Saturday, November 16, 2013

Hydro-Québec plans to install 2 million more smart meters

Hydro-Québec plans to install 2 million more smart meters

Atmospheric-pollution group calls for moratorium until health study results are out

CBC News Posted: Nov 17, 2013 11:36 AM ET Last Updated: Nov 17, 2013 11:36 AM ET
Hydro-Québec hopes to bring the total number of smart meters installed to 3.8 million units by 2018.
Hydro-Québec hopes to bring the total number of smart meters installed to 3.8 million units by 2018.
Hydro-Québec is applying for a permit to install more than two million additional smart meters across the province, hoping to bring the total number to 3.8 million units by 2018.
However, one group is calling for a moratorium until it's known beyond a doubt whether the meters cause health problems.
André Bélisle, the head of a watchdog organization that's been keeping an eye on atmospheric pollution for more than 30 years, said Hydro-Québec is rushing things and should wait for the results of new studies, such as the one a federal panel of experts is working on.
“If we act as a responsible society, we should look at the potential health effects before we go and spend billions of dollars on a technology that maybe we will have to take back,” said Bélisle, president of the Association québécoise de lutte contre la pollution atmosphérique,  
“The standards we're using are, compared to the other countries, 100,000 times less strict."
Smart meters record the consumption of electric energy and communicate that information back to the utility with wireless technology for monitoring and billing purposes.
Although Bélisle said he is concerned about the safety of radiation emitted by wireless smart meters, he doesn't dispute the value of meters as energy-efficiency tools.
“We know that it could be a good tool in saving energy or toward energy efficiency. That is a well known fact,” said Bélisle. 
According to Hydro-Québec, 850,000 smart meters are already in service in the Montreal area and by next June, 1.7 million will have been installed.
If it gets approval from Quebec's energy board, the utility will install another two million meters over the next five years.
Hydro-Québec said the roll-out is going very well, with less than one per cent of customers choosing to opt out.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Une électrosensible en Ardèche

Une électrosensible en Ardèche

NYC Panel on Cell Phone & Wireless Risks 11/15: “How to Protect Ourselves and Growing Children from Electromagnetic Fields”

NYC Panel on Cell Phone & Wireless Risks 11/15: “How to Protect Ourselves and Growing Children from Electromagnetic Fields”


Experimental and numerical assessment of low-frequency current distributions from UMTS and GSM mobile phones.

 2013 Dec 7;58(23):8339-8357. Epub 2013 Nov 11.

Experimental and numerical assessment of low-frequency current distributions from UMTS and GSM mobile phones.

Source

Foundation for Research on Information Technologies in Society (IT'IS), Zeughausstrasse 43, 8004 Zurich, Switzerland. ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

Abstract

The evaluation of the exposure from mobile communication devices requires consideration of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) over a broad frequency range from dc to GHz. Mobile phones in operation have prominent spectral components in the low-frequency (LF) and radio-frequency (RF) ranges. While the exposure to RF fields from mobile phones has been comprehensively assessed in the past, the LF fields have received much less attention. In this study, LF fields from mobile phones are assessed experimentally and numerically for the global system for mobile (GSM) and universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) communication systems and conclusions about the global (LF and RF) EMF exposure from both systems are drawn. From the measurements of the time-domain magnetic fields, it was found that the contribution from the audio signal at a normal speech level, i.e., -16 dBm0, is the same order of magnitude as the fields induced by the current bursts generated from the implementation of the GSM communication system at maximum RF output level. The B-field induced by currents in phones using the UMTS is two orders of magnitude lower than that induced by GSM. Knowing that the RF exposure from the UMTS is also two orders of magnitude lower than from GSM, it is now possible to state that there is an overall reduction of the exposure from this communication system.

PMID:
 
24216774
 
[PubMed - as supplied by publisher]


KIUC members to vote on non-meter fees

KIUC members to vote on non-meter fees

Posted: Thursday, November 14, 2013 1:00 am


LIHUE — Less than two weeks after receiving approval from the Public Utilities Commission to begin charging new fees for old electric meters, the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative validated a member petition submitted with the intent to reverse the commission’s decision.
The additional charges include a one-time set-up fee — ranging from $50.64 for residential meters to $138.80 for commercial ones — as well as a monthly fee of $10.27 for customers who opt not to use a standard, wireless smart meter.

Last month, the petition to reject both fees was drafted by local residents Jonathan Jay, Adam Asquith and Douglas Wilmore. They say the co-op has unfairly singled out certain members. On Nov. 6 — six days after the PUC’s approval — Jay delivered the petition to KIUC, with signatures from 408 co-op members, enough to put the issue to a vote.
“Board policy enables petitioners who gather at least 250 valid signatures to put to a member vote any action of the elected, 9-member cooperative board,” a KIUC release stated Wednesday.
KIUC has determined that the petition received a sufficient number of signatures to be considered qualified.
Now, a committee of the KIUC board of directors will meet within 15 days with the petitioning group to discuss the method of putting the fee issue to a vote.
All utility members would be allowed to cast a ballot.
The process follows the steps outlined in KIUC Board Policy 32.
Co-op Communications Manager Jim Kelly said an election would require a simple majority — 50 percent plus one — of co-op members.
“The decision by the board was about fair cost recovery for our members — reading those old meters costs money,” David Bissell, president and CEO of KIUC, said in the release. “The petitioners are challenging this approach. So now the members will decide whether those who opted out of a smart meter should pay or if all the members should pay.”
The fees took effect Nov. 4, and customers without a smart meter currently pay the extra costs of manually reading and servicing the old meters. KIUC has said spreading the cost to all of its customers would work out to just under $1 per month.
Out of the utility’s 30,000 customers, about 3,000 have opted not to have smart meters.
Jay described KIUC’s announcement Thursday as “excellent news.”
“The decision made by the board was about unfair fees and fines — management’s effort to punish members financially for opting out of the smart meter program,” he said. “However, KIUC’s classic effort at divide and conquer will fail because our island community is too strong in the spirit of aloha and lokahi — unity, harmony, togetherness. We are all in this together.”
Co-op member Kathy Matara, of Kapahi, said she signed the petition and opted not to have a smart meter installed on her house because she is concerned not about privacy issues, but the potential health risks associated with the technology, which transmit information about electrical use back to KIUC.
“The reason I signed the petition is because I believe that everyone should have analog meters,” she said. “I have proven to myself that the radiation (from the meters) is harmful, not from reading the research but from my own experience.”
Matara said she is even considering moving off the island because she suffers from headaches, lack of sleep, pressure in her chest, digestive problems and more.
Today, the minimum price tag for the additional non-smart meter fees is $173.88 for the first year.

Gov't to help convert public buildings into wireless base stations

Gov't to help convert public buildings into wireless base stations

By John Liu ,The China Post
November 15, 2013, 12:11 am TWN

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The Executive Yuan's Minister Without Portfolio Simon Chang (張善政) said yesterday that the government plans to invest NT$20 billion in 4G technology development in the next three years.

The government will assist private businesses in making public buildings such as postal offices and police stations all over the island available for construction of wireless base stations.

Base stations are the key to the success of broadband wireless services, Chang said. Private businesses are still responsible for the costs of base station construction, and the government will not provide subsidies; however, the government will assist private businesses in obtaining permits for station construction in public spaces.

According to the World Health Organization, there is no hard evidence to suggest that cellphone use increases health risks. In May 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer listed electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones as having the same risk level as coffee and pickles in terms of cancer risk.

Electromagnetic radiation is not as bad as most people think, Chang said, adding that various government agencies will cooperate in future to inform the public about this basic knowledge to alleviate public concern.

The government plans to invest a total of NT$20 billion in the next three years to establish advanced wireless broadband technology, facilitating e-commerce through 4G and making it a common technology among the public, Chang said.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Getting schools up to 21st-century speed

Getting schools up to 21st-century speed


When a student at Elliston Elementary in rural Montana logs onto her laptop for a remote lesson over the Internet, Tressa Graveley must ration the Web for the rest of her tiny school. The teacher tells other students to shut down their browsers and stop streaming video or there won’t be enough bandwidth for the eighth-grader’s lesson.
Elliston Elementary is on the wrong side of a new digital divide in this country. The school, decked out with laptops and whiteboards, hoped to harness the power of the Internet to break out of its isolation. But its connection is too slow to allow the 15 students and two teachers to fully use everything the digital world offers — videos, music, graphics, interactive programs.


But it’s not just rural school systems that are cut off from the digital world. An estimated 72 percent of public schools — in the countryside, suburbs and cities — lack the broadband speeds necessary to fully access the Internet, according to Education Superhighway, a nonprofit organization that wants to improve digital access in schools.
“Wiring schools has brought the Internet to the principal’s office or maybe a teacher’s desk,” said Evan Marwell, the chief executive of the group. “That’s five million administrators and teachers. But we need to move this technology into the learning process, and that means 55 million students.”
President Obama agrees, and proposed in June that all public schools receive high-speed broadband and wireless Internet service within five years. “In a country where we expect free WiFi with our coffee, why shouldn’t we have it in our schools?” Obama said when he announced the initiative at a school in North Carolina.
The plan, called ConnectED, calls for the Department of Education to train teachers in the best ways to use technology in classroom instruction, an area that many agree is weak.
To fund ConnectED, the Obama administration wants the Federal Communications Commission to modernize the way the money is allocated and perhaps to increase the E-rate, a surcharge the government has added to telephone bills since 1997. E-rate funding provides schools and libraries with discounts of 20 percent to 90 percent on telecommunications costs. The allocation is based on need, with poor districts getting priority and a greater share of money. It is the federal government’s largest education technology program.
The FCC has been accepting input from the public about ways to update the E-rate program, and whether to increase the amount collected under the program. A decision probably will be made next year, observers say.
The move comes at a time when schools are under increasing pressure to boost instruction in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, and to prepare for a new era of annual computerized testing.
Supporters of E-rate say it has been pivotal in bringing schools into the technology age. When it began, only 14 percent of schools had Internet access. Today, that figure is 99 percent, according to the Obama administration.

Parents raise concern over GUSD's Wi-Fi

Parents raise concern over GUSD's Wi-Fi

But officials say wireless technology emits radio frequency levels too low to cause harm.

November 13, 2013|By Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com
La Crescenta resident Winston Story has collected more than 40 signatures from fellow parents for a petition against Glendale Unified’s use of Wi-Fi in classrooms over concerns that radio waves emitted by wireless Internet routers could pose health risks to children. Story is the father of a child who attends Mountain Avenue Elementary School, which also serves families living in the westernmost section of La Cañada Flintridge.
Story presented his concerns during a school board meeting last week on the same night Glendale school officials announced plans to boost bandwidth at all the district’s schools by the end of November to improve wireless Internet network usage.
The wireless Internet upgrades and the district’s overall Internet network improvements have been a main priority for Glendale school officials since voters approved the Measure S bond in 2011.

ELECTRICAL SENSITIVITIES and the ELECTRICAL ENVIRONMENT

ELECTRICAL SENSITIVITIES and the ELECTRICAL ENVIRONMENT

From Cyril Smith
Cyril W. Smith, Ph.D.
ELECTRICAL SENSITIVITIES and the ELECTRICAL ENVIRONMENT
A shortened and edited version of notes written for and in cooperation with The Breakspear Hospital, Hemel Hempstead, HP2 4FD, U.K. The writer has been helping their electrically hypersensitive patients since 1982.
What are Electrical Sensitivities?
Many persons suffer from sensitivities to certain foods and environmental chemicals which cause them discomfort, or even in extreme cases prevent them from functioning in any effective manner. Even the most minute amounts of these substances may on occasions ‘trigger’ reactions which are specific to each individual. Warnings regarding nuts, peanuts or gluten are commonly found displayed on food products. When a sensitivity reaction occurs, some regulatory system within the body has ceased to function properly and gives alarm signals, calling for an unjustified panic reaction. Usually, it is the autonomic nervous system (ANS) which is the first to become compromised in this way. This system controls all the involuntary body functions. Thus, any part or function of the body might become affected by the same allergen acting in different people which is why such effects do not show up in medical statistics.
Those who have already acquired several chemical hypersensitivities and which are ‘on-going’ are at particular risk of acquiring electrical sensitivities as an additional problem. The allergen ‘triggering effect’ may transfer from a minute amount of some chemical in the environment to some patient-specific frequency of an electromagnetic field in the environment. Usually, it is the same patient symptoms that continue to be ‘triggered’. It is the frequency of the electromagnetic field that matters once some patient-specific threshold of intensity or field strength has been exceeded. The range of effective coherent frequencies extends from below a thousand seconds per cycle (circadian rhythms) through audio- and radio- and microwave-frequencies to visible light. All these effects are ‘non-thermal’: the electrical power is insufficient to produce any significant heating. It is the frequency that matters. In technical terms, it is the spectral power density or the watts per cycle of bandwidth of the radiation which matters. The more precise the frequency the less power is needed. Coherence makes frequency a fractal linking its chemical, microwave and biological effects.
Germany has introduced the WHO International Classification of Diseases Code T78.4 for ‘Chemical-Sensitivity Syndrome Multiple’, against which this can be reported and statistics collected. There is no electrical equivalent WHO Classification to date but it would seem reasonable for these cases to be recorded as a complication of the multiple chemical sensitivities which precede the electrical sensitivities. Sweden regards electrical sensitivity as a disability with the implication that all public places must be fit for the electrically sensitive disabled person to be in.
The Electrical Environment
Such persons may experience problems from the natural electrical environment beyond what is normal such as the influence of light on melatonin levels. Electrical or acoustic (even sub-audio) frequencies from approaching weather fronts or thunderstorms may become troublesome. Eventually, there may be a hypersensitivity to sunlight.
Fluorescent lighting and lasers at check-outs may make shopping difficult, particularly if inhalants such as chemicals on in-store fabrics provide an initial chemical sensitisation. The patient may experience problems when near any electrical equipment such as power lines, radio- TV- or mobile phone transmitters, tape or DVD-recorders, computers, mobile phones, satellites or in fact any one of the multitude of electronic devices in the modern environment. It is not necessary for an electrical device to be active, any passive resonant circuit may suffice; this could be the resonant frequency of a row of metal railings in the street. Persons may become aware of actually having electrical devices malfunction when they handle them or, even when in their vicinity.
The female characteristic is towards chronic sensitivities appearing at an early stage, resulting in being labelled as “over-anxious”; the male characteristic is for no reaction until the onset of a sudden and disabling crash which may result in the person becoming completely unable to function normally.
The hazard of chronic over-exposure to electrical frequencies is one of adaptation to symptoms triggered by a particular pattern of frequencies until they become indistinguishable from a disease condition. The problem seems to arise when the frequency pattern of a toxic chemical in the body matches that of the person’s electrical environment. It is the frequencies in the electrical environment which makes the body think it is under chemical attack
Typical Subjective Symptoms Relating to Electrical Sensitivities 
Drowsiness, malaise and headache, mood swings, tearfulness and eye pain, poor concentration, vertigo and tinnitus, numbness and tingling, nausea and flatulence, convulsions, noise sensitivity, alteration in appetite, visual disturbances, restlessness, blushing.
Clinical Observations Relating to Electrical Sensitivities
Changes in respiration, heart rate changes (heart rate variability analysis is a good indicator of the status of the ANS), eye pupil dilation, perspiration or lack of it, muscular weakness, loss of visual acuity, speech or writing difficulties, loss of consciousness, convulsions.
At the Breakspear Hospital, about 10% of all patients with chemical, nutritional or particulate sensitivities had acquired electromagnetic sensitivities. Tests often showed stress coming from some common environmental frequency such as the power supply (50Hz in UK, 60 Hz in North America) or the 2.45 GHz frequency of microwave cookers and other devices using this frequency which can effect L- to D- isomerisation in amino acids.
Patients’ reactions were triggered over a very wide range of frequencies for which at first there was no recognisable pattern. Then it was realised that 7.8 Hz often appeared. Measurements quickly revealed that 7.8 Hz was the endogenous frequency of the heart acupuncture meridian. The endogenous frequencies of other acupuncture meridians also appeared when these were under stress. The frequencies on acupuncture meridians are very precise; for 53 heart meridian frequencies from 38 patients, the mean was 7.788 Hz (standard deviation ± 0.92%). This frequency is used in some therapeutic or environment protection devices. For 50 healthy persons it was 7.802 ± 0.026%. Its precision enables living systems to detect changes in Schumann Band radiation from in the upper atmosphere. .
Sensitivities to Foods and Chemicals
About 1-in-6 of a ‘population’ is usually considered to have some degree of impaired function due to an allergic reaction to the environment or to food. Repeated exposure to a frequency while a person is reacting to some other allergic trigger may link that specific sensitivity pattern to that frequency, so that the same reaction is triggered on encountering either the frequency or the allergen on a subsequent occasion. In general, the patient’s pattern of response is the same whether the trigger is chemical, biological, particulate, nutritional or electrical – it is characteristic of the patient.
Exposure to pesticides or herbicides seems to enhance or even create electrical sensitivities. Formaldehyde is a very good sensitizer. Ionising radiation exposure (e.g. long-haul flights) represents an additional stress factor. A few persons may become hypersensitive to light, some to sunlight, or to the light of the mercury vapour spectrum, which is superimposed on the emission from fluorescent tubes and energy-saving lamps.
Dental fillings may cause problems due to electrolytic currents between amalgam fillings containing different mixtures of metals or, between fillings and surrounding tissue. Patients have been seen with black stains on the palate due to the electrolytic transport of mercury. Amalgam-to-tissue contacts may detect environmental frequencies such as radio transmissions just like a cat’s-whisker crystal set. There has been a case where a dentist heard music coming from a patient’s mouth. The mercury toxicity frequency and a mobile phone frequency unfortunately happen to stress the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system.
A common feature of electrical hypersensitivity is that its sufferers complain vigorously that nobody does anything for them, such as turning off an electrical source which they know is “triggering” their reactions but, which seems to have no effect on anyone else. When a hypersensitivity to sunlight is acquired, the futility of this approach is realised but perhaps not before the sufferer has become almost paranoid about these problems.
Treatment
When patients have acquired a high degree of sensitivity to many factors in foods and/or the chemical environment (multiple-sensitivities), they are very likely to have acquired an abnormal sensitivity to their electrical environment as a part of this ‘package’ of symptoms. It is rare to find electrical sensitivities without on-going chemical sensitivities. This electrical sensitivity can become so severe that a person becomes incompatible with technology and unable to function in the modern environment. Electrical sensitivity is not mutually exclusive of other clinical conditions; it can co-exist with and even trigger physical or mental illness. Electrical sensitivities make diagnosis and therapy more difficult. Medications may produce abnormal responses or side effects, even chronic sensitisation to the electrical environment.
A therapy for alleviating allergic reactions is called provocation/neutralisation therapy. It was developed from earlier work in the USA by Dr. Joseph Miller of Mobile, Alabama, and further developed at the Environmental Health Center, in Dallas, Texas, by Dr. W. J. Rea and at the Breakspear Hospital, Hemel Hempstead, England by its Medical Director, Dr. Jean Monro. This therapy relies on successive serial dilutions of the substance having in sequence the effects of stimulating and/or quelling the reactions that they produce. This therapy is not a substitute for eventually reducing the total body loading of triggering substances to a level that the individual can cope with which can be done by simultaneously increasing the rate of detoxification and reducing the rate of toxin intake until the body can function normally, assuming that the enzyme systems for detoxification are still intact. However, while this can produce an alleviation of the symptoms and thereby assist achieving eventual normalisation, it may not be possible to achieve this without some change in the patient’s lifestyle. It is also labour-intensive and therefore expensive.
The general concept introduced by Dr. W. J. Rea is to seek to reduce the total body load of stressors. Which stress factors one seeks to reduce may be a matter of choice although some stresses are involuntary through exposure to the general environment. Dr. Rea has demonstrated the reality of electrical sensitivities in double-blind trials . The equivalent therapy for alleviating reactions to electrical frequencies involves trying to find one or more frequencies which will turn-off the body’s abnormal frequency sensitivity. This is not a cure but it can help stabilise the body for more effective allergy therapy. As foods and chemicals sensitivities are brought under control and the body detoxifies itself, the electrical sensitivities usually disappear as well. Symptoms usually disappear in the reverse order to their appearance. However, it is worth noting that if a person is working or sleeping in a zone of ‘geopathic stress’, which may be electrical in origin, then their problems may persist and resist therapies.
Reducing the Impact of the Electrical Environment
The sensitive person is best able to determine what affects them. It is impossible to get away from the natural electromagnetic radiation from the sun, the ionosphere, the weather and the geomagnetic field. It is almost impossible to get away from man-made electromagnetic radiation. Persons who find a deep canyon or go to the ‘out-back’ still get zapped when a satellite comes over the horizon. The best indicators for safer places are – mobile phones do not work, TV reception is poor and there are no overhead lines.
In the home, electricity supply meters emit large fields and may be located in a passage on the other side of the wall from a bed-head. From where the power supply reaches the house, its cable may run on an outside wall but, close to a bed. Power lines on overhead poles may act as antennae for radio and microwave transmissions and channel them into the house wiring. It is good practice to turn off all non-essential electrical circuits at night. Power frequencies may have the same effect as daylight in the arctic summer depressing the level of melatonin (an anti-cancer agent). Some biologically based shielding may be provided by pine trees which have terpene problems, cacti or spider-plants.
The power supply frequencies are in effect impossible to shield with any practical measures. Higher frequencies can be shielded by metal wire mesh, metallised fabric or aluminium foil, although these may act as mirrors to reflect the radiation elsewhere. They can also reflect self-radiation emitted by a person having an allergic reaction making it even worse. A very sensitive person may react to a quantum component of the electromagnetic field called the magnetic vector potential and this cannot be shielded .
It is rare to find electrical sensitivities without previous and ongoing chemical sensitivities. If a person is sensitised chemically, the electrical sensitivity can be enhanced. Remember that electronic equipment emits chemical fumes and as these may be a trigger for reactions so they need to be ventilated. For example, a person may tolerate the electromagnetic radiation from a television set if it is enclosed in a glass-fronted box ventilated to the outside keeping fumes from the hot plastic out of the room.
Computers have different clock frequencies usually specified in terms of their speed of operation. These frequencies will be sub-divided in the process of carrying out the various computational functions. It may be possible to find a model/manufacturer whose equipment is tolerated. The flat screen displays are likely to have less emission. The pulses emitted when a mobile phone dials-up a number can imprint frequencies into the head if it is held against the ear before dialling is complete.
The eye can also be a pathway for frequencies to enter the body such as when viewing TV or a computer. Most acupuncture meridians are stimulated/stressed while viewing a light source flashing at a frequency equal to the endogenous frequency of the meridian. Frequencies greater than 0.05 Hz and less than 47 kHz have this effect as do strong visual patterns and colours. The body as a whole is sensitive to resonances in its environment, so metal structures or even electronic equipment which is not switched on may cause problems. Computer keyboards can have a long cable or an infrared optical link to the computer unit enabling the latter to be kept at a distance. A whole building or public area may be fitted out with a wire-less internet link which cannot be avoided. There is software which enables one to dictate to a computer, so that the process of typing in a lot of text can be circumvented; only error correction and editing need be done at the keyboard.
Conclusion
It is rare to find a patient with electrical sensitivities who does not already have multiple on-going sensitivities to chemicals, volatiles and particulates. To avoid becoming electrically sensitive, one must be careful about acquiring a body load of chemicals which happen to be toxic to you because your body cannot get rid of them quickly. Then, if the frequency pattern of such substances happens to match a pattern of frequencies in your electrical environment this will make the body think it is under further chemical attack. That is why only some people are affected by their electrical environment. Engineers (chemical or electrical) work to specifications, unless they are told that certain environmental frequency patterns cause problems with certain environmental chemicals nothing will ever get done about the problem.

Belgium Boosts Cell Phone Radiation Safeguards

Belgium Boosts Cell Phone Radiation Safeguards

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2013










Belgium recently adopted new cell phone regulations that bar mobile phone models designed for, and marketed to children ages 7 and younger.
That’s just the beginning of what these innovative regulations will do. Under Belgium’s new rules, slated to take effect next March, cell phone retailers will be required to disclose phones’ maximum emission levels, known as specific absorption rates, or SAR, at the point of sale. Though SAR values are an imperfect measure of user exposure, they are the only metric available to the public.  Clearly, Belgium respects people’s right to know enough to mandate disclosure of SAR values in stores.
In addition, phone vendors will be required to display posters with warnings to use mobile phones moderately, to use an earpiece and to buy models with lower SAR values.
With the adoption of these rules, Belgium becomes the latest in a rapidly lengthening list of nations to attempt to shield children from too much cell phone radiation and to inform everyone about the risks of exposure to these emissions.
At least a dozen other nations have taken steps to protect children from cell phone radiation.  Some nations have barred children from using cell phones in school.  Under a law passed in 2010, France prohibited the sale of phones created for kids under 6. The statute also forbade advertising of cell phones to children under the age of 14, required cell phone vendors to display SAR values, required all phones to be sold with a headset and banned the use of cell phones in elementary schools.  On Oct. 15, the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health published a risk assessment linking mobile phone use to sleep disturbance, male infertility and cognitive problems.
One reason so many countries are taking action is the World Health Organization’s 2011 classification of radiofrequency energy emitted by cell phones as “possibly” carcinogenicScientific studies suggesting that exposure to cell phone radiation could affect human health are not definitive.  But as evidence mounts that cell phone radiation can change brain activity and sperm count and may be linked to brain tumors, regulators are under pressure to take protective measures, especially for children.
Children and teens may be more susceptible to radiation because they have smaller heads and thinner skulls than adults. A number of scientific studies, including one conducted by France Telecom in 2008, have demonstrated that the brains of young children absorb more radiation than adult brains, possibly rendering them more vulnerable to brain cancer.
Cell phone use by children and teenagers is skyrocketing. According to a survey earlier this year by the Pew Research Center, almost 80 percent of teens own cell phones. And a 2009 study by Mediamark Research & Intelligence, a market research organization, showed that cell phone ownership among children ages six through eleven rose to 20 percent, up 68 percent over the 2005-2009 period. A 2013 study of 1420 parents with children under 16 by uSwitch, an independent product and service comparison group, showed that nearly 10 percent of children under five had cellphones. And according to Common Sense Media, the use of smartphones and other wireless devices among children under 2 grew from 10 percent in 2011 to 38 percent this year. Children who begin using cell phones when very young will likely be exposed to much greater total emissions over their lives than adults.  No one knows the consequences of extremely long-term exposures to these emissions.
Some of the phones targeted by Belgian regulations are very simplified models designed for young children. Others barred are those fashioned like cartoon characters such as Snoopy, Mickey Mouse, Hello Kitty, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger. Cell phone advertising geared to children will be prohibited.
As regulators around the world take precautionary action, it remains to be seen what the Federal Communications Commission will do. The agency is reviewing its regulations for the first time since 1996, but it has hinted that it may actually weaken them. EWG is urging the FCC to strengthen its outdated standards to better protect people, especially children, and to inform the public about cell phone radiation and its potential hazards.
To sign EWG’s petition and make sure the FCC knows that this is the time to improve its standards, not weaken them, click here.