Health Committee on April 28th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to start our committee meeting right now. We have a slightly condensed meeting today. The bells will ring at a quarter after five and the votes will take place some time after that. We're going to have to condense each panel by about seven minutes to fit everything in. Also, to make sure that we get our normal rounds of questions in I think we should go from seven-minute questions to five-minute questions, just to make sure everybody gets a chance.

We have two people here by video conference, Ms. Bray and Ms. Nicol. Seeing you're here through our technology, we'll have you go first.

Ms. Bray, you can present first, and then Ms. Nicol, you'll go after Ms. Bray.

Go ahead.

[Dr. Riina Bray, Medical Director, Environmental Health Clinic, Women’s College Hospital, As an Individual]

Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Riina Bray. I have a degree in chemical engineering and a master's in pharmacology in the area of addictions and toxicology. I studied medicine at the University of Toronto and did a specialty in family practice. I have a master's in health sciences, public health, in family and community medicine.

I have been medical director of the environmental health clinic at Women’s College Hospital and associate professor in the department of family and community medicine, University of Toronto, since 2002. I was chair of the environmental health committee of the Ontario College of Family Physicians for over 10 years. I have taught university-level courses, lectured widely to the public and peers, mentored and taught hundreds of medical students, done environmental health research, and published and created educational materials. I have been investigating electromagnetic fields and human health for the past 10 years.

Dear honourable chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to speak about my experiences in caring for patients who have developed hypersensitivities from chronically high levels of exposure to electromagnetic fields in everyday life.

Since the time these diagnoses were initially made 10 years ago, the numbers have increased dramatically, perhaps due to increased awareness and perhaps due to increased unrestrained use of wireless devices—it is difficult to say.

Individuals who are sensitive to EMF, or those with electromagnetic hypersensitivity, are canaries in a coal mine and lucky enough to have discovered what it is that is making them feel unwell. Many of them find everyday life and work difficult and uncomfortable. Most often we see them with family members who thought the patient had gone mad, but then realized that what they were saying was actually true, through observations.

We see EHS in people who have predisposing stressors such as cardiac arrhythmias, neurological problems, physical and mental exhaustion, previous prolonged exposures as with teachers and technicians working in wireless institutions, the airline industry, computer and information technology, and health professionals in institutions where wireless technology is used for monitoring.

In my opinion, based on what I have seen and read, those at highest risk for EHS include the fetus, children, the elderly, the infirm, those with predisposing morbidities—usually cardiac and neurological—and those with a toxic overload. They are all at risk for adverse health effects from this insufficiently regulated, poorly studied, man-made environmental health hazard—the radio and microwaves ranging from 10 kilohertz to 10 gigahertz to hundreds of gigahertz.

Despite the way they are feeling, people have no choice to stop the radiation on their bodies or their children’s bodies, but must put faith in the government that there is indisputably no harm being done. Sources causing a majority of problems in the patients we have seen include airport technology, cellphone units and towers, cellphones, Wi-Fi routers, Wi-Fi hubs, laptops, iPads, baby monitors, and fluorescent lights.

Signs and symptoms include skin irritations, headaches, tinnitus or ringing in the ears, brain fog, listlessness, fatigue, concentration problems, dizziness, low mood, irritability, malaise, heart palpitations, nausea, and gastrointestinal disturbances. We have found that about half have chemical sensitivities. Holter monitors have been helpful in proving that cardiac symptoms can be induced or provoked with increasing levels of exposure, such as being close to cellphone towers or Wi-Fi hubs.

EHS is characterized by these signs and symptoms, which occur due to prolonged exposures at home, work, or school, and abate when the person has been removed from that environment. Depending on the extent of disability, the symptoms can come on in one to five minutes and require the patient to take time off work or school in order to recuperate sufficiently. We have noted that it can take up to one day to recover, although recovery is sometimes much faster, such as a few minutes, depending on the health of the individual.

The question that continues to alarm me is this. What of those who have not yet become sensitized, or those who are unwell but have not realized it is the EMFs provoking the problem and continue to try to function in an environment where the electrical and magnetic fields are high? Multiple Wi-Fi hubs, laptops, and cellphones all in one space can reach levels of over one million microwatts per metre squared. This has been measured in a high school from the proximity of an adjacent classroom. The electrical field would be greater than 10⁷ microwatts per metre squared in that occupied classroom.

What are the exposure levels for the students and teachers in a class of that type for hours daily, year after year? Has anyone done a study on that? No. Teachers are forbidden by school boards to take measurements on their own or turn off Wi-Fi hubs that are not even in use, or they will lose their jobs.

As a physician who has specialized in the area of environmental health for over 20 years, I am mortified at the lack of accountability regarding radio and microwave radiation use in the everyday lives of Canadians both young and old. I am appalled by the poor, impractical, and unrealistic research done in this area and the lack of proper, relevant investigations that need to be done and have not.

There are no longitudinal studies except the one going on right now on people who did not ask to be subjects, who gave no research ethics board consent, and on whom data is not being collected. That is not a study at all.

Some of my patients are going to Green Bank, West Virginia, to recuperate. In Green Bank, there is a ban on sources of EMFs that would interfere with the operation of radio telescopes. All these patients' symptoms abate after a few days but unfortunately return when they return to their Canadian environments. Diagnosed and properly managed hypersensitive patients get better slowly over one to two years with the treatment of their current comorbidities, the use of shielding to reduce exposure—and this is at their own expense—the diligent avoidance of environments with high exposures, and proper accommodation at work or school.

Questions that need answering include what other physicians in the community are finding. Anecdotally, they tell me they are reporting more patient concerns for EMF exposures and noting symptoms related to EMFs, but we need to gather statistics properly. We also need to have a public opinion poll on the matter. The CCHS, the Canadian Community Health Survey, would be useful in that regard. We need to find out how many complaints doctors are getting. How many people out there are feeling unwell from something they can’t touch, see, smell, or taste? We must protect our citizens properly, and we have to be educated in order to do that.

How much are children, including the fetus, being exposed cumulatively on a daily basis, and how much EMF exposure could potentially cause problems in the early years, or disease and illness in the latter years?

Some physicians are taking some initiatives. For example, the Austrian Medical Association published a report on diagnosis and treatment of patients with EHS and ongoing research examining biomarkers associated with the condition.

As a physician, educator, advocate, and health care leader, I feel physicians are seriously lacking in the fundamentals of science of EMFs from a physical science, technological, and biological standpoint. They need to become aware of the EMF sources and how the characteristics of this radiation impact on the body. They need to understand the condition of EHS, which affects about 3% of the population severely, and how this condition is related to other coexisting medical conditions. They need to understand the impacts of EMFs on children, issues arising in schools, baby care, and pregnancy. They need to become aware of ways they can help patients protect themselves by minimizing exposures through common-sense measures and shielding.

The EMF phenomenon has increased in intensity in our society from 10^-6 microwatts per metre squared, the natural background level for our very recent ancestors, to 10⁷ microwatts per metre squared. This is an increase of 10 million million times. This should be alarming. Tobacco, pesticides, lead, mercury, BPA, particulates in air pollution, and a plethora of other environmental health hazards, which have been deemed as having increasingly smaller “safe” limit thresholds, are a reminder to us that radio and microwave use, which is supposedly regulated and considered safe, is more than likely going to come to a similar unfavourable end. I hope we are not too late. It does not have to be this way, if we use technology responsibly.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Thank you very much, Dr. Bray.

Dr. Nicol, go ahead.

[Professor Anne-Marie Nicol, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual]

Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me. My name is Anne-Marie Nicol. I am a Ph.D. epidemiologist trained at the University of B.C. in the faculty of medicine. I'm a professor at Simon Fraser University. I also work at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. My usual area of expertise is ionizing radiation. I deal predominantly with radon. I was asked to be part of the Royal Society panel as an expert on risk communication and risk perception, which is where I do a majority of my research.

In my capacity on the panel, I was not asked there to be a radio biologist or a radiation scientist. I was there to help with the public meeting and to understand better the perceptions of the public through the Royal Society process. To speak quickly to the Royal Society process, we were asked to review Safety Code 6. We were given a very clear mandate to evaluate the science. The Royal Society decided that it would be prudent to provide a day in which we listened to people's perceptions, given that there had been a number of inquiries from the public and different NGOs regarding their desire to speak to the process.

I sat for nine hours and listened to the testimony from people all day long, both in person and over the Internet, about their concerns around Wi-Fi, EMF, and RF in general. My job was to collate that input, organize it, and provide the information back to the Royal Society.

In doing so, I came up with four major areas. The first was major concerns about health impacts and health effects, which Dr. Bray has eloquently described. There were also serious concerns about exposure. People were very worried about what they were exposed to. People were very concerned about the Royal Society process and whether or not it was being manipulated or controlled by Health Canada. There was also a very clear desire for more communication about RF in general.

I'm going to unpack each of those four. There were other findings, but these were the four findings, overall, that we tried to address in the final report for Safety Code 6 from the Royal Society.

Regarding health effects, there was incredibly poignant testimonies from a number of people who have obviously been affected by something in their lives. I'm not a clinician, nor am I a diagnostician, so I can not tell you what was causing these people's pain, but I can tell you in a very heartfelt way that it was hard to sit and listen to person after person discuss how their life had been significantly affected.

One of the recommendations that I feel is prudent, which Dr. Bray has also discussed, is that we need a place for people to go and discuss their symptoms or the constellations of symptoms. Here in B.C. we have what are called complex chronic disease clinics. I know in Ontario we have environmental health clinics. I think these are very important places for people to be treated and to start to collect data for surveillance.

As an epidemiologist I believe it's important that we understand what people are exposed to, or their symptoms, so that we can at least come up with an overall sense of what's going on in this country. Currently that data is not being collected. In fact, we allow these people to be shunted from one specialist to another where they get increasingly frustrated and become incredibly vulnerable to non-medical interventions. I think, as a society, we need to be doing a better job of addressing these people who appear to be very seriously affected by this.

On the topic of exposure, it's very clear that most people have very little understanding of what radio frequency is. Most people do not realize that this is a question of proximity. They're very concerned about the ubiquity of exposure without an understanding that the closer a technology is to your body, the more dangerous it possibly could be to you. This is a question of proximity and a question of education. Given the ubiquity of radio frequency in our society, I do find it amazing that we are not doing a very good job either in the public school system, or in general, of discussing what RF is.

I think one of the more poignant stories was a conversation with someone regarding a baby monitor. People had no idea that baby monitors emitted some kind of radio frequency. They put the baby monitor next to the child, which would be a normal thing that you would want to do with a baby monitor. Then they were shocked to realize that was emitting something that could potentially have some impact on a child. They felt essentially deceived both by the product manufacturer and the government in part because they don't understand what RF is or how the technology exists.

I'm sure these people are not alone, and as a result we are essentially breeding—if you think about risk-perception research—a whole group of people who are suddenly very distrustful of both the government and the manufacturers for not telling them what's actually in the product and how it emits.

When we think about cellphones, it's the same issue. Many people were concerned about Wi-Fi, but less concerned about cellphones. If we look at how much RF is emitted between Wi-Fi and cellphones, it is clear that a cellphone is a major emitter of RF, and Wi-Fi much less. Again, this is an issue of proximity. Most people don't realize that a cellphone used like a normal phone is not the most prudent way of operating that device—that again, distance is important. There's interesting messaging that's coming out, for example, that texting is safer than talking on the phone, yet we have whole public health campaigns around not texting during certain activities.

So you can see we're getting very mixed messages to the public—if they even understand this at all—around the technology. I think we need overall much better information to consumers about what their exposure is, about this issue of distance. It could be done in a number of different modalities, but it is a very important component that is missing in our dialogue with the public around RF.

Regarding the process, I was brought into the process because my predecessor on the board had to step down due to a potential conflict of interest. I did come to the board as a independent academic. We had no involvement from Health Canada; I can speak to that. We were not micromanaged by Health Canada in the Safety Code 6 review process at the Royal Society, although there was a lot of mistrust in the community around that. You can see why that would occur, given some of the other factors that have gone around. These are people who have not been heard, people who are potentially suspicious of a process that they have had no real dialogue with.

In terms of risk communication overall, people want more education. Perhaps this would be labelling on products, or a basic primer that a cellphone is not like a normal phone. People don't even realize that cordless phones—your home cordless phone—emit RF. I believe that people have the right to be informed of what they are exposed to regardless of whether or not it's at a level that can cause them something like a thermal heating effect. I like to use the analogy of salt. We all know that salt is in our diet. Some people choose to pursue low-sodium options for a number of reasons. We make those labels very clear to people. From a communication perspective, I don't see this as being much different.

I know we don't have a lot of time. There were more findings from the public input that the Royal Society collected. I commend the Royal Society for including a space for a public voice on this issue, because I believe it is important.

I will stop here and anticipate any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Thank you very much.

Our final presentation for this panel is from Ms. Krogh and Ms. Harrington.

I understand, Ms. Krogh, you'll be doing the presentation. You have it on slides, so we'll see how our technology is performing.

[Carmen Krogh, Independent Health Researcher, As an Individual]

Great.

Beth Harrington is my colleague and we thank you for this opportunity. We've been working on wind turbine health risks for about seven years together.

Some of you may ask yourselves why wind turbines should be considered under Safety Code 6. We are finding that people exposed to wind turbines are also complaining of the many symptoms and the issues that have been described by the previous speakers. Wind turbine facilities do emit electromagnetic energy and radio frequency because of their infrastructure and operations. For example, under the infrastructure and operational mandate, such facilities use remote monitoring and Wi-Fi technologies for communications, have databases, and interfaces, transformer stations, and so forth. From a community exposure point of view, communities are exposed to these energies.

The scale and the scope are surprising because they monitor and use the communications network 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and back in 2010 one of the wind turbine manufacturing companies indicated that globally there were about 6,000 remote operational centres established. Since that time five years have passed and more and more approvals are occurring in Canada, in Ontario, and we're expecting more to come up, so the exposure is going to be higher. This is the reference there for that particular slide.

We provided in a submission a number of references and links, and if you go on this particular link you will see a large number of infrastructure modules and methods for how wind turbines are using the infrastructure and the communications network. We don't do solar ourselves. However, one of the methods...there's a solar panel up on the right-hand side, and they are also monitoring through the infrastructure.

We have competing claims about whether there's a risk or not, and this is of concern. It's very difficult to get the message out, but one study that was conducted in Ontario supported the official position of Health Canada that it didn't consider any precautionary measures because the levels of exposure, at home and at school—and incidentally, turbines are going around schools—are low and there is probably no conclusive evidence of an issue.

We also have other competing claims where while it's acknowledged by the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health that the emissions do occur at these facilities, the emissions for EMF are not a significant amount.

We're seeing a lot of interest generally in these types of emissions that we're talking about. Of interest is that we know that insurance companies are risk adverse. There's a very interesting insurance process for engineers and architects where it appears that in terms of liability, electromagnetic fields for these two groups are not being underwritten. Therefore, we can see there's some interest there.

One of the consultants who does quite a lot of work for wind energy development notes that these fields can damage human health, so that's an industry acknowledgement. Also researchers here in Ontario have indicated that some people get electromagnetic wave exposure through poor power quality and these people are adversely affected. The ones who are electrically hypersensitive are at risk.

I'd like to talk a bit about the general population exposure. This has already been very well done by Dr. Bray, where the Women's College Hospital is looking at this, and her very elegant presentation spoke to this. We have general population exposure and we haven't even considered the wind energy facilities yet.

I'd like to move a little bit to show the potential risk factors through excerpts from the BioInitiative working group, because they talk about risk factors and susceptibility to exposures for children, especially if they have had maternal exposure. As well, they have a very strong statement that there's little doubt that the exposure to electromagnetic low frequencies causes childhood leukemia.

Another excerpt has been addressed by Dr. Bray that when we have children exposed, we don't know if that carries over into adult life. I think that needs to have vigilance and long-term surveillance as well, because the impacts could be significant in affecting cognitive and behavioural control.

As well, there are potential risk factors for women in the workplace, where extremely low frequencies can be a risk factor for breast cancer over a prolonged period of time. I think we would all be concerned about that type of exposure. Another exposure risk factor is the potential damage to the DNA.

These are pretty serious and significant things.

The Biolnitiative working group did not speak about wind turbines per se, nor does Safety Code 6. However, the working group did identify another concept of labelling and informed choice, which has already been raised. They speak about the smart grid and those technology tools that I've just talked about. They know that there's little labelling, little or no informed choice, and that people cannot get away from the source easily because it's quite pervasive in our society now. We agree, my colleague and I, that there's been a failed government process here to help people.

Of interest is that in California they have started to look at disclosure of risk. One of the utilities there, Con Ed, has distributed a brochure that addresses the scientific uncertainty and the opportunity for people to reduce EMF exposure if they can, so I think we're starting to see disclosure of risk.

With respect to industrial wind turbine facilities, there's a lack of disclosure, no warning labels at all. In fact, any risks to health are frequently dismissed. Those who step forward and talk about this when they've been exposed to wind energy sources are really dismissed and have a hard time carrying their message forward.

One other point is that non-participants—that would be people who have not signed agreements to host turbine facilities on their land—are exposed to these energy sources without consent. So we have that issue to face as well.

I think the prevention model has been overlooked in this case. World Health Organization does speak and advocate that if we have a reasonable possibility that public health is at risk or would be damaged, we don't need full scientific proof before taking some type of action. I think that's required now.

The advocate for children is quoted in the Policy Interpretation Network on Children's Health and Environment, and they also support that we don't need full scientific proof before taking action. We have that, not only from the children's perspective but also the general population's perspective.

We would like to recommend that industrial wind energy facilities, and possibly solar facilities, should be included under Safety Code 6. This is based on the discussion around the operation and infrastructure. As I briefly described, we have a 10-page briefing note with references available for the committee. We also have an expected increase of facilities, with more exposure going to happen. Risk factors are being explored and discussed, so we're on our way to looking at that. There's an opportunity for the committee to capture the aggregate of all possible exposures.

Our recommendations are that investigation of Safety Code 6 be broadened to include industrial wind energy and solar facilities. While we have to be concerned about the general population at large, we would like to see priorities given to the fetus and neonatal exposure, as well as babies, children, youth, the elderly, and those with pre-existing medical conditions or disease and special needs. I think we all are concerned, as a society, that our youth are possibly at risk and vulnerable to long-term effects. We also would recommend that requirements for public disclosure about risk factors be established. I think this will go a long way.

My final wrap-up is that we have to understand that these facilities are not installed in urban communities. They are being installed in rural communities, and no attention is being paid right now to these emissions.

Thank you very much for your attention.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Okay, thank you very much. That concludes our presentations. Now we'll have some questions.

Again, we are going to trim it from seven minutes to five minutes just to make sure we have a full round.

Go ahead, Ms. Moore.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

My questions are for Ms. Bray and for the two researchers here in Ottawa.

Last week, a representative of Canadians for Safe Technology, or C4ST, appeared before this committee and told us that he had submitted 140 studies to Health Canada about Safety Code 6. But we only have 36 of those studies. So 104 of them were not included in Health Canada's study because there were some problems with scientific standards.

Should those studies have been considered—albeit with some caution—especially because there are so many of them? Should they have at least been considered as potential warning signals?

In your opinion, does the scientific information show that there are currently enough concerns for us to seek to protect vulnerable populations, women and children especially? In your opinion, do we currently have enough scientific data for us to err on the side of caution, as a principle?

[Dr. Riina Bray]

It's Dr. Bray here.

Absolutely. We have enough information to put that on board. There need to be studies in other areas related to this field, but in terms of the precautionary principle and putting that into place right now, it is imperative that we do that. It is absolutely imperative that we don't wait.

[Carmen Krogh]

My first thought is that we listen to the people who are telling us that they are having some problems. Unless we start to acknowledge that there are risk factors and issues here, we can never move forward to solve them. It is related to proximity and the full-scale emissions that are there 24-7, 365 days a year. I am in agreement that we have enough warning signs to move forward, and it may take a while to build what we call “scientific certainty”. Sometimes you can't have scientific certainty for a long time. Many conditions in medicine are known for which we don't have scientific certainty about a causality, but we treat and we look after that, and we remove the source as much as possible.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Ms. Bray, which easily followed recommendations do you regularly make as you seek to reduce the patients' exposure?

[Dr. Riina Bray]

First off, it's to avoid the exposure, and then we try to talk about distancing. We try to make sure that at home there is as little EMF exposure as possible, especially during sleep, that they turn off everything that might be emitting—their routers, etc.—that they get corded phones as opposed to cordless phones in their home, that they basically clean up their home in that regard.

At work it's not so easy, because accommodations can cause job loss, conflicts, and a lot of friction between bosses and workers. These folks need to be educated about shielding and protecting themselves so that they can navigate through the day and be able to do their jobs.

It basically requires a unified approach, but unfortunately there isn't enough in our society that helps these folks, protects them, or even looks at the possibility of there being a problem. We have a very big uphill battle that we need to deal with, with every patient. We also have to address the other physical problems that they need help with so that they can tolerate the exposures better on a daily basis, and that takes a bit of time as well. We spend many hours at a time with patients to try to get to the bottom of their exposure histories.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Thank you very much.

Ms. McLeod.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you, Chair. Could you let me know when I'm at three minutes, because my colleague, Ms. Gallant, would like two minutes.

I guess I'd better move fairly quickly.

I will start with Dr. Nicol. I spent this weekend not only going through the briefs, but also trying to do my own literature review on this issue. I can tell you that I became more confused. There are people with some very strong credentials and some very different viewpoints on what the harms potentially are. I'm not sure my weekend was spent all that well in terms of getting a clearer picture.

To go back to the society, the process that we set in place was to have people who are more expert than I am take on that task. I know there have been some concerns about the process. As someone who participated in that process, could you walk us through how you went through and analyzed the different science, the different reports, out there?

[Prof. Anne-Marie Nicol]

I can speak to that although only in part, recognizing that my role is not to discuss the health impacts per se. I was brought on more as a person to understand public perception and risk perception. But the process was that we were given a very specific question to answer: to evaluate the scientific rigour.

Why I say that, I frame that, is that I believe there's a bigger question that could have been asked or could be asked again. We're hearing a lot of concerns around the health impacts and risks of those technologies, but this was not a risk-risk or risk-benefit analysis. We didn't hear from people who were happy about RF, who found RF important for their work. So the question was bounded very much by what the scientific evidence of harm was. It wasn't a bigger question of how we manage this risk or how we deal with competing risk-benefit interests.

So that very narrow question.... There were scientists and experts from all over the world. There was lively debate among them about how we were going to collate all the evidence: the discussions of lower dose exposures and what the health impacts were, and the frustration of not being able to say with any sort of certainty what's going on in low dose levels. I believe that one of our major recommendations, which I'm hearing echoed, is that we need better, more robust research on this area. It looks as if there are signals in that large body of literature, but it's very scattered.

The information on thermal heating, which is what Safety Code 6 is all about, is quite clear. The rest of it is quite scattered. We need better informed research to bring that together so we have clear answers and can take precautionary steps to try to find a level that might be more acceptable to everybody.

But when you start to talk about questions of acceptance and risk management, that's a bigger question than just a scientific question. It's what is our society...? What do we want to do as a country around regulating this exposure? That doesn't just have to do with science. It has to do with the benefits of the technology, the impacts on a larger scale. We're a big country. We need technologies that move information across the country, but we also need to do it in a safe way. I think that's a much bigger question than what we were asked to address in the Royal Society panel. I believe those questions are valid and need to be addressed.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you very much.

I have two questions. I heard childhood leukemia and I'd like to know the epidemiology between that and RFs or EMFs is.

I also understand and would like Ms. Krogh to answer my question with respect to comparing and contrasting how the initial cases of thalidomide compare with the anecdotal evidence we're seeing with the EMFs.

[Carmen Krogh]

There are analogies with that; you have to listen to the people first. They're the start. We have, for example, some situations.... Thalidomide is one example. Its history was ignored for some years. We also have things like fibromyalgia. We don't know exactly what causes it, yet we treat it and we do whatever we can to avoid what we suspect are exposures. Chronic fatigue syndrome is another example.

There are a lot of conditions where there are analogies that we could follow. We're seeing risk. People are telling us. I'm not a physician but I'm used to vigilance monitoring and surveillance. As pointed out, we don't have those kinds of mechanisms in place right now. We need to go to places as described by Dr. Bray. We could do a lot, but you have to work with people first and listen to them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

We are quite a bit over time. We'll have to catch that next question on another round.

Ms. Fry, go ahead, please.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank everybody for their presentations and I want to apologize for being late. There's some stuff going on and I'm being called to the telephone on emergency calls during this time, so I was late for listening to what you had to say.

I was reading the presentation from Ms. Krogh and Beth Harrington; and I heard some of what you had to say, Ms. Nicol.

The bottom line really is that we know there is not conclusive evidence linking cause and effect. We know, however, there is an upgrading to a possible carcinogen by the World Health Organization.

We have had people telling us about linkages that may not have the causality piece in it, but make us want to stop and think. I think that for me the question is simply this. We should have learned lessons from cigarettes. We should have learned lessons from acid rain. We should have learned lessons from thalidomide. The question about thalidomide is a good one. In every case, as far as I'm concerned—this is a health committee—the ability to look at risk management, i.e., weigh up the benefit versus the risk, is always at the foremost of whatever you do, and you mentioned that as well.

When we're talking about human health, we have historical experiences of how we went ahead and we allowed things to happen, and we are now trying to deal with the fallout of it in terms of cigarettes. How many people have died from cardiovascular disease? It's not just lung cancer, but from COPD, emphysema. How many people have been severely maimed through thalidomide when at that time it was just one person's gut feeling in the United States that said, “Let's not do this”? Then eventually we saw that it was right.

The bottom line for me is simply this. The precautionary principle is extremely important. My mother, who was neither a scientist nor a researcher or anything like that, used to always say that a pound of prevention is worth an ounce of cure. In other words, if you prevent things, then you will actually prevent the fallout. When we talk about human health, especially in this particular instance, I just think we need to err on the side of precaution.

You had suggested, Ms. Krogh, that we look at some things that are happening in California, which is in the brochures here that help people to know, to be warned—some kind of warning, a caveat emptor kind of thing—and then what you can do to minimize your use.

We had lots of people tell us that looking at just the thermal effects was only looking at a certain sector of the community that uses electromagnetic energy. We're not talking about thermal effects. We're talking about other kinds of effects.

My question is simply this. Would you recommend, all of you, that we work with industry to develop some sort of brochure or whatever to tell people there may be linkages? Because you do that on labelling. This may cause a problem, please be careful when you're using it. People do it to protect themselves. Companies do it all the time. Then we could also talk to people about how you unplug the baby monitors, just simple little precautionary measures.

That is something I would like to see happen. I would also like to hear what you think about that, and what you think about Health Canada working with groups like you who were not part of this panel. You are researchers and people who are actually out there in the field who might be able to help look at a reasonable way of telling people that this could cause problems and here's how they might use it more carefully down the road, and help deal with industry to look at how they can minimize the amount of radiation emitted when people use their products. We see that Europe does it. We saw some actual examples here of what is happening in Europe with regard to cordless phones and what's happening with regard to child monitors.

I just wondered if any of you had any comment on how we could do that without causing a panic and going, “Oh, my God, this is going to harm you,” but do that sort of precautionary use.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

I'm sorry, but perhaps I could interrupt. We're right at five minutes, so if you could provide some very brief comments that would be great.

[Prof. Anne-Marie Nicol]

If I may address that, Hedy, I think the answer is yes. I think it's necessary. We need labelling. We need awareness. We need government leadership. People aren't necessarily going to believe what a manufacturer says by themselves, because they're trying to sell you something. Some form of labelling and better awareness about what's in products—particularly products in the home and ones you keep close to your body, where we know exposure is higher—is merited and should be considered.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Well said.

Ms. Bray, did you want to comment briefly?

[Dr. Riina Bray]

Yes. I think there should be some legislation in schools to have hard-wiring throughout and not expose our children to this unnecessary radiation. We've talked about the precautionary principle. I think it's very important there be some legislation saying that everything needs to be hard-wired, that Wi-Fi is to be used only if necessary, and that hubs should be turned off if they're not in use. Therefore, you'd decrease the exposure of a vast number of children to unnecessary radiation. We don't know where we're going with that, as I was saying in my speech in reference to the tobacco industry and everything else that's come before that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

To be fair with time, we should go to Mr. Lizon. He has the last question for this panel.

Go ahead, sir.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you, witnesses, for coming today.

The first question I have is for Dr. Bray. Electromagnetic radiation has been around for over 100 years, ever since electricity was invented. People have been exposed to it in different settings for many years.

Is there a case of negligence if there are no conclusive studies done on the impact of electromagnetic radiation on the human body? There are workers in workplaces who are working around electric motors. You can name many professions where people are affected. There must be some kind of impact on their health. How come we neglected it for so many years?