Posted: 07/07/2014 10:12 am EDT Updated: 07/08/2014 5:59 pm EDT
As uses and users of wireless
transmitting devices are skyrocketing in our homes, schools and even our
national parks, one would think that scientific research on the human health
and environmental implications of wireless electromagnetic radiation would be
exploding with fierce competition. Yet as I write this blog fresh from the
Capetown South Africa meeting of the Bioelectromagnetics
Society, research
funding and training in this field is at its lowest point in modern history in
both the government and private sector. Motorola's once vaunted laboratory is
no more.
The society awarded its highest
accolade to Environmental Protection Agency Senior Scientist Carl Blackman at
the meeting. EPA's most distinguished and prolific investigator in the field, Blackman retired just two days after
receiving the D'Arsonval Medal. Blackman explained that funds for research in
this field at EPA had been wiped out.
This is a tragedy for the field and
bespeaks an unfortunate policy direction. Despite the extraordinary growth in
wireless transmitting devices, we lack the resources to study their impacts in
any systematic way. The absence of research on the health or environmental
impacts of wireless radiation should not be confused with proof of safety.
Other presentations highlighted the
exciting new field of electro-ceuticals -- where electric current is being
applied to treat a range of diseases including cancer. Thus, the biological
impact of electromagnetic fields is not in dispute. The meeting also heard
presentations showing that cows, bats and carp orient their bodies along lines
that reflect the earth's magnetic field. When asked what this might mean for
mammalian migration and even for human health, Uwe Bregger, the animal
ecologist who presented this work, quipped, "I would certainly never live
near a wireless tower."
The issue of exposures to towers is one of many on which we simply have no serious research underway, despite growing public concerns.
The issue of exposures to towers is one of many on which we simply have no serious research underway, despite growing public concerns.
The last national survey on
exposures to electromagnetic fields in America took place in 1980. Standards
for cell phones were set 18 years ago. Would you fly in an airplane that met
old safety standards? While the Israelis have established a national institute
to evaluate wireless transmitting devices, no serious research is underway in
the U.S., excepting one large animal study that was first proposed 14 years
ago. In fact, this past week researchers in China published a study on pregnant
women planning to have an abortion. Those results are mindboggling: Women with
the highest exposures to electromagnetic fields had much smaller embryos.
Conspicuously missing from the
Bioelectromagnetics meeting are young students from America. Frank
Barnes, member of
the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and mentor to a generation of
students, has no funding to continue his groundbreaking work at the University
of Colorado showing the
impacts of magnetic fields on experimental variability. In 2008, he chaired the committee
that presented a National Research Council Report, "The
Identification of Research Needs Relating to Potential Biological or Adverse
Health Effects of Wireless Communications Devices," as requested by the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration, identifying research gaps and the critical need to increase
our understanding of any potential adverse effects of long term chronic
exposure to RF energy on children and pregnant woman. That report identified several
important data gaps -- none of which has been addressed in the meantime.
When will the U.S. take
action on these
recommendations? What research continues in the states appears to be that which
cannot be publicly discussed sponsored by the Department of Defense. While none
would dispute the value and importance of devising non-lethal uses of
electromagnetic weapons, this is one of the few areas where research continues.
One notable instance where the
public is poorly informed about the need to promote safer uses involves the rapid proliferation of
tablets such as iPads. These devices are tested at a distance of 20 centimeters
from a large male adult body. Indeed, tablets are well-named -- they belong on
tables and not on laps.
Manufacturers
advise that
tablets can exceed the "as-tested levels" when held next to the
pregnant abdomen or gonads, especially those of children. Yet, advertisements
on television and print -- include lovely ads of the Pottery Barn -- tout these
products for use by young expectant people holding them close to the body. Of
course, these devices also are not tested for use directly against small
elementary school students who nowadays hold them tightly to their small
frames, often seated with their young organs directly exposed. Recently medical
doctors Maya Shetreet-Klein and Hugh Taylor have brought attention through the Baby Safe Project to the fact that pregnancy is a
time when special precautions should be taken to keep wireless exposures as low
as as reasonably achievable (ALARA)
Our ability to study any of these
phenomena is hampered by the lack of funds that propelled Blackman to leave a
field he had helped create nearly four decades earlier. Professor Emeritus
Barnes rues the situation: "If a young investigator comes to me seeking to
work in this field, I have to advise them of the facts. We have no money. There
are no incentives to proceed. They are better advised to chose another career
focus."
As the former director of the Center
for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, I
had to offer similar counsel to students and young faculty.
We can fix this problem. Here's a
solution every grandparent can support. The U.S. and the European Union need
to implement a five-year program of a dollar-a-phone fee to be paid equally by
phone manufacturers, cell providers and consumers to generate funding to train
physicians, biomedical researchers and engineers, provide independent research
funding, and support monitoring and evaluation of the potential impacts of cell
phones and other wireless transmitting devices on our health.
Blackman's retirement is an omen. We
have already lost one generation of researchers -- as he recounted. We must
invest in ensuring that our growing and important electromagnetic technologies
are used and developed to be as safe as possible. Assuming things are safe
until we have incontrovertible evidence they are not -- as happened with
tobacco and asbestos -- is not a path we can afford to take.
At this point, our failure to
develop evidence of harm cannot be regarded as proof of safety.
More:
Environmental Health
Trust Center for Environmental
Oncology Safety Capetown Cell Phone Bioelectromagnetics Frank Barnes University of Colorado Embryos Wireless Radiation Pregnancy China University of Pittsburgh
Cancer Institute Center for Environmental Oncology European Union Wireless Transmitting
Device D'Arsonval Medal
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