ELECTROMAGNETICS Forum - Volume1, No.2, Article 7


Volume1, No.2 Article 7



EDITORIAL Comment on the DOCA Fact Sheets

In February 1997 the Department of Communications and the Arts' (DOCA) Committee on Electromagnetic Energy Public Health Issues released a series of 'fact sheets' dealing with various aspects of the mobile phone network in Australia.

The stated purpose of these fact sheets is to: "help keep interested members of the public informed about the latest substantiated scientific evidence and Government action on EME public health issues. They will be updated as necessary and additional fact sheets will be published as information becomes available. Regular information will also be provided to local governments, health and community centres and the media."

A read of these fact sheets immediately indicates that they do not present a balanced viewpoint in their representation of the state of current scientific evidence. When these sheets repeatedly refer to "scientific opinion" they are more accurately referring to the opinions of a select group of scientists and not to to the actual science from many of the scientists working in bio-electromagnetic research. These fact sheets draw conclusions on the health effects of human exposure to mobile phone tower transmissions that simply can not be justified.

In the DOCA fact sheet titled; Health issues and electromagnetic energy from mobile phone towers, it is stated:

"Mobile phone towers produce very weak electromagnetic energy (EME) levels in the everyday environment. Concerns have been expressed that exposure to these levels may cause health problems. However, the weight of national and international scientific opinion is that there is no substantiated evidence that living near a mobile phone tower causes adverse health effects.

From a scientific view point the above statement says nothing. What is "the weight of national and international scientific opinion" and where has it concluded that "there is no substantiated evidence that living near a mobile phone tower causes adverse health effects"?

If DOCA is referring to the whole body of national and international RF/MW exposure standards, research studies, conference papers, articles, etc. published since the beginning of our modern era on electromagnetic radiation (EMR) surely they must realize that practically all of these documents are irrelevant to the safety (or not) of mobile phones and base stations.

Almost all of these studies deal either with the extremely low frequency (ELF) end of the electromagnetic spectrum or with acute short term exposures to RF/MW and not with the low power microwave frequencies used by mobile phones. The truth of the matter is that there are very few studies completed looking at the long term biological effects of people living near a mobile phone tower.

Optus, in its own information sheets, states that "after more than six thousand scientific studies the world over, there is still no convincing evidence of any adverse health effects caused by electromagnetic fields (EMF) from mobile phones or mobile phone base stations."
As reported in the Financial Review, (12 July 1995) Dr Stan Barnett, Principal Research Scientist of the CSIRO's Ultrasonics Laboratory, Division of Radiophysics, challenged Optus on its statement about the alleged 6000 scientific studies:

"There have been nowhere near this many studies at frequencies relevant to use of cellular phones. Not even 600 or even 60."

When the DOCA fact sheets refer to "the weight of national and international scientific opinion" it is mainly referring to the opinions of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). The author of the fact sheets however, must be ignoring the ICNIRP's own summation of the state of current science, as mentioned in their April 1996 paper, Health Issues Related to the use of Hand Held Radiotelephones and Base Transmitters. (Health Physics, Vol. 70, no. 4, April 1996, pp. 587-593):

"The scientific literature on the biological effects of RF fields (including microwaves) has been reviewed extensively In order to address questions raised by prolonged exposure to modulated radiofrequency transmission, or specific end-points such as cancer, it is necessary to collect information from a wide range of experiments carried out on different biological systems exposed under various conditions. The relevance of these data to the exposure of people may, however, be limited due to differences in the coupling of the fields to the exposed objects and differences in the responses of different biological systems compared with those of humans."
"Most of the established biological effects of exposure to RF fields are consistent with responses to induced heating, resulting in rises in tissue or body temperature of greater than 1 degree C.(UNEP/WHO/IRPA,1993). Most studies examined endpoints other than cancer, many examined physiological and thermoregulatory responses, effects on behaviour and on the induction of lens opacities (cataracts) and adverse reproductive outcome following acute exposure to relatively high levels of RF fields. Very few studies are relevant to the evaluation of RF exposure on the development of cancer in humans."

With the ICNIRP statement in mind, it would be more factual to state; 'the weight of national and international scientific opinion is that the necessary research to determine whether living near a mobile phone tower is harmful or not, has not yet been done.

There is now a large and growing body of scientific evidence indicating that low level chronic exposures to RF/MW radiation (which do not increase body temperatures non-thermal or athermal), have a subtle and cumulative biological impact. This evidence has largely been excluded from what these fact sheets refers to as "the weight of national and international scientific opinion".

For example, it is interesting to note that although the 1992 proposed American RF/MW standard (ANSI/IEEE) had a bibliography extending as far back as 1950, so few publications were judged to meet the ANSI criteria, that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) voiced its objection to the acceptance of the proposed ANSI/IEEE standard on the grounds of its use of gross effects only as a criteria for safety (High level thermal exposures).

The recently adopted American RF/MW standard, (part of DOCA's "international scientific opinion"), though better than the ANSI/IEEE proposal, still is only designed to protect against high level exposures. To quote from a US Environmental Protection Agency letter (Oct 1996) on this standard:

"While there is sufficient information on thermal exposure/effects on which to base a standard, the data base on low-level, long term exposures is insufficient to provide a basis for standards to protect the public against adverse human health effects that may result from long term, nonthermal exposures. Both the NCRP and ANSI/IEEE standards are thermally based, and do not apply to chronic, nonther-mal exposure situations. The statement referring to "adequate protection of public health" pertains only to thermally related effects."

The Australian public concerns about possible adverse health effects from mobile phone towers are not about being heated up, the Aust RF/MW exposure standard guards against that. They are however concerned about the long term (years) cumulative effect of exposure to the low level microwave radiation, and that is clearly not addressed in "international scientific opinion". It is unscientific for the DOCA 'fact sheets' to refer to irrelevant "scientific opinion" in an attempt to use it to suggest safety of mobile phone technology.

The "fact sheets" also make a statement that is no longer credible with the scientific community, and reveals a real lack of scientific basis for their statements. "To date the only biological effect that has been substantiated as a result of absorbing EME relates to partial or whole body heating (that is a 'thermal' effect)."

To clarify thermal and non-thermal effects, the following may be of benefit: The older 'thermal effects only' school, dates from the early days of our electronic era, when it was thought that the only harmful effects from EMR was the actual heating of body tissue at high exposure levels. This interpretation is favoured by the telecommunications industry, which obviously has a vested interest in maintaining exposure standards at existing, or even higher levels.

The 'non-thermal (a-thermal) effects' school would state that there is now adequate evidence, from both epidemiological and laboratory studies to conclude that low-level (athermal) electromagnetic radiation has a subtle effect on biological processes and this fact must be taken into account in setting exposure standards. This line of thinking is well expressed by Professor Ross Adey, of the US Veteran's Administration Medical Centre in Loma Linda California.

Dr. Adey is the committee chairman for the U.S. National Council for Radiation Protection and Measurement's (NCRP) committee evaluating the standards for powerline frequency electromagnetic fields.

Dr. Adey has conducted a multi-million dollar research study into the safety (or otherwise) of mobile phones, funded by Motorola.

On July 25, 1995, I wrote to Dr. Adey and asked him: "Based on the current scientific knowledge, is it advisable to base RF/MW maximum exposure limits (standards) solely on thermal effects?" His reply, received in early August 1995 was as follows:

"You ask about exposure limits based solely on thermal effects. The laboratory evidence for athermal effects of both ELF and RF/Microwave fields now constitutes a major body of scientific literature in peer-reviewed journals. It is my personal view that to continue to ignore this work in the course of standard setting is irresponsible to the point of it being a public scandal."
The DOCA fact sheet referred to previously does however admit that there are non-thermal effects but then arbitrarily dismisses their health implications.

"Some bioeffects have been observed at moderate exposure levels (much higher than exposures from mobile phone towers) where tissue heating is apparently not involved and which cannot be explained by current knowledge on the physics of radiation/tissue interactions. Available evidence does not provide the basis to conclude that there are any adverse health effects arising from these 'non-thermal ' bioeffects."

How can this statement be justified given the prevous statements from Dr. Ross Adey, the ICNIRP and the US EPA? Even the preamble to the original Australian RF/MW Standard 2772 -1985 disagrees with the DOCA fact sheet statement.
To quote: "It has been demonstrated that low-level, long-term exposure can induce a variety of effects in nervous, haematopoietic and immune systems of small animals. Such exposure may influence the susceptibility of animals to other influencing factors. Thermal mechanisms seen inadequate to account for these and other effects."

On another DOCA fact sheet Government action on electromagnetic energy public health issues, under the heading of 'Research', we again have the much repeated sentence: "The weight of national and international opinion is that there is no substantiated evidence" and "The continuing development of communications technology and improved scientific methods means that ongoing research ensures that public health policies continue to be based on the most up-to-date information."

There is more that could be said about these fact sheets, such as how they refer to the Australian RF/MW exposure Standard as providing protection, when this standard is for high level thermal effects only and not for low level chronic exposures. However it is sufficient to finish off with a quote from Dr. John Goldsmith, author of Epidemiological Evidence of Radiofrequency Radiation (Microwave) Effects on Military, Broadcasting and Occupational Studies (1995).

"There are strong political and economic reasons for wanting there to be no health effect of RF/MW (radiofrequency/microwave ) exposure, just as there are strong public health reasons for more accurately portraying the risks. Those of us who intend to speak for public health must be ready for opposition that is nominally but not truly, scientific."