There is very little doubt that if cellular phones and wireless machines, such as iPad and were safe, they would be a tremendous boon to communications, economies, and society. People can wonder whether a few human lives sacrificed to allow the proliferation of wireless technology is moral or not. The fact remains that the telecommunications industry is not going to wait around for 'do gooders' to ease their consciences that society may be demanding deaths of people so that they can enjoy cheaper entertainment. It seems that even the churches have joned the throng of organisations willing to take the lives of a few so that the living can have better TV-like programming on the move and viritually everywhere. Business is not just in the office. It is fully mobile. Fun is not just in the home, it is in the woods and everywhere on the move, in cars, airplanes, subways and trains, boats, schools and hospitals. It, RF technology is already almost universally available and becoming more dense than six lazers triggering a nuclear holocast.
So as a defunct but still thinking economist, I have to ask the question whether the technologogists, engineers, politicians, physicists, health gurus, doctors, academics and theoreticians etc have thoroughly thrashed out the multitude of general disequilibrium implications for economics, health, security, and environment. I am sad to say that the equations have not even been formulated and few of the pressing questions have been asked or researched seriously. So with bad equations, Canadian society a small small part of an extraordinarily 'dense' world presses on muddling through. Those that have and exploit the technologies make money that they may never live to enjoy.
Like Jobs, the Apple founder, they may flounder because of a disease they don't understand, see or protect against before it is too late. Yes, cell phones and RF signals affect genetic structures and ultimately spawn a slew of cancers. Those that use the products gain in a technical and useful way, but so what if they die prematurely, like children with their heads full of water just waiting for magnetic fields to mess up their futures. Try putting a baby or a child's head in a microwave oven, like you do your own amygdala so sensitized you instantaneously start to battle in the streets, or go on a roof top to shoot at fellow citizens. So what is the problem? Why should anyone in Canada be concerned?
Now, if I were a terrorist, the way to put a big damper on my foe would be to have a delayed activation weapon, a weapon that would spread to every one of my enemy and carry out its destructive effect without any one being the wiser. It just happens that a slow acting deadly wireless technology would be the perfect Trojan horse. It would be like a virus that no one would stop, no one would worry about (save a few bewildered people like myself) and would be universal, being that everyone would be infected before the deadly implications were understood. Who would survive?
I get this nightmare of a dream in which some entity, a machine, from the future is sent back into the past to warn of the danger from wireless. A mistake is made and the prophet machine lands a thousand years too soon, talks about eating the forbidden tree of a fruit called the apple and as a consequence human kind and life falls into a path of no return out of which only machines survive!
Pretty extreme!
Well, we don't yet have dead people telling us that RF waves killed them! Dead people don't talk, and if radiation produced the cancer that they died from, they would not be any wiser. The story requires that It be a slowly evolving Trojan horse that make take several decades before dead bodies talk! No, not really! There are too many people dying in highly populated countries for the danger not to go unnoticed. Many people suspect, but have trouble finding 'proof' even though animal tests are very conclusive. The analysis is just complex enough for doubts to linger within a large segment of the population addicted to fun! This is especially true of the very young.
As a statisitician, one can come to the conclusion today that RF radiation is a killer of life and an extremely dangerous. However, most people don't have my skills, and statistics lie don't they!
My view is different. The Trojan horse evolves very very rapidly to kill people and people do become aware before all of humankind is dying. Some people guess the seriousness of the danger and act to develop technologies to protect themselves, but many people die. Like aids and smoking, the addictive properties of the RF cancer spreads out of control for a long while, but is eventually restrained after many many people have died needlessly!
What follows is an example of an attempt by an expert to convince a mayor of the dangers, the Trojan horse.
Open Letter to: Mayor Gerri Lynn O'Connor, Township of Uxbridge, Ontario.
Dr. Magda Havas, B.Sc., Ph.D.,
ENVIRONMENTAL AND RESOURCE STUDIES PROGRAM
October 31, 2012,
1600 West Bank Drive
Peterborough, ON Canada K9J 7B8
Telephone (705) 748-1011 x 7882 Facsimile (705) 748-1569
Email mhavas@trentu.ca www.magdahavas.com (general) www.magdahavas.org (academic)
Open Letter to: Mayor Gerri Lynn O'Connor, Township of Uxbridge, Ontario.
Re: SCADA system & tower at the Quaker Hill Reservoir
As a former Uxbridge resident and as a professor who does research on the biological effects of electromagnetic radiation, I was asked by two Uxbridge citizens to attend the October 30th 2012 meeting regarding the proposed communication tower at the Quaker Hill Reservoir.
I spoke briefly and asked how many people live within a 500-meter radius of this tower because this distance seems to be critical for health effects. My concern is less for the current proposal, which consists of two antennas, and more for potential co-location of antennas promoted by Industry Canada. Once a tower is erected, additional antennas can be added to it without notifying the surrounding community as the decision is made by Industry Canada and requires no consultation. The more antennas . . . the more radiation.
While I recognize that the levels of radiation will be a small fraction of the guidelines established by Health Canada's Safety Code 6 (SC6), these limits for microwave radiation are thermal guidelines and are orders of magnitude higher than biologically-based guidelines used in other countries. For example, public exposure guidelines established by SC6 for the frequencies that will be used at the Quaker Hill Reservoir are 1000 microW/cm2 averaged over a 6-minute period. Health Canada will tell you these guidelines are safe for any 24-hour period for exposure of men, pregnant women, children and the elderly. There is no research verifying this statement! In Russia, people can be exposed at this level for only 15 minutes a day. The Russian guideline for the same frequency is 10 microW/cm2 (1% of SC6).
Near the end of the meeting Mayor O'Connor stated that perhaps Uxbridge should ask Health Canada why Canada has such lax guidelines and provide some pressure with the help of other municipal governments to request safer health guidelines for Canadian citizens. This would be a welcome step taken by municipal governments since they have very little say as to where and how many antennas are placed in their community.
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I. We have STUDIES documenting the adverse effects of this radiation. For example,
1. We have at least 3 studies in Israel, Germany, and Brazil that show an increase in cancer for those who live within 350 to 500 meters of cell phone antennas. None of the exposures exceeded our federal safety code guidelines. Indeed, the highest level documented in the Brazil study (Dode et al. 2011) was 41 microW/cm2, which is 4% of Health Canada's Safety Code 6 of 1000 microW/cm2.
2. A review of 10 epidemiological studies by Khurana et al. (2010) showed that 8 of the 10 studies documented adverse health effects and all of these were within 500 meters of cell phone antennas. These include 2 of the 3 cancer studies noted above and 6 studies showing neurobehavioral effects. The symptoms are some combination of chronic fatigue, chronic pain, cognitive dysfunction, mood disorders, skin problems, dizziness, nausea, sleep disorders, and tinnitus for those who live within 450 meters of cell phone antennas.
Collectively these symptoms are referred to as electrohypersensitivity (EHS) and were previously known as microwave sickness and were experienced by military personal working with radar (which also uses microwave radiation).
Epidemiological studies show an associate with an agent (radio frequency radiation) and an outcome (in this case cancer and EHS). They require confirmation with laboratory studies as in item 3 below.
3. We have laboratory studies with rats showing an increase in primary tumors at levels below our federal guidelines (Chou et al. 1992) and demonstrating damage to DNA (Lai and Singh 1995). These studies show cause effect relationship between radiation and cancer/DNA damage.
II. We have RECOMMENDATIONS for limiting our exposure and for safer guidelines. For example,
1. The ECOLOG (2000) review funded by T-Mobile provides the following recommendations:
We recommend the precautionary limit of 0.01 W/m2 [10 microW/cm2, current HC SC6 value is 1000 microW/cm2, so this is 1/100th of Safety Code 6)] independent of the carrier frequency. The rough dependency on frequency with higher limits outside of the resonance range, as it is applied in the concept of SAR, is not justifiable given the results of the scientific studies which conclusively prove non-thermal effects of high frequency fields. Also, the current allowed higher exposures for parts of the body, as long as they refer to the head or thorax are not justifiable.
2. Germany physicians signed the Freiburger Appeal (2002) which states the following [www.feb.se/ NEWS/Appell_021019-englisch.pdf]:
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Our therapeutic efforts to restore health are becoming increasingly less effective: the unimpeded and continuous penetration of radiation into living and working areas . . . causes uninterrupted stress and prevents the patient's thorough recovery.
In the face of this disquieting development, we feel obliged to inform the public of our observations . . .
What we experience in the daily reality of our medical practice is anything but hypothetical! We see the rising number of chronically sick patients also as the result of an irresponsible "safety limits policy", which fails to take the protection of the public . . . as its criteria for action. Instead, it submits to the dictates of a technology already long recognized as dangerous. For us, this is the beginning of a very serious development through which the health of many people is being threatened.
We will no longer be made to wait upon further unreal research results - which in our experience are often influenced by the communications industry, while evidential studies go on being ignored. We find it to be of urgent necessity that we act now!
Above all, we are, as doctors, the advocates for our patients. In the interest of all those concerned, whose basic right to life and freedom from bodily harm is currently being put at stake, we appeal to those in the spheres of politics and public health.
3. A review of effects from exposure to electromagnetic radiation emitted by cell tower base stations and other antenna arrays (Levitt and Lai 2010) recommends lower guidelines than we currently have in Canada.
In general, the lowest regulatory standards currently in place aim to accomplish a maximum exposure of 0.02 V/m, equal to a power density of 0.0001 μW/cm2, which is in line with Salzburg, Austria's indoor exposure value for GSM cell base stations. Other precautionary target levels aim for an outdoor cumulative exposure of 0.1 μW/cm2 for pulsed RF exposures where they affect the general population and an indoor exposure as low as 0.01 μW/cm2 (Sage and Carpenter 2009). In 2007, The BioInitiative Report, A rationale for a biologically based public exposure standard for electromagnetic fields (ELF and RF), also made this recommendation, based on the precautionary principle (BioInitiative Report 2007).
4. The Standing Committee on Health report (HESA 2010) on the potential health impact of radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation (http://www.magdahavas.com/house-of-commons- standing-committee-on-health-2/) made the following recommendations. I am unaware that any of these recommendations have been put in place.
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1. The Government of Canada consider providing funding to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in support of long-term studies examining the potential health impacts of exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation.
2. Health Canada request that the Council of Canadian Academies or another appropriate independent institution conduct an assessment of the Canadian and international scientific literature regarding the potential health impacts of short and long-term exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation, which would include an examination of electromagnetic sensitivity and a comparison of public policies in other countries governing exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation; and report on its findings.
3. Health Canada and Industry Canada develop a comprehensive risk awareness program for exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation, which would include Health Canada making public in an accessible and transparent way all the studies and analyses undertaken by the Department on the impact of radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation on human health, as well as the provision of information promoting the safe use of wireless technologies.
4. Health Canada and Industry Canada offer to provide information, including awareness sessions on exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation.
5. Health Canada ensure that it has a process in place to receive and respond to reports of adverse reactions to electromagnetic radiation emitting devices.
III. ELECTROHYERSENSITIVITY (EHS) is recognized by several jurisdictions worldwide. Based on scientific studies about 3% of the population have severe EHS and anther 35% have moderate symptoms. In Uxbridge—with a population of 20,600—this comes to approximately 618 with severe symptoms and 7,210 with moderate symptoms. The effects on health care, family resources, and time off work or school can be considerable if these individuals are exposed to radiation within their own homes. For example,
1. In the United States, the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act recognizes this sensitivity.
2. In Sweden, electrohypersensitivity (EHS) is an officially fully recognized functional impairment (i.e. it is not regarded as a disease). Survey studies show that somewhere between 230,000— 290,000 Swedish men and women [~3% of the Swedish population] report a variety of symptoms when being in contact with electromagnetic field (EMF) sources (Johansson 2006).
3. The Canadian Human Rights Commission (Sears 2007) reported that approximately 3% of Canadians have been diagnosed with environmental sensitivities and many more are somewhat sensitive to traces of chemicals and/or electromagnetic phenomena in the environment.
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Sears goes on to state: For people with environmental sensitivities, their health and ability to work rests with the actions of others, including building managers, co-workers and clients. Accommodating people with environmental sensitivities presents an opportunity to improve workplace environmental quality and workers' performance, and may help prevent the onset of sensitivities in others.
Surely the home environment should be a safe sanctuary but if antennas are placed near homes there is no place for these people to go.
4. Women's College Hospital diagnoses electrohypersensitivity in their environmental sensitivity clinic and have been doing so for years. They currently have a 12 month waiting list.
5. The Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe (PACE 2011) Resolution 1815 stated the following: Recommendation 8.1.4. pay particular attention to "electrosensitive" people who suffer from a syndrome of intolerance to electromagnetic fields and introduce special measures to protect them, including the creating of wave-free areas not covered by the wireless network;
6. The Austrian Medical Association (2012) wrote guidelines for physicians on how to diagnose and treat people with EHS. They stated the following:
There has been a sharp rise in unspecific, often stress-associated health problems that increasingly present physicians with the challenge of complex differential diagnosis. A cause that has been accorded little attention so far is increasing electrosmog exposure at home, at work and during leisure activities, occurring in addition to chronic stress in personal and working life. It correlates with an overall situation of chronic stress that can lead to burnout.
The bottom line is that levels of microwave radiation are increasing and are now at levels that adversely affect human health. The guidelines we have in Canada (Safety Code 6) are outdated and do not protect public health. They provide false assurance to those who have faith in Health Canada. Until the guidelines are changed everyone can hide behind these inadequate guidelines. In the interim it is incumbent on individuals to protect themselves and municipal governments to be responsive to public concerns.
References cited are available on request.
Respectfully submitted, Magda Havas, B.Sc., Ph.D.
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