EMF Health Dangers and Electrical Sensitivity: Help Make UK Government Aware

Dr. Damien Downing's Column

...expert advice on treating environmental illnesses with ecological and nutritional medicine.

Dr. Damien Downing M.D. is President of the British Society for Ecological Medicine (www.ecomed.org.uk), Chief Medical Advisor to the charity Yes to Life (www.yestolife.org.uk), and Editorial Board member of the Orthomolecular News Service (www.orthomolecular.org). He is a practitioner of ecological medicine in London (www.newmedicinegroup.com) and York (www.naltd.co.uk) and author of several books including The Vitamin Cure for Allergies (USA, Basic Health Books, 2010).

You can benefit from Dr. Downing's wisdom and experience by visiting us at The Environmental Illness Resource regularly to read articles from his newsletter!

Monday, March 12th, 2012:

EMF Health Dangers and Electrical Sensitivity: Help Make UK Government Aware

[A letter from Dr. Damien Downing MD]

In the UK the Health Protection Agency has an Advisory Group on Non-ionising Radiation (AGNIR) with responsibility for evaluating the ppotential risks from mobile phones etc. This is what it currently says on its website [1];

The AGNIR has therefore been asked to carry out a review of exposure to radiofrequency radiation and human health focusing particularly on those areas of the science where knowledge has been added since its last review. This work began in 2009 and is expected to take two to three years to complete. Publication is expected to be in 2012.

It is also clear from enquiries to the HPA CRCE and media coverage that there is continuing public interest in this issue and in topics such as mobile and cordless phones, base stations, and wireless computer networking. It is therefore appropriate for the AGNIR to keep new publications under review and to issue comments/statements on specific papers where appropriate. In this regard, the AGNIR issued a statement on the results of the INTERPHONE study, which was published in 2010. See [2] below re INTERPHONE.

I was alerted to this by a letter from the HPA to a patient. The timing appears to mean that there is a window of opportunity here in which we can try to inform the HPA. And they clearly need informing; the same letter said;

"…whilst people have symptoms that they attribute to EMF exposures, the symptoms are not related to the exposures themselves but are presumably due to other factors."

The AGNIR website invites submissions;

If there are published papers on the topics under consideration that readers think should be reviewed by the AGNIR as an input to its work, references should be submitted through the AGNIR secretariat.

Relevant references can be sent by post to the AGNIR Secretary, HPA Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon, OX11 0RQ, UK, or by e-mail to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Can I urge anyone who has information that may help to inform and educate the AGNIR to submit it as invited.

Yours,

Dr Damien Downing MBBS MSB

References:

1. http://www.hpa.org.uk/Topics/Radiation/RadiationAdvisoryGroups/AdvisoryGroupOnNonIonisingRadiation/

2. The INTERPHONE study came out in Feb 2010 and reported, in essence, no evidence of an increase in brain tumours from the use of mobile phones. The AGNIR statement on INTERPHONE (two members of the AGNIR were among the authors of INTERPHONE) said;
"The INTERPHONE study was well designed and carefully conducted, and has contributed importantly to our understanding of possible health risks from use of mobile phones."

Others commented that INTERPHONE only took account of research conducted before new patterns of heavy phone usage, particularly among young people. And of course the difficulty of finding controls for the research, when everybody is exposed to emissions from phone masts, Wifi base stations etc, even if they don’t have a mobile phone.