Below certain exposure limit values, electromagnetic waves are harmless, says the WHO. What are these limit values? Are they enough to protect us? By whom are they fixed? “Further investigation” compiled scientific studies and wondered about certain risks of conflicts of interest…
According to the WHO (World Health Organization), below certain exposure limit values, electromagnetic waves are harmless. What are these limit values? For its relay antennas, for example, France (like the United States, Germany or Brazil) is one of the countries which establish these thresholds between 28 and 61 volts per meter (V / m) depending on the frequencies. They are supposed to protect us from the only effects recognized by all scientists: thermal effects.
In the absence of consensus on the question of other possible effects of electromagnetic waves, “Further investigation” turned to an independent Australian NGO. With its help, the journalists compiled more than 2,000 studies published in leading medical journals. Result: nearly 68% of this work concluded that there were biological effects (demonstrated, but not all triggering serious pathologies) below the exposure limit values.
ICNIRP, guardian of the temple of limit values
Do these limit values really protect our health? According to three of the authors of these studies, “These limits have nothing to do with public health”. “There are nine biological effects that occur below regulatory thresholds. One of them is cancer ”, specifies the American biochemist Martin Pall. According to Dariusz Leszczynski, specialist in molecular biology, these limit values would have “Been adopted at a very high level, more to help the industry develop quickly and at a lower cost than to protect the health of cell phone users”.
By whom are these limit values set? The recommendations that the WHO has been disseminating since 1998 emanate from the ICNIRP (in French the International Commission for the Protection against Non-Ionizing Radiation), created in 1992 by Mike Repacholi, an Australian biologist… close to the telecoms industry.
Risks of conflicts of interest with the telecoms industry
Are ICNIRP scientists completely independent? The journalists of “Complément d’études” went through the CVs of its fourteen experts. Ten of them would be exposed to a risk of conflict of interest with the telecoms industry. Such as the Italian Guglielmo D’Inzeo, who was scientific advisor for two years for the operator Vodafone. Or the Swiss Martin Röösli, researcher in a foundation financed by mobile telephone operators.
As for the current vice-president of ICNIRP, he is the former number 2 of an association financed in part by the telecoms industry. Eric van Rongen is also an advisor to the WHO. The journalists went to interview him in Rotterdam…
Extract from “5G: the wave of doubt”, a document to see in “Further investigation” on November 12, 2020.
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