed” by the reported
link between police radar and cancer. And Dodd urged the NIH to get on
with it because his patience was “about to run out” (see MWN, S/O92).
That summer, the controversy was featured on a segment of 60 Minutes. But nothing ever
happened. There was no study, there was no follow-up.
The next summer, an epidemiologist and a pathologist jointly
reported in the
American Journal of Industrial Medicine an abnormal clustering of testicular cancer among police officers who had used hand-held radar guns (see MWN, J/A93).
But that also failed to prompt any action from NIH. And five years later, the same journal published a
paper
pointing to a link between both testicular cancer and skin cancer (melanoma) with radar guns (see MWN, J/A98). Again, nothing happened.
The fire fighters have a much tougher battle than the police officers
because very few people think it’s worth spending the money to
investigate cancer rates around a cell site. If they really want a
study, the union will have to pay for it. But even if the fire fighters
pony up the money, it’s unlikely they will get any reliable answers.
These types of studies are notoriously hard to do and, in this case, it
will be even more difficult because the microwaves from cell towers are
not very strong. It will be a torturous task to untangle all the
various factors at work.
We must believe that the fire fighters have been warned about how
hard the epidemiology will be. And that they have been told that it
would be much easier to study those who use hand-held phones. After
all, it’s essentially the same type of radiation and although the
exposures from the phones are intermittent, their intensity is
approximately a thousand times higher.
Another approach would be to study radio and TV towers, which
broadcast much stronger radiation signals. That was the logic of Bruce
Hocking, who once was the chief medical officer of Australia Telecom
(later called Telstra). He wanted to show that cell towers were safe
and figured that if he could show that TV towers were not associated
with cancer, he would reassure the locals who were fighting cell
towers. It did not turn out the way he expected. He
found
higher rates of leukemia among children living near the TV antennas in Sydney (see MWN, N/D95).
To no one's surprise, a controversy erupted and no one dared to repeat the study. This too is unresolved.
As long as each group limits itself to a special case, there will be no
answers. Progress will only come when the various factions understand
that they have common interests. A useful first step would be for the
firefighters to look beyond the towers and ask for studies of cell
phone users. In the long run, that’s their only hope of finding out
whether those antennas are safe.
March 29, 2005... Bill Guy says that he didn’t do it, that he didn’t call NIH, that he didn’t
try to shut down Henry Lai’s work on microwave-induced DNA breaks. (See
March 11 below.)
In a letter to Microwave News, Guy wrote: “I most vehemently and unequivocally deny that I, or anybody that I am aware of, made any calls to NIH...”
We are not so sure that Guy’s memory is serving him well. Our detailed
response recounts the sordid story of CTIA’s health research program,
known as Wireless Technology Research (WTR), which Guy helped run. The
call was part of the cell phone industry’s concerted effort to
discredit Lai and his colleague, N.P. Singh.
The smear campaign continues today. Two weeks ago, two members of the
board of directors of the Bioelectromagnetics Society with long-time
associations with the wireless industry and the U.S. Air Force,
circulated a crude review of Lai’s DNA and behavioral research. The
cover note proclaimed, “Lai’s science has failed CONCLUSIVELY” (their
emphasis). Maybe not. These are people and organizations that keep
telling us they are only interested in science. Clearly not.
Read the complete text of Guy’s three-page letter
and our response. (Both are pdf files.) And make up your own mind.
March 11, 2005... The March issue of the University of Washington alumni magazine, Columns,
features a well-deserved tribute to Henry Lai and his colleague, N.P.
Singh, who have demonstrated that low-level microwave radiation can
lead to an increase in DNA breaks in the brain cells of rats (available
online).
The headline of the piece tells the story: “Wake-Up Call: Can Radiation
from Cell Phones Damage DNA in Our Brains? When a UW Researcher Found
Disturbing Data, Funding Became Tight and One Industry Leader
Threatened Legal Action.”
The article later identifies that “industry leader” as George Carlo who
ran Wireless Technology Research (WTR) on behalf of the CTIA, the trade
association of the cell phone industry. Of course, most people, except
those on the industry payroll, now concede that WTR was misnamed.
Something like “Whatever Happens Do As Little Research As Possible and
Take As Long As Possible Not To Do It” would have been far more
appropriate (even though it’s hard to make an elegant acronym out of
all that).
One important fact is left out of the story —for reasons that will
become apparent in a moment. The piece begins with Lai recollecting
how, back in 1994, someone had tried to stop his DNA-microwave work by
calling the National Institutes of Health and alleging that Lai was
misusing his research grant by carrying out unauthorized experiments.
After Lai explained what he was up to, the NIH was satisfied that
nothing was amiss. Lai was allowed to go back to work, though he lacked
the funds to do as much he would have liked.
The snitch is not named in the article but should be revealed. It was
Bill Guy, who had received three degrees from the University of
Washington, including his doctorate, and then spent much of his
professional life at its Department of Bioengineering. No wonder the
alumni magazine was squeamish about identifying him.
For more than ten years, Guy and Lai had worked together at the
university’s Bioelectromagnetics Research Lab. They were coauthors on
close to 20 research papers. But that did not stop Guy from trying to
sabotage Lai’s research. At the time he made the call to Mike Galvin of
the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Guy was one of
two key advisors to George Carlo, and was helping him map out the
strategy for CTIA’s $25 million cell phone-health research project.
Separately, he was also a consultant to the CTIA. Guy would stay on the
WTR payroll for another three years.
Guy is a former president of the Bioelectromagnetics Society and the
recipient of the d'Arsonval Award, its highest honor. Despite a
lifetime in RF research, despite the fact that he chaired the committee
that wrote the 1982 ANSI RF exposure standard, despite the fact that he
chaired the committee of the National Council on Radiation Protection
and Measurements that wrote the council's 1986 (and its most recent)
report on RF biological effects, Guy’s first impulse on hearing about
some important new experimental finding that questioned the safety of a
product that would soon be responsible for exposing more than a billion
people to a constant stream of RF radiation was to blow the whistle and
try to impugn Lai.
Does anyone still believe that the mobile phone industry ever made an
honest attempt to get to the bottom of the cell phone safety question?
March 10, 2005... The Karolinska group’s
paper
showing no increased risk of brain tumors among those who used a cell
phone for ten or more years appears in the March 15 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology. We first reported
this result
in December based on a brief announcement from Stockholm, but the
published paper offers many more details. One interesting item is the
finding of a somewhat elevated risk of developing a glioma (a 60-80%
increase) on the same side of the head as the phone was used. But, the Karolinska researchers also saw a lower than expected glioma risk on the opposite
side of the head. Stefan Lönn, Maria Feychting and Anders Ahlbom posit
that these results don’t make sense. “It is not biologically plausible
that RF exposure from mobile phone use would increase the brain tumor
risk on the side of the head where the phone is usually held and
protect against brain tumors on the other side of the head,” they
write. Lönn’s team previously reported
an increased risk of acoustic neuromas among this same population of
long-term phone users (both studies are part of his doctoral
dissertation, and, in turn, they are part of the 13-country Interphone
study coordinated by IARC in Lyon, France). For neuromas, there was no
apparent protective effect on the opposite side of the head. All this
means that the new paper, in their words, “strengthens the finding of
an increased risk of acoustic neuroma.” The number of Swedes who used a
phone for more than a decade is small, and so we anxiously await the
results from other Interphone study groups. It is quite possible,
however, that the Interphone study will not adequately resolve the
neuroma risk. After all, the Scandinavian countries were quick to adopt
mobile phones and some of the participating countries may have a
smaller proportion of subjects who used them for more than ten years.
The recent Stewart report (see below) recommended more research, and
made specific mention of a need for an international cohort study of
mobile phone users. The editors of The Lancet endorsed this
idea. Writing in the January 22 issue, they warned, “With more than one
billion people, in more than 200 countries, now using a mobile phone,
any risk, however small, could conceivably affect thousands of people.”
February 16, 2005... It
was embarrassing watching the cell phone industry shoot itself in the
foot yesterday. The scene was a public hearing at the New York City
Council in downtown Manhattan on a proposal to maintain and make
available a list of all new cell phone antenna sites. Predictably, the
mobile phone operators oppose the bill (Intro. No.149-A) and the
citizen groups are backing it. Jane Builder, a manager at T-Mobile,
called the proposal “anti-business” and “anti-technology,” but there
was another reason she did not even want to discuss in a public forum
—the security issue. Though Builder kept mum, she had brought along
Kathryn Condello who had no problem raising the specter of a terrorist
attack on the city’s critical infrastructure. “Since September 11,
2001, we live in a different world,” said Condello. If the bill becomes
law, she warned, it would provide “a blueprint for sabotage” with the
potential of devastating the City of New York’s telecommunications.
Condello was also issuing this overly dramatic —and spurious— warning
on behalf of Cingular, Nextel and Sprint.
There was something quite vile about sitting there, only a short
distance from the site where the World Trade Center towers once stood,
listening to a lobbyist use the 9/11 attacks to further the industry’s
economic interests. City Council Member Peter Vallone Jr., the chief
sponsor of the bill, berated Condello for using scare tactics. But, in
fact, Condello was not scaring anyone, just tossing the industry’s
credibility out the window. No one believed her and, odds are, few will
believe the industry when, at a second hearing to be held later this
week, it will no doubt dismiss the health issue. (Speakers were
actively discouraged from addressing RF health effects at yesterday’s
hearing.)
The whole terrorism argument is bogus. Anyone who wants to attack a
cell tower can easily spot them around the town. But surely there are
much more critical telecom targets than some cell phone antenna on top
of an apartment building in Astoria. What Condello neglected to mention
is that such information is available for a relatively small fee. Tower Maps
has 224,817 (at last count) antenna sites in its database. You can find all the towers in a given county for $500.
For years, detailed information on cell phone antennas in a number of
European countries has been available for free on the Internet (see MWN, M/J02). For instance,
in the U.K. the Office of Communications maintains the Sitefinder
database, which not only gives the location of mobile phone towers but
also their height, frequency and output power as well as the operating
company. The Swiss database
also includes radio and TV transmitters, which typically broadcast at
much higher power levels. Other countries either already have or are
developing their own information systems. Some are even working on
providing real-time radiation levels near certain mobile phone towers
on the Internet.
The Vallone bill is hardly a draconian proposal. It does not
even require the cataloguing of the thousands of existing cell tower
sites in New York City. But it’s a start —a small step towards giving
the public the information it has every right to have.
February 11, 2005... If
you are a geek and want to be a cool geek, Griffin Technology and Apple
Computer have the just thing for you. The new Griffin
AirBase allows you to put Apple’s Airport Express
right on top of your desk instead of hidden away in the wall power
socket. Once in full view, it will be, according to Griffin, “an
elegant artistic statement.” The Airport Express lets you set up a
Wi-Fi hot spot so that you can move your laptop around your home (or
wherever) and still be connected to the Internet and your printer.
Griffin’s marketing plan isn’t based only on aesthetics: When the
Airbase is up on your desk and away from a dusty corner, it will
increase the effective range of the Airport Express. Our concern is
that it will also increase your radiation exposure. We realize that it
is a low-power transmitter (with an output power of about 30 milliwatts
at 2.4 GHz, giving it an effective range of 50 to 150 feet), but, given
all the uncertainties, do you really want it broadcasting into your
face whenever you are sitting at your desk?
Last summer, we tried to find out how much microwave exposure a user
might get from an Airport Express. We sent a query by e-mail to Tom
Neumayr at Apple’s press office. No answer. About a week later we sent
a second request this time to Natalie Sequeira, another press aide. No
answer. Three weeks later we made one last stab and wrote to Steve
Dowling and Todd Wilder in Apple’s corporate media relations
department. Again, no answer. We got the message and we turned to other
projects. But it all came back when we saw a puff piece on the AirBase
in the Circuits section of yesterday’s New York Times: “Now, AirPort Express
owners who want to show off the routers have an option...”
Fifteen years ago, Apple executives favored the same head-in-the-sand
strategy. They assumed that they could ignore growing public concern
over radiation emissions from computer terminals. Their complacency
came to a sudden end when Macworld
asked in a July 1990 cover story “HEALTH HAZARD: Could Your Computer Be
Killing You?” Soon afterwards, David Nagel, an Apple VP was testifying
before a Congressional subcommittee assuring Rep. James Scheuer that
Apple had a responsibility to look “at ways of reducing emissions from
products.” Nagel went on, “We have a role to play in sponsoring
research with the government to understand the effects and how to
control them.”
But this has now been forgotten and the lesson will have to be
learned all over again. In the meantime, why not leave the AirPort
Express in that dusty corner.
February 10, 2005... Microwave News
has long advocated more research on the potential health effects of
power-frequency EMFs and RF radiation. It’s been an uphill battle. EPRI
and the CTIA, the two key industry players, are more interested in
shutting down research labs than sponsoring those who might be able to
make sense of the conflicting results that bedevil this whole business.
With respect to mobile phones, Motorola and Nokia have been among the
most outspoken in asserting that they have done enough RF studies. (One
exception is Sony-Ericsson: Mats Pellback-Scharp recently (January 24)
told the Financial Times that, “Every report that comes out
calls for more research. I have never heard anyone say on anything,
‘This is fully researched.’” Clearly, Mr. Pellback-Scharp has not been
hanging out with Mays Swicord, the director of Motorola’s EMR
programs.) Today we received a press release
from the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) in Washington
that puts industry’s failure to spend any money on health in
perspective. The TIA projects that U.S. spending on wireless
communications will reach $159 billion this year and will grow to $212
billion by 2008. That’s only in the U.S. By the end of the decade the
worldwide total could easily top $1 trillion a year. Five years ago, we
humbly pointed out
that if each of the then 87 million cell phone users in the U.S. chipped in just one cent
a month, we would have $10 million a year for health research. Nothing
approaching that has ever been spent in a single year. Today, there are
more than twice as many American subscribers: 175 million, according to
the CTIA. That same penny a month per user would now bring in $20
million a year. But don’t expect anything to happen. The industry’s “no
conclusive proof” mantra is working so well, there is no hope that a
research initiative will find any support among telecom executives.
January 21, 2005... One
of the lessons to be learned from the aftermath of the second Stewart
report, released by the UK NRPB last week (see below), is that
interpreting the mobile phone health data is much like reading
Rorschach inkblots. What you see depends a lot on your mind-set. Robert
Matthews, the Daily Telegraph’s science correspondent, thinks
that Sir William made “a bad call.” After noting that there were
concerns at the NRPB press conference over last October’s Karolinska
study,
that showed a doubling of the risk of acoustic neuromas among those who
had used a cell phone for more than ten years, Matthews went on to
write: “What was not made clear, however, is that the tumor is benign,
non-fatal and astonishingly rare: just one person is affected per
100,000 per year.” He then added that Maria Feychting, who led the
Karolinska study, is not very worried about all this. He quoted
Feychting as saying: “I must say I am happy my children have mobile
phones, because then I know where they are... I would not stop them
using one.” On the other hand, in today’s Financial Times,
Clive Cookson took a different tack: “Although [an acoustic neuroma is]
a benign tumor, it leads to deafness and loss of balance —and if it is
not removed surgically, it will eventually kill the patient.” He quoted
Anders Ahlbom, another member of the Karolinska team, saying “it’s a
strong association” but one that must be replicated before it can be
relied upon. Contrast also the title of Cookson's article, “The
Warnings We Must Listen To,” with Matthews’s,
“Dial M for Myth.” [Unfortunately, there is no free on line access to this FT story. The FT
will continue with a second article next Monday.] Should we trust
Matthews or Cookson? Should we follow the lead of Feychting or that of
her mentor, Ahlbom? Cookson concluded with an important point: As the
number of subscribers surges past 1.5 billion, even a tiny individual
health risk could translate into thousands of deaths.” Let’s do the
math. If the Karolinska study is found to reflect a real neuroma risk,
then one cell phone user per 100,000 will develop a tumor each year.
That comes to 15,000 cases a year based on today’s usage and 20,000 by
the end of this year when, as Deloitte
predicted earlier this week, there will be 2 billion owners of mobile
phones. So, between 2015 and 2020, there could be (very approximately)
a total of 100,000 tumor cases, most of which would have been
avoidable. Could this be an acceptable risk for the convenience of
using a cell phone without a hands-free kit? (We wonder why Feychting
doesn’t ask her kids to use hands-free kits.) Do we really want to let
the industry off the hook and not bother to do the research to better
understand the health impacts of cell phones? Ahlbom told the Financial Times that it is the “the responsibility of the industry to support research.”
Matthews of the UK Telegraph closes with a quote from
Adam Burgess of the University of Bath who predicted that the cell
phone controversy will eventually go the same way as the now-forgotten
scares over color TVs, VDTs and microwave ovens. Burgess, the author of
Cellular Phones, Public Fears and a Culture of Precaution, should know better. (Disclosure: If you read the book, you may well conclude that Burgess believes that Microwave News
has unnecessarily fanned the flames of the EMF controversy.) Burgess
would have us believe that the radiation risks from these appliances
are urban legends. The truth is very different, and Burgess should know
better. In each case, a technological fix reduced radiation exposures
to the point where the risk could be justifiably ignored. For color
TVs, lead was added to the glass of the cathode ray tube, thereby
absorbing any troublesome X-rays. Whether VDT EMFs could cause adverse
pregnancy outcomes was never settled —much like today’s cell
phone industry, VDT manufacturers did not want to do any research. But
the question became moot when TCO, the Swedish union, single-handedly
forced the industry to reduce stray VDT emissions to a very low level.
(TCO Development is now encouraging the production of
safer phones.) And microwave oven radiation became a non-problem when the US FDA set tough leakage standards and
actually enforced these rules. (That was a very different FDA than the
one we have today that has been captured by the industry.) Another
important point is that in all three cases the radiation emissions were
unwanted byproducts. Cell phones are very different, the radiation
conveys the message. No radiation, no conversation.
January 15, 2005... Going
through our collection of clips on the new Stewart report this
afternoon, we came across the following quote by Paolo Vecchia, the
chair of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation
Protection (ICNIRP), in a press release issued by the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) on January 11:
“Because EMF exposure guidelines are based on worst-case hypotheses and include reduction factors providing safety margins for possible lack of data, the Commission does not need to create separate guidelines to protect special groups such as children.”
January 14, 2005... As
the aftershocks from the Stewart report continue to reverberate, the
telecom industry is brazenly moving forward with its plan for a major
relaxation of the US limit for radiation exposures from cell phones.
Yesterday and today, some members of the IEEE International Committee
on Electromagnetic Safety (ICES) are meeting to hammer out their
revision of the IEEE RF safety standard (known as C95.1). One of the
major planned changes is to replace the current SAR limit of 1.6 W/Kg,
averaged over 1g of tissue, with a standard of 2.0 W/Kg, averaged over
10g. James Lin of the University of Illinois, Chicago, who was recently
appointed a member of ICNIRP, has called this proposal to increase the
averaging volume from 1g to 10g “scientifically indefensible” (see MWN,
J/A00 and N/D00). According to Lin, a limit of 2.0 W/Kg averaged over
10g would be approximately equivalent to an SAR of 4-6 W/Kg, averaged
over 1g (see MWN, S/O01 and M/J03). Or to put it more simply,
ICES wants to triple the amount of radiation you could get from a cell
phone. Exactly who was invited to this “editorial” meeting is not
clear. (ICES’ procedures are not what you might call transparent. Over
the years, we have repeatedly asked to be advised of future meetings.
But soon after we make it onto the mailing list, our name is somehow
deleted. No one can explain why this keeps happening.) We do know,
however, where the ICES meeting is taking place: on the Motorola campus
in Plantation, Florida. What remains to be seen is whether the FCC will
bow to industry pressure and gut the cell phone standard. Anyone want
to bet that the commission will stand its ground?
January 13, 2005... The
British press has given a lot of ink to the Stewart report, featuring
numerous interviews with Sir William. In one of the most detailed of
these he told Nic Fleming of the
Daily Telegraph
that he is “more concerned” about possible health risks today than he
was five years when he first called for children to be discouraged from
using mobile phones. Sir William said that, “When it comes to
suggesting that mobile phones should be available to three- to
eight-year-olds, I can’t believe for a moment that can be justified. It
seems to me ludicrous.” He explained: “They should not have them
because children’s skulls are not fully thickened, their nervous
systems are not fully developed and the radiation penetrates further
into their brains.” Not everyone agrees with Stewart. The editorial
writers at the Telegraph, for example, called him a “Professional Fusspot.”
They wrote that “all human activity carries risks, and we have quite
enough to worry about these days, without getting into a flap about
dangers that may or may not exist.” Even some of those who report to
Sir William at the NRPB appear to a bit uneasy. (We doubt that the NRPB
has yet gotten comfortable with having an activist chairman.) In an
interview with the Wall Street Journal, published today,
Michael Clark of the NRPB’s press office tried to moderate Sir
William’s warnings. “Our chairman felt very strongly that parents ought
to be aware of the risk of a risk. But we found no hard evidence of a
risk,” Clark said. On this side of the Atlantic, the Journal quotes David Heim, the deputy editor of Consumer Reports,
who also downplayed possible health concerns, as did officials at the
FCC and the FDA (see January 11, below). Heim discounted recent studies
that point to hazards —such as the Karolinska paper,
published last October, pointing to an increased incidence of acoustic
neuromas among those who had used cell phones for more than ten years.
He reasons that ten years ago everyone was using analog phones, and
since these are no longer around, it would be a mistake to infer that
the present generation of digital phones is unsafe. “Analog phones use
considerably more power than digital phones and their emission patterns
are different,” he told the Journal. Heim is right, but he
neglects to mention that pulsed radiation, like the signals from many
digital phones, is more biologically active than the continuous wave
(CW) radiation from analog phones. At this point, no one knows whether
the enhanced biological activity might compensate for the weaker
signals. And we will not know for another decade or so, by which time
we will probably have graduated to yet another type of phones with yet
another set of radiation signals. Health research may never catch up
with the changing technology, preserving industry’s and Consumer Reports’
ability to keep on the path of denying the relevance of health studies
as they are published. But Heim is ignoring a much more fundamental
issue. According to current (official) thinking, analog cell phones
should not be able do anyone any damage. If the Karolinska study turns
out to reflect a true tumor risk (and it’s the second epidemiological
study to point that way) all bets would be off. We may have been wrong
about analog phones and equally wrong about digital phones. Why then is
Consumers Union and its magazine, Consumer Reports, so gung
ho about discounting digital phone risks —to the point of sounding like
they are part of industry’s PR machine? It’s true that Consumer Reports has long been uninterested in cell phone health risks, (see MWN, J/F02),
but it’s still strange that its editors’ first instinct is to dismiss
an important new study by a leading group of Swedish researchers on
little more than wishful thinking. As we argued in our recent commentary
on the precautionary principle, the reason the EMF controversy never
moves forward toward resolution is that those whom we count on to speak
out on behalf of public health remain strangely silent —or worse, shoot
from the hip in the wrong direction— when it comes to electromagnetic
radiation.
Before moving on, we should give credit to the Journal for covering the Stewart report. It is practically
the only newspaper in America to do so. The Financial Times had an
item
in its UK news, but, perhaps because the FT well understands the US market, it did not bother to run the news
in its US edition.
As expected, the National Research Council of the National Academy of
Sciences today released its report on the possible health impacts of
the US Air Force’s PAVE PAWS radar. The investigating committee found
that, “There is no evidence of adverse health effects to Cape Cod
residents from long-term exposure to radiofrequency energy from [the]
nearby U.S. Air Force radar installation," the press release states. You can download a free summary.
You can also read the report page-by-page, but you cannot download a
full copy. The published report will be available for purchase later
this winter from the National Academy Press.
January 11, 2005... In its report, released today,
the board of the NRPB reaffirmed its call
for a “precautionary approach” to the use of mobile phones. One of the
key recommendations is that “particular attention be given to how best
to minimize exposure of potentially vulnerable subgroups such as
children.” In the NRPB press release,
Sir William Stewart, the chair of the board, states that, “The fact is
that the widespread use of mobile phones is a relatively recent
phenomenon and it is possible that adverse health effects could emerge
after years of prolonged use.” The UK papers led with the risk to
children. “Get Off that Mobile, Expert Tells Children,” ran the headline in the Sunday Times, when it broke the story ahead of today’s official release. Yesterday, the Daily Telegraph followed with “Fresh Warning over Children and Mobiles,” and today the BBC announced, “Child Warning over Mobile Phones.” CNN went with the same thread: “Expert: Keep Children from Mobiles.”
Here in the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA),which has long
sought to pacify those worried about possible cell phone health
effects, tried to spin the story out of existence. Howard Cyr, the
agency's point man on the health effects of electromagnetic radiation
at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, sent out an
e-mail saying that the FDA “agrees with the NRPB on its basic
conclusion that there is no hard evidence of adverse health effects on
the general public (the NRPB did say that). But the FDA added: “With
regards to the safety of children and use of cell phones by children,
the scientific evidence does not show a danger to users of wireless
communication devices including children” (that’s the
FDA’s emphasis). Given all the bad press that the FDA has been
attracting recently (think Vioxx), one might think that warnings put
forward by its British counterpart might merit a more considered and
less deceptive approach. Perhaps Cyr, who is semiretired, is unaware
that Sir William Stewart is the former science advisor to Prime
Minister John Major. Perhaps Cyr doesn’t care. He simply sees his job
as making sure that the cell phone story sinks somewhere offshore in
the Atlantic. You can download the full NRPB report at no cost.
January 8, 2005... Next week two major reports will be released to the public. On Tuesday
January 11, the National Radiological Protection Board, or NRPB, will
issue a review of the current state of knowledge on mobile phones and
health. The report is already being called “Stewart#2.” Sir William
Stewart was the chair of the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones
(IEGMP) that issued Mobile Phones and Health.
in May 2000 (see MWN, M/J00). Sir William is now the chair of the NRPB.
This second report was one of the recommendations of the 2000 report (see MWN,
M/J00), though the panel asked for it to be ready in 2003. The most
widely cited conclusion of the Stewart#1 report is that children be
discouraged from using mobile phones. Even though this remains official
policy, the UK government has made no serious effort to implement this
recommendation and most kids don’t have a clue that mobiles may present
a radiation risk. Then on January 13, the U.S. National Research
Council (NRC), a branch of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), will
release its assessment of the potential health effects from exposure to
the RF radiation from the U.S. Air Force’s PAVE PAWS radar located on
Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The PAVE PAWS project
was requested by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) in 2001, and was initially slated to be completed in two years (see MWN,
N/D01, J/F02, M/A02). The chair of the NAS-NC panel is Frank Barnes of
the University of Colorado, Boulder. The report will be released in
Sandwich, MA, at a one-hour public briefing.
January 7, 2005... Everyone else is doing it so we
thought we would try too. Welcome to the Microwave News
Blog. In the weeks and months ahead, we will try to give our readers
some perspective on the news. As you can see below, we have posted some
comments in the past, admittedly on a sporadic basis. We will now try
to follow a more regular schedule. As always, comments are welcome.
Write to us at:
E-mail: info@microwavenews.com
October 18, 2004... Members of each of the
teams that have reported links between mobile phones and
acoustic neuromas have recently published reviews of the RF
epidemiological literature. Lennart Hardell and Kjell Hansson Mild of
÷rebro University, who were the first to report this association a
couple of years ago, have written a detailed analysis, “
Mobile Telephones and Cancer —A Review of Epidemiological Evidence” in the Journal of Toxicology and Environment Health, Part B.
Michael Kundi of the University of Vienna is the lead author of this
paper and Mats-Olof Mattson of ;rebro University is the fourth
contributor. And the standing committee on epidemiology of the ICNIRP,
which is chaired by Dr. Anders Ahlbom of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute
has written its own review, “Epidemiology of Health Effects of RF
Exposure,” which will appear in a future issue of Environmental Health Perspectives. Meanwhile the full text of the paper is available at no charge on “ehponline”
One of the coauthors of this review is David Savitz of the University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who wrote the commentary that
accompanied Ahlbom and Maria Feychting’s paper on acoustic neuromas
which made headlines last week. See our news story.
The other members of the ICNIRP committee are Adele Green of the
Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia, Leeka
Khefiets of UCLA and formerly with the WHO EMF project and EPRI and
Tony Swerdlow of the UK Institute of Cancer Research in Surrey. Both
Ahlbom and Swerdlow are members of ICNIRP.
August 20, 2004... The California Public Utility Commission has
decided
to take a fresh look at its EMF policies, which were first adopted in
1993. At its August 19 meeting, the CPUC announced that it expects the
review to be completed within 18 months. In a related decision,
the commission approved a new power line, the Jefferson-Martin line, to
meet electricity demands on the San Francisco Peninsula. The CPUC is
requiring PG&E, the electric utility, to bury the line at a depth
of 11 feet “in all residential neighborhoods and by schools, daycare
centers, senior centers, parks and similar public places.” In addition,
the CPUC is taking the “unprecedented precautionary measures” of having
the conductors configured to reduce EMF levels. The decision on the
Jefferson-Martin line was unanimous. CPUC President Michael Peevey, a
former utility executive, abandoned his own proposal and supported the
proposed decision of Administrative Law Judge Charlotte TerKeurst. (For
more background on these two decisions, see our recent commentary.)
July 29, 2004... The Japanese EMF–leukemia study discussed below will be presented at the Children with Leukemia to be held in London, September 6-10.
July 22, 2004... Today, there has been another uproar about the accuracy of the
reports of what goes on at RF scientific meetings. Dariusz Leszczynski
of Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Helsinki is
furious about the content of a so-called “Consensus Statement” coming
out of a workshop
on heat shock proteins (HSPs) held in Helsinki, April 28-29.
The statement,
which has already been widely distributed, contains the following sentence in its opening paragraph:
“Based largely on the evidence presented at the workshop, there is no
substantiation of the hypothesis that RF exposures result in the
induction of stress proteins.”
This morning, Leszczynski wrote to Norbert Leitgeb, the chair of COST281, and
Gerd Friedrich, its secretary, that this is “absolutely false.” Friedrich is the
head of FGF, Germany’s
wireless industry research group.
Leszczynski should have a good idea about what had happened at the
workshop: He hosted the meeting and over the last few years he has
published a number of papers showing that RF can activate HSPs.
In his e-mail, Leszczynski expressed surprise and disappointment that the consensus statement had been posted
on the COST281 Web site. Soon afterwards,
the statement was pulled from the Web. It is now undergoing another round of editing.
Leszczynski pointed out that the offending sentence was not in an earlier version
of the consensus statement, which had been circulated in May. According to FGF, Marty Meltz of the University of Texas Health Science Center
in San Antonio, Texas, and Blair Henderson of Austria’s Innsbruck University had made the changes.
A report on the Helsinki HSP workshop also appeared in the Bioelectromagnetics Society (BEMS) newsletter and,
as we noted in our recent commentary, “Industry Rules RF,
” this write-up prompted charges of biased reporting. In its workshop recap, BEMS neglected to even mention Leszczynski’s work.
(We continue to wonder why the society continues to allow Motorola
to control its newsletter. Some of the criticism that has been directed
at BEMS may explain the recent addition of a statement on the BEMS home page
proclaiming that its mission is to encourage “excellence in scientific
research.” Unfortunately, stating this does not make it so.)
Swicord is slated to speak at a workshop
in Brussels this September. He will be on a panel on “Public Health
Priorities for Future Research.” The title of his talk is: “Will a
Review of Current and Ongoing Studies Provide Sufficient Information?”
Anyone want to bet that Swicord will call for more research to
answer ongoing questions about RF effects on DNA breaks, the
permeability of the blood-brain barrier and, of course, activation of
HSPs?
When three cases of male breast cancer
showed up in the same small office in Albuquerque in 2001, a lawsuit
was quickly filed. “The odds of three men in one specific office
getting breast cancer are a trillion to one,” said Sam Bregman, the
plaintiffs’ attorney. He argued that the cancers were caused, at least
in part, by EMFs from an electrical vault that was next to the basement
office where the men worked.
At the two-week trial in April 2003, Sam Milham testified for the men, while John Moulder
was an expert witness for the defense. The jury decided that there was
insufficient evidence to hold magnetic fields responsible and declined
to award damages.
Milham would not let the case rest. In a brief
report
published in the July issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine,
Milham writes that, based on some conservative assumptions, the risk of
breast cancer in that office was a hundred times the expected rate.
Milham calculated that the chances of finding these three cases in that
office were 100,000 to one.
Milham notes that after Gene Matanoski
first announced an EMF-male breast cancer link in 1991, there have been
14 additional studies that have reported a similar association.
“I am more convinced than ever that male breast cancer is a sentinel tumor for EMF exposure,” Milham told us recently.
If you, like us, are waiting for the Japanese EMF–childhood cancer epi study to appear in print, don’t hold your breath.
Two years ago, Asahi Shimbun, a leading national newspaper, leaked word that Michinori Kabuto
of the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Ibaraki had
confirmed an EMF-cancer link in his own country. He went public last
year at a Symposium on Risk of EMF and Its Governance, held
in Tokyo on September 15. Kabuto reported that he had found a close to
fivefold elevated risk of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) among
children exposed to magnetic fields of greater than 4 mG (>0.4 µT)
in their bedrooms. This finding, though based on a small number of
cases, was statistically significant. Among those invited to the
symposium were Leeka Kheifets, Chris Portier, John Swanson and A.A.
Afifi. Now we hear that Kabuto is having trouble getting the study
published. It has been rejected more than once, we’ve been told by
multiple sources. “It’s crazy,” said one epidemiologist who has read
the paper. “It’s a very carefully done study. I don’t understand what’s
going on.” “It should be published,” agreed another leading
epidemiologist who has also seen the paper.
An exchange of letters in the July 1 New England Journal of Medicine
points to the continued institutional resistance to taking EMFs seriously. Last April 8, Ching-Hon Pui
and colleagues at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, published a detailed
review
of the mechanisms that could explain ALL. The paper includes this
sentence: “Exposure to residential magnetic fields has largely been
excluded as an instigating factor.” Only one reference was given to
support this conclusion —the
U.K. study headed by Nick Day, published in 2000.
Bruce Hocking, an occupational health physician in Melbourne, Australia, wrote back, citing the two meta-analyses (by Ahlbom and Greenland)
which have convinced most observers that EMFs play a role in the
etiology of childhood leukemia. Hocking also pointed to IARC’s decision
to classify 50/60 Hz EMFs as a “2B” cancer agent, that is, IARC
believes EMFs are possible human carcinogens. “The possible role of
magnetic fields in childhood leukemia should not be dismissed,” wrote
Hocking, especially since exposures can easily be kept low. Pui replied
that there are still plenty of reasons to be skeptical and even if
there were a link, “the attributable risk would be negligible” because
public exposures are so low. Pui misses the point, Hocking told us:
It’s not that EMFs don’t matter, it’s that we should keep exposures
low.
Of course, Pui’s review was published in a journal that has long disdained EMF risks. A few years ago, Ed Campion, an editor there, had a hissy fit
—the journal would call it an editorial— and banged the drum for an end
of all EMF health research. Since then Campion has moved up the
masthead and is now the New England Journal’s senior deputy editor.
© Copyright Microwave News 2004-2007. All Rights Reserved.