A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News Center: Main Articles Archive

September 22, 2004

The radiation protection agencies in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have issued a joint statement agreeing that “[T]here is no scientific evidence for any adverse health effects from mobile telecommunications systems, neither from base stations nor from headsets below the [ICNIRP exposure limits].” Even so, the agencies go on to endorse a policy of “prudent avoidance,” stating that, “The existing gaps and the prevailing scientific uncertainty justify a certain precautionary attitude regarding the use of handsets for mobile telephony. ”

September 21, 2004

The U.S. Navy has announced that, on September 30, it will close down its Project ELF transmitter, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The transmitter, which consists of a 56-mile antenna on Michigan’s upper penninsula and a 28-mile antenna in nothern Wisconsin, operates at 72-80 Hz with a peak power in excess of 2 million watts, is used to communicate with submerged submarines. Over the years, it has been the scene of countless protests and the subject of a number of lawsuits.

September 15, 2004

Children with Leukemia, a U.K. charity based in London, is inviting applications for its new £1 million (approx. $1.80 million) research fund. The emphasis is on causes and prevention. The deadline for “outline applications” is October 29, 2004, with full proposals due on February 18, 2005. Winners will be notified on 2 April 2005. An announcement appears in the September 9 issue of Nature.

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.

August 20, 2004

Lennart Hardell has found no association between the use of cellular or cordless phones and the incidence of salivary gland tumors. “There was no effect with increasing tumor induction period or number of hours of use of the different phones.”

August 18, 2004

California will soon decide what's next for EMFs.

As power line skirmishes continue to smolder across the country and around the world, California regulators may be the first to take stock of all the new health data that have been generated over the last decade.

July 30, 2004

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is negotiating a sole source contract with the IIT Research Institute (IITRI) in Chicago to run the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) RF–animal studies. The studies will cost in excess of $10 million. The NIEHS requested proposals last February, but no one responded.

July 23, 2004

In a new report, Mobile Phone Masts, the All Party Parliamentary Mobile Group in the U.K. is recommending that every cell phone tower should be required to go through the normal planning process and that any blanket exemptions be revoked. The panel noted that this was one of the recommendations of the Stewart committee in its own report, Mobile Phones and Health, issued in the spring of 2000.

July 23, 2004

The House Committee on Armed Services has released the findings of the commission charged with assessing the threat of an EMP attack to the U.S.

An EMP, which stands for “electromagnetic pulse,” is generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated in the upper atmosphere.

July 23, 2004

The Invisible Disease: The Dangers of Environmental Illnesses Caused by Electromagnetics Fields and Chemical Emissions, by veteran Swedish journalist Gunni Nordström has been published by O Books in the U.K. and will soon be available in the U.S.

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