Microwave News | EMFs: Microwave News Article Archive (2004

August 16, 2023

“Mammography Using Low‐Frequency EMFs with Deep Learning,” Scientific Reports, August 15, 2023. New system, operating at 200 MHz, for detecting anomalies inside the human female breast. It could not only detect benign and malignant tumors, but also their size and location. “Remarkably, deep learning models were found to achieve very high classification accuracy.”

May 21, 2023

“EMF Exposure on Fetal and Childhood Abnormalities: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Open Medicine, May 12, 2023. “Fetal and childhood abnormalities were more common in parents who have been exposed to EMFs compared to those who have not.”

June 21, 2019

Health Effects Linked to Low-Frequency EMFs, from ANSES, the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety, released June 21, 2019.

French government agency recommends precaution especially for children and pregnant women. Also: No high-voltage lines & substations near schools & hospitals. ... And more research. Full report here.

July 24, 2018

“Thermal and Non-Thermal Health Effects of Low Intensity Non-Ionizing Radiation: An International Perspective,” Environmental Pollution, posted July 6, 2018.

An “urgent” call for action from D. Belpomme, L. Hardell, I. Belyaev, E. Burgio & D. Carpenter.

October 1, 2010

Dave Eisen (1925-2010)

We just learned that David Eisen, the former Director of Research and Information at the Newspaper Guild, died on September 16 at the age of 85. (A notice appeared in today's New York Times.) We got to know Dave Eisen back in the early 1980s when we were reporting on the possible health risks associated with video display terminals (VDTs), cathode ray tube (CRT) displays for computers. (From 1984 to 1995, Microwave News also published VDT News.) We'll let the obituary that ran in Maine's Kennebec Journal recount his life story, but we wish to salute him here.

February 6, 2010

Beyond Risk and Reason

Assessing health risks is a tricky business. Teaching others how to do it is no easier. To see this, you need to look no further than a recent report from the Geneva-based International Risk Governance Council (IRGC), a self-described "independent" group run by a group of government, industry and academic leaders. The title of the report is a mouthful: Risk Governance Deficits: An Analysis and Illustration of the Most Common Deficits in Risk Governance. A better title would have been, Common Pitfalls in Risk Analysis, or perhaps, Risk: A Guide to Better Decision Making.

January 18, 2010

Will NIEHS Ever “Get” EMFs?

Lorenzo Tomatis got it. But few others do. Among those who don’t are the many managers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) who refuse to allow that the EMF–cancer playbook may be different from the one for chemicals. Even now, when there is ample evidence that power line EMFs can increase the risk of childhood leukemia and there is a growing suspicion that cell phone radiation is associated with three different types of tumors, NIEHS prefers to look the other way. The institute has long resisted endorsing precautionary policies for any kind of EMFs.

August 18, 2004

EMF Decision Time in California: Follow the Health Data or Follow the Money?

California will soon decide what's next for EMFs.

As power line skirmishes continue to smolder across the country and around the world, California regulators may be the first to take stock of all the new health data that have been generated over the last decade.

March 31, 2004

U.K. NRPB Favors ICNIRP Limits

The U.K. National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) is recommending the adoption of the ICNIRP limits for human exposures to EMFs in the 0-300 GHz frequency range. In its Advice, issued on March 31, the NRPB cites its “review of the science, the need to adopt a cautious approach and recognition of the benefits of international harmonization” as the rationale for tightening the U.K. standards, which are among the least restrictive in the world.

The board stresses that it may be necessary to adopt “further precautionary measures” for the exposure of children to power-frequency magnetic fields.

March 10, 2004

Sir William Stewart to Open Leukemia Conference

Sir William Stewart, the chairman of the U.K. Health Protection Agency as well as the chairman of the NRPB, will give the opening address at the International Scientific Conference on Childhood Leukemia. The meeting, to be held in London, September 6-10, will examine all the possible risk factors including genetics, ionizing radiation, EMFs, chemicals and viruses. Those signing up before June 30 will get close to a 20% discount on the registration fee.

February 9, 2004

At a conference in the summer of 2002, Maren Fedrowitz of Wolfgang Löscher’s group at the Hannover Medical School in Germany explained why the Battelle labs in the U.S. had been unable to repeat Meike Mevissen and Löscher’s experiments showing that EMFs can promote breast cancer in rats. It was because of genetic variations among substrains of rats, she said.

January 30, 2004

DNA Breaks: The Controversy Continues

The ability of ELF magnetic fields to damage DNA may be getting clearer (see item below) —but not so for microwaves. Over the last ten years, the battle of the Washington universities has been raging, with Joseph Roti Roti of Washington University in St. Louis at odds with Henry Lai and N.P. Singh of the University of Washington, Seattle. Roti Roti is now claiming the upper hand in the February issue of Radiation Research.

January 27, 2004

Environmental Health Perspectives will publish a new paper by Henry Lai and N.P. Singh showing that a 24-hour exposure to 100 mG ELF EMFs can lead to significant increases in single- and double-strand DNA breaks. The two University of Washington, Seattle, researchers found even larger increases following a 48-hour exposure, leading them to conclude that the effect is cumulative.

A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

EMFs: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )