Canada: Radiofrequency Toolkit for Environmental Health Practitioners

Bron: www.bccdc.ca/NR/rdonlyres/9AE4404B-67FF-411E-81B1-4DB75846BF2F/0/RadiofrequencyToolkit_v4_06132013.pdf .
7 maart 2013

Introduction to the Radiofrequency Toolkit

The Radiofrequency Toolkit was developed in response to requests from BC’s medical
and environmental health officers to the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control
(BCCDC) for assistance in assessing and communicating the risk to health of the many
devices and applications which emit radiofrequency (RF) waves. Health officers have
been asked for their advice and sometimes for their involvement on issues as varied as
whether children should use mobile phones, where mobile phone towers should and
should not be located, whether WiFi should be allowed in schools, whether baby
monitors are safe, and increasingly about the transmission strength of BC Hydro’s new
Smart Meters, and whether Smart Meters cause a variety of health effects.

As elsewhere, individuals and community advocacy groups in BC have expressed
concerns about the widespread use of RF and about specific applications. Much of the
concern is directed to wireless communication despite RF having been the basis for
radio transmission since the 1920s, and despite its extensive use in health care and in
industry. Information on RF and RF safety, while widely available, is often also highly
technical and not easily understood.

The toolkit was a two-year project involving staff at the Environmental Health Services
of BCCDC and the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health (NCCEH), a
program funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada and housed at the BCCDC.
Students, public health residents, and specialists in epidemiology from outside BCCDC
collaborated with BCCDC and NCCEH staff on the project. Among contributors to the
toolkit are experts in radiation physics, exposure assessment, cancer studies, and
environmental epidemiology.

Intended as informative rather than definitive, the toolkit summarizes and assesses
scientific research published between 2006 and 2012 on the physics, exposure, and
health effects of RF. The health risk of various RF-emitting devices is put into context
by offering a framework for assessing the potential strength of an RF source on the
body as a function of one’s distance from it, and of the frequency, continuity, and
intensity of the waves that the source emits. The toolkit is based both on collections of
articles assessing the RF literature and on original research articles themselves. Draft
chapters were kindly reviewed by a number of public environmental health
practitioners whom the toolkit was intended to serve.

Het begin van de inleiding.
Voor het volledige verhaal zie bovenstaande link.
Een uitgebreid overzicht, met teveel nadruk op: het is nog niet bewezen dat ....

In dit rapport staat onder meer:

“the epidemiological studies of men assessed for infertility were consistent in demonstrating decreased sperm motility associated with increased use of mobile phones” and “biological effects on sperm motility related to RF exposure



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