Evidence of meeting #34 for Health in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was wi-fi.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Bloc
Nicolas Dufour Bloc Repentigny, QC
I'm sorry, but I think you'll appreciate the question, Mr. Palmer.
Ms. Pieterson, do you intend to do anything to verify what Mr. Palmer has said?
Director General, Environmental and Radiation Health Sciences Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
If we were asked to help the school board measure, yes, we'd be there. If we were asked to provide some assistance to the provincial government, we would do so.
Director General, Environmental and Radiation Health Sciences Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
No, we would respond if we were asked by the—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Excuse me. We'll stop right here. Anything has to be addressed through the chair.
Director General, Environmental and Radiation Health Sciences Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
My response was that yes, we would respond if we're asked by the provincial government or by the school board to provide some information and assistance.
Conservative
Bloc
Nicolas Dufour Bloc Repentigny, QC
I have no further questions, Madam Chair, but Mr. Pomerleau has one.
Bloc
Roger Pomerleau Bloc Drummond, QC
I have a very brief question for Mr. Bennett. Did I correctly understand the translation? You expressed your comments, your hesitations and your doubts about the procedure surrounding this affair. You also said that, despite the letter or letters you sent, all you received was an acknowledgment of receipt telling you you were very kind. Is that the situation?
President, Thermographix Consulting Corporation
You know, unfortunately that is the fact, and again I want to stress this to Ms. Pieterson and Health Canada. Safety Code 6 is a complete document in that it says the problem with all the things we're talking about today is that we're missing causality, biological plausibility.
I'm here, Ms. Pieterson, as a science professional who is trained and certified by the government, to tell you that the science has changed, and that's for this panel as well: a prolonged study effectively means that we're going to radiate your children and they're going to be in a lot of trouble because Safety Code 6 says “nerve and muscle depolarization”. If Ms. Pieterson and Health Canada—
Conservative
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to go back to part of the opening remarks from Ms. Pieterson. You talked about the Interphone study. I'm wondering if you could talk a lot more about the Interphone study, what it was, and what the results were. Then I'd like to hear the other researchers' perspectives on that particular study.
Director General, Environmental and Radiation Health Sciences Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
The Interphone study was a multinational study. I forget how many countries were involved; Canada was involved, as were many other countries. It was released this past May.
It took place over 10 years and looked specifically at whether cellphones increased the risk of brain tumours. The results showed that there was not evidence that conclusively said, yes, the risk of brain tumours was increased, but it did recommend that longer-term studies be conducted, specifically on children.
As most of us know, cellphone use didn't really become widespread until the nineties, so children have not been exposed for that long.
So longer-term studies were warranted and Canada will hopefully participate.
Conservative
Cathy McLeod Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Could I ask the researchers, anyone with knowledge, what their perspectives are on that particular study?
Adjunct Lecturer, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Occupational and Environmental Health Unit, University of Toronto, As an Individual
I have no particular comment on it other than to say it is part of the environment within which the standard-setting committees evaluate the studies that are coming along and take them into account.
It remains a study that.... What could I say? It was not conclusive in establishing any effects. That's really the bottom line, as I read it.
Conservative
Associate Professor of physiology and cellular biophysics, Department of physiology and cellular biophysics, Columbia University
I'm not prepared to give you a detailed kind of analysis, but there are people who have made analyses of the data. They have pointed out that there a number of things in the report indicate that it really is a document that does not give you the full story. It's the fact that they separated out some of the data in the appendices. It's in the appendices that they find the data there for longer periods.
I think for the 10-year periods the data shows that there is some indication that the greater the length of exposure, the greater your risk of getting cancer, that is, it approaches or may have actually reached significance. The end points there are cancer, and cancer is not something that shows up in a matter of a few years. You usually take induction periods of greater than 10 years, sometimes 15 or 20 years, before you start seeing cancer. The fact that you see it in those data indicates that there is something there that you ought to follow up and view with caution.
If you want to get more detail on what there is, there was an analysis that was published by Lloyd Morgan, and there may have been someone else on that. They went into the various flaws in the way they chose.... One thing I remember is that they defined “users”. In the Danish study, for example, a user was someone who used a cellphone once a week for six months. That's hardly “use”. You're loading your category of users with a lot of almost non-users. They also eliminated corporate users because the phones weren't registered in their own names, which means they were eliminating those who were most likely to use the phones. So you can see the ways in which the data could be skewed, and there are reasons to believe they probably were skewed.
The actual investigators on Interphone disagreed very, very strongly on the results of the Interphone study, and for years they could not agree on a common point of view. I think that's the reason they actually published it with these appendices: so that the appendices would show that there are data in there that shows there's reason to worry about some of the things they found.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Thank you.
Dr. Prato, I think Ms. McLeod wants you to comment. Is that okay?
Imaging Program Leader, Assistant Scientific Director, Lawson Health Research Institute
Thanks. May I?