If you are concerned about power line or appliance radiation, you are not alone. Martin Halper, a director of the E.P.A., said in a Fortune Magazine article on magnetic radiation: "In all my years of looking at chemicals, I have never seen a set of epidemiological studies that remotely approached the weight of evidence that we're seeing with ELF electromagnetic fields. Clearly there is something here." (Fortune Magazine)
Over 64 studies in the U.S. and Europe have linked chronic exposure to magnetic fields, such as those from power lines and computer monitors, to cancer, leukemia, and tumors in humans. In the book "Currents of Death -- Power Lines, Computer Terminals, and the Attempt to Cover Up Their Threat to Your Health" (by Paul Brodeur, Simon and Schuster), electromagnetic fields are linked to headaches, chataracts, heart problems, stress, fatigue, nausea, insomia, forgetfulness, chest pain, and significantly higher than expected rates of acute leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia. In animals, experiments have found higher birth defects and miscarriages.
There are now three studies linking computer use with higher rates of miscarriage and birth detects published in peer reviewed medical literature, such as in the American Journal of Epidemiology. There are also three major studies linking male breast cancer with power line fields.
Dr. David Carpenter, dean of public health at SUNY in Albany, N.Y., headed the utility industry's New York Power Lines Project, a five million dollar review of the carcinogenicity of magnetic fields. According to Dr. Carpenter, "The Savitz study changed my entire view of the field, and it has enormous implications." Fortune Magazine wrote: "Based of those results, he estimates that up to 30% of all childhood cancers may be attributable to ELF fields." "That's conservative," Dr. Carpenter added.
With so many common sources of ELF fields in our homes and work environment, you need to make sure you are not exposed to magnetic fields in a chronic fashion. The Office of Technology Assessment of the Congress of the United States recommends a policy of "prudent avoidance." Prudent avoidance means to measure fields and act to reduce exposure. To do that, one uses a Gauss meter. This easy to use device shows you which places in the home or office are safe from chronic exposure to magnetic radiation, and which places are not.
In addition to long-term health concerns, buying a house or living in a house with high fields will be an economic disaster. In a few years, when power line radiation is as well known as asbestos and radon, a house near power lines or with high fields will be practically impossible to sell. Business Week writes that there are over 100 lawsuits regarding power lines and property devaluation.
If you are concerned about computer radiation, we urge you to use our computer monitors. As the literature mentions, they come with a certificate showing the extremely low levels. Be safe! Call us today at 1-800-222-3003.
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The Latest News:
Excerpts from: MICROWAVE NEWS -- A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation
August 2002
California EMF Program to issue Strongest Health Warning Yet
After spending more than $7 million over the
last eight years, the California Department of Health Services (DHS) will soon
issue the strongest warning to date on the potential health risks from exposure
to power-frequency electromagnetic fields (EMFs).
Drs. Raymond Neutra, Vrncent DelPizzo and Geraldine
Lee, who wrote the report, conclude that they "are inclined to believe" that
EMFs are a cause of childhood leukemia, adult brain cancer, amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (ALS) and miscarriages.
The final report of the EMF Program, which runs
more than 500 pages including appendices, has not yet been released, but
Microwave News has obtained a copy. It "is slowly working its way through
the bureaucracy," said Neutra of the DHS, who led the program. He expects to
submit it to the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) "at the end of
the summer."
July/August 2001
ELF EMFs (electromagnetic fields) are now classified in the same category as DDT, lead, Carbon Tetrachloride and Chloroform, Category 2B possible carcinogens.
IARC Finds ELF EMFs Are Possible Human Carcinogens
A working group assembled by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has unanimously concluded that power-frequency magnetic fields are possible human carcinogens. This finding, announced on June 27 in Lyon, France, is based on the consistent association between childhood leukemia and residential exposure to extremely-low-frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF EMFs).
The makeup of the IARC panel spanned all sides of the EMF controversy, from those who openly believe that EMFs promote cancer to industry consultants who are skeptical of any such connection. "We all agreed," said Dr. Larry Anderson. EMFs have now been formal1y designated "2B Possible Carcinogens." (For a list of the members of the working group and their affiliations, and examples of each type of IARC carcinogens, see below.
"There was a unanimous feeling about it," said Dr. Jan Stolwijk. Dr. Maria
Stuchly, who remains unconvinced that magnetic fields are responsible for promoting leukemia in children, nevertheless joined the others in voting for the 2B designation. "The epidemiological data are there and it is hard to dismiss them," she said. Dr. Vincent DelPizzo believes that the cancer evidence is stronger that do any of the other panelists. He cast the only vote that there is "sufficient" human evidence for childhood leukemia, which implies that EMFs are known human carcinogens. "I am sure that the childhood leukemia finding cannot be attributed to chance, bias or confounding," he said. (See table below for definitions of "sufficient," "limited" and ”inadequate")
The IARC decision follows similar reviews by panels in the U.S. and the U.K. In 1998, a working group of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), using the same IARC criteria, also classified EMFs as 2B possible human carcinogens, a view that NIEHS Director Kenneth Olden later endorsed in his report to Congress. Earlier this year, an advisory committee to the UK National Radiological Protection Board chaired by Sir Richard Doll, also acknowledged the possible link between EMFs and cancer.
The childhood leukemia studies have had a major impact on all of these prior assessments. The Doll report was heavily influenced by the two recent pooled analyses: one led by Dr. Anders Ahlbom and the other by Dr. Sander Greenland. The IARC panel was similarly swayed, according to both Stolwijk and Dr. Elizabeth Hatch. “The Ahlbom analysis was found to be most impressive," noted Stolwijk. Much more surprising was the IARC panel members' view of the animal data. They came close to finding "limited" support for a cancer association based on the animal exposure experiments.
IARC Carcinogens: Definitions and Examples:
Category 1: Carcinogen
Evidence: Sufficient in humans
Chemical and physical agents:
Asbestos, benzene. dioxin, hepatitis C virus, radon. vinyl chloride. Total
number of agents: 87.
Category 2A: Probable Carcinogen
Evidence: limited in humans and sufficient in animals
Chemical and physical agents:
Benzo[a]pyrene, formaldehyde, PCBs, ultraviolet (A,B&C) radiation. Total number
of agents: 63.
Category 2B: Possible Carcinogen
Evidence: limited in humans and less than sufficient in animals
Chemical and physical agents:
Carbon tetrachloride, chloroform., coffee, DDT, ELF EMFs, lead, PBBs. Total
number of agents: 236
June, 2001
Maximum EMF Exposure Emerges
As Strong Miscarriage Risk
A new and innovative epidemiological study has found an up to six fold
increased risk of spontaneous abortions among women exposed to magnetic
fields of 16 mG or greater. The results “should have wide implications,” concludes
Dr. DeKun Li, who led the study team at Kaiser Permanente’s research
division in Oakland, CA.
Unlike past efforts, which have essentially all used average fields, Li focused
on maximum magnetic field (MMF) as the key index of exposure. While
Li found miscarriage risks that are significantly higher for women who had an
MMF of at least 16 mG, he saw no excess for women with time weighted
averages (TWA) of 3mG or more. Nor did he observe any increased risk for
elevated spot electromagnetic field (EMF) measurements or with wire codes.
“With TWAs you are diluting any possible effect because you are combining
relevant and irrelevant exposures,” Li told Microwave News. In a paper
summarizing his results, Li argued that, “It seemed more plausible to us that
MF exposure has a threshold below which any exposure is biologically irrelevant.”
Li’s paper is an appendix to the as yet unreleased final report of the
California EMF Project (see p.2). An advance copy of Li’s paper was obtained
by Microwave News.
“My study convinced me that EMFs probably have a biological effect,” Li
said. “We are entering a new chapter in the field of EMF epidemiology. There
is more evidence that there is an association—the better conducted studies
consistently show an association.
A “Robust” Association
“This population based cohort study with prospectively measured
MF exposure level revealed for the first time (based on
our search of Medline) an increased SAB risk associated with a
MMF exposure level of 16mG. The adverse MMF effect appeared
to have a threshold around 16 mG and persisted regardless
of the sources/locations of MMF exposure. Prenatal MMF
exposure had a greater effect on early spontaneous abortion
(< 10 weeks of gestation) when embryos or fetuses are much
more sensitive to environmental insults, and among women who
may be more susceptible to environmental exposures.
The association was much stronger when women whose 24 hour MF
measurements may not reflect their true prenatal MF exposure
were excluded. These biologically coherent observations, all
based on a priori hypotheses, provide strong evidence that prenatal
MF exposure above a certain level (possibly around 16
mG) may increase SAB risk. It is also unlikely that the observed
association was due to biases or unmeasured confounders, because
any such biases or confounders would have to explain the
above observations simultaneously. The robustness of the association
against potential confounders was further supported by
the evidence that, despite adjusting for more than 30 variables
of known or suspected risk factors for SAB, the estimates were
barely altered. Moreover, prompted by the findings in this study,
Lee et al. reanalyzed the data from the study in which the findings
related to TWA exposure led to funding the current study,
and confirmed our observed association between MMF and
SAB risk. These findings raise the question of the effect of MMF
on reproductive outcomes and other health endpoints. The MMF
exposure level in our study population was quite comparable
to that found in a nationwide survey and our study population
was racially/ethnically and socioeconomically diverse. Thus,
the findings from our study should have wide implications.”
DeKun Li, “A Population Based Prospective Study of Personal
Exposure to Magnetic Fields During Pregnancy and the Risk of
Spontaneous Abortion,” unpublished manuscript, May 2001.
G.M. Lee et al., “A Nested Case Control Study of Residential and
Personal Magnetic Field Measures and Spontaneous Abortions,” Epidemiology,
submitted.
Li stressed that 16 mG is not a rare exposure. He noted that
approximately 75% of his study population had at least one exposure
above this threshold in a 24hour period. Li said that such
peak fields are more likely to come from household electrical
appliances and transportation sources than from local electrical
distribution lines.
The Kaiser Permanente study has cleared peer review and is
scheduled to be published in the November issue of Epidemiology,
Li said. His results were first disclosed at a meeting convened
by the California EMF Program on April 25. Kaiser Permanente
is the largest and oldest health care provider in the U.S.
“It’s quite exciting if it holds up,” Dr. Nancy Wertheimer said
in an interview. “ More work needs to be done on thresholds and
short term high exposures.” Wertheimer, who lives in Boulder,
CO, was a member of Kaiser’s internal peer review team. Wertheimer
and Ed Leeper have themselves reported associations between
miscarriages and EMF exposures from electrically heated
beds and home electrical heating systems.
Others have also seen a miscarriage risk due to magnetic
fields from video display terminals (see MWN, M/J88 and M/A
92) and from power lines (see MWN, M/A92).
“Taken together the EMF studies of spontaneous abortions
paint a consistent picture,” said one epidemiologist, who has read
the new Li paper but who asked not to be identified.
The new study is the first prospective study ever done for
EMF health risks and the first to use maximum magnetic field
exposures to gauge risks. A total of 969 women who had been
pregnant for less than ten weeks qualified for the study, and the
outcomes of their pregnancies were monitored. They wore an
EMDEX meter for 24 hours and were then asked if their activities
during that particular day were “typical” of the pregnancy.
“One of the strengths of this study was that we measured MF
exposure during the relevant period and used personal measurement
to capture MF exposure from all sources encountered by a
woman,” Li wrote.
Li found that women who were exposed to MMFs of 16 mG
or more had 80% more miscarriages compared to those exposed
to less than 16 mG—a statistically significant increase. But when
women who said that they had worn the EMDEX on an atypical
day are eliminated from the study population, the miscarriage
risk increases to three times that of the less exposed women.
And for pregnancies lost during the first ten weeks of gestation,
the risk is close to six times that of the less exposed women. All
these results are also significant.
Of the 159 women who had spontaneous abortions, 132 had
exposures above 16 mG, and of these 95 said that they had taken
measurements on a typical day.
For women who were judged to be more susceptible to environmental
insults—those who had already had two or more miscarriages
or who had fertility problems—the miscarriage risk is
three times higher when they were exposed to 16 mG or more.
This risk rises to close to five times that of the unexposed women
for those pregnancies that were lost before the tenth week of gestation,
a time when the fetus is most sensitive to environmental
insults. Both these risks are statistically significant.
“All this evidence points to an underlying biological effect
of the magnetic field rather than bias or a chance finding,” Li
said. “If this were a chance finding, you would not expect there
to be a difference between typical and atypical exposures and
between early and late abortions.”
In the interview, Li said that he was “a little disappointed” by
the recent commentary on EMF epidemiology by Dr. David Savitz
A number of researchers have argued for the need to look
beyond TWAs to measure biologically relevant EMF exposures.
For instance, in the early 1990s, Drs. Richard Lovely and Bary
Wilson of the Battelle Labs in Richland, WA, pointed specifically
to MMF exposure as an alternative exposure index (see MWN,
M/J93). Until Li, no one had followed up their suggestion.
In a previous epidemiological study, Li found that women
with fertility problems who used electric blankets during pregnancy
had a greater chance of having babies with birth defects (see
MWN, S/O95). The risk was ten times higher among women
who used electric blankets during the first trimester.
September 2001
WHO EMF Project Now Endorses
In a major policy shift, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International
EMF Project has endorsed prudent avoidance.
On October 3, the WHO advised that decisions on siting power lines should
“consider ways to reduce people’s exposures.” The WHO also recommended
that governments and industry should offer the public “suggestions for safe
and low-cost ways to reduce exposures.” The advice is contained in a fact sheet
on extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF EMFs) and cancer.
The project’s new outlook follows the decision by an expert panel convened
by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to classify
ELF EMFs as “possible human carcinogens” (see MWN, J/A01). IARC, which
is based in Lyon, France, is part of the WHO.
Three years ago, in its last fact sheet on ELF EMFs and cancer, the WHO
project took a very different view. “There is no need for any
specific protective measures for members of the general public,”
it stated —beyond meeting the exposure limits recommended
by the International Commission on NonIonizing Radiation Protection
(ICNIRP). This standard protects against acute health
hazards, such as shocks and burns, but does not address cancer
risks.
At that time, Dr. Michael Repacholi, who oversees WHO’s
work on EMFs, told Microwave News: “It is not WHO’s job to
be recommending ‘prudent avoidance’ to national governments”
(see MWN, N/D98).
As late as last year, the EMF project advised that prudent avoidance
“may be justified,” but warned that “such actions should
not be recommended by national authorities on health grounds.”
Rather, they may be appropriate to deal with individual perceptions
of risks (see MWN, M/J00).
“The precautionary principle
cannot be applied to EMFs.”
—Dr. Paolo Vecchia
“The lower the limits, the
greater the public concern.”
—Dr. Michael Repacholi
German Radiation Commission
Germany’s Radiation Protection Commission is recommending
a policy of prudent avoidance.
In a report released on September 14, the panel—known
by its German acronym SSK—states that it has confidence
in the ICNIRP standards. But it calls for “minimizing” exposures
to both ELF and RF/MW EMFs to the extent “technically
and economically reasonable,” especially in locations
where people spend extended periods of time.
The SSK recommends that emissions from consumer appliances,
including mobile phones, be kept as low as possible
and that product labels indicate emission levels.
The SSK also argues for more health effects research.
The Federal Environment Ministry, which is revising
Germany’s EMF safety rules, requested the report (see MWN,
S/O97). In July, the ministry announced that it was weighing
precautionary exposure limits for mobile phone base stations,
but would wait for SSK’s advice (see MWN, J/A01).
The SSK’s principal expert on non ionizing radiation is
Dr. Jürgen Bernhardt, who is the vice chair—and a past
chair—of ICNIRP and a former head of Germany’s Radiation
Protection Office.
On July 31, the radiation office’s current director, Wolfram
König, advised against the use of mobile phones by children
and called for restrictions on base station antennas near
schools and hospitals (see MWN, J/A01).
The full text of the SSK’s 56page report, Limits and
Precautionary Measures to Protect the Public Against Electromagnetic
Fields, is available in German at <www.ssk.de>.
JUNE 2000
Strong Electric Fields Implicated in
Long term employees of Ontario Hydro who worked in strong electric
fields had much higher risks of leukemia, Canadian researchers have found.
Significant risks were also found for non Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) in a
related study.
The elevated risks were seen among workers who spent the most time in
electric fields above certain thresholds, in the range of 10 to 40 V/m. The largest
increases occurred among those with more than 20 years on the job. Senior
workers with the greatest time above the thresholds had an eight to tenfold
increase in the risk of leukemia—much higher than in past epidemiological
studies of electromagnetic fields (EMFs).
“It’s very interesting that there seems to be a threshold effect,” Dr. Anthony
Miller, a coauthor of the study, told Microwave News. “ These studies confirm
that electric fields are very important, if not dominant,” Miller said. “I think
that’s a very important message.” Both studies were based on
data from Miller’s 1996 study of Ontario Hydro employees, which
put a spotlight on cancer risks and electric fields (see MWN, J/A
96). Formerly at the University of Toronto, Miller is now with
the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.
Paul Villeneuve of the University of Ottawa, who led the studies
as part of his doctoral dissertation, said, “It’s remarkable that
we saw similar threshold effects for both leukemia and NHL.”
The threshold levels were “relatively consistent” in the two studies,
he noted.
In an interview, Dr. Lois Green of Ontario Power Generation
(formerly part of Ontario Hydro) in Toronto described this work
as the first of its kind. “No one has ever taken a systematic look
at threshold effects before,” she said. Most previous studies have
focused on cumulative effects or time weighted averages, which
Green called “a very limited way to view EMF exposures.” The
new work by Villeneuve, Miller and colleagues “shows that there
are other important ways of looking at exposure,” she said. “We
can’t close the door on this question.”
The new Canadian results stand in sharp contrast with past
EMF epidemiological studies, most of which have focused almost
exclusively on magnetic fields. Dr. David Savitz of the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told Microwave News
that the new findings “suggest that those doing future studies
reconsider the pessimism about the value of electric field data.”
“Our results suggest that there is no association between exposure
to magnetic fields and NHL,” Villeneuve and colleagues
write in the April issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine,
and no threshold effects were seen with magnetic fields in
either study. In the leukemia study, some nonsignificant elevations
in risk were observed for workers with higher average magnetic
field exposure.
Miller’s 1996 study also described electric fields as the main
source of risk, but indicated that the highest risks came from
combined electric and magnetic exposure. While the two new
studies “tend to confirm the dominance of electric fields,” he
said, “I’m not sure they remove any effect for magnetic fields.”
For electric fields, however, Miller now believes that the threshold
analysis in the new papers is a more precise way of measuring
their impact.
The leukemia study, published in the June issue of the American
Journal of Industrial Medicine, found that the amount of
time spent above these thresholds was a “significant predictor
of leukemia risk.” While average exposure was also linked to an
increase in risk, Villeneuve and colleagues write, their results
indicate “that leukemia risk is more sensitive to exposures above
a threshold.”
For workers employed for more than 20 years, the findings
were especially striking. Of these, the one third who spent the
most time above 10 V/m were ten times more likely than others
to develop leukemia, a significant increase. The one third with
the most time above 20 V/m had a risk eight times higher than
others. These odds ratios, however, had very wide confidence
intervals.
The case control study was based on 50 cases of leukemia
and 200 controls, drawn from a cohort of over 31,000 male Ontario
Hydro employees and retirees. Employment data were linked to
a job exposure matrix based on both job title and work site, with
personal measurements from over 800 workers, and to incidence
data from the Ontario Cancer Registry. These data were the basis
of Miller’s 1996 study, which was part of a three utility study
that included workers at Hydro Quebec (HQ) and Electricité de
France (EDF) (see MWN, M/A94). The Ontario research used a
more detailed exposure assessment—taking into account job
location as well as title—than was used for the other utilities.
The NHL study was based on 51 cases and 203 controls from
the same study population. It found that the one third of workers
who spent the most time in electric fields above 10 V/m had
triple the risk of NHL. Those with the most time above 40 V/m
were 3.6 times more likely to get the disease.
“Many of us, starting with Genevieve Matanoski around 1986,
have long held that we need to look at alternative indices of
exposure,” Dr. Indira Nair of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh
told Microwave News. Confirmation of this point is “the
central importance of these papers,” said Nair. “Until we are able
to elucidate a mechanism, studies that include these alternate indices
can provide us with understanding which may help us eventually
to ‘back into’ the mechanisms.”
A 1997 paper in Bioelectromagnetics by Nair and Dr. Jack
Sahl, then of Southern California Edison and now a consultant
based in Upland, CA, examined how using different indices of
exposure influenced the exposure assessment of different job
categories. While average field strength could be used for separating
jobs into “high” or “low” exposure, they concluded, it
“may be misleading” in ranking jobs which have significant exposure.
For example, electricians were highest in average exposure,
while substation operators were highest in time spent above
certain magnetic field thresholds.
“We still don’t know what is the biologically relevant exposure,”
commented Green. “Some of these exposures are very
complex, and some of the effects are very subtle.” While Ville
neuve’s studies are “very interesting and important,” she said,
they are certainly not the last word. She pointed out that while
significant risks were observed, the numbers of cases are small
and as a result the risk estimates are “unstable.”
Miller noted that these latest findings cannot be directly extrapolated
to work on childhood leukemia. “These studies involve
occupational exposures, which of course are much higher
than in a residential environment.” Also, he noted, childhood
leukemia is “a different disease from adult leukemia—it’s a different
histological type.” Miller said that in a 1999 study of childhood
leukemia in Toronto, which was led by Green, “We could
find no effect at all of electric fields.” When its findings were
published, Green’s team concluded that, “As exposure assessment
is refined, the possible role of magnetic fields in the etiology
of childhood leukemia becomes more evident” (see MWN,
J/A99).
Villeneuve pointed to computer modeling work by Dr. Maria
Stuchly and colleagues at Canada’s University of Victoria, estimating
the level of induced current in different organs of the body
that might result from each type of exposure. Among other findings,
they calculated that electric fields would be likely to produce
especially high peak levels of induced current in the blood,
while magnetic field exposure would produce higher currents in
the brain and cerebrospinal fluid.
Villeneuve and colleagues conclude their leukemia paper by
recommending that “similar analyses be pursued in other study
populations.” But it appears that few if any existing data sets
would be suitable. Villeneuve said that the only studies he knew
of that had the right electric field measurements were the EDF
and HQ components of the triutility study. He noted, however,
that the French researchers had not followed up with workers
after retirement age and that the HQ data had fewer cases, both
of which “would limit analyses.”
“It’s unfortunate that people haven’t collected the data on electric
field exposure,” said Dr. David Agnew of Ontario Power
Generation in Whitby, Ontario—a coauthor of the Villeneuve
papers and of Miller’s 1996 study. Agnew told Microwave News
that any repetition of the Villeneuve studies would probably require
completely new research.
“I somehow can’t see this happening,” commented Green,
“which is a great disappointment.” She noted that “funding is
not coming forward to support follow-up studies in this area”—
no matter how compelling the results. In the long run, though,
Green thinks the issue will demand attention. Even if it is buried,
she said, “I’m not sure it will stay adequately buried.”
Paul Villeneuve, David Agnew, Anthony Miller, Paul Corey and James Purdham,
“Leukemia in Electric Utility Workers: The Evaluation of Alternative Indices
of Exposure to 60 Hz Electric and Magnetic Fields,” American Journal of
Industrial Medicine, 37, pp.607617, June 2000.
Paul Villeneuve et al., “NonHodgkin’s Lymphoma Among Electric Utility
Workers in Ontario: The Evaluation of Alternative Indices of Exposure to 60 Hz
Electric and Magnetic Fields,” Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 57,
pp.249257, April 2000.
Jun Zhang, Indira Nair and Jack Sahl, “Effects Function Analysis of ELF Magnetic
Field Exposure in the Electric Utility Work Environment,” Bioelectromagnetics,
18, pp.365375, 1997.
Trevor Dawson, Kris Caputa and Maria Stuchly, “A Comparison of 60 Hz Uniform
Magnetic and Electric Induction in the Human Body,” Physics in Medicine
and Biology, 42, pp.23192329, December 1997.
U.K. Panel Discourages Use of
Mobile Phones by Children
A high level panel appointed by the U.K. government has recommended
that children be discouraged from using mobile phones and that the industry
not market phones to children. Although the Independent Expert Group on
Mobile Phones, chaired by Sir William Stewart, found that there was no evidence
of a health risk, it favored a “precautionary approach” given current
“gaps in knowledge.”
“I have got a grandchild of four and a grandchild of two and I would not be
recommending that they have mobile phones,” Stewart told the BBC, noting
that he would continue to use his own phone. Stewart was science advisor to
the prime minister from 1990 to 1995.
The 12 members of the expert group issued their report on May 11. They
asked that radiation exposure data for different phones—specific absorption
rates (SARs)—be “readily accessible to consumers” and that there be no shortcuts
in the planning process for the siting of mobile phone base stations.
USA Today conducted a survey of
4,567 readers and reported that electromagnetic fields, or EMF's, are the number one
environmental concern in America. "EMF's - always present near power lines and
working electrical appliances - are linked to such diseases as leukemia and breast
cancer."
"The National Council on Radiation
Protection and Measurements (NCRP) committee charged with evaluating the potential health
effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) has completed a draft report that calls for
strong action to curtail the exposure of the U.S. population. "It took us nine years
but we finally reached agreement," committee chair Dr. Ross Adey, of the
Veterans Administration Hospital in Loma Linda, CA, told Microwave News.
A draft report prepared for the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) generally endorses a 2 mG exposure limit. It would take effect
immediately for new day care centers, schools and playgrounds, as well as for new
transmission lines near existing housing. The report was funded by the EPA. Dr. Joe Elder,
EPA's program officer for the NCRP study in Research Triangle Park, NC, called the
committee's report "the first comprehensive review of the world's literature on EMF
health effects." "I have never seen a set of epidemiological
studies that remotely approached the weight of evidence that we're seeing with ELF
[extremely low frequency] electromagnetic fields. Clearly there is something here." "Electromagnetic fields are associated with
the development of leukemia, brain cancer and other serious diseases." "...studies on cats, rats, and chick brain
cells have shown that low frequency electromagnetic radiation interacts with brain
activity and could cause a host of negative symptoms from heightened stress and
depression, slowed reaction time, and learning disabilities to miscarriages, fetal
deformities, and cancer." "This is really harming people." When buying a home, it is important to check
for EMF's. Homes "sold...for 30% less" when exposed to EMF's, as reported by the
Wall Street Journal, September 8, 1993.
According to a survey conducted by Indoor
Air Review, 26% of homes have areas that register EMF fields exceeding 3
milligauss.
"...Sweden has concluded that EMF's do
lead to higher rates of cancer...I, frankly was somewhat impressed by the arguments made
by the Swedes." - President Bill Clinton
"Most unsettling of all, perhaps, is the
fact that the pulsed VLF and ELF magnetic fields found routinely within a radius of about
two feet from the average CRT computer terminal can be as strong as, or even stronger
than, the sixty-hertz magnetic fields found inside the homes in which Wertheirner and
Savitz discovered children to be dying unduly of cancer." "...sit at least ten feet away from the
television set." A Swedish study has found that weak, pulsed
magnetic fields similar to those emitted by VDTs can cause fetal abnormalities in the
offspring of pregnant mice. According to Tom Brokaw of NBC News, "the findings no
longer rule out the possibility that radiation can affect human fetuses." In Sweden,
a major Swedish union (the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees, or TCO) is
seeking more stringent limits, and pressure is being put on the Swedish government to
change VDT work regulations to protect pregnant women.
A study released in February, 1991, by the
University of Southern California (UCS) in Los Angeles has found an increased rate of
leukemia among children who watch black and white televisions.