Health effects associated with cell phone towers
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Date
2000-04-25
Type
Journal Article
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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.
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