Thank you for asking me.
I'd like to make five points, and I'll try to make them as briefly as possible.
The current guidelines we have for microwave radiation are based on a thermal effect. This effect came out of research that was done following World War II with radar operators. It was intended to protect military personnel from radiation. I don't think anyone at that time realized what would happen with our love affair with wireless technology and that we would have this type of technology on top of apartment buildings and inside schools, and that children would be exposed to the radiation.
The guidelines that we currently have in Canada are 100 times higher than the guidelines in Russia. The reason for the discrepancy between the two is that the Russian guidelines do not apply to the military. When the United States was first instigating their guidelines, they had the same ones for the general public as for the military, and they didn't want any compromises in what they could do with microwave radiation.
Our guidelines, being 100 times higher than those in Russia, don't make sense any more, because the Russians are probably as sensitive to this form of energy as we are here in Canada.
So that is my first point: that the existing guidelines are inadequate. They're based on an assumed thermal effect, and we now have a lot of scientific documentation—over 6,000 publications—that show adverse health effects from this radiation well below those thermal guidelines.
My second point is that we have some recent advances that are worth noting. In September 2009, there was a Senate committee hearing on cellphones. Shortly following that, the Federal Communications Commission issued a fact sheet asking for a precautionary approach when it came to cellphone use. I think this was a major step forward.
In November last year, following the Senate hearing, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences published a report called “Microwaves from Mobile Phones Inhibit 53BP1 Focus Formation in Human Stem Cells More Strongly Than in Differentiated Cells: Possible Mechanistic Link to Cancer Risk”. This report shows that the radiation from mobile phones inhibits a tumour-suppressor gene. That means if you have cancer and you're exposed to this radiation, your cancer is likely to grow more quickly because the gene that suppresses the tumour is disabled.
Health Canada, in their 1999 report on page 11, states that some individuals may be more sensitive to the radiation. So in a sense they acknowledge the concept of electrohypersensitivity.
The Royal Society report in 1999 came up with three different biological indicators that happen below Safety Code 6. They include increased permeability of the blood-brain barrier, increased calcium flux between cells, and an increase in an enzyme that's been associated with cancer. In that 1999 report they state that the guidelines are not sufficiently protective for occupational exposure.
On the final document with recent advances, the Canadian Human Rights Commission in 2007 recognized that environmental sensitivities may be initiated and promoted by electromagnetic exposure.
My third point is that I have a unique perspective on this. I work with people who have developed electrohypersensitivity. My current research is trying to come up with diagnostic procedures we can provide to doctors, so when someone comes into their office and claims they are electrically hypersensitive, we can monitor them objectively.
The most recent study that we've completed—it has been accepted for peer review—will be coming out within the next month. It looks at cordless phones--a particular type of technology called the DECT phone. We found in a double-blind study that when we exposed people to the radiation from a cordless DECT phone at 0.3% of Safety Code 6 guidelines—well under Safety Code 6 guidelines—for three minutes, their hearts began to go into either arrhythmia or tachycardia. So they developed either a very rapid heart rate, palpitations, or an irregular heart rate.
That study was done in Colorado with 25 subjects. We've since repeated it with an additional 75 subjects and we're getting virtually the same response. So the comment that electromagnetic energy well below Safety Code 6 guidelines has no adverse biological or health effect is simply not supported by the study.
The fourth point I would like to make is that communities are trying desperately to protect their health. There are individuals among them who are very sensitive, and they're trying to keep telecommunication antennas away from residential areas and schools and day care centres. Each time this happens, Industry Canada overrides the local decision.
I was part of a group in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, where the city community decided it did not want a tower near day care centres and schools. Industry Canada simply said that was nonsense and overrode the local decision. So people are no longer having the right to determine what is in their environment.
Finally, I'd like to say that we're really not here trying to point blame at either the industry or government communities that are regulating this technology. What we're doing is responding to a very rapid increase in our exposure to microwave radiation, and I think it's responsible for us to respond to the people who are claiming that they are ill, testing to see whether or not their symptoms are induced by exposure to microwave radiation, and, if they are, to take steps that would limit their exposure.
I think what is absolutely essential is that we begin to reduce the current guidelines that we have. Safety Code 6 does not protect the public. We need to have areas where this technology is restricted, and that includes schools and hospitals. We need to have some microwave-free zones, and I think we have to educate health care professionals who are trying to treat their patients with very little success because, whatever the treatment is, they go back home into a dirty environment, an electromagnetically polluted environment, and they become sick again.
I would like to end my presentation with a quote that comes from the Freiburger Appeal in 2002. This appeal comes from a group of German physicians who got together and were very concerned that current guidelines were not protecting their patients:
Our therapeutic efforts to restore health are becoming increasingly less effective: the unimpeded and continuous penetration of radiation into living and working areas...causes uninterrupted stress and prevents the patient's thorough recovery. In the face of this disquieting development, we feel obliged to inform the public of our observations....What we experience in the daily reality of our medical practice is anything but hypothetical! We see the rising number of chronically sick patients also as the result of an irresponsible “safety limits” policy, which fails to take the protection of the public...as its criterion for action. Instead, it submits to the dictates of a technology already long recognized as dangerous. For us, this is the beginning of a very serious development through which the health of many people is being threatened. We will no longer be made to wait upon further unreal research results--which in our experience are often influenced by the communications industry--while evidential studies go on being ignored. We find it to be of urgent necessity that we act now! Above all, we are, as doctors, the advocates for our patients. In the interest of all those concerned, whose basic right to life and freedom from bodily harm is currently being put at stake, we appeal to those in the spheres of politics and public health.
That is the end of my presentation.
Thank you very much.