Germany: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )

The German government is the main sponsor of ICNIRP, the International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection.

The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), which is the bureaucratic parent of the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS), has contributed 70-80% of ICNIRP’s annual income in each of the last three years. This...

”Still worried about power lines and cancer? That’s so retro, says the New York Times. You’re just stuck in the 1980’s.  

This is what the “newspaper of record” wants you to know about the risk of childhood leukemia from power lines: A “fairly broad consensus among researchers holds that no significant threat to public health has materialized.”

The full message is told in a new 7+ minute video, produced by the Times’ RetroReport, which boasts a staff of 13 journalists and 10 contributors, led by Kyra Darnton. The video even credits a fact checker. What was missing is the common sense to do some digging when reporting on a controversial issue.

Chronic exposure to 3G (UMTS) cell phone radiation can promote the growth of tumors, according to a new animal study presented at a workshop in Berlin last week. This finding is "remarkable," according to the lead researcher, Thomas Tillmann of the Fraunhofer Institute of Toxicology and Experimental Medicine (ITEM) in Hannover, Germany. At this point, only the conference abstract is available (p.10).

Birds may actually be able to "see" a magnetic field. This is the fascinating and surprising conclusion of a group of German scientists who have been studying migratory birds. Not everyone is yet convinced that garden warblers can visualize the geomagnetic field (see today's news item on Nature.com), but the new German paper reminds us how little about we know about how living systems interact with electromagnetic signals.

Is it a warning sign or a statistical fluke?

This is the question prompted by a new epidemiological study, released on Friday (January 27) which shows —once again— that one may be more than twice as likely to develop certain types of tumors after using a cell phone for more than ten years.

A court in El Paso, TX, ruled on January 26 that German soldiers who developed cancer after being exposed to X-ray radiation from radar components can pursue their claims against the manufacturers of the equipment, according to the German edition of the Deutsche Welle. The defendants include GE, Raytheon and Lucent.