News & CommentKey Documents
August 13, 2005... The inside back cover of the August issue of Wired
has an ad with a picture of a model who has a laptop on her belly.
She’s got a big grin on her face —apparently because her computer is
protected with Symantec’s anti-spyware and anti-virus software.
Putting a laptop on your body may be okay for a photo shoot, but it’s
probably not such a good idea to leave the computer there for a long
time. In addition to delivering heat to sensitive organs, there can be significant exposure to EMFs.
In fact, it’s probably not a good idea to keep any electronic or electric appliance flush to your body on a regular basis.
Let me be clear: We don’t know whether EMFs from appliances are a
health hazard. What we do know is that some appliances give off strong
localized fields with complex waveforms. While they diminish very
quickly with distance, up close they can pack a wallop.
We also know that a discomfortingly large number of epidemiological
studies show that long-term exposure to low-level EMFs is linked to
childhood leukemia —the implicated levels are 250 times lower than the
current limit for exposing children 24/7 and more than a 1,000 times
lower than the occupational guidelines. (The U.S. has never adopted an
EMF exposure standard.)
In addition, we know that the use of certain appliances has been
associated with cancer. For instance, a 1998 National Cancer Institute
(NCI) study showed that children exposed to electric blankets, hair
dryers or video games had significant higher rates of acute
lymphoblastic leukemia. A number of other appliances, including curling
irons, were also linked to cancer.
But there were inconsistencies. The risk associated with years of use
was often similar to that from short-term use —that is, there was no
dose-response relationship. But that said, looking at all the NCI
appliance data, you will see a large number of statistically
significant elevated risks of childhood leukemia and it’s hard to
escape the conclusion that something is going on.
The NCI team, however, focused on the inconsistencies, threw up their hands and concluded there was nothing to worry about.
Earlier this year, the NCI published another study
which linked the use of electric hair dryers and shavers with brain
tumors. (Men who used electric shavers had ten times more meningiomas!)
Once again, the NCI decided that it was “unlikely” that there was a
true association.
One major problem with both NCI studies is that the EMFs from the
appliances were not measured. The NCI team assumed that the magnetic
fields from a hair dryer are identical to those from a fan or a
microwave oven, except in terms of the intensity of the field. This is
a primitive, though not uncommon, approach among EMF researchers. But
it’s like studying particulate air pollutants without specifying the
size or the chemical composition of the particles. You might get an
idea about effects, but it would be a very rough estimate.
By neglecting the differences among the different types of EMFs, the
NCI team assumes that all appliances are sources of simple sinusoidal
60 Hz magnetic fields. No allowance is made for fields whose frequency
and intensity fluctuate over time, whether other frequency components
and transient are present, or whether the resulting exposures are
intermittent. (In the more recent paper, the NCI team does acknowledge
that hair dryers and shavers give off high-frequency transients).
Another ignored variable is the polarization of the field.
Elizabeth Ainsbury, an English doctoral student of Denis Henshaw’s at
Bristol University, illustrates the variation in polarization of the
magnetic fields associated with appliances in a paper published recently in Physics in Medicine and Biology.
She reports, for example, that microwave and electric ovens have the
most elliptically polarized fields, while alarm clocks have the least
ellipticity.
(As the field becomes more circularly polarized —that is, as it become
more elliptical— the greater the potential for depositing its energy
into those exposed, see MWN, M/A00.)
Ainsbury concludes that her measurements
“demonstrate that domestic magnetic fields are extremely complex and cannot simply be characterized by traditional measurements such as time-weighted average or peak exposure levels.”
August 9, 2005... UCLA School of Public Health, Leeka Khefiets received $50,000 from EPRI for her work on the
WHO workshop on EMF risks
to children. UCLA calls it a “ joint WHO/EPRI” workshop.
That’s a lot money for a review paper
(250 hours @$200/hour). Or is this another way for Mike Repacholi’s EMF
project to skirt WHO rules prohibiting direct industry funding?
August 8, 2005... EPRI,
the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the electric
utility industry, has lots of money and is not shy about using it to
push its agenda.
Today, EPRI is the only source of research
funds on power line EMFs in the U.S. In recent times, practically all
of EPRI’s money has been devoted to pushing the idea, championed by
staffer Rob Kavet, that contact currents —not EMFs— are responsible for
the oft-observed increase in childhood leukemia. Kavet may be on to
something, but at the moment only Kavet himself and his contractors
embrace this hypothesis.
Actually, there is another: The WHO EMF Project in Geneva.
EPRI was one of the sponsors of WHO’s workshop on EMF risks to children, held in Istanbul last summer.
EPRI also paid Leeka Kheifets to prepare a review
of the epidemiologic evidence for the EMF-childhood leukemia link. She
presented a draft at the meeting; the final paper, “The Sensitivity of
Children to Electromagnetic Fields,” appears in the August issue of the
journal Pediatrics, which is posted on the Internet. (You can download a complete copy of the Pediatrics paper for free.)
Most of you will remember that Kheifets was a coconspirator, with Mike
Repacholi, in the infamous flip-flop over applying the precautionary
principle to EMFs (see MWN,
M/A03 and M/J03). After announcing a decision to adopt precautionary
policies, they backed off without any explanation for the reversal.
Before joining Repacholi in Geneva, Kheifets worked at EPRI in
California for many years, where she was Kavet’s boss. She now has a
position at the University of California, Los Angeles. She continues to
do a lot of work for Repacholi.
Kavet’s non-EMF theory gets top billing in both Kheifets’s review paper, and the workshop report.
Kheifets and Repacholi, as they have done in the past, cast the
EMF-childhood leukemia association as still highly uncertain due to the
lack of a mechanism. They write:
“At present there is no experimental evidence that supports the view
that [the EMF-childhood leukemia] relationship is causal.”
What is left out of both papers is the fact that at least six different
labs have shown that power-frequency EMFs can break DNA. It’s true, we
don’t know how EMFs can do this, but it has been observed
experimentally over and over again.
Kheifets and Repacholi must be aware of the DNA work.
If EMFs can break DNA, EMFs can certainly play a major role in the
etiology of childhood leukemia. But this is an inconvenient fact for
both EPRI’s Rob Kavet and WHO’s Mike Repacholi. They have common
interests: In addition to both supporting Kheifets, neither wants to
endorse precautionary policies to protect children from EMFs.
Here’s the payoff —from the conclusion of the Pediatrics paper (with some emphasis added):
For ELF (power-frequency) fields, there is some evidence that exposure to environmental magnetic fields that are relatively high but well below guidance levels is associated with an increase in the risk of childhood leukemia, a very rare disease (even if the risk is doubled, it remains small at 5-8 per 100,000 children per year). Although the evidence is regarded as insufficient to justify more restrictive limits on exposure,
the possibility that exposure to ELF magnetic fields increases risk
cannot be discounted. For the physician faced with questions from, for
example, a couple planning a family and concerned about this issue, or
from someone pregnant and occupationally exposed to relatively high ELF
magnetic fields, standardized advice is not possible.
Instead, physicians could inform their patients of possible risk and
advise them to weigh all the advantages and disadvantages of the
options available to them (of which EMF reduction is but one consideration).
Some simple options include reducing exposure by minimizing the use of
certain electrical appliances or changing work practices to increase
distance from the source of exposure. People living near
overhead power lines should be advised that such proximity is just an
indicator of exposure and that homes far away from power lines can have
similar or higher fields.
This may read like it was written at EPRI, but the paper is signed by
Kheifets, Repacholi, together with Rick Saunders (on leave from the
U.K. Health Protection Agency) and Emilie van Deventer, all affiliated
with the EMF project at the World Health Organization.
How much money does EPRI give the EMF project every year? How much
support did EPRI provide for the Istanbul workshop? And how much did
Kavet pay his old boss Kheifets for the literature review? We don’t
know because Repacholi continues to refuse to open up his books.
But whatever the cost to EPRI, you can be sure that Kavet’s managers back in Palo Alto, California, are pleased.
One final footnote: Kheifets was recently hired to serve as a
consultant to the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) to help
develop state EMF policies. She will receive approximately $58,000,
plus expenses. In her application, she told the presiding
administrative law judge that, “I believe that rigorous application of
Precautionary Framework to EMF is appropriate.”
Hmmmm....We wonder how we should interpret the word “rigorous.”
Actually, it doesn’t matter. It’s doubletalk. The capital “P” and “F”
indicate that she is referring to Repacholi’s framework and we know
that neither of them has any interest in applying precautionary EMF
policies (see the July 5 entry).
When Kheifets applied for the CPUC job, she requested that her personal
financial information be kept confidential because its release “would
unnecessarily intrude on [her] privacy.” Maybe so, but it would reveal
how much EPRI and Repacholi are paying her, while she gives advice —on
behalf of the rate-paying public— to California regulators.
Most surprising of all is that, in his ruling
granting her request, the judge noted that not one of the many EMF
activist groups in the state of California challenged Kheifets’s
application.
August 5, 2005... A literature review on the topic by Luc Martens of Belgium’s Ghent University was posted on the Bioelectromagnetics Web site a few days ago. Anyone who doubts how little we know about all this should check it out.
Not counting the abstract, references and acknowledgments, the review runs
just three pages —that’s it. There’s not much to say because we don’t
know much.
Even the relatively long-running controversy over whether children
absorb more radiation than adults due to their thinner skulls and
whether the radiation penetrates deeper into their heads —sometimes
referred to as Salt Lake City vs. Zurich or Gandhi vs. Kuster— remains
unresolved (see MWN, N/D01). Or as Martens puts it, “There is still an inconsistency in the literature.”
The fact is that most of the literature on cell phone health risks is
inconsistent. Not only don’t we know whether the unlimited use of
mobile phones is riskier for children than for adults, we don’t know
how great the risk is for adults.
Regardless of all this uncertainty, U.S. mobile companies, ever hungry
for more profits, are now targeting children as young as six. The
health issue is so far off the radar screen that in the last week, Time, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal have all run major stories on the selling of kiddie phones. Not one of them even mentioned health concerns.
Youri Grigoriev of the Institute of Biophysics in Moscow predicted this
would happen after Eric van Rongen and the Health Council of the
Netherlands’ finding that there is no scientific rationale to limit children’s use of cell phones.
To be fair, van Rongen is hardly alone. As we have made clear in
earlier postings, the World Health Organization (led by Mike Repacholi)
and the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection
(led by Paolo Vecchia) are similarly more concerned with maintaining
scientific integrity than with addressing uncertain health impacts.
Here’s how Grigoriev closed his response
to van Rongen and the other members of the council: “The resolution of
the Health Council of the Netherlands that it ‘sees no reason for
recommending limiting the use of mobile phones by children,’ opens the
way for aggressive advertisement of a ‘cellular phone for each child’
and the possibility of using cellular phones by children without limit
or control.”
That was last year. This year it has all come to pass.
August 3, 2005... Remember this: The next time Mike Repacholi tells you something, it probably means nothing at all.
A couple of years ago, he advocated precautionary policies for EMFs
from power lines and RF radiation from mobile phones, but soon
afterwards he backed off, saying it was all a misunderstanding (see MWN, M/A03 and M/J03).
Now he’s done it again.
Cell phones are safe and children need take no special
precautions—unless they or their parents are concerned —Repacholi
advises in a just-released
clarification, reaffirming a five-year old policy statement.
Repacholi sang a different tune when he was in Canada last month for
his workshop on setting precautionary policies under uncertainty. That
same week (July 9-14), the Toronto Star
ran a major series on the controversy over the safety of cell phones,
with special emphasis on the possible risks to children. Under the
media spotlight, Repacholi, promoted precautionary policies for
children’s use of mobile phones.
“With respect to children, WHO recommends that children should use hands-free headsets,”
Repacholi told Canadian TV.
“We certainly advocate precautionary measures for children,” Repacholi told the
Toronto Star.
“With respect to children, WHO recommends that children should use hands-free headsets” reported
ConsumerAffairs.com.
Repacholi would have us believe they all got it wrong.
Tyler Hamilton, one of the two reporters who wrote the Star series is standing firm. “Repacholi said it in three different forums plus I saw him say it on television,” Hamilton told Microwave News. “He said it to me in a telephone interview, he wrote it to me in an e-mail and I heard him say it at the Ottawa conference.”
Hamilton forwarded an e-mail Repacholi had sent him a few days before the conference. This is part of what Repacholi wrote:
“WHO has already said on a number of occasions that children’s exposure should be reduced. However the best way to achieve this is to ask them to use hands-free-kits.”
When asked by a Canadian who is electrosensitive for a response to our July 5 commentary, “Time To Stop the WHO Charade,” here’s part of what Repacholi replied:
“As you know WHO has built the highest possible reputation in public health
matters among the public and governments world wide and the EMF Project
will not be deviating from the sound science
course that sustains this high esteem, no matter what the pressures
from self interest groups or individuals. Louis appeals to people who
do not believe in the scientific method for resolving issues. He, like
others who are unable to argue a scientific case always claim WHO
decisions are industry biased—a completely untrue position.” [our
emphasis]
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, our criticism of WHO’s EMF
project has nothing to do with science per se, but how Mike Repacholi
sets policies based on the science—both what the science tells us and,
just as importantly, what it doesn’t tell us.
As we noted in the commentary, many national governments have looked at
the same body of scientific data and have promoted precautionary
policies. These include China, Italy, Switzerland and Russia. In
addition, expert panels in England, France, Germany and Russia have
issued advisories discouraging children from using mobile phones.
Perhaps, it is easier for Mike to single us out than to address those
who seek to protect the public health of well over a billion people,
including the national government of Switzerland, WHO’s host country.
As we have stated time and time again, the WHO should err on the side
of public health, not the interests of the wireless industry.
We should also highlight Mike’s use of the phrase “sound science.” As
Elisa Ong and Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San
Francisco, have pointed out, these seemingly unchallengeable words were
coined by the tobacco industry and other corporate interests to
manipulate public opinion. Here is some of what they wrote in the American Journal of Public Health in November 2001:
“Public health professionals need to be aware that the ‘sound science’ movement
is not an indigenous effort from within the profession to improve the
quality of scientific discourse, but reflects sophisticated public
relations campaigns controlled by industry executives and lawyers whose
aim is to manipulate the standards of scientific proof to serve the
corporate interests of their clients.”
The WHO has long been targeted by the tobacco industry in its continuing
efforts to water down control initiatives. Ong and Glantz have also documented the campaign waged against the IARC study on second-hand smoke.
A detailed report on the tobacco industry’s nefarious activities was released in 2000. At that time, Nature ran an editorial calling for the WHO and other groups to “strengthen their guard against conflicts of interest.”
As we have reported (see MWN, N/D01, page 19),
a number of the players in the mobile phone controversy have also
worked for the tobacco industry —most notably, George Carlo.
Where does Mike Repacholi fit in to all this? No one will know until he
opens up his books and tells us who is paying the bills for the EMF
charade that he runs out of the WHO offices in Geneva.
Once again, we ask: Show us the money, Mike.
Microwave News has received a letter from Ben Greenebaum, editor of Bioelectromagnetics, concerning the claim that a sentence was added to a 1997 paper by Jerry Phillips without Phillips’s knowledge. Greenebaum is addressing our July 11 entry below.
July 12, 2005... In
a major change of policy, Mike Repacholi is now advising children to
reduce their radiation exposure from mobile phones. Repacholi, who
leads the World Health Organization’s EMF project, has told CTV (Canadian television) that the “WHO recommends that children should use hands-free headsets.”
In the past, Repacholi has shunned precautionary policies. He has
steadfastly argued that children have no reason to protect themselves
when using mobile phones. For instance, in its last fact sheet on
mobile phones, No.193
revised in 2000, the WHO stated: “Present scientific information does
not indicate the need for any special precautions for use of mobile
phones. If individuals are concerned, they might choose to limit their
own or their children’s RF exposure by limiting the length of calls, or
using ‘hands-free’ devices to keep mobile phones away from the head and
body.”
Repacholi’s change of outlook comes with the opening of his
workshop, being held in Ottawa, on how to deal with uncertain risks and
the publication of a major series in the Toronto Star
on the potential health risks associated with use of mobile phones by
children, at a time they are being targeted by the marketing arms of
cell phone companies.
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