Current safety standards, which have been fixed for the exposure of people, consist of limiting the intensity of radiation. They are exclusively established by the same physical measure of the quantity of energy radiated from the emitter or absorbed by the inert material that is exposed to it (SAR). Safety standards in Western countries do not provide an appropriate level of protection, in comparison with Eastern countries (for example, Russia), which are much more restrictive, resulting from their experience of non-thermal and ELFs effects. More generally, current UK and European Community Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) legislation requires that all electronic goods offered for sale in the EU continue to operate satisfactorily up to an electric field exposure of 3V/m. Unfortunately, however, the same concern does not currently extend to the alive human organism, which is generally considered immune from adverse influences of GSM radiation, on account of its intensity* being far too low to cause any deleterious degree of heating of body tissue (as quantified through the so-called specific absorption rate, or SAR); indeed for humans, contrary to the case of electronic instrumentation, this heating is generally considered to be the only adverse effect possible. Furthermore, paradoxically some thermally based safety guidelines (such as those of ICNIRP or CENELEC) actually permit users to be exposed to electric fields over ten times stronger than the EMC standard of 3V/m (for electronic devices) ! [G.Hyland]
*Intensity is expressed either as an electric (magnetic) field strength in V/m (Tesla), or as a power density, in units of Watts/cm2, according as whether near or far field conditions obtain - the former being relevant to handset use, and the latter to public exposure in the vicinity of a Base-station.”
In a scientific analysis carried out by Westernand the former Soviet Union experts in 1998 regarding works that had been completed in Eastern countries and which to that date were unknown in the West, experts recommended that the establishment of standards protecting humans against radiation should take into consideration very low and extremely low frequencies (Grigoriev, 1998). This recommendation came at an appropriate moment, in particular because extremely low frequencies have been recently classified amongst potentially carcinogenic agents (Portier and Wolfe, 1998).
In 2001, standards would have to take into consideration the decision taken by the International Agency for Research in Cancer (IARC), an agency belonging to the World Health Organisation, of classifying the range of frequencies of ELF in the category “class 2B”, that is a “carcinogenic factor, with limited or possible evidences”. This classification of carcinogenicity for the ELF range shows that the athermal effects should be generally taken into consideration (as ELF belong to a range of frequencies that have no thermal effects).
- about micro-waves, thermal effects, mobile phones and S.A.R.
Standards, or rather recommendations, for mobile telephony only concern exposure levels that could lead to heating effects in tissues, of acute level and in the short term, as a direct response to “high doses”.
Standards for emissions from cellular telephones, which are valid for the range of micro-wave frequencies of 0.8-0.9 to 1.8-1.9 GHz are based on heating, as quantified by the evaluation of the Specific Absorption Rate (S.A.R.) of energy by the tissues.
Therefore they only take into consideration the thermal effect. Most of the time, SAR measurement is applied either to animal cadavers or to synthetic equivalents of tissues or “phantom” organs, whose physical and chemical properties are compared to those of living tissues. As SAR cannot be measured in a living human brain in its “electromagnetic” activity : the probe is submerged in a liquid that is meant to simulate the electrical properties of biological tissues.
The “phantom” is only the synthetic replica of the volume of a human head filled with a saline liquid which corresponds to physiological serum. However, phantoms and bodies are inert objects, which by their very nature are lifeless, and are therefore unable to give any measurable biological response. As a result, the SAR is only the physical signature of the electrical component of micro-waves and in this respect has no biological meaning, since its measure is not contemporaneous of the observation of a biological effect on the living organism. Of course, the measure of the SAR on the living organism presents technical problems that are more than difficult to solve ! We may therefore question the validity and the usefulness of the SAR as it is currently measured or calculated, except as a simple indication of the quantity of energy deposited in tissues.” [B.J.Youbicier-Simo] |
