The International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection

  • ICNIRP proclaims itself ‘an independent voice in NIR protection’.
  • Statement on EMF-Emitting New Technologies, April 2008. This document, published in Health Physics, Vol. 94, No. 1, merely refers to EM technologies in terms of ‘energy deposition’, without reference to structural effects of radiation, such as frequency or pattern. As such is has little to say about physics and less to say about health. Biology is absent.

As such, it comprises specialists in a number of fields, and presents itself as the focus of international expertise and advice on EM fields. This unfortunately does not create a responsive organisation with an ear to the ground, but one where ‘scientific certainty’ is required for international agreement.

The one area of chief dispute between those who report adverse health reactions to electric, magnetic and EM fields, is that the cause is below the power density threshhold set for thermal effects (ie tissue heating). ICNIRP steadfastly sets its guidelines around this level on the basis that this is the only known biological effect from EM fields.

ICNIRP guidelines therefore do not acknowledge non-linear effects, nor issues of chronic exposure, nor complex frequency effects. And yet these are features of modern digital microwave communications, and it is to ICNIRP that governments and national health bodies look. ICNIRP therefore is perceived as a significant stumbling block in pursuit of acknowledgment of emerging EM-produced health problems. By now, the position of ICNIRP with regard to WHO and political and economic interests makes it difficult to declare any need for greater precaution. Rather, countries like China and Russia with traditionaly much more conservative guidelines, are being pressurised to harmonise upwards and reduce their precaution.

A reminder of what ICNIRP (1998) is based on

“Induction of cancer from long-term EMF exposure was not considered to be established, and so these guidelines are based on short-term immediate health effects such as stimulation of peripheral nerves and muscles, shocks and burns caused by touching conducting objects and elevated tissue temperatures resulting from absorption of energy during exposure to EMF.

In the case of potential long-term effects of exposure, such as an increased risk of cancer, ICNIRP concluded that available data are insufficient to provide a basis for setting exposure restrictions, although epidemiological research has provided suggestive, but unconvincing evidence of an association between possible carcinogenic effects and exposure levels of 50/60 Hz, at magnetic flux densities substantially lower than these guidelines.”

Source: ICNIRP guidelines for exposure from electromagnetic radiation

Critiques:

Dosimetry

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