|
Thursday, 31 August 2000.
Note: this is an uncorrected copy of the Transcript of Dr
Michael Repacholi's appearance at the Australian Senate Inquiry into
cellphone and health standards.
Dr. REPACHOLI
I am here representing the International Electromagnetic
Field Project of the World Health Organisation. I have made a special
visit to Australia this time because Australia is a supporter of the
international EMF project at WHO, and a very good supporter. I
appreciate that very much. The reason I have come is to say what we are
trying to do at WHO. WHO, as you know, normally deals with developing
countries and diseases that occur in these countries.
However, this technology of mobile telephones has been
growing so rapidly that it is now going straight into developing
countries as well. They are missing the landline systems and going
straight into mobile telecommunications so if there is any health
problem then it is a global problem and we need to deal with it as soon
as possible.
I established at WHO a program that would go through a
series of logical steps to resolve this issue. The steps-and I will
give a short presentation on this-are really to review the literature,
identify the gaps in knowledge that we need filled so that we can make
good health risk assessments, coordinate research world wide to ensure
that those gaps are filled and then set up formal task forces, which
WHO does for many physical, chemical and biological agents as a
routine, to establish what the health effects are so that we use the
normal criteria that WHO has for determining health effects of any
physical, biological or chemical agent. I think that is the only
reasonable way-in my view, anyway-to resolve this problem. I know that
the public has tremendous concerns, and I empathise with those
concerns, because the technology has been propagated into people's
working and living environments without very much consultation. It is
when such base stations are placed in schools, parents would ask, 'Are
there any health effects?' and if we are in a period of debate about
the science then that is not very reassuring for parents.
So what we have tried to do within this project is
complete initial reviews, and a lot of the research that we found was
necessary is taking time. It takes time to do this research; it cannot
be done very quickly. And so we are in this research period that we
hope will last probably about three years. Then we will be able to set
up our formal health risk assessment committees and we will be
publishing the results, and the project will conclude at WHO. It is a
time-limited project; it is due to end in 2005. Maybe the best thing I
could do is to give you my presentation.
SEN. ALLISON (CHAIR)
Dr. REPACHOLI
Dr. REPACHOLI
So we have at WHO the International EMF project, and it
has already been going for some five years. It is a project that has a
large number of international partners. All the international agencies
that have any responsibility for non-ionising radiations are involved
in this project, including organisations like the United Nations
Environment Program; the International Commission on Non-Ionising
Radiation Protection, which is the NGO that is formally recognised by
WHO to deal with non-ionising radiations; the International Labour
Office to deal with worker related concerns; the International
Electrotechnical Commission to provide the technological input; the
International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is a WHO specialised
agency that just does research and evaluation of carcinogens to
determine whether any physical, chemical or biological agent is
carcinogenic; NATO, which obviously has a military concern about
exposure to their personnel; the International Telecommunications
Union; and the European Commission. We currently have over 45
countries-national representatives-involved in the project, and we have
specialised collaborating centres in the United States, UK, Japan,
Sweden and Germany.
This provides essentially a schematic overview of what we
are trying to do within the project. International reviews are
conducted. As I said, they provide health status reports-what we know
from the information we have available-and also identify research that
is still necessary. We are currently coordinating we estimate
approximately $100 million worth of research world wide. These are
research organisations that have asked WHO what research is necessary
so that WHO can make better health risk assessments. In this case, the
Australian government, through its electromagnetic field project, has
approached WHO and identified a number of projects that are currently
ongoing. We are collecting a database of information and then we will
go through the review and health risk assessment processes that will
finally, hopefully, lead to standards.
We are also looking at the environmental impacts of
electromagnetic fields. We have already held an international
conference on this and we are currently writing up a review article
that will summarise all of the information. It relates primarily to
major development projects that emit large amounts of electromagnetic
fields into the environment. We want to know what non-human impacts
occur. We have the paper written and it is currently going through a
review.process. It will be published and it will be available, for
example, to organisations that need to do environmental impact
statements for these major development projects.
We have a large information and training program. We have
facts sheets on most things in 14 different languages so that people
can look at these things in their own language and get the information
they need.
We also have a standards procedure that I would like to
say more about today because I know that the review is primarily
addressing the Australian standard and what should be done about that.
This standards harmonisation project has reviewed standards world wide
and is providing working groups that will develop the framework for a
global standard so that, once we have the framework, the health risk
assessment process can come into the global standards. We also have a
risk perception communication program through which we try to better
understand public concerns about the issue and how scientists,
government and the public can communicate better on it. We will produce
documents that provide information about that. It is a fairly
comprehensive program.
I will not go through this information because you have it
in your notes, but it essentially outlines what I have just explained:
the series of logical steps that we are going through to try to resolve
this issue in the best possible way. We have conducted our reviews and
we are currently promoting research. We have research coordination
committees to identify what research is ongoing and what we still need
so that we can promote what is needed in order to maximise available
resources.
I would like to pause briefly to indicate that there are
big differences between what is considered to be a biological effect
that is found through scientific study and what is considered to be a
health effect. First of all, WHO has a definition of health, as you
might expect. It is defined as a state of complete physical, mental and
social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. We
consider wellbeing within our program-so people who consider themselves
to be under some psychosocial stress because of electromagnetic fields
are considered within the program.
Biological effects that are produced in scientific studies
are generally measurable responses to EMF. For example, a biological
effect could be a very small rise in temperature which has no
significance to the body. It could be any one of a number of things
that are easily compensated for within the body. In our Canberra
environment, you go out into the cold and the body compensates. The
body is responding to what is effectively a hostile environment all the
time.
A health effect is a biological effect that produces a
consequence which is outside the body's normal range of physiological
compensation and is thus detrimental to the health or wellbeing of the
person. This is something that the committees within WHO look at to
find out whether there is a true health effect that could be produced
by this biological effect. Obviously, you can do limited
experimentation on humans. Short-term effects can be determined and
that is expected to be coming up under the British program following
the Stewart committee inquiry.
There will be substantial funding to get volunteers within
the laboratory and find out exactly what occurs with exposure to
telecommunication fields. With this criteria, we work through.
People probably have difficulty in understanding that it
is not any one study that can produce a definitive result-it has to be
replicated independently. These are criteria that WHO uses before it
can accept a result. I will mention my own study because of the
concerns that that has raised. So it has to be replicated independently
and has to be shown to be good science, and that is very important.
There are a lot of studies in this area which are very poor science and
we can identify those relatively easily.
When we look at the evidence, though, we have to look at
the strength of the evidence, because you can never prove that
something does not happen-you cannot prove a negative.
You cannot say that there is no health effect possible.
But, by the number of studies that are produced, you can produce a
weight of evidence which indicates overwhelmingly that there is no
effect or that there is an effect and that is what we have to realise
when we develop the database on which standards are written. The health
risk assessments are set up under WHO task groups which are identified
by the executive director of WHO.
Let me briefly say something about my mouse study, which
has given grief around the world.
I should give a little background to this, because it is
important that this study was actually an add-on study to another
long-term study that was produced, or that was being funded, on the 50
Hz fields. We had a very elaborate set-up for the 50 Hz exposures. Then
we were approached by Telstra, which said, 'The model looks good and we
would like to find out if there are any effects to this model of mouse
which could occur from telecommunications frequency fields.' I was
actually given a golden opportunity. I was told, 'Go and find the most
sensitive model that you can possibly get to look at the incidence of
cancer from a physical agent such as this.' The ???pim1 mouse is a
transgenic strain of mouse where extra cancer genes are put into the
DNA to make them predisposed to the cancer that you want. Transgenic
animals are becoming very popular in science because if you want, for
example, to look at asthma or some other ailment, you can insert the
appropriate genes into the DNA to make it predisposed to get asthma and
then you can expose it to whatever other physical or chemical agent you
are going to be exposing them to.
These animals are extremely sensitive. Twenty per cent of
these animals in this case were going to get lymphoma, which in fact
was what we found, but we also found, of course, that if you expose
them to GSM signals this doubled the incidence of cancer. There have
been a number of criticisms of the study, that it did not go for long
enough. We only did 18 months, and the reason for doing 18 months was
because we did not want to have the diseases that occur with age. In
the last six months you get all sorts of age related diseases
occurring, which can confuse the results, so we wanted to have a look
at 18 months when they were relatively healthy, and we could just
concentrate on what we wanted to do.
The subsequent studies, however, are using now the
two-year period, which is a national toxicological program-type assay
with a full two years to look and see what happens over that period.
And people criticise the 18 months because, while the cancers were
increasing, so were the number of cancers in the controls, but there
was a doubling here of the incidence, and they feel that maybe the
controls would have caught up with the exposed group at the end of two
years. I do not believe that myself. I think a real difference had
occurred, but we have just got to await the results. The problem is
that we only looked at one exposure, and to give a result credibility
you like to see that increasing exposure will increase the effect. The
dose response is something where, when you look at toxicology, you want
to see that increasing the dose of chemical, for example, increases the
effect: you get higher incidences of the cancer or whatever.
My study was not able to test that because it only had one
point.
Senator HARRIS
Chair, can we ask questions as we go, or would you prefer
not to?
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
I would normally prefer not to, but it depends. Dr
Repacholi, how much longer do you expect to be with that presentation
because we are all getting a bit anxious to ask you questions.
Dr. REPACHOLI
Yes, I understand. I have only got about 11 slides or
something like that.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Okay, if you can perhaps try and not repeat what is
already here because we have got it in front of us and can read it.
Dr. REPACHOLI
Sure, I understand. I am trying to just use this as a
memory jolt. The study that is being held in Adelaide now is under a
standard procedure that has been used for testing carcinogenicity in
experimental animals. It is using the US national toxicology
program-type protocols. So there are other difficulties. Obviously, it
is a difficulty extrapolating mice to humans because of the different
RF absorptions, and humans do not have these genetic changes.
The mechanisms to account for this are very difficult
because I have no idea what has produced this effect, and we spent a
long time looking at this before we finally finished our publication
because we thought we had done something terribly wrong because it
seemed that the result was quite dramatic. We knew that we had not
overheated the animals, but we did not know what else could have
occurred, so that delayed the study-plus a few journals felt that it
was too hot to handle so we got a few rejections on the publication.
I will just mention, as you probably know, that under the
EMF projects at WHO IARC is going to conduct a huge mobile telephone
study that will be done in probably 14, maybe more, countries where
there will be 3,000 cases of brain tumour compared with 3,000 controls.
This will be a huge, very sensitive study, and there is an Australian
component of the study funded by the Australian government. The beauty
of this study is that they are all working under the same protocol so
we can pool the results and come up with a very sensitive result.
Uncertainty is something that the public and many others
are unable to deal with very well. I do not want to labour this, but
uncertainty exists. You will notice in the papers that I gave to the
committee there is a publication from WHO, a backgrounded document,
plus an article that we sent to Science about the precautionary
principle. These things are looking at uncertainty and how it can be
dealt with.
Normally, uncertainty is dealt with in a science based way
by using safety factors that incorporate reductions in the exposure
levels to account for the uncertainties and unforeseens.
We know that we have some uncertainty still. There are
some results in the EMF area that we want to follow up, but we do know
that if there is an effect it is going to be quite a subtle effect.
There are 5,000 to 6,000 publications now in this area
that relate to EMF, and especially mobile telecommunications.
We have embarked on a standards harmonisation project. WHO
does not develop standards, but it goes through its NGO, which is
ICNIRP in this project. We have got the major standard setting
countries in every country in the world involved in this project for
standards harmonisation. The benefits are obvious. It increases public
confidence. It reduces debate and fears. People are protected to the
same high level and obviously with our globalisation of trade we would
expect that there would be benefits to health care by having standards.
As for precaution, we know and understand that there is a
growing movement to adopt precautionary approaches to manage health
risks with scientific uncertainty. I have recently spent about an hour
with the minister of health in Belgium. She was asking what she could
do about precautionary measures. I will indicate what was the outcome
from that.
WHO does not normally advise national authorities to set
policies to go beyond established knowledge. We set health risk
assessments based on the knowledge that we know. However, there was a
ministerial conference in London recently and we were asked to look at
the need to rigorously apply the precautionary principle in assessing
risks and to adopt more preventive, proactive approaches to hazards.
WHO has not caught up with that. The EMF project is certainly right in
the middle of this and we feel that we want to provide some leadership
in WHO for this.
The European Commission has provided a document on this,
but I will not go into it. It has certain criteria for using the
precautionary principle. If you use those criteria, the precautionary
principle as it is should not be applied to EMF; but it does not mean
to say that you cannot have precautionary measures, it is just that you
cannot invoke an established principle like the precautionary
principle.
What are the recommendations to member states? There is
the need to address the health issue, which should be done through
mandatory, science based standards. There is a need to address public
concerns. We suggest that this should be through a separate policy of
voluntary precautionary measures. Unfortunately, a few countries are
now introducing additional ad hoc safety factors into the science based
standards as a precautionary measure. This undermines hundreds of
millions of dollars worth of science that went into developing the
standards, for no apparent benefit to health.
These voluntary measures can be through increased
research, encouragement of manufacturers to keep exposures to minimum
needed for the technology, better risk communication, targeting
audiences with honest and accurate information, public involvement in
decision making, and the sighting of facilities to minimise public
exposure and concerns.
People would generally be happy with those sorts of
measures because it has their involvement and they do not feel taken
out of the equation.
I have just summarised our most recent fact sheet into
which I will not go. I will just say a couple of things that need to be
said. There have been a number of reviews and none have indicated that
there are health consequences from exposure to either the mobile phones
or their base stations. There are gaps in knowledge where we are
conducting research, and this research is going through. We recommend
that governments have a role to play in setting health based standards
and introducing additional precautionary measures, as they feel fit.
Individuals can be encouraged to take their own
precautions if they have concerns about children. There was a lot of
press following the Stewart inquiry about children being more
sensitive. If people feel that this is the case-and there is no
evidence for that, but it is a possibility-then hands-free kits or
limiting times of calls are good ways to reduce exposures.
The one message I would really like to convey though is
that motorists should be strongly discouraged from using mobile phones
while driving. There is no doubt that-
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
They get brain tumours, do they?
Dr. REPACHOLI
No, they are wobbling all over the road. Maybe I can leave
it there. Thanks very much.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Can I kick off by referring to the comment you made a
moment ago that the standards that you are promoting for harmonisation
are based on science. What precisely was the science that set those
standards up in the first place? Can you give the committee examples of
the sorts of studies that led to those standards?
Dr. REPACHOLI
There were studies that were done on primates. These tend
to be very expensive studies, but primates have, essentially, very
similar characteristics to humans. It is as far as you can go without
actually exposing humans to radiofrequency fields. The basis of modern
standards now are the studies that were done on-
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
Yes, there is no doubt they are heat based standards.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
There were a number of studies done, predominantly in the
United States.
There is John D'Andrea.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
These were behavioural studies where they found that the
primates had a change in behaviour or they were unable to do tasks as
well as they should have.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
So were they in the 1920s, 1930s, 1950s?
Dr. REPACHOLI
No, most of those studies were done in the late 1970s and
1980s. There have been follow-up studies done, as you probably know, by
Henry Lai. He is finding behavioural changes at levels which are at the
lower end of what has been found before. The studies are essentially
based on changes in behaviour or tasks in mazes where, for example,
animals are put into a radial arm maze and food pellets are put at the
end of each. Then you can train them to go around and pick up all the
pellets quickly. In time they become very accurate or the timing can be
done fairly precisely. Then you expose them and find out if they do it
in the same time. They can forget that they have already been down a
maze and they will go down that maze twice and so take a longer time to
find the food pellets.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
So that behavioural study in the 1970s determined the
current proposal in terms of exposure. Why did it take so long? Why
didn't Australia adopt that back in the 1970s if that was so pivotal to
setting standards?
Dr. REPACHOLI
They did not think of standards. Most countries did not
think of standards. It was mostly the Soviet Union and the US that
dealt with standards. Most European countries, until recently, did not
look at standards for this area. The standards were introduced
primarily because of the introduction of radar. In fact, as the stories
of-
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr Repacholi, what I am trying to get at is this: what we
understand to be the case is that Australian standards are likely to be
relaxed, and they are to be relaxed in line with your recommendations
for harmonisation. What I think the committee needs to understand is
why it is that Australian standards should be relaxed to this
harmonisation level. Another aspect of this is why the World Health
Organisation should play a role. I am sure we can understand why the
industry would want harmonisation, but why should that be of concern to
the World Health Organisation?
Dr. REPACHOLI
There are two questions there. I was involved in the early
attempts to develop an Australian standard. The standard was developed
primarily on the international standard at the time and follows the
international standard except in one region, called the microwave
region. There was so much discontent about this that the level ended up
being a negotiated level. It was not based on the science. Everything
was based on the science up to that point, but the last part was not
based on the science-it was negotiated between the unions and the
government at the time.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
Yes, because the shape of the standard relates to the
absorption of energy.
You assume that a certain amount of energy is absorbed and
will produce an effect.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
But what is the science that tells you what the effect is
at that point? What I am trying to get at is: what informs the current
proposal in terms of the science, precisely?
Dr. REPACHOLI
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
These are all the animal studies, the ones that wer??
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
The seventies and eighties, yes. These are the early
studies on primates. It was indicated that four watt per kilogram
seemed to be a threshold, above which there were changes in behaviour.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
Yes. Below that, there did not seem to be any, unless the
environmental temperatures were high and then that four watt per
kilogram came down to one watt per kilogram.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Given the sort of research work that has happened since
the seventies, that seems to me to be rather imprecise and not terribly
scientific, especially in terms of biological responses. It does not
sound very sophisticated.
Dr. REPACHOLI
The problem is that behavioural changes are quite variable
between peopl?3/4different people behave differently. It can be partly
that. It is also the imprecision of the studies and imprecision in the
dosimetry-knowing that you have, in fact, given four watt per kilogram
to the animal and not 3.8 or whatever. There is a certain amount of
imprecision there. This is why safety factors are incorporated: because
of that imprecision and the variabilities that occur. Essentially, that
threshold was noted some time ago. There was a factor of 10 reduction
in the SAR to produce the occupational level and a factor of 50
reduction for general public levels. When you have a constant SAR over
the spectrum, that dictates the shape of the curve. In other words, if
you are going to get a constant 0.4 or 0.08 watt per kilogram, then you
need to be exposed to certain levels before you get that absorption.
That is what dictates the shape of the international curv?3/4it is just
the absorption. But what happened was that this part of the curve was
just straightened out and it did not follow the science because, in
fact, to produce this level, you need even lower absorption and you do
not get the standard 0.08 watt per kilogram at that point.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
All of this is based on animal studies, behavioural
studies with primates?
Dr. REPACHOLI
Yes, but you can extrapolate absorption of energy to
humans because there has been a lot of work done on the dosimetry of
mice, rats, guinea pigs, humans and monkeys.
You can use that data to extrapolate what the absorption
would be in animals from the monkey studies.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
It would be useful for the committee to have the progress,
if you like, of what you are talking about with the SAR and so on that
actually leads you to the view that this is the right standard as
opposed to some other standard. Given that Australia is facing a
relaxation in its standards, this is a critical question.
Dr. REPACHOLI
It is not actually a relaxation, it is just a correction
back to the science.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Nonetheless, it is a relaxat ion, is it not?
Dr. REPACHOLI
There is a confusion in the Australian standard at the
moment. It says that the standard is 0.08, but in fact it is not. The
limits that came out were not 0.08. Down here it is about 0.01. If you
stick to the basic standard it will not be a relaxation. If you stick
to the limits that were identified to get that, then yes, it will seem
like a relaxation.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Can I ask you about the production of the fact sheets?
What you have said to us tonight is that there remains quite a lot of
uncertainty. Certainly you have identified a lot of work that still
needs to be done in terms of the research. Don't you think it is a
little premature to be producing fact sheets for people? The suggestion
here is that part of the problem for the World Health Organisation is
uncertainty. Is that a reasonable position to take?
Dr. REPACHOLI
We do not think there is a big uncertainty. We have a very
large volume of literature and we can say something from that
literature. There are thousands of studies, and these are what are
reviewed. We have to be able to say something. We cannot wait until the
end and think, 'Okay, now our database is full', and then make some
recommendations. So these are interim recommendations as we go along.
They are produced by an international advisory committee which is
composed of all the international organisations that I mentioned at the
start of the presentation, plus the 45 national representatives that
come along, and they review all of these studies. What we did was do
our international review first and then collect all the information
that we could, and then that goes through a review process through the
international advisory committee. The latest fact sheet actually went
to our director-general. She is personally interested in the EMF and so
she signed it off-begrudgingly in some points, but she feels the
process has been followed and this is what the international consensus
is and so that is what WHO produces. But she is somewhat worried about
EMF as well.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Can I just ask you about your own study on mice? This is
to be replicated, and thank you for explaining some of the method
changes. Will you at any point in time be able to precisely replicate
the previous study? That is, if you go from 18 months to two years,
will you stop at the 18-month point and see whether in every respect
the methodology is the same so that it can be a true replication?
Dr. REPACHOLI
I guess in those studies a true replication, and in this
case they are using better dosimetry. We have mice, for example, just
able to run around in the cages, which is what people normally do,
which meant that the variation in the amount of the radio frequency
field they absorbed varied quite a lot from 0.01 to four watts per
kilogram in this case, which is not very helpful for development of
standards. So the new studies are going to be putting the mice into
tubes, holding them during the exposure, they have got a fixed
orientation to the field, and then the RF absorption is well-known and
precise. That is one change. They are also going to do the dose
response by exposing the mice to different levels of RF-although we
did, I think, incredibly good pathology because we had it checked at
three levels, including going to the US National Cancer Institute and
having them check our pathology.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Can I interrupt there? Isn't the point of replication to
use precisely the same methodology? Isn't that the problem with so much
research, that it is not replicated and you need to do that replication
in order to verify whether your first results have any validity or not?
How can you change the methodology and still call it replication?
Dr. REPACHOLI
We tend to call it confirmation of a result. The reason is
that in initial studies they may have done something that is not
particularly helpful or there is a better way of doing it. If the
result is a true result it should still occur in the animal. There is
no reason to expect that you are still exposing the animal to
radiofrequency fields using the same pulsing regimes, maybe different
times, different orientations, but if there is going to be an effect it
should still occur. We were very careful in reviewing the follow-up
study in Adelaide, and there is another study being done in Europe, to
make sure that, yes, what was done in the original study is going to
either be confirmed or not confirmed in these studies. I feel confident
in that; and I want that myself because it is my result and I want to
make sure that they do it right. If there is any deviation from that,
then it is going to be criticised, so they are going to waste millions
of dollars and then end up being criticised for something that they
should have done.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
It is a blinded study, so the people doing the study do
not know which group are exposed and which are not exposed. Only an
independent person is able to say, at the end when all the statistical
analyses are done, that this one was exposed and this one was not,
because you have got to take out biases. I know people criticise
scientists for not coming up with preliminary results, but, in many
cases, preliminary results have come out and they have said, 'Wow, we
have found a big effect,' and then at the end of the study there was no
effect, it all washed out. So scientists generally want to have their
results peer reviewed and published.ECITA 12 SENATE-References before
they announce them. That is quite standard in science. It is only in
EMF that this has tended to sway away from the norm. It has been
unfortunate, because a lot of people have come out with these
preliminary results, there has been a lot of media and a lot of
concern, and then there was nothing at the end.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Telstra funded the last study. Do they also have any money
in this project, or not?
Dr. REPACHOLI
Probably the Australian government leaned on them to put
some money into it, but it all came from the government.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
I honestly do not know what the Australian government did,
but I think they did want a contribution from industry as well. I am
not privy to that information.
Sen. MARK BISHOP
Could you track back to the earlier discussion you were
having with Senator Allison about the establishment of the Australian
standard and could you put on the record for us how it was established,
what it sought to achieve, your criticism of it and your view on the
adequacy or otherwise of the current interim standard? I was intrigued
by that discussion.
Dr. REPACHOLI
The original standard came out in the 1980s, when I was
not back in Australia-I was in Canada at the time. Then I was asked to
chair an Australian standards committee on radiofrequency field under
WorkSafe. We used this as a basis, and this was where I found out what
the history of that standard was. I tried at that stage to bring it
back to a more solid, scientific basis, but was unsuccessful. Then
there was the Standards Australia effort where we joined with New
Zealand to try to develop a joint standard.
Sen. MARK BISHOP
Dr. REPACHOLI
It is not deficient from my viewpoint, but it does not
follow the science. It partly follows the science in the absorption
curve. As you increase the frequency, the absorption changes and, at
this point, it departs from the normal absorption curve, which is well
known and well established in science. The shape of the standard should
follow the normal absorption curve for human beings. The negotiated
point is the only point of departure from the science.
Sen. MARK BISHOP
What in your view are the consequences or effects of
departing from what science suggests the standard should be?
Dr. REPACHOLI
There is no effect on health. It is just that, from my
viewpoint, I would like to see something that is science based and take
away the subjectivity or the various opinions of people. Healt h is not
negotiable; it should be based on something that is substantiated so
that you know what level of protection you are providing to people.
That is one of my criticisms of increasing safety factors, for example.
In this case, safety factors are incorporated maybe for base stations
but not for mobile phones that cause a thousand times more exposure. If
you are protecting against health effects, why would you address just
one source of exposure and not airport radars or radio and television
transmitters? As a person working in a technical health agency, I want
to protect people's health against a physical agent. I am not
protecting them against a base station; I am protecting them against
radiofrequency fields. I encourage people to adopt a standard that
looks at the protection of health.
Sen. MARK BISHOP
Is the current Australian interim standard linked to the
science? Has the debate you are speaking about been resolved?
Dr. REPACHOLI
No. The Standards Association does not have a standard
now, so there is no interim standard. I understand that the regulatory
authority for mobile telecommunications is using the ICNERP standard as
an interim standard because there is no Australian standard and they
must have something to go on in the meantime.
Sen. MARK BISHOP
Dr. REPACHOLI
It is the international standard, which is science based.
They use WHO's health risk assessments to derive the standard. Let me
give some examples. It is a complex issue. For example, the Russians
have standards that are about a thousand times below international
standards. We are encouraging them to look at the whole of the
literature, not just the Russian literature, in developing their
standards. I was in Moscow recently and I asked whether these standards
were being complied with. They said they were. But the question then
is: how come anyone is using a mobile phone, because if you use a
mobile phone you exceed the Russian standard by about 100 times.
Sen. ALLISON (Chair)
Dr. REPACHOLI
I have had assurances that they comply, but I would like
to see testing of mobile phones. If you have a standard, you should
determine compliance with it. I do not trust the manufacturers to say,
'Yes, we're doing it.' The problem at the moment is that there is no
standard protocol for measuremen?3/4you know, what size phantom and
what the characteristics are of the measurement that you should take to
determine compliance with this. That standard will be out at the end of
this year. So there will be a standardised procedure and manufacturers
should be made to show exactly what SAR they have for that phone under
this standard procedure; that is not unreasonable. They should be made
to comply with the standards.
I was also going to give an example here. A lot of the
eastern European standards tended to be paper tigers in that they came
out with a standard which, for the public, sounded very protective.
But, in fact, they could not operate any technology with the standards
that they had because, if they did any measurements, they would find
that the standards were exceeded. So are you protecting health or are
you using it as a political statement? I am sorry, I do not like
political statements, but I like health statements. I like people to be
protected to a known level, so that if you are going to increase the
level of protection, which from WHO's view point is absolutely okay,
why wouldn't you, if you have a chemical, say, 'This dose is okay but,
if countries lower the dose, it will be more protective'? You know that
chemicals may not have a cut-off. It is like ionising radiation. Any
dose of ionising radiation is going to cause some harm, so what you
have to do is minimise the harm and maximise the benefits. It is a
trade-off. In this case, though, we have a threshold below which we do
not find any effects but above which we do, and we want to make sure
that we eliminate those effects. This is the basis for a health base
standar?3/4to get well down, 50 times below the level at which health
effects are starting to be seen. Most technologies are actually 1,000
or 10,000 times below. I mean, the base stations are some 10,000 times
below the international standards, and still they get singled out. I
know there is pressure by people, but the pressure is really because
the base stations are ugly-looking things. They are in people's living
environments-probably by schools-and people do not want anything
happening to their children, which is absolutely right, so they pick on
a technology. They do not worry about the paging transmitters, because
the paging transmitters are much smaller, but they emit much higher
levels than base stations. I just want to make sure that we protect
health, and that is my primary concern in trying to follow the science.
I think science does a good job, by and large, when it is given a
chance.
CONTINUED:
|