Are public health officials abusing the word once again?
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Since its inception, HART has concentrated its efforts on analysis of the pandemic and all the ramifications of the government response (and indeed that of governments across the world). But occasionally, other articles get sent to us which have some common features, in particular, whether some new technology really is as ‘SAFE’ as we are being told.
Safe could mean more than one thing. It could mean absolutely harmless, or it could refer to safety relative to other things. For the covid vaccines that might be relative to other medications or to other vaccines; this difference matters. It should of course also mean safe relative to the illness it is aimed at.
There are other instances where things are declared safe – really meaning “safe enough” – where the full picture does not indicate that they are completely harmless.
5G is a particularly risky topic to cover because there are two totally different questions which ‘Fact Checkers’ and detractors love to conflate, namely:
(i) is there any evidence of health risks from 5G technology?
(ii) do the vaccines contain nanobots which will allow global elites to track our every move via 5G technology? (NB: this is the belief which the “fact-checkers” like to portray as one which all lockdown sceptics – aka ‘antivaxxers’ – hold)
We are sharing the article below, which most definitely is only concerned with the first question. In it, the author, Gillian Jamieson, expands on an article recently published in the Daily Sceptic. She has written previously in the DS, although other authors do not share her concerns.
Here is her article below, so please read and decide for yourselves, has the government really done its ‘due diligence’?
Ministers remain in ignorant bliss with regard to 5G health risks
By Gillian Jamieson
Please note that in this article I have not made a distinction between the terms RFR (radio-frequency radiation) and EMFs (electromagnetic fields). These are both classed as non-ionising radiation.
Too often, nowadays, those who are concerned about the potential health risks of the radio-frequency radiation (RFR) emitting from smartphones, cordless phones, phone masts, WiFi, Bluetooth, smart meters and much more are dismissed with that overused label, “conspiracy theorists,” a term which seems to align with the modern tendency to believe in “consensus science”. It seems that our own government has fallen prey to this fallacy. It maintains, as you will see, that RFR is safe and that there is an international consensus to this effect.
I voiced my own concerns to my MP Rishi Sunak, as I suffered chronic health problems after living for three years within 15 to 20 metres of a phone mast twenty years ago and therefore wish to reduce my exposure to radiation, where possible. My belief in the likely cause of my own ill-health was underpinned by the deaths of two neighbours, living on either side of this mast, from motor neurone disease. Eileen O’Connor, the director of the EM-Radiation Research Trust has a similar story to tell, with a cluster of breast cancers, along with one case of motor neurone disease around the mast where she lived.
Mr. Sunak replied that the government wished to “blanket the country with the fastest most reliable wireless coverage available”, that “exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) is not new” and that there is “no credible evidence of an impact of 5G on public health”. He also mentioned that he had asked ministers to address my concerns, of which more later.
In response, I noted that the government stands by the Stewart Report of 2000 with advice about how people “might reduce their exposure if they so wish”. But now that RF radiation is so ubiquitous, how can people reduce their exposure, unless they are given information about radiation hotspots and unless Wifi-free areas are provided in trains, workplaces and public spaces?
I questioned the rights of those disabled by electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) in terms of section 6 of the Equality Act. A case has already been won in the UK, where a local authority has been mandated to provide EMF-free education for a child with EHS.
Moreover, because EMFs are not new, enough time has now elapsed for us to have sufficient evidence for high quality epidemiological studies. In 2019, an international expert team led by Professor Tony Miller found human epidemiological evidence linking human breast and brain tumours, male reproductive outcomes and child neurodevelopmental conditions to RFR exposures to pre-5G emissions.
With regard to Mr Sunak’s statement on 5G, there is indeed little evidence, in so far as its safety remains unproven. The effect of the combination of new technologies, such as beamforming, combined with present and higher frequencies has not been tested. The UK follows the safety exposure guidelines of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, (ICNIRP), but their calculations use only simple heating models that do not consider the complexities of the many interacting and aggregated signals that occur in the built environment.
Be that as it may, when the two ministerial replies arrived, I was genuinely shocked by the level of ignorance they betrayed.
Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care wrote: “The ICNIRP guidelines apply to the whole population, including children and people of varying health status, which may include particularly susceptible groups or individuals”
This is simply wrong. What ICNIRP actually says is: “some exposure scenarios are defined as outside the scope of these guidelines. Medical procedures may utilize EMFs, and metallic implants may alter or perturb EMFs in the body, which in turn can affect the body both directly and indirectly…. ICNIRP considers such exposure, managed by qualified medical practitioners, as beyond the scope of these guidelines.” (emphasis mine)
In other words, these guidelines do not apply to the large numbers of people with metal implants or anyone undergoing a medical procedure utilising EMFs. It is left to doctors to advise on this, but UK doctors are not trained in the health effects of non-ionising radiation.
Even more alarming is this statement by Sir John Whittingdale OBE, the Minister for Data and Digital Infrastructure,
“The ICNIRP… guidelines…are based upon a large amount of research carried out over many years”.
This is highly misleading! The guidelines are based on behavioural studies of eight rats and five monkeys, which were irradiated for up to an hour and also by measuring heating effects on a plastic model of a man’s head. Criticisms of the methodology used for deciding the guidelines have been made by the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF) in a recent article and by James Lin, a highly qualified biophysicist and ex-member of ICNIRP, who laid out his objections in the IEEE Microwave Magazine.
In fact, far from research being the basis of the guidelines, the opposite is true. Studies on the biological health effects of EMFs are largely ignored by ICNIRP because their members do not consider that health damage can occur unless the body is heated by irradiation. There are however numerous studies showing damage below the heating thresholds.
Sir John also maintained that, “a substantial international consensus exists to the effect that wireless technologies are safe” (Sir John’s underlining by hand).
In this context he mentions ICNIRP and SCENIHR (the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks), both of which are recognised by the EU. However, it is claimed that these two advisory bodies are compromised, as their members comprise a handful of like-minded industry-linked researchers, very few of whom have expertise in the biophysics of RFR. And again, this article emphasises that “ICNIRP 2020 itself, and in practice all its referenced supporting literature, stem from a network of co-authors with just 17 researchers at its core”
Contrast this with the 433 scientists who have signed the EU 5G appeal, asking for a moratorium on the roll-out of 5G or the 259 scientists from 44 nations, who have signed the international EMF scientist appeal, calling for protection from RFR exposure. There is also the compelling 2020 Consensus Statement of UK and international, medical and scientific experts and practitioners on health effects of non-ionising radiation, signed by organisations representing 3,500 medical doctors throughout the world, initiated by the Physicians’ Health Initiative for Radiation and Environment (PHIRE).
Meanwhile, in the United States the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been urged by numerous scientists and environmental health groups to respond promptly to the order of the U.S Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit in their recent judgment which mandated the FCC to re-examine the evidence regarding its 25-year-old wireless radiation safety limits.
Does all this indicate an international consensus that RFR is safe?
Sir John also referred to AGNIR: “Reviews carried out by the independent Advisory Group on Non-Ionising Radiation (AGNIR) found no convincing evidence that radiofrequency field exposures below guideline levels cause health effects”.
He did not mention that this UK review was carried out back in 2012 and was discredited by Dr Sarah Starkey who found that the report omitted and distorted scientific evidence, leading to wrong and misleading conclusions. She also pointed out how many personnel had dual roles/conflicts of interests by being in more than one of these regulatory bodies at the same time.
Indeed, since that time, there have been large animal studies from the US National Toxicology Program (preprint in 2016 and full report in 2018) and confirmed by the Ramazzini Institute, both showing a link between RFR exposure and heart and brain tumours in rats, as well as the large afore-mentioned epidemiological review by Professor Tony Miller (2019).
AGNIR is now defunct and its remit has been adopted by the Department of Health’s Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE). Unfortunately COMARE has never produced a report on the health effects of non-ionising (radio-frequency) radiation, because our Government has never asked it to do so, according to an email sent to me by its secretariat. Its newly formed EMF and Health subgroup holds only a watching brief.
What a contrast to the U.S. New Hampshire Commission, which gathered a large group of experts together and conducted a thorough investigation into the health effects of RFR a couple of years ago!
In June this year, at a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, its findings were described with great clarity by Professor Kent Chamberlain, the Professor Emeritus of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Hampshire. His talk included a discussion of the methods used to set the ICNIRP safety exposure guidelines, a review of the peer-reviewed literature on adverse health effects of RFR and the highlighting of key findings, such as the increased risk of cancer if you live within 1000 metres of a mast. He has also published an excellent summary of this process.
The Royal Society of Medicine conference was organised by the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF) and was based around an important paper, examining the 14 false assumptions of those creating the ICNIRP safety guidelines. I introduced the expert speakers in a previous article. This event was ably introduced by David Gee, who co-authored Late Lessons, Early Warnings for the European Environmental Agency.
Short written highlights, presentation slides and videos of the event are now available to view on an ICBE-EMF webpage ⎼ these are essential viewing and reading for anyone interested in this subject, particularly for our Government ministers and their researchers. In addition, I would recommend this excellent article summarising the current science and the battle to get it heard.
In summary, seemingly unaware of the large number of scientists calling for a moratorium on 5G as well as suggesting ways for technology to be safer, and in ignorance of the facts surrounding the “safety” exposure guidelines followed in the UK, USA and parts of Europe, our government is quite content to tell the population that RFR is safe and to continue to roll out wireless technology at speed. There is no hint that it will proactively investigate whether the exposure guidelines are fit for purpose.
In the meantime, there are thousands of people whose main daily task is to consider how they can avoid radiation that day, as they suffer from the acute and debilitating symptoms of electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS). Such people become more and more isolated and less and less able to take part in normal life, with some sufferers resorting to extreme measures such as camping to get away from radiation. The human rights of those who do not consent to exposure in their home, place of work or public buildings, are being violated as they are being given no choice.
Is our government happy with this?
