Download a pdf of our June/July 2007 "News & Comment"

July 30... Mike Repacholi has now revealed that up to half of the funds raised for his EMF Project came from industry. This admission comes in an interview with Resource Strategies Inc. in an effort, he states, to "set the record straight." Repacholi is circulating the text of the interview far and wide because, he says, he wants "the truth about WHO" to be known.

While Repacholi has acknowledged in the past that he raised funds from industry, the extent of the industry support is much greater than anyone has previously suspected. Repacholi has never disclosed how much money he received and from whom. He insists that the EMF Project was not "influenced by industry." (For more on Repacholi's relationship to industry, see WHO Watch.)

Repacholi stepped down as the director of WHO's EMF Project last year. Some activists have openly speculated that he was forced out by senior WHO managers because of his ties to industry, but these allegations have never been substantiated. Repacholi has repeatedly stated that he left on reaching WHO's mandatory retirement age.

In an e-mail to one activist, which was forwarded to Microwave News, Repacholi touts the interview as an example of "where the press finally got it right." Resource Strategies, however, can hardly be considered "the press" in the usual meaning of the term. Resource Strategies is a corporate consulting firm that prepares briefing papers for clients, which are almost exclusively in the wireless and electric utility businesses. Among them are EPRI, FGF, GSM Association and MMF. All of these industry groups supported the EMF Project during Repacholi's tenure. And to bring it all full circle, the WHO is also on Resource Strategies' client list.

July 28... The "methods" paper for the Interphone study on mobile phone tumor risks has been posted on the European Journal of Epidemiology's Web site. The full text of the 18-page paper can be downloaded free of charge. IARC's Elisabeth Cardis is the lead author; she has 47 coauthors. There is still no word on when the long-awaited results of the study will appear —they were originally scheduled to be ready as early as 2003-2004.

July 13... When the residents of the Oak Hill Park community in the Boston suburb of Newton fought the expansion of a local 5 kW AM station, they complained about radiofrequency interference (RFI)—to their telephones, stereos, VCRs, wheelchairs and baby monitors. They also objected to the possible effects on local wildlife, particularly to the blue-spotted salamander. And they worried about the visual blight posed by the towers.

What community activists hardly mentioned were the possible impacts on their health.

That may now change.

In the largest and most detailed study of AM radio radiation to date, a team led by Mina Ha of South Korea's Dankook University in South Korea has found that children living within 2km of an AM transmitter had more than twice the risk of developing leukemia, compared to those living more than 20km away. The study will appear in the August 1 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.

[Read the complete story]

July 10... We don't spend much time writing about microwave ovens, but the "Really?" column in today's New York Times science section prompts a few comments.

The columnist, Anahad O'Connor, asks whether people face a radiation risk from standing too close to a microwave oven and concludes that it's "not dangerous." That's about the same finding reached a couple of years ago by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) —see "Microwave Myths" which appeared in its newsletter, Nutrition Action.

We agree that the risks are small, but, as with most generalities, such blanket assurances can lead people astray.

As the Times points out, all ovens leak to some extent. The FDA specifies two different emission standards: one for new ovens and one for those in use. The limit becomes five times higher as soon as you take the oven home from the showroom. Leakage tends to increase with the age of the oven.

We have two concerns: First, we worry about kids spending too much time peering into microwave ovens while they're cooking. This could be fun when they're bored silly at home on a rainy afternoon. In so doing, children are putting their eyes (which are very sensitive to microwave radiation) close to the spot of maximum leakage. Second, we are concerned about professional cooks and cafeteria workers who spend long hours in cramped, hot kitchens next to one or more microwave ovens. Some might characterize this as an occupational risk, but it's a health risk nonetheless.

While the Times and CSPI discount possible high-frequency (microwave) radiation dangers, both ignore the power-frequency EMFs associated with microwave ovens, and other energy-hungry appliances. Four feet away from a high-power microwave oven, 60 Hz magnetic fields are as high as 20mG (100mG, a foot away), according to the EPA (see NIEHS' EMF booklet). Remember that the threshold for the childhood leukemia risk is widely believed to be at 3-4mG. Transient exposures are not a major concern, but chronic exposures —here again, consider the cafeteria worker— could well present a cancer risk.

Finally, though O'Connor's short item is on ovens, it provides yet another example of the Times' clueless coverage of cell phones. (See, for instance, our March 29 item.) When he compares the two, O'Connor gets the power output of mobile phones wrong (it's 0.6W, not 1.6W; he confuses emissions and exposures) but more importantly, O'Connor, like so many others at Science Times, seems to be oblivious to the growing body of data pointing to the higher incidence of tumors (gliomas and acoustic neuromas) among long-term (>10 years) users of mobile phones. (To be fair, the Times is not alone in ignoring these risks as the recent item in the Chicago Reader points out.)

July 2... Just days before the National Academy of Sciences' newly formed RF radiation committee holds its first meeting —primarily to plan its August 7-9 workshop (see May 24)— the Swiss federal environmental agency has issued its own report on what is and is not known about the health effects of high-frequency radiation. This is precisely the mission of the NAS panel: to identify current gaps in knowledge and research needs on the possible impacts of cell phones on health.

One key finding of the Swiss report is that "it has to be generally regarded as possible that intensive long-term use of mobile telephones could lead to an increased risk of brain tumors."

We look forward to comparing the U.S. report with its Swiss counterpart when the NAS committee completes its work at the end of the year.

The complete 165-page Swiss report is available only in German, but the summary has been translated into English, French and Italian. The environmental agency's June 26 press release is in French, German and Italian.

June 15... It's become axiomatic that wide acceptance of non-thermal effects will come from developing biomedical therapies rather than from studying potential hazards. The health effects work is mostly sponsored by those who don't want to find any. And they usually don't (cf: the USAF, EPRI, CTIA, FGF, MMF etc.) So no one should be surprised that the latest advance comes from a small high-tech Israeli company, NovoCure, which is looking for innovative ways to treat cancer. It's a breakthrough —quite possibly a major breakthrough.

NovoCure uses weak 100-200 kHz electric fields —the company calls them tumor treating fields or TTFields— to stunt the growth of cancer cells, either by slowing down their proliferation or by killing them off entirely. The company has now demonstrated this in four different cancer cell lines. Even more impressive is that tumor growth has been curtailed in mice, rats and, in a small pilot project, ten human patients with recurrent brain tumors (glioblastoma).
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June 14... Another passing: Bill Wisecup died of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 28 at the age of 77. A vet by training, Wisecup spent much of the 1980s and 1990s administering the EMF research program for the U.S. Department of Energy. He was also the executive director of the Bioelectromagnetics Society (BEMS) from 1986 until his retirement in 2000. He then devoted most of his time to photography and his Welsh corgis.

Wisecup ran the annual DOE research review and BEMS meetings with an iron hand, but he was a bit of softie when you got to know him. He was never shy about telling you where he stood. After leaving the EMF scene, Wisecup would on occasion send us a note about what he saw in the world he had left behind. Here's an excerpt from his last e-mail, under the heading, "Oh My": "Time has moved on since 1 July 2000 when I moved on to other things. But it really hasn't has it? The same old names in the same old arguments. ... How dull and mundane to read about the same issues and the same people. Some of them need to get a life and move on. Don't you guys at MWN ever get tired of this too? Isn't it like beating a dead horse?" We saw no reason to argue with him then, nor do we now.

June 11... Norm Sandler is dead at the age of 53. He was found in his Washington, DC, apartment last Monday; the cause has not yet been determined. Until recently, Sandler had been Motorola's principal spokesman on the cell phone health issue. He had previously worked for UPI and Powell Tate, a Washington PR firm.

For years, Sandler was a fixture on the RF conference circuit. He is probably best known to this community as the author of the Lai-Singh "war-gaming" memo. The December 31, 1994 memo to Michael Kehs of Burson-Marsteller, another DC PR shop, reviewed talking points to prepare for press inquiries about new experimental evidence suggesting that microwaves could be genotoxic (see MWN, J/F97, p.13). Henry Lai and N.P. Singh at the University of Washington, Seattle, had shown that 2450 MHz radiation caused DNA breaks (MWN, N/D94, p.1). The memo gained wide notoriety as it revealed the behind-the-scenes corporate maneuvering to manage the news, as well as the close coordination between Motorola, CTIA and George Carlo's health effects research program.

Sandler's roommate from his days at MIT has posted an obituary on his Web site.