July 12, 2005... In a major change of policy, Mike Repacholi is now advising children to reduce their radiation exposure from mobile phones. Repacholi, who leads the World Health Organization’s EMF project, has told CTV (Canadian television) that the “WHO recommends that children should use hands-free headsets.”

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.

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.”

You can access all the articles in the Toronto Star’s special report on cell phones here.

 

Time To Stop the WHO Charade

July 5, 2005... 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.





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