ICNIRP

March 14, 2024

The International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF) has written to Italian government officials to support the country’s strict 6 V/m RF exposure limit.

The letter, dated March 13, expresses “great concern” that the standard might be weakened. It is signed by Ronald Melnick, the chair of ICBE-EMF, and by Elizabeth Kelley, its managing director.

December 11, 2023

ICNIRP Revamp:Closer Ties to WHO EMF Project

In November, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) elected a new chair, vice chair and seven new Commissioners to join the remaining five. The new lineup takes over in mid-July 2024.

Yet, despite all the changes, ICNIRP’s outlook and policies are expected to remain much the same. While two medical doctors will be joining the Commission —there are none now— the membership will continue to be dominated by physicists and electrical engineers. ICNIRP’s entrenched thermal dogma will most likely continue to hold sway with cancer risks, and other non-thermal effects downplayed, when not dismissed outright.

June 15, 2023

EC’s Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER), “Opinion on the Need of a Revision of the Annexes in the Council Recommendation 1999/519/EC and Directive 2013/35/EU, in View of the Latest Scientific Evidence Available with regard to RF (100kHz - 300GHz),” released June 14, 2023. SCHEER reaffirms use of ICNIRP limits. Effectively rejects NTP, Ramazzini and Lerchl animal studies. Sees no need to protect public & workers from possible long-term effects of RF.

June 5, 2023

ICNIRP Still Runs RF at WHO

ICNIRP continues to dominate EMF policies at the WHO, according to documents made available to Microwave News.

The documents were recently distributed by Emilie van Deventer as she prepared to host a briefing this week for its International Advisory Committee (IAC) in Geneva.

May 9, 2023

“RF Health Safety Limits and Recommendations,” IEEE Microwave Magazine, June 2023. Jim Lin offers his most stinging criticism to date of the FCC, IEEE and ICNIRP exposure limits for RF and 5G radiation.

January 28, 2023

“Incongruities in Recently Revised RF Exposure Guidelines and Standards,” Environmental Research, posted January 23, 2023. Jim Lin, a former member of ICNIRP member and editor of Bioelectromagnetics, expresses concerns over safety limits for mm waves set by the IEEE in 2019 and ICNIRP in 2020. “Current scientific database is inadequate at mm wavelengths to render a trustworthy appraisal or to reach a judgment with confidence.” More here.

November 1, 2022

New Challenge to ICNIRP

An international group of research scientists has come together to challenge ICNIRP, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection.

The new panel wants a complete revision of ICNIRP’s guidelines for exposures to radiofrequency (RF) radiation. The researchers are demanding the adoption of more scientifically rigorous standards, which better protect public health and the environment.

“We are calling for an independent evaluation of the limits,” said Joel Moskowitz of Berkeley Public Health.

August 11, 2022

“Static Magnetic Fields from Earphones: Detailed Measurements Plus Some Open Questions,” Environmental Research, November 2022. From Argentina and Slovakia. Team includes Igor Belyaev. “Overall, it is concluded that the whole of the literature precludes assuming that, a priori, static magnetic fields from earphones are innocuous.”

July 20, 2022

The Odious Smell of Truth

My wife and I spent a few days in Basel, Switzerland, earlier this month. One afternoon as we were walking through town, I spotted a carefully crafted warning on the side of an otherwise unremarkable building. “The Odious Smell of Truth,” it called out.

With a little Googling, I learned that the expression comes from the title of an exhibition held at the Royal College of Art in London in the spring of 2017. The show was organized by Peter Kennard, a noted British political artist, and his students. They called themselves the Rage Collective. What does it mean, they wanted to know, to tell the truth in a world of false news and social media misinformation.

As it happens, a few days later, I received an email from Peter Hensinger, the scientific director of Diagnose:Funk, with a commentary he had just published which was sharply critical of Martin Röösli, an associate professor at the University of Basel.

July 14, 2022

The MW Debate Continues —in Norwegian

Close to 40 years after its first publication, The Microwave Debate, Nicholas Steneck’s history of research and regulation of microwave health effects, is back in print —this time in Norwegian.

The new translation comes with an epilogue by Thomas Butler, a professor at Ireland’s Cork University Business School, who has contributed seven chapters —about 30,000 words— to bring Steneck’s story up to the present.

The translation is the brainchild of Einar Flydal ...

July 10, 2022

“Interagency Committee on the Health Effects of Non-Ionising Fields: Report to Ministers,” New Zealand Ministry of Health, June 28, 2022. Report runs 107 pages: offers a full-throated endorsement of ICNIRP (on both RF and ELF EMFs) and recommends adoption of ICNIRP’s 2020 RF exposures guidelines. Strangely, committee members not named and they are not allowed to speak to the media.

July 7, 2022

“Self-Referencing Authorships Behind the ICNIRP 2020 Radiation Protection Guidelines,” Else Nordhagen and Einar Flydal, Reviews on Environmental Health, June 27, 2022. Two key findings: “ICNIRP 2020 authors are involved in all literature reviews referenced in ICNIRP 2020 to underpin it”; and “a small and tight network of just 17 authors behind all the literature used to underpin ICNIRP 2020.” From Norway; open access.

January 10, 2022

Abandoning Inconvenient Science

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....

November 29, 2021

The End of BEMSA Merger or a Heist?

The Bioelectromagnetics Society (BEMS) and the European BioElectromagnetics Association (EBEA), the two leading research groups in Western countries, will soon join together and become BioEM. Like its predecessors, the new society will be a forum on the interactions of all types of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields and radiation with living organisms. BioEM will be based in Zurich, Switzerland.

The move is hardly unexpected. Just the opposite. A union has been in the planning stages since at least 2016. Many favored a BEMS-EBEA consolidation even earlier, but it ran into one roadblock or another, at least partly because directors did not want to lose control.

May 9, 2021

Yuri Grigoriev, Russian BiophysicistAnd Non-Thermalist, Dies at 95

Yuri Grigoriev, a Russian biophysicist and a singular figure in the world of electromagnetic health and safety over the last 50 years, died in Moscow on April 6 at the age of 95.

“We have lost a ‘scientific grandfather’,” Oleg Grigoriev told Microwave News. “Yuri supported scientists and pushed them to do research. He was greatly respected by all his colleagues, myself included.”

In contrast to many of his counterparts in the West, Yuri Grigoriev promoted the idea that microwave biology is more complex than simple tissue heating. His views were based, in part, on his own research showing the importance of modulation characteristics.

February 8, 2021

Rich Rewards for Bad Behavior

Alexander Lerchl’s bogus campaign against the REFLEX project and members of Hugo Rüdiger’s lab did nothing to harm his career. Just the opposite, Lerchl thrived as he gained stature and a succession of rich research grants from the German government.

Over the last 20 years, Germany’s Federal Office of Radiation Protection —the Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz, or BfS for short— has given Lerchl $5 million in contracts. Lerchl has been the best-funded RF lab researcher in Germany, Europe, and, most likely, the world.

June 20, 2020

“ICNIRP: Conflicts of Interest, Corporate Capture and the Push for 5G,” by Klaus Buchner and Michèle Rivasi, June 2020.

Both authors are members of the European Parliament. A call for disbanding ICNIRP and replacing it with a “new, public and fully independent advisory” panel.

November 4, 2019

Will WHO Kick Its ICNIRP Habit?

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.

Our latest chapter, “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.

October 23, 2018

Japan and Korea Planning Their Own Cell Phone Animal Studies

Japanese and Korean officials are working on a partial replication of the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) animal study on cancer risks from cell phone radiation. The project is expected to be approved and get underway late next year.

Though collaborating on a common experimental design, each country will carry out its own exposures with animals from the same breeder. If the designs are similar enough, the two sets of data will be combined in a joint analysis.

“We have been discussing this issue in Japan,” said Masao Taki of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Tokyo Metropolitan University, who was a member of ICNIRP from 1996 to 2008.

June 30, 2014

Freaky or What?

INTEROCC and INTERPHONE have a lot in common —more than their first five letters. So much in common that it’s a bit freaky. Or, maybe it just shows, once again, how small, insulated and polarized the EMF community is.

The most obvious parallels are that Elisabeth Cardis is the principal investigator of both the...

A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

ICNIRP: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )

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