A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News & Comment

Monday, January 18, 2010

Lorenzo Tomatis got it. But few others do. Among those who don't are the many managers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) who refuse to allow that the EMF–cancer playbook may be different from the one for chemicals. Even now, when there is ample evidence that power line EMFs can increase the risk of childhood leukemia and there is a growing suspicion that cell phone radiation is associated with three different types of tumors, NIEHS prefers to look the other way. The institute has long resisted endorsing precautionary policies for any kind of EMFs.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Pity those who are trying to follow the cell phone–brain tumor story. Their sense of the cancer risk is most likely a reflection of the last thing they read or saw on TV —It all depends on whose sound bite they happen to catch.

Take, for example, a paper published earlier this month in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) by a team of Scandinavian epidemiologists, under a rather bland title — "Time Trends in Brain Tumor Incidence Rates in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, 1974–2003." But its message is anything but: Because there has been no increase in brain tumors between 1998 and 2003, a period when the use of cell phones "increased sharply," cell phones are cancer safe.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Bioelectromagnetics has posted “Comments” by Louis Slesin, the editor of Microwave News on the call to stop research on power-frequency electric fields by Leeka Kheifets and John Swanson (see “The Real Junk Science of EMFs”). The two electric utility insiders declined the journal's offer to respond. The comments are now on the journal's Web site and will be published in its February 2010 issue.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Three high-profiles cases of alleged lapses of scientific integrity have come to light over the last ten years. None of them is the same league as Leeka Kheifets and John Swanson's electric-field gambit (see “The Real Junk Science of EMFs”). Here's a quick rundown:

Monday, November 23, 2009

A decade after some of the world's leading epidemiologists agreed that exposure to power line EMFs could lead to childhood leukemia, the denial continues. Some people still believe that the studies that link EMFs to cancer are nothing more than junk science. Even those who should know better refuse to acknowledge the risks. The World Health Organization (WHO) says the association is so weak that it can be pretty much ignored, and the leading radiation protection group, ICNIRP, has refused to endorse precaution. Here in the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scarcely acknowledges that EMFs are even a health issue.

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Short Takes

IARC Publishes Rationale for RF as
Possible Human Carcinogen

April 19, 2013

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has released its detailed evaluation of the cancer risks associated with RF radiation, which serves as the rationale for designating RF as a possible human carcinogen.

The IARC monograph comes close to two years after an invited panel of experts from 14 countries reached this conclusion following an eight-day meeting at IARC headquarters in Lyon, France (see our...

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FCC Begins Review of Its RF Safety Rules 

March 29, 2013

Today, the FCC —finally— issued a package of rules and requests for information related to RF health and safety. We say finally because the commission announced that this was on its way last June (see "What's Up at the FCC?"). No one at the FCC is eager to say why it took so long, except that it covers a lot of ground.

The document is indeed long (over 200 pages) and...

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Plus Ça Change…

December 4, 2012

Another in our continuing series  —Nothing Ever Really Changes. 

We recently came across an item in the January 20, 1964 issue of Newsweek titled, "The Mrs. G Effect" about a California housewife, who could hear noises that no one else could hear.

An "expert" was brought in. As far as he could tell, Mrs. G was converting alternating current fields into sound signals "as though she were a radio receiver." Newsweek also talked to Allan Frey who offered qualified support. "If you use the correct frequency and modulate it properly, it's easy to induce...

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Buddy, Can You Spare $25,000?

November 30, 2012

EPRI, the research arm of the electric utility industry, has just published what might be a very useful report. Unfortunately, most of us will never get to see it.

The report is an evaluation of consumer-grade RF exposure meters —the type of instrument you might use to measure radiation levels from a cell tower or a smart meter. In a short abstract, which is publicly available, EPRI states, "Consumers need to recognize that each [RF...

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All Short Takes...