W.E.E.P. News
Wireless Electrical and Electromagnetic Pollution News
28 May 2010
Mayday, Mayday, One of our best has died - was it Environmental Homicide?
Hello,
Philippe Hug, tireless fighter against the disease-causing cell phone radiation and for a liveable world, is no longer with us. He died unexpected not even 54 years old.
Personally we met him only a few times, we hope all his work will be kept secure and used by others?
Peter Schlegel (Buergerwelle Swiss) has put together an obit (German), we have translated to English, French version is in the works.
Download and full information:
http://microondes.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/phillipe-hug-dead/
or right now on top
http://microondes.wordpress.com/
Best regards
Michael Heiming
http://microondes.wordpress.com
BTW
Please feel free to drop us hints or anything you'd like to express.
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Dear friends and co-fighters,
Some of you may have learned about the death of PhilippeHug, chairman of ARA, the Association against the Antennas of the Suisse romande.
As I met him last year, I was impressed by his energy and his ideas. His knowledge of the literature on mobile telephony was unrivalled. He had many contacts, not only in Switzerland, but to people all over the English speaking world, too. He used to end his letters with: Mayday, Mayday, the emergency signal of the radio operators. He is right!
He was fully aware of what might happen to him soon, a seriously sick electrosensitive person, But he kept fighting uncompromisingly which might have contributed to his rather lonesome life, besides the EHS condition.
Shocked by Philippes destiny I am regretting the bereavement for the EMF critical asociations too.
Cordially,
Christine
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http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?ID=201005280038&Type=aLIV
'Digital schoolbag' program may impair learning: researchers
2010/05/28
Taipei, May 28 (CNA) Over 3 million Taiwanese students are now using "digital schoolbags, " but researchers warned Friday that extended exposure to the "bags'" radio frequency fields may cause anxiety and headaches and impair students' ability to learn.
The "digital schoolbag" program, launched by the Ministry of Education in 2002, basically consists of giving students a notebook computer to replace the heavy books they would otherwise have to carry home. But those computers may come with a risk.
"Using digital schoolbags with wireless Internet may create radio frequency radiation of 1,000 to 60,000 microwatts per square meter, " said Chen Jiau-hua, chairwoman of the Taiwan Electromagnetic Radiation Hazard Protection and Control Association (TEPCA).
Exposure to such high levels of electromagnetic radiation has been shown to lead children to become anxious and fidgety, making learning more difficult, Chen said at a news conference.
Taiwan has not set a standard for the radiation, but the TEPCA has recommended a safety-based limit of 1 microwatt per square meter, based on the standard of the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB), Chen said.
According to the association head, cell phones and microwave ovens also emit high volumes of electromagnetic radiation, but they are less of a threat because they are not used for as long as computers.
"Even adults can get cancer from these radiation fields, so children are particularly vulnerable," she said.
A mother of two children also showed her concern after the news conference, saying the "digital schoolbags" may have contributed to her children's nearsightedness and left them unwilling to eat properly.
"Digital schoolbags are not good for kids," she said.
The program was adopted in 2002 by the Ministry of Education after it received a litany of complaints about the heavy schoolbags students carried on their backs every day and the adverse effects it was having on their posture.
The program to distribute notebook computers began with Taipei-based Nanhu
Elementary School and has since reached 3 million students in elementary, junior high and high schools. (By James Lee) E
Mast Sanity
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Colonie cell-tower plan rejected
By TIM O'BRIEN, Staff writer
Last updated: 12:00 a.m., Wednesday, May 26, 2010
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=934759
COLONIE -- The town Planning Board rejected a proposal late Tuesday for a church to build a new bell tower with a wireless cell phone tower within it.
Loudonville Presbyterian Church would be paid $900 monthly to allow Verizon Wireless to build the 60-foot bell tower. Upset neighbors expressed fear of cell-phone radiation on children, and Verizon sued the town for moving too slow on its application.
Tuesdays hearing lasted more than three hours, with Chairman C.J. O'Rourke taking pains to cut off speakers who raised health effects because federal law does not allow that to be a factor. Instead, the board focused on other issues including the tower's appearance.
"This cell tower would fundamentally change the use of that land," said resident Robert Hymes, a neighbor.Michael Cusack, an attorney for Verizon, accused the board of caving to public pressure. The board did not make its decision until shortly before 11 p.m.
Verizon spokesman John O'Malley said afterward the firm will decide whether to sue the town over the rejection. "We dont consider tonights decision the final word," he said.
Carl
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Wi Fi in Schools
This is a letter for UK schools about the compulsory use of mobile phones and other wireless technologies in the classroom (2 pages):
http://wifiinschools.org.uk/resources/letter+May+2010.pdf
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District to study cell phone tower's effect on campus
Michelle Mitchell • The Desert Sun • May 26, 2010
The cell tower on Vista Del Monte Elementary's campus will undergo a study amid concerns about cancer, district officials decided Tuesday.
The $15,000 independent review, unanimously approved by the Palm Springs Unified board of education , will study the electromagnetic waves and look for any irregular electric waves, or "dirty power," beginning next week.
"I'm very scared of it," 13-year teacher Sarah Johnson said, citing cancer cases that have popped up at the Palm Springs school. "I lost one of my best friends here."
The 85-foot Sprint tower has been in the middle of campus since 2005.
It's about 20 feet from classroom buildings and next to the playground and lunch tables.
Teachers and staff at the school, in the Victoria Park neighborhood, have expressed concerns about the number of cancer cases that have appeared at the school since the tower was installed.
"If our employees feel unsafe, concerned or afraid of being at work, the least we can do is invest in a formal study," said Mauricio Arellano, assistant superintendent of human resources. "We really do want answers."
Janet Acker, a retired Vista Del Monte teacher who used to work in one of the classrooms closest to the tower, has recorded nine current and former staff members who have been diagnosed with cancer. Acker has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and has spoken to the board of education in the past.
"I said, 'Why don't you err on the side of caution?'" she said. "They do have the responsibility to make their school safe."
Sprint studied the tower's structural safety and an initial power reading, but the electromagnetic survey will be more thorough, Arellano said.
"There's some concern and they want to do a study that's a little more in-depth to see if there's anything to be concerned about," Principal Joseph Scudder said.
"I think there's a perception that probably exists anywhere there's a cell tower."
The school district receives $1,500 a month to house the Sprint cell tower and also uses it for district communication and Internet equipment, said Julie Arthur, the district's executive director of facilities planning and development.
"It's probably worth studying," said Sharon Bernard as she picked up two of her four grandsons Monday from Vista Del Monte. "If people are thinking that (it is dangerous), then yeah, of course."
Cell phone towers provide a low risk under ordinary conditions, although organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the International Agency for Research on Cancer have not issued findings on cell towers, according to the American Cancer Society Web site.
Cell towers are also installed at Landau Elementary in Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage Elementary and Ed Wenzlaff Elementary in Desert Hot Springs. Plans to install a tower at Cathedral City High School are moving through the approval process.
David
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Church wants to profit from neighbours misery!
Wyckoff church neighbors give cell tower plan poor reception
NorthJersey.com
"It's bad enough that we're right on Route 208, but to add a cell tower there ... a 120-foot monopole antenna on the property of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox ...
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Riz gets bee buzz right
- Experiment shows fallout of mobile radiation
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100527/jsp/frontpage/story_12492728.jsp
G.S. MUDUR Calcutta Telegraph
New Delhi, May 26: Concerns that cellphones pose a threat to honeybees, articulated by Shah Rukh Khan's character in My Name Is Khan, have now been bolstered by Panjab University zoologist Neelima Kumar's experiments.
Electromagnetic radiation from cellphones appears to alter the behaviour of bees, her experiments suggest and add fresh evidence to observations reported by a team of German researchers seven years ago.
Honeybees exposed to cellphone radiation appear to lose the ability to return to their hives and queen bees produce a lower number of eggs, according to the new findings that appeared yesterday in the journal Current Science from the Indian Academy of Sciences.
"These are still preliminary findings, but they have dire implications," said Kumar. "Bees are important not just for honey, but for pollination of crops."
Bees pollinate some 80 per cent of commercial crops —apples, melons, sunflower, mustard, cucumbers and radish, she said. "A massive loss of bees could cause loss of production of such crops," Kumar added.
Those thoughts appear to echo the words of Rizwan Khan — the character played by Shah Rukh in My Name Is Khan — who cautions that cellphones may be harmful to honeybees and cites Albert Einstein's warning that if the world's bees were to disappear, humans would perish in four years.
In 2003, three researchers in Landau, Germany, had produced the first evidence to suggest that electromagnetic exposure may cause a change in the behaviour of bees. Their findings triggered speculation among some scientists that electromagnetic radiation may interfere with bees' ability to communicate and navigate.
Honey Trap
Kumar and her student exposed two colonies of the honeybee, Apis mellifera, to electromagnetic radiation, placing two cellphones on side walls of hives in call mode for 15 minutes, twice a day, for up to 12 weeks.
The researchers observed that the number of bees from the colonies returning to their hives after foraging for pollen declined compared with two other colonies of bees not exposed to cellphone activity. A queen bee exposed to the cellphone radiation produced only 144 eggs a day compared with 376 eggs laid by a queen in a colony not exposed to it.
The honey-storing ability of exposed hives dropped significantly. At the end of several months, the hive had neither pollen, nor bees. "The colonies collapsed," Kumar said.
The team from the Chandigarh-based university had experimentally created a condition that mimicked the strange disappearance of bees reported by beekeepers in North America, France, Germany, and Sweden in recent years.
Entomologists call the phenomenon colony collapse disorder (CCD) — an abrupt and unexplained 50 to 90 per cent of loss of bees. Scientists have speculated fungal infections or pesticides or even global warming as possible causes.
However, many researchers believe there is not enough evidence yet to link either electromagnetic radiation or even rising temperatures to the loss of bees. Three years ago, Jessica Hamzelou from the University College, London, wrote in the medical journal The Lancet that CCD did not appear to be a recent phenomenon, and abandoned hives had been documented as far back as in 1869.
But Kumar said her findings were similar to the results of studies in the 1970s on the influence of high tension transmission lines on bee behaviour. "Bees use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate — it's reasonable to assume that electromagnetic radiation could interfere with this ability," Kumar said. But she cautioned that any such effect would need to be authenticated through physiological studies. No such studies have been done yet, she added.
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Domestic Detox: Extreme Home Cleaning
New York Times
... household chemicals and electromagnetic radiation (beware your Wi-Fi! ... He was treating a lot of autistic children, he said, and after learning that ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/garden/27clean.html
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Communiqué de presse du SEMO, 26 mai 2010
Objet : Rencontre entre Pierre-Karl-Péladeau et le collectif SEMO
M. Pierre-Karl-Péladeau, de Québecor-Vidéotron, a rencontré l'enseignant en électricité François Therrien, porte-parole du collectif SEMO (Sauvons nos Enfants des Micro-Ondes) à Lanoraie samedi dernier le 22 mai 2010.
Vidéotron avait annoncé au cours des jours précédent la rencontre un report de la mise en fonction de son nouveau réseau d'antenne relais cellulaire, initialement prévu pour ce printemps il a été reporté à la fin de l'année 2010. De son coté, le collectif SEMO rend disponibles des informations scientifiques sur les effets néfastes des micro-ondes et vient en aide à ceux qui s'opposent à la présence d'antenne relais cellulaire dans les milieux scolaire et résidentiel. Ainsi, plusieurs groupes de citoyens et des villes se sont opposés avec succès à des projets d'antenne relais de Vidéotron au cours des derniers mois.
Cette rencontre au sommet a permis un échange de point de vue diamétralement opposé. M. Péladeau avait son discours pour les chambres de commerce et les politiciens du Québec : Vidéotron crée de bons emplois au Québec et ils doivent affronter les méchantes compagnies de cellulaires canadiennes-anglaises. Du côté du SEMO on reconnaissait volontiers l'apport économique de Vidéotron, mais le sens des démarches de sensibilisation vise à dénoncer la mauvaise application de la technologie des communications avec micro-ondes. Les démarches de sensibilisations du SEMO ont alerté les services de santé publique du Québec, dont on attend leurs avis sur le rapport international BIOINITIATIVE et se sont retrouvés au Comité de santé d'Ottawa les 27 et 29 avril dernier, ou des experts scientifiques internationaux ont dénoncé les normes canadiennes.
M.Péladeau connaissait ces démarches, et n'avait pour commentaire à ce sujet que l'utilisation du cellulaire c'est comme le bon vin il ne faut pas en boire trois bouteilles…et qu'il ne craignait pas d'exposé ses propres enfants aux micro-ondes des antennes relais. On lui a rappelé la déclaration d'électrosensibilité du député du Bloc Serge Cardin faites au Comité de santé sur les effets des micro-ondes sur la santé : son cellulaire lui fait bouillir le cerveau avant de sonner (audition du 29 avril)…Fort contrarié, il est revenu sur les avantages économiques pour le Québec. Et nous avons mis fin à la rencontre.
En novembre 2009, Le collectif SEMO avait déjà répondu à une lettre de M Péladeau, en lui demandant d'assurer l'avenir des employés Vidéotron en acceptant de l'application du Principe de Précaution ( voir pièce jointe).
Merci de votre intérêt.
Pour plus d'information,
François Therrien
450 471 8371
Enseignant en Électricité
Porte-parole du Collectif S.E.M.O.
Sauvons nos Enfants des Micro-Ondes
ftherrien@aei.ca
www.dangersemo.com
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Self Renewing Electrical Charge in Ash Plume
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100527/sc_afp/icelandvolcanoaviationscience
David
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Dear Dr. McBride,
Thank you for your response to my email. You indicate that you would not consider any peer-reviewed, published articles I send you but rather would continue to "follow the science" through your regular access to published, peer-reviewed articles. Would you please tell me what that source is? In addition would you please explain your established criteria for assessment of causation.?
I ask this because, despite many requests to Health Canada, I have not been told why some studies which are published, peer-reviewed and accepted by well-respected agencies, are not considered worthy by either Health Canada or the members of the Royal Panel of which you are one. The reply which I always am given, "weight of evidence", does not satisfy, especially when it is explained that this means there are more studies that show no effect than there are studies that show adverse effects, even if the majority of the studies showing no effect are industry-funded. It doesn't make sense to me that good, peer-reviewed studies showing harmful effects can be ignored simply because they are outnumbered.
And to make my effort to understand Health Canada's and your stance even more frustrating, this definition of "weight of evidence" is incorrect, as reputable researchers make clear. The correct use of weight of evidence is NOT putting the studies showing adverse health effects up against the studies showing no health effects.
But rather than debating "weight of evidence" I would prefer another approach, one which considers the "weight of adverse effects." Dr. McBride, please explain to me where my logic fails in the following.
When something like cell phone radiation is tested following appropriate protocol, there should be no adverse effects if the thing being tested is safe. If 30% of these studies indicate adverse effects, then 30 times more harmful effects were seen than were expected. In fact, where studies regarding electromagnetic radiation are independently funded (e.g. no affiliation with industry) 70% of studies show adverse effects. Would this not indicate that there are 70 times more adverse effects than expected?
No one in Health Canada or the Royal Panel, or in WHO for that matter, has denied that there are studies showing adverse effects to cell phones and cell transmitters. Isn't the fact that there is "weight of adverse effects" significant? Don't these studies deserve to be considered when establishing standards and when allowing the public to be exposed to potentially life-threatening devices? Wouldn't it be more accurate, more scientifically correct to at least warn people of the potential of hazards, rather than telling them there is no danger because of some faulty "weight of evidence" argument some have chosen to espouse?
Dr. McBride, because of your stance as an expert who advises the public that cell phones and cell transmitters are safe, you have a responsibility to explain how you reached this conclusion. I sincerely hope you will.
Sincerely,
Sharon Noble
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Cellphone tower radiation 'unsafe', says study
HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, May 27, 2010
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Cellphone-tower-radiation-unsafe-says-study/Article1-549499.aspx
The mobile phone towers crowding the city's skyline are making the air toxic for you.
Electromagnetic radiation (EMR) emitted from these towers is so high that four-fifth of the Capital's area falls under the "unsafe" category, exposing Delhiites to a new kind of health threat that very few are aware of, says a study commissioned by Tehelka newspaper and carried out by Cogent, a Delhi-based company working on radiation safety solutions.
The surveyors mapped "100 radiation hotspots" in the city where EMR from cell towers was higher than acceptable.
According to established norms, the radiation level of 600 milliwatts per metre square (mW/msq) is considered safe.
Forty of the 100 spots had "extreme anomaly" in radiation levels — the levels were seven times the limit. These were "high-risk areas". Thirty-one spots had "unsafe" radiation, with levels two to six times the safe limit, while nine spots are "borderline"—just over the limit.
The opening and closing ceremonies and the athletics competition of the Commonwealth Games, for instance, fall in "unsafe areas". The Yamuna Sports Complex is also said to be "unsafe".
Safdarjung Hospital, Modern School, Vasant Vihar, and Delhi Police headquarters are in the "high-risk" zone. At Safdarjung, the level was 4000 mW/msq. It was the same at Connaught Place and ISBT Kashmere Gate.
"We had got the Delhi government to stop the installation of cell towers in residential areas a few years ago. People were complaining of headache and other symptoms of radiation exposure," said Pankaj Aggarwal, general secretary, Residents' Welfare Associations' Joint Front.
"There are indicative studies to prove that this radiation is harmful for people living in a 300 metre radius of the towers."
But those who install these towers said there was no problem. "A World Health Organisation (WHO) study says that radiation from cellphone towers doesn't harm anyone. There is no study to prove otherwise," said K.N. Srivastava of Towers and Commercial Space Association.
There are only 20 of the 100 spots that were found to be safe. PM House, the residence of Sonia Gandhi and that of CM Shiela Dikshit are some of the "safe" areas, the study says.
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Powerwatch
May 2010 - Science Update
The following is a quick summary of another twnety papers that have come out over the last few months related to effects of electromagnetic radiation. Some of the papers are notable papers that have been published very recently, others are papers that were published a few months ago that have not yet made it to one of the Science Updates.
Click here for the full news story - http://www.powerwatch.org.uk:80/news/20100528_science_update.asp
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W.E.E.P. – The Canadian initiative to stop Wireless Electrical and Electromagnetic Pollution
