> Environmental and Health Concerns > Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) and Microwaves

When Martin Weatherall retired, he wanted to get away from it all. The former Toronto police investigator and his wife bought a place in the Ontario countryside. But almost as soon as the couple moved in, Weatherall started feeling sick.

This normally healthy man developed headaches, nausea, tinnitus, body aches, insomnia, and suffered from depression. Yet his symptoms dissipated whenever he spent time away from his supposed retreat. Weatherall says he suspected from the start that the cause of his illness was electromagnetic radiation (EMR) coming from nearby power antennas. He’s still convinced to this day.

EMR is emitted by the many radio-frequency devices we can’t live without–power lines and antennas, cellphones and cellphone towers, cordless phones, laptops, and microwave ovens. People like Weatherall, who suffer from what’s also known as radio-frequency sickness or electrosensitivity, maintain that the negative health effects of EMR are far more pervasive than scientists or government officials are willing to admit. As the borders of the wireless world expand, they say the harm is only going to get worse. Meanwhile, many health officials say that levels of EMR to which Canadians are exposed are safe.

So, how great is the threat of EMR?

Good question.

A Bit of History

In 1973 the Canadian government issued a report called Environmental Pollution by Microwave Pollution–A Potential Threat to Human Health. It stated that international accord hadn’t been reached about safe exposure levels.

It seems little has changed.

Weatherall says microwave sickness goes back to the Second World War, when radar operators reported similar symptoms. Today, overexposure to radio-frequency radiation is causing illness, cancer, and death, he claims. He cofounded the group Canadian Safe Wireless, Electrical, and Electromagnetic Policies to educate people about the understated and severe impact of EMR.

“There are so many cases of ill health because of microwave radiation,” Weatherall says in a phone interview. “Unless people are affected directly, they find it hard to understand. The trouble is, a lot more people are being affected than we realize. And the government keeps telling us it’s safe.

“I’d like to see the government investigate complaints and sponsor a public-education program to let people know how electromagnetic radiation can affect them,” he adds.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), radio-frequency energy is absorbed in the body and produces heat, but the body’s normal thermoregulatory processes carry that heat away.

That’s where any certainty ends. Research is as conflicting as public opinion.

Science Proves Links

On one hand, the WHO states that scientific evidence indicates that exposure to radio-frequency fields, such as those emitted by cellphones and their base stations, is unlikely to induce or promote cancers.

A 2001 study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute looked at cancer incidence among nearly 421,000 cellphone users in Denmark between 1982 and 1995. It concluded that there was no association between cellphone use and tumours of the brain or salivary gland, leukemia, or other cancers.

In 1999, the United States National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences found “limited evidence” that residential magnetic fields increase the risk of childhood leukemia.

According to Health Canada, “scientific evidence has not presented convincing evidence” to implicate EMR exposure from portable phones as a cause of cancer.

On the other hand, a 2000 report released by the UK Health Protection Agency’s National Radiation Protection Board Advisory Group on Non-ionising Radiation found that “the possibility remains that intense and prolonged exposures to magnetic fields (from power lines) can increase the risk of leukaemia in children.”

More recently, study results released at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s 2006 annual meeting showed that men who used a cellphone for more than four hours a day had the worst sperm counts and the poorest-quality sperm. Researchers said the damage could be caused by the EMR emitted by handsets.

Elsewhere, findings are just plain murky.

Gail Johnson is a Vancouver writer who always uses a hands-free cellphone.

Source: alive #299, September 2007