This is the 14th installment of the Canadian SWEEP Initiative e-bulletin (Safe
Wireless, Electric and Electromagnetic Policy). This newsletter serves as a
roundup of what has been occurring on the EMF/EMR awareness and advocacy front
in Canada. Please send me Canadian links and stories.
SWEEP is assisted by the Breast Cancer Research and Education Fund of Niagara:
we couldn't do this without your foresight and generous support.
*Please return to sender with a brief note if you wish to be removed from this
list.*
1. GLOBAL TV REPORT ON EM POLLUTION AND ELECTROSENSITIVITY
2. DAVE STETZER AND M. HAVAS TO VISIT VARIOUS LCOATIONS IN SOUTHERN ONT
3. UPDATE FROM BC. Submitted by M. Broadfoot
4.EXCELLENT AUDIO INTERVIEW WITH OLLE JOHANSSON. Thanks very much to B. Binder
5. UPDATE FROM DON MAISCH
6. REQUEST FROM SHIVANI
7. FROM OLLE JOHANSSON
8. WHO PETITION. From Hans Karow
9. NEW PUBLICATIONS. Submitted by L. Aarssen
10. LINKS. From M. Weatherall, S. Fusco, G. and E. Pett, S.F. Ambrose, A.
Ingvarsdottir, S.P.
11. COMING SOON TO A CONVENIENCE STORE NEAR YOU. Submitted by EMF Canada
1. GLOBAL TV REPORT ON EM POLLUTION AND ELECTROSENSITIVITY
As far as I know, Global will be presenting a piece of EM pollution and EHS on
Monday Feb 6 on their early evening neswscast.
2. DAVE STETZER AND M. HAVAS TO VISIT VARIOUS LCOATIONS IN SOUTHERN ONT
An important seminar on electromantic pollution and various mitigation
solutions.
Including: La Rosa Grand Hall in Markham, 7-9pm on Feb 15th, 25 Lanark Drive,
Markham, ON L3R 8E8
For more information, please contact Ann Chow at achow@econice.com
647-284-2135
3. UPDATE FROM BC. Submitted by M. Broadfoot
We continue our fight to stop high voltage lines through residential areas of
Tsawwassen and have found an alarming rate of cancer in people and pets living
under the existing 138kV lines. Here are a couple of important articles you may
want to circulate.
http://www.delta-optimist.com/issues06/012106/news.html
http://www.delta-optimist.com/issues06/013106/news.html
http://www.delta-optimist.com/issues06/012206/opinion.html
(see Prudent
Decision Required)
http://www.delta-optimist.com/issues06/014106/news/014106nn5.html
http://www.delta-optimist.com/issues06/013106/news.html
http://www.delta-optimist.com/issues06/013206/opinion/013206op4.html
http://www.delta-optimist.com/issues06/014106/opinion/014106le1.html
4.EXCELLENT AUDIO INTERVIEW WITH OLLE JOHANSSON. Thanks very much to B. Binder
http://home.comcast.net/~binder_b/sfd
5. UPDATE FROM DON MAISCH
A new entry titled 'Important updates to www.emfacts.com' has been posted to
EMFacts Consultancy.
NOTICE
Please note that I have added two new sections to the EMFacts web site, both of
which are mirrored from Stewart Fist's site and have been done so with
Stewart's suggestion and assistance.
1) Electricwords: This consists of abstracts of recent scientific research into
the biological safety of cellular mobile phones, radio signals in general, and
the possible impacts of electrical and magnetic fields. Listed by scientific
approach. Continously updated by Stewart Fist and others.
http://electricwords.emfacts.com/
2) CSIRO Report: The landmark 1994 study conducted by Dr Stan Barnett of the
CSIRO for the Australian government into the status of research into potential
health problems with mobile phones. http://electricwords.emfacts.com/csiro/
6. REQUEST FROM SHIVANI
Shivani Arjuna who lives outside Milwaukee is keen to contact Canadians with EHS
and electromagnetic injury. Please contact her at:
SArjuna@aol.com
See her new, and useful website at: www.LifeEnergies.com
7. FROM OLLE JOHANSSON
For those of you that can read and understand Swedish, or get automatic
translations, please note the following very well written interview:
"Mobiltelefonstrålning ofarlig?" from "Äventyrliga Föräldrar" 5/2005
http://www.aventyrliga.se/spec-artikel.php?id=8
8. WHO PETITION. From Hans Karow
The EMR mess we are in is thanks also- if not mainly - to Michael Repacholi,
head of WHO's EMF department and also member of ICNIRP:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/409444403?ltl=1123880420
Please, if you have not signed the petition yet, then do so, and send to all
people you are related and befriended and acquainted!
You canb choose to have your name hidden on the list.. I however did not, I have
nothing to hide and I don't fear anything!
I signed back in last year, # 155..you will find names that you recognize,
including EMF experts!
When writing to other people, write some personal notes as well!
Thanks, cheers, Hans.
9. NEW PUBLICATIONS. Submitted by L. Aarssen
In case you haven't seen them, I've come across the following recent
publications that may be of interest to some:
The journal "Bioelectromagnetics" has a 2005 supplement
issue: "Proceedings of WHO-sponsored symposium on
[] sensitivity of children to EMF exposure". For table of contents and
abstracts see:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jissue/112100890
"The Environmentalist" has dedicated a recent issue to biological effects of
electromagnetic fields. For table of contents and abstracts see:
http://springerlink.metapress.com/link.asp?id=U74R54N2444N
See also the recent book by Poljak (2003) Human Exposure to Electromagnetic
Fields, published by WIT Press. Details and table of contents can be viewed
at:
http://www.witpress.com/acatalog/9976.html
10. LINKS. From M. Weatherall, S. Fusco, G. and E. Pett, S.F. Ambrose, A.
Ingvarsdottir, S.P.
http://www.nomasts.org.uk/
New French group:
http://trans.voila.fr/voila?systran_lp=fr_it&systran_id=Voila-fr&systran_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.next-up.org%2Fabonnement_desabonnement_news.php
http://www.next-up.org/main.php?param=questionnaire_ang
Breast Cancer and RF Exposure
http://tinyurl.com/arymf
Dr Carlo’s site.
http://www.safewireless.org/
Agnes Ingvarsdottir’s site:
http://www.mast-victims.org/index.php?content=journal
www.mastsanity.org
www.hese-project.org
www.tetrawatch.net
www.powerwatch.org.uk
www.electrosensitivity.org.uk
http://www.neilcherry.com
http://www.cogreslab.co.uk
11. COMING SOON TO A CONVENIENCE STORE NEAR YOU. Submitted by EMF Canada
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/28/news/journal.php
TITLE : This Mosquito makes unruly teenagers buzz off
By Sarah Lyall
The New York Times
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2005
BARRY, Wales
Though he did not know it at the time, the idea came to Howard Stapleton when he
was 12 and visiting a factory with his father, a manufacturing executive in
London.
Opening the door to a room where workers were using high-frequency welding
equipment, he found he could not bear to go inside. "The noise!" he
complained.
"What noise?" the grownups asked.
Now 39, Stapleton has taken the lesson he learned that day - that children can
hear sounds at higher frequencies than adults can - to fashion a novel device
that he hopes will provide a solution to the eternal problem of obstreperous
teenagers who hang around outside stores and cause trouble.
The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Stapleton said),
emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he says, can be heard by most people
younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30.
The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes,
they cannot stand it and go away.
So far, the Mosquito has been road-tested in only one place, at the entrance to
the Spar convenience store in this town in south Wales. Like birds perched on
telephone wires, surly teenagers used to plant themselves on the railings just
outside the door, smoking, drinking, shouting rude words at customers andmaking
regular disruptive forays inside.
"On the low end of the scale, it would be intimidating for customers," said
Robert Gough, who, with his parents, owns the store. "On the high end, they'd
be in the shop fighting, stealing and assaulting the staff." Gough planned to
install a sound system that would blast classical music into the parking lot,
another method known to horrify hanging-out youths into dispersing, but never
got around to it. But last month, Stapleton gave him a Mosquito for a free
trial. The results were almost instantaneous. It was as if someone had used
anti-teenage spray around the entrance, the way you might spray your sofas to
keep pets off. Where disaffected youths used to congregate, now there is no
one.
At first, members of the usual crowd tried to gather as they normally did,
repeatedly going inside the store with their fingers in their ears and "begging
me to turn it off," Gough said. But he held firm and neatly avoided possible
aggressive confrontations: "I told them it was to keep birds away because of
the bird flu epidemic." A trip to Spar here in Barry confirmed the strange
truth of the phenomenon.
The Mosquito is positioned just outside the door. Although this reporter could
not hear anything, being too old, several young people attested to the fact
that yes, there was a noise, and yes, it was extremely annoying. "It's loud and
squeaky and it just goes through you," said Jodie Evans, 15, who was shopping
at the store even though she was supposed to be in school."It gets inside you."
Evans and a 12-year-old friend who did not want to be interviewed were once
part of a regular gang of loiterers, said Gough's father, Philip.
"That little girl used to be a right pain, shouting abuse and bad language," he
said of the 12 year old. "Now she'll just come in, do her shopping and go."
Robert Gough, who said he can hear the noise even though he is 34, described it
as "a pulsating chirp." By way of demonstration, he emitted a bat-like squeak
that was indeed bothersome. Stapleton, a security consultant whose experience
in installing store alarms and the like alerted him to the gravity of the
loitering problem, studied other teenage-repellents as part of his research.
Some shops, for example, use "zit lamps," which drive teenagers away by casting
a blue light onto their spotty skin, accentuating any whiteheads and other
blemishes. Using his children as guinea pigs, he tried a number of different
noise and frequency levels, testing a single-toned unit before settling on a
pulsating tone that, he said, is more unbearable, and that can be broadcast at
75 decibels, within government auditory-safety limits.
"I didn't want to make it hurt," Stapleton said. "It just has to nag at them."
The device has not yet been tested by hearing experts. Andrew King, a professor
of neurophysiology at Oxford University, said in an e-mail interview that while
the ability to hear high frequencies deteriorates with age, the change happens
so gradually that many non-teenagers might well hear the Mosquito's noise.
"Unless the store owners wish to sell their goods only to senior citizens," he
wrote, "I doubt that this would work." Stapleton argues, though, that it does
not matter if people in their 20s and 30s can hear the Mosquito, since they are
unlikely to be hanging out in front of stores, anyway.
It is too early to predict the device's future. Since an article about it
appeared in The Grocer, a British trade magazine, Stapleton has become modestly
famous, answering inquiries from hundreds of people and filling orders for
dozens of the devices, not only in stores but also in places like railroad
yards. He is considering introducing a much louder unit that can be switched on
in emergencies with a panic button. It would be most useful when youths swarm
into stores and begin stealing en masse, a phenomenon known in Britain as
"steaming."
The idea would be to blast them with such an unacceptably loud, high noise - a
noise that would be inaudible to older shoppers - that they would immediately
leave. "It's very difficult to shoplift," Stapleton said, "when you have your
fingers in your ears."