India September 2014

CELL PHONES ANDCELL TOWERSHealth Risk and Precautionary Principle
Dariusz Leszczynski,PhD, DSc
Adjunct Professor, University of Helsinki
Editor-in-Chief of Frontiers in Radiation and Health
(specialty of the Frontiers in Public Health, Lausanne, Switzerland)
Member of the Advisory Board, Cellraid, Ltd, Oulu, Finland
Dariusz Leszczynski in INDIA, September 15 -19, 2014

Who I am... few examples of my experience
•Adjunct Professor at the University of Helsinki, Finland
•Chief Editor of ’Radiation and Health’; specialty of Frontiers in Public Health
•Two doctorates in biochemistry and in cell biology
•22 years (1992-2013) at Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority
•2003-2007 as Head of Radiation Biology laboratory
•2000-2013 as Research Professor
•Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School 1997-1999
•Guangbiao Professor at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China 2006-2009
•Visiting Professor at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia 2012/2013
•Testified in US Senate hearing on cell phones and health, in 2009
•Expert in IARC 2011 classification of carcinogenicity of cell phone radiation

WHO defintion of health
“Healthisastateofcompletephysical,mentalandsocialwell-beingandnotmerelytheabsenceofdiseaseorinfirmity”
WheneverdiscussingsafetyofradiationemittedbythewirelesscommunicationdevicesweneedtorememberthisWHOdefinitionofhealth

Safety standards –who sets?
•Set by ICNIRP -International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection
•ICNIRP’s membership: by invitation only “private club”
•Membership of ICNIRP based on similarity of scientific opinions of experts
•No accountability for ICNIRP experts
•Limited scientific debate when all ICNIRP members have a similar opinion
•WHO EMF Project recommends use of ICNIRP safety standards
•WHO EMF Project was started and run by former ICNIRP Chairman -Dr. Repacholi

ICNIRP sets
safety standards
WHO recommends to use
ICNIRP safety standards
In Finland Ministry considers
WHO recommendation
In Finland Ministry asks STUK
opinion on ICNIRP standards
STUK expert recommends
use of ICNIRP standards
STUK expert is ICNIRP member
who prepared safety standards
Setting safety standards in… Finland

Safety Standards –short-comings
•Based on thermal effects of cell phone radiation
•Not accounting for other parameters of exposure
•Dosimetry based on macro-scale temperature changes
•Lack of micro-scale dosimetry
•Models do not resemble living cells and organs
•Comparisons to classical heating do NOT apply

Macro-scale dosimetry
Water
Salt
Sugar
+
=
Problem:
free movement of ions

Problems associated with the safety standards
•No information whether/how cell phone radiation affects humans
•No certainty that safety standards protect all users from anything besides thermal effects
•Any equipment radiating below safety standards is considered safe which might be misleading
•Compliance with safety standards is used as an excuse to stop research funding and to deploy new wireless technologies without any testing
•Non-thermal effects exist but are refused to be studied in depth because of the “excuse” of safety standards

IARC evaluation may 2011
•30 invited experts divided into four sub-groups
•Dosimetry
•Epidemiology
•Animal studies
•Mechanistic laboratory in vitrostudies
•Decissions done by consensus or by simple majority
•The vast majority of experts voted for possible carcinogen classification

IARC 2011 and after IARC: Epidemiology
•Interphone & Hardellstudies
•no reliable exposure data
•risk increase in long-term avid users
•Children –only CEFALO
•exposures for 2-4 years
•has no statistical power to detect small risk
•Trend-data -Little et al. 2012: slow rise of brain cancer cases in USA
•trend is similar to Interphone “prediction” but not Hardell“prediction”
•Danish Cohort update study –no effect but no exposure data at all
•Million Women study -no effect but exposure data inadequate

The limited human evidence was based on the results of two sets of epidemiological studies European Interphone group and Hardellgroup in Sweden.
After the IARC evaluation, in 2014, was published a new epidemiological study -the French CERENAT.
The French study reached similar conclusions as Interphone and Hardellpreviously – long term avid use of cell phone increases a risk of developing brain cancer.
It means that now there are three replications of the same epidemiological type of study, the case-control study, that all suggest cell phone radiation might increase a risk of brain cancer.
After IARC evaluation: Epidemiology

IARC 2011: Human studies
•The vast majority are “feelings” studies
•Subjects asked how they feel
•Subject asked do they feel when radiation is on/off
•EHS must exist –question is only of radiation cut-off level
•Otherwise RF would be the only factor not causing individual sensitivity in people
•Problem of EHS –studied by psychologists not physiologists –wrong methods
•WHO definition of health –how to consider it? IARC classification justifies reasoning for “mental and social well-being”
•Lack of studies examining biochemical responses of human tissues
•Single skin proteomics study
•Two studies examined glucose metabolism in the brain
•That is all!

IARC 2011: Animal studies
•No classical toxicology possible
•By classical toxicology RF would be judged as harmful to humans
•Not possible to overdose cell phone radiation because of heating effect
•Life-time exposures to radiation doses similar to those emitted by cell phones show no effect –result useless for human health risk estimation
•Co-carcinogen studies show some effects –cell phone radiation might potentiate effects of carcinogenic chemicals or radiation

*…but… what nobody is speaking about!
Risk evaluation of radiation emitted by the base stations:
scientific studies where exposure levels are similar to levels emitted by cell phones can be considered as toxicology studiesexamining effects of radiation emitted by base stations

IARC 2011: Mechanistic studies
•Laboratory evidence was considered, by voting (no consensus) as insufficient to support/show mechanism of cell phone radiation effects

Leszczynski et al. 2002
Caraglia et al. 2005
Friedman et al. 2007
Buttiglione et al. 2007
Yu et al. 2008
Lee et al. 2008
Mechanism ?: Cell phone radiation affects stress response
Cell proliferation and
expression of cancer regularory genes

Scale of the potential problem
Even if individual risk will be small, considering that there are over 6 billion of cell phone users, the burden for the society might be sizable in monetary and human suffering terms
Radiation exposures from cell phones and from smart phones are not comparable –smart phone radiation exposures are much higher because of data traffic

The IARC classification, of cell phone radiation as a possible carcinogen, invalidates the ICNIRP and WHO claims that the current safety standards protect all users.
In three independent epidemiological case-control studies, two of which were evaluated by IARC, adult participants used regular, off-the-shelf, cell phones.
These cell phones were built to fulfil all ICNIRP safety standards.
However, avid use of such “safe” cell phones for period of over 10 years led to increased risk of brain cancer.
This means that the current safety standards do not protect sufficiently users of cell phones and casts doubt whether safety standards for cell towers are reliable.
Un-reliability of safety standards

Invoking the Precautionary Principle
“WhetherornottoinvokethePrecautionaryPrincipleisadecisionexercisedwherescientificinformationisinsufficient, inconclusive,oruncertainandwherethereareindicationsthatthepossibleeffectsonenvironment,orhuman,animalorplanthealthmaybepotentiallydangerousandinconsistentwiththechosenlevelofprotection.”

Invoking the Precautionary Principle
•Scientificinformationisinsufficient,inconclusive,oruncertain
•IARCclassificationaspossiblecarcinogen(2Bcategory)
•Thereareindicationsthatthepossibleeffectsonhumanhealthmaybepotentiallydangerous
•epidemiologicalstudiesfromInterphonegroupandfromHardellgroupshowincreasedbraincancerriskinlong-termavidusers
•Inconsistentwiththechosenlevelofprotection
•epidemiologicalstudiesshowingincreasedriskinlong-termavidusersweregeneratedbasedontheuseofregularcellphonesmeetingcurrentsafetystandards=currentsafetystandardsarebeinsufficienttoprotectusers

India: problem of location of cell towers
Dariusz Leszczynski in INDIA, September 15 - 19, 2014

•Cell phone app -runson any commercial Android phone
•Measures RF emission exposure from cell phone, cell tower and wi-fi
•Accurate algorithm to estimate total RF emission
by Cellraid in Finland
cellraid.com

before
now
Cell tower radiation exposure in India
[drawings no to scale]

before
now
Cell phone radiation exposure
lesser exposure
of the users

Conclusions
•IARCclassificationofthecellphoneradiationasapossiblecarcinogenisasufficientreasonforinvokingPrecautionaryPrinciple
•Claimsthatthecurrentsafetystandardsprotectallusersarenotsupportedbythescientificevidence
•Currentsafetystandardsshouldbeurgentlyrevisedtobetterreflecttheavailablescience
•Usersshouldbeinformedaboutthecurrentscientificuncertaintyandadvisedtolimitexposureswheneverpossibleandfeasibleandstronglydiscouragedfromkeepingcellphonesclosetobody(inpockets)

India September 2014

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (15)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (10)

Similar to India September 2014

Similar to India September 2014 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

India September 2014