Criticism of the health assessment in the ICNIRP guidelines for radiofrequency and microwave radiation (100 kHz - 300 GHz)

Abstract

Dr Cherry was invited by the Ministry of Health/ Ministry for the Environment of New Zealand to carry out a peer-review of the proposal to adopt the ICNIRP guidelines for cell sites in New Zealand, in November 1999. The ICNIRP guidelines were covered by a published assessment in 1998. This review shows that the assessment had ignored all published studies showing chromosome damage. It was highly selective, biased and very dismissive of the genotoxic evidence and the epidemiological evidence of cancer effects and reproductive effects. The assessment gives the strong impression of being predetermined in the belief that the only effects were from high exposures that cause electric shocks and acute exposures that cause tissue heating. For, example, they cite two studies saying that they do not show any significant increased effects of Brain/CNS cancer from microwave exposures when the actual published papers, Grayson (1996) and Beall et al. (1996), both do show significant increases of Brain/CNS cancer.