BfS: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )

Leif Salford celebrated his 80^th birthday on December 7. An emeritus professor at Sweden’s Lund University and a noted neurosurgeon, Salford spent much of his career treating patients with brain tumors. Over the years, he became frustrated as, all too often, he was unable to save them with a scalpel.

In 1987, Salford came across a paper in Neuroscience Letters from a group at the University of Western Ontario, who had found that rats undergoing the equivalent of a routine MRI scan showed changes in their blood-brain barrier. The BBB is a membrane that keeps potentially toxic substances in the bloodstream from getting into the brain. It’s not a perfect barrier —it can leak. The Canadians reported that something about the electromagnetic exposures during the MRI scan had increased the permeability of the rats’ BBB. It had become more porous.

If microwaves used in the MRI were responsible, Salford thought....

A new analysis from the radiation group at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) calls into question the agency’s own classification of wireless radiation as a possible human carcinogen.

On May 27, IARC’s Isabelle Deltour presented the new analysis of the incidence of malignant brain tumors (glioma) in the Nordic countries —Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden— over the last several decades. She spoke at an online colloquium hosted by the German Federal Office of Radiation Protection, known as the BfS.

Deltour argued that the trends are mostly not “compatible” with those seen in the epidemiological studies —principally, Interphone and Lennart Hardell’s— that were the basis of IARC’s 2011 designation of RF radiation as a possible, or 2B, human carcinogen.

A German court of appeals has ordered Alexander Lerchl to stop smearing the authors of two papers which show that mobile phone radiation can break DNA and possibly cause cancer. For more than a decade, Lerchl, a professor of biology at Jacobs University in Bremen, has charged, without evidence, that the experimental data from Hugo Rüdiger’s lab at the Medical University of Vienna (MUV) were fabricated.

In its long-awaited decision, dated December 11, 2020, and released at the end of January, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court of Bremen threatened Lerchl with a fine of up to €250,000 (~US$300,000), or six months in prison, if he continues to falsely disparage the Rüdiger papers. The penalties would apply each time Lerchl violates the court order. Lerchl must also pay €20,000 in court costs.

UPDATE: With no public notice or any formal announcement, the World Health Organization (WHO) held the first meeting of its RF Working Group in Geneva March 14-16, 2023.

The group is preparing a review of health effects, as part of a process that has been ongoing for close to a decade.

For the latest on this continuing story, “RF Review Shrouded in Secrecy,” is posted here.

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After eight years of work, the WHO is reopening its review of the health effects of RF radiation for a summary report intended to serve as a benchmark for its more than 150 member countries. The report will be used as a guide to respond to widespread concerns over the new world of 5G.

The WHO issued a public call in October for detailed literature reviews on ten types of RF–health impacts from cancer to fertility to electrohypersensitivity. Some see the move as a sign that the health agency is interested in opinions beyond those of its long-time partner, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). They hope that the WHO is finally ready to recognize evidence of low-level effects, in particular the link between cell phones and cancer. Others are far from convinced.

The skeptics see the new reviews as little more than a ruse.