Health effects associated with cell phone towers

Abstract

There is a strong push from the WHO and the ICNIRP of harmonize national RF/MW exposure standards by individual states adopting the ICNIRP Guideline. This would be a good thing if the ICNIRP Guideline was set at an exposure level that provided sound protection of public health. The evidence presented here shows that the ICNIRP Guideline exposure level is set many orders of magnitude too high to accomplish this. It is based on the preconceived and long held view of Western Government Authorities that the only possible and only established biological effect of RF/MW exposure is tissue heating. This is referred to here as the RF-Thermal View. This view has been intransigently maintained in the face of compelling laboratory and epidemiological evidence of adverse health effects that would have had a chemical declared carcinogenic, neuropathogenic, cardiogenic and teratogenic for humans many years ago. This critique was originally written when the New Zealand Ministries of Health and Environment proposed to adopt the ICNIRP Guideline as the Public Health Standard for Cell Site exposures. At the same time the New Zealand RF Standards Committee was proposing to use the ICNIRP Guideline as the New Zealand RF/MW Standard. ICNIRP is the International Commission on Non- Ionizing Radiation Protection. The ICNIRP RF/MW guideline and scientific assessment was published in Health Physics, Vol. 74 (4): 494-522, 1988. This is the primary source document for this critique and will be referred to as ICNIRP (1998). The ICNIRP (1998) assessment of effects has been reviewed against the research literature cited and other published research. It is found that both the basic approach of ICNIRP and its treatment of the scientific research have serious flaws. The ICNIRP assessment is determined to maintain the RF-Thermal View and it rejects or omits all evidence that conflicts with this view. This may be termed "Constructive Dismissal" for a preconceived concept is used to inappropriately dismiss all evidence that challenges it. ICNIRP is particularly dismissive of epidemiological evidence because all existing studies involve nonthermal exposures. Hence accepting the validity of these studies would directly challenge the RF-Thermal View. In this way the approach to dealing with health effects from non-ionizing radiation was developed to follow a completely different method than for toxic chemicals, drugs or air pollution. Both the approach of ICNIRP and the assumptions made are severely scientifically challenged in this report.