A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News Center: Main Articles Archive

Schüz Defends ICNIRP’s 1,000 mG Limit

May 21, 2007

It's the murky disconnect that undermines public confidence in EMF exposure standards: While epidemiological studies point to an increased risk of childhood leukemia at exposures as low as 3-4 mG, the ICNIRP exposure standard is over 200 times higher. That is, ICNIRP sees nothing wrong with exposing kids to 999 mG, 24/7. One reason this disparity is baffling is that Anders Ahlbom of Sweden's Karolinska Institute is both the chair of ICNIRP's committee on epidemiology and the person whose work —more than anyone else's other than Nancy Wertheimer's— has established the plausibility of the 3-4 mG threshold. The IEEE standard is even more out of sync: At over 9,000 mG: it's more than nine times higher than the ICNIRP limit.

May 9, 2007

More health research is needed for all EMF frequency bands, according to the newly-released report by the EC's Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR). (See also the press release and news item.) Anders Ahlbom of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm is the chair of the committee.

May 8, 2007

A study that stirred worldwide uneasiness last fall —as well as quite a bit of disbelief— is now in print. In October, Ashok Agarwal of the Cleveland Clinic presented a paper at a fertility conference showing that men who used their cell phones for more than four hours a day had poorer semen quality than those who went phone-free (see our October 26, 2006 post).

Agarwal's paper has been posted on the Fertility and Sterility Web site and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal. Here is his conclusion: "Use of cell phones decrease the semen quality in men by decreasing the sperm count, motility, viability, and normal morphology. The decrease in sperm parameters was dependent on the duration of daily exposure to cell phones and independent of the initial semen quality." 

May 7, 2007

We have to admit that we are skeptical about the much-hyped hypothesis that mobile phone radiation is at least partially responsible for the disappearance of bees —if only because of the timing of these colony collapses. If microwaves are involved, bee disorientation would most likely be an acute effect. Yet mobile phones and their towers have been around for many years. So, why are the bees flying away, never to return, now?

That said, we were nevertheless taken aback when we read in this morning's Wall Street Journal that the National Wildlife Federation has inaugurated its own cell phone service. NWF Mobile is "tailored to wildlife enthusiasts and activists," the Journal reports, with such features as "ringtones that croak like frogs and chirp like birds" and the ability to provide updates on environmental news. Can a "buzz" ringtone be far behind?  

May 7, 2007

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has tentatively scheduled its RF workshop for August 7-9 in Washington. Its objective is to review the status of health research associated with exposure to RF radiation from wireless devices. See the NAS announcement for further information. The FDA requested the NAS review last March (see our March 30 post).

May 4, 2007

Ted Litovitz, a physics professor at Catholic University in Washington DC, died on May 1 after a long battle with kidney cancer. He was 82. The silver-tongued EMF researcher leaves a mixed legacy.

May 1, 2007

U.K. newspapers ran another batch of power line and WiFi stories last weekend. The BBC, the Guardian and the Times all featured items on EMFs following the formal release of the SAGE report, which presented policy options to address EMF health risks. The Daily Mail profiled Sarah Dacre and her travails with electrosensitivity. And the Independent and the Telegraph continued to focus on public anxiety over the proliferation of Wi-Fi systems, especially in schools.

March 30, 2007

After sidestepping the cell phone health controversy for many years, the FDA announced yesterday that it had asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to hold a symposium and to advise what additional research needs to be done. It's déjà vu all over again. This is the same do-nothing strategy that George Carlo so successfully pursued for the CTIA, the wireless trade association, in the 1990s to make sure that very little health research got done. Over a six-year period, Carlo held meetings and wrote literature reviews. In the end, he spent $25 million of CTIA's money and had practically nothing to show for it. Neither Carlo nor the CTIA has ever accounted for where all that money went. Now, the CTIA and the FDA are planning to replay the same charade, albeit on a much smaller scale.

March 29, 2007

Over the last four years, the number of eight-year-olds in the U.S. with cell phones more than doubled to 506,000 and the number of nine-year-olds ballooned to 1.25 million, according to an analysis by the Yankee Group, a consulting firm in Boston, cited in a "style" piece in today's New York Times. There will be 10.5 million preteen cell phone users by 2010, the Yankee Group predicts. The 31-paragraph Times story does not offer a word about the possible health implications of long-term cell phone use, but there is this view from the deputy director of the Center for Children and Technology in New York City: Cell phones can serve as "transitional objects" for young children suffering separation anxiety from their parents, and that phones with "reasonably interesting games" might have some "redeeming educational value." ... "The only harm is an economic one." What does a preteen use a cell phone for? A mother of a seven-year-old gave this example: "He'd call me from the cafeteria, screaming, 'Mom, I'm at lunch'."

WHO'a Mike Repacholi Chaired the Panel

March 23, 2007

The government of Ireland released a report yesterday that generally dismisses health concerns over RF radiation from mobile phones and base stations, as well as concerns over EMFs from power lines. The report, Health Effects of Electromagnetic Fields, was prepared by a four-member panel chaired by Mike Repacholi, the former head of the WHO EMF project. The panel concluded that, "So far no adverse short or long-term health effects have been found from exposure to the RF signals produced by mobile phones and base station transmitters" and that "there are no data available to suggest that the use of mobile phones by children is a health hazard."

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