The Challenge
What happens when we interact with the ubiquitous electromagnetic radiation from our wireless technologies, such as mobile phones, mobile phone masts and small cells, WiFi, smart meters, radar, tv and radio transmitters, wearables, internet of things devices, and so on?
Absolutely nothing, says the Government and its agencies, along with the source of this dismissive presumption, a shadowy club based in Germany, called ICNIRP (international Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection). We follow ICNIRP’s Guidelines on limiting exposure to this radiation, and therefore the public is fully protected, they insist. It is all very convenient for the industries involved, for Governments, and for agencies such as Ofcom, which slices and dices the electromagnetic spectrum, and then sells it to the highest bidder.
Au contraire, say the 254 experts from all over the world who have signed the International EMF Scientist Appeal. They note that:
‘Numerous recent scientific publications have shown that EMF affects living organisms at levels well below most international and national guidelines. Effects include increased cancer risk, cellular stress, increase in harmful free radicals, genetic damages, structural and functional changes of the reproductive system, learning and memory deficits, neurological disorders, and negative impacts on general well-being in humans. Damage goes well beyond the human race, as there is growing evidence of harmful effects to both plant and animal life.’
This radiation has already been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of WHO, as a Group 2B Possible Carcinogen, and an IARC expert committee recently recommended that the cancer classification should be re-evaluated with high priority, in light of recent scientific findings.
These findings include the results of the $30m U.S. National Toxicology Program Cell Phone Studies, which found ‘clear evidence of an association with tumors in the hearts of male rats’. These studies also found that radiofrequency radiation exposure ‘was associated with an increase in DNA damage’. The information sheet accompanying the results noted that: ‘…the studies question the long-held assumption that radio frequency radiation is of no concern as long as the energy level is low and does not significantly heat the tissues’ (the assumption that percolates from ICNIRP, via Public Health England and the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment, to the Government).
This is a minuscule snapshot of the scientific evidence which shows that the electromagnetic radiation from wireless technologies is harmful. All of this evidence is routinely dismissed by individuals and organisations which should be working to protect public health, but which are instead working to protect the vested interests involved. Meanwhile, the public continue to pay the price, and so does the NHS.
This is the key challenge: how do you protect the public, if this means restraining the uncontrolled proliferation of wireless technologies, upon which we have made ourselves dependent?
The industries involved have spent decades successfully defending their product (as did Big Tobacco before them), in order to keep the good times rolling. Anybody who points this out is routinely branded a ‘conspiracy theorist’ – even if they are MPs or MEPs.
However, despite all of the vested interests, and despite the addiction to wireless devices, there are huge opportunities available to us, once we are brave enough to admit that this problem is real, and that it urgently needs to be addressed.
The Opportunities
When we finally have official acceptance that there is a problem, and that we cannot rely on ICNIRP’s Guidelines to protect us, this will open the door to huge opportunities, although there will also be immense opposition to overcome, not least from a wireless-addicted public, and industries that are prepared to fight to the bitter end to defend their products, as we currently see with Glyphosate.
The communications and technology industries have had free reign over decades to install their harmful wireless infrastructure, and to sell their harmful products. As with the tobacco companies before them, they will have to pay substantial damages in the lawsuits that are already under way, and in those yet to come. They will also have to develop safer alternatives, or build upon safer technologies that we already have, such as fibre optic communications.
One of the biggest opportunities will be the phasing out of infrastructure in our homes, offices, and environment, which immerses us in destructive ‘electrosmog’, 24/7. This will have positive health benefits that we cannot even begin to imagine.
We will have the opportunity to set radiation limits that not only protect us, but which also protect wildlife and plants. ICNIRP’s Guidelines, as well as failing to protect us, also ignore the harm that ubiquitous radiation does to other species.
There is currently concern about the negative impact of 5G communications on climate change, and a cessation of this unnecessary and harmful technology will help to reduce spiralling energy consumption by millions of mobile masts, small cells, satellites, and connected ‘Internet of Things’ devices etc.
We will have an unparalleled opportunity to discard conflicted, industry-directed, ‘science’, and replace it with independent, objective, rigorous science, that tells us how far we can go with our use of electricity and electromagnetic radiation, before it takes a toll on our health, or on the wider environment and ecosystem.
Conclusion
In a 2018 review of the epidemiological science on Radiofrequency Radiation (RFR), four authors, including Dr Anthony B. Miller (ex-IARC) and Nobel Prize co-winner Dr Devra Lee Davis, concluded:
‘The Epidemiological studies reported since the 2011 IARC Working Group meeting are adequate to consider RFR as a probable human carcinogen (Group 2 A). However, they must be supplemented with the recently reported animal data as performed at the Ramazzini Institute and the US National Toxicology Program as well as by mechanistic studies. These experimental findings together with the epidemiology reviewed here are sufficient in our opinion, to upgrade the IARC categorization of RFR to Group 1, carcinogenic to humans’.
What would Lord Jeremy Heywood have made of this conclusion, and what should we make of it…?
244-11