#673: Comments on the Swedish EMF Health Risk Report
Comments from Olle Johansson re. last message:
“It is a strange message coming from the SSI, since – at the very same time – they (including Lars Mjönes) have recently (February 8, 2007) strongly warned for mobiles and children’s exposure. For instance, in the Swedish evening paper “Expressen” it says: ” The cellular phone damages children’s brains. The risk to get a brain tumour increases
dramatically if one uses a cellular phone. The risk is at it’s greatest level for young persons. “Do not let children and youngsters use their cellular phones without a handsfree, says Lars Mjönes at the SSI.” ” [http://expressen.se/1.548147]
Don’s comments:
The fundamental problem here is that while at least some scientists at SSI are obviously taking a sensible precautionary approach in regards to children and mobile phone use. ICNIRP takes the opposite viewpoint. This was illustrated at the 2004 Moscow cell phone conference. Paolo Vecchia, chairman of ICNIRP, claimed that children were taken into account by ICNIRP, however, in regards to children and mobile phone use, Vecchia said “it is not the responsibility of ICNIRP. Therefore there is no need or justification for a special approach to children”. Vecchia later said at the conference that “ICNIRP only considers acute effects in its precautionary principle approach. Consideration of long term effects is not possible”. Then Vecchia made the astonishing statement:
“Precautionary actions to address public concerns may increase rather than mitigate worries and fears of the public. This constitutes a health detriment and should be prevented as other adverse effects of EMF”
( Reference: http://www.emfacts.com/papers/moscow_conf.pdf )
In other words, according to ICNIRP’s Chairman, precautionary actions to protect the health of children would give rise to public worries and make people sick from worry (and therefore people would stop buying cell phones). Such bizarre logic can only be called evil.
The ICNIRP approach is one where unless there is absolute proof of harm, no action will be taken. Instead of action its much more profitable to just call for more $$$ research to fill in the gaps in knowledge and therefore allow the continuation of unrestricted marketing of cell phones to children. This can be seen in the final sentence of the following paragraph from the SSI ICNIRP written report (page 31):
“Current overall conclusion on mobile phone use:
Recently published studies on mobile phone use and cancer risk do not change the earlier overall assessment of the available evidence from epidemiological studies. In particular an extended follow up of a cohort study from Denmark does not alter the conclusions. Currently available evidence suggests that for adult brain tumours there is no association with mobile phone use for at least up to, say, ten years of use. For longer latency the majority of the evidence also speaks against an association, but the data are still sparse. The same conclusion holds for short-term use and acoustic neuroma. However, for long-term use and acoustic neuroma there is a concern, and more information is required. A study on symptoms near base stations did see an association between exposure level and prevalence of symptoms. These results need to be replicated and better understood before conclusions can be drawn.”
Don
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