We live in an “electro-smog”
Computer screens, high voltage lines, cell phones, WiFi, relay antennas … The man of the 21st century evolves in a tangle of electromagnetic waves created by all these devices supposed to make our lives easier. And nothing seems to stop the proliferation of what the Anglo-Saxons call “electro-smog”. The number of mobile users continues to grow, reaching today more than four billion worldwide. In France, mobile telephone operators could soon go from three to four, which would lead to a multiplication of relay antennas, which already number more than 70,730 in the territory. As for the wireless system, WiFi, which appeared more recently, it is also booming and its power should increase with the arrival of Wimax.
If all these technologies have improved our daily lives, more and more voices are rising to decry the harmful effects they could have on our health. A concern that does not date from yesterday, however. As early as the 1970s, in the United States, people began to worry about the possible harmfulness of high-voltage lines that carry electricity across the country.
High voltage lines: uncertain risks
The first studies pointing to a higher incidence of leukemia in children who live near these electrical installations emitting a very low frequency electromagnetic field date from 1980. The last one appeared in 2005. After studying nearly 30,000 medical files, Gerald Draper, of the University of Oxford, found a 70% increased risk in children residing within 200m of the lines, and 20% up to 600m around. But the researcher himself emphasizes that his work does not prove the existence of a cause and effect relationship between these two phenomena. Other factors may explain this concomitance.
Doubt also on the side of Professor André Aurengo, head of the nuclear medicine department at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital (Paris), who notes that a risk is noted up to 400 m from the lines, while at this distance there is no longer a magnetic field. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has still classified these waves as a possible carcinogen. On the basis of these same studies, the Superior Council of Public Hygiene of France estimated that two to twelve cases of childhood leukemia could be attributable each year in France to these high voltage lines. A conditional which shows that the risks remain questionable and that, if they exist, they are certainly low.
Cell phones singled out
Cell phones are particularly targeted, especially since they operate on a frequency close to that of microwave ovens that we also use every day. So what is it? Can they, for example, have an effect on our brain? Yes, replies the Center for Independent Research and Information on Electromagnetic Radiation. And this one to brandish the BioInitiative report. Published on August 31, 2007 by American, Swedish, Austrian, Danish and Chinese scientists, it is the synthesis of several hundred studies already carried out around the world and pointing to the risks of electromagnetic waves. Increase in inflammatory and allergic reactions, risk of Alzheimer’s disease, tumors… Their conclusions are worrying. “We can no longer ignore the risks due to electromagnetic waves, studies showing that they have effects on health are much more numerous than those which indicate the opposite”, estimates Catherine Gouhier, of the same research center.
Lack of objectivity, methodological bias, lack of consensus and even cheating, answer the Health Council of the Netherlands, the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection and the Danish National Health Council. On December 18, these organizations expressed strong reservations. In what has now become a real scientific battle, the Interphone study is therefore expected like the messiah.
We are awaiting the results of the Interphone study
Launched in 1998 in thirteen countries under the aegis of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, Interphone aims to detect a possible cancer risk due to the use of cell phones. The researchers compared cell phone use in 5,200 brain tumor patients with that of healthy people of the same age. But, while most of the national surveys have already been published, the final report to compile the results and conclusions has still not seen the light of day. The cause of this delay? Data not always consistent, uncertainties and the difficulty of evaluating the biases of such a study. For example, it is possible that a person who believes that their tumor is due to the use of the telephone overestimates its past use.
However, the national results of Interphone provide a partial answer. “If overall, we do not notice a significant effect, it still seems that people who have used a mobile phone a lot for more than ten years have a doubled risk of developing a tumor”, explains Dr Annie Sasco, epidemiologist at Inserm and a signatory, along with twenty other scientists, of a call for caution in the use of cell phones.
“If there is indeed a slight increase in the incidence of certain cancers for the most exposed users, it is possible that this is due to chance since we only had very few patients using a laptop for more than ten years “, retorts Dr Martine Hours, coordinator for France of Interphone. “National studies do not have enough statistical power to decide in favor of one hypothesis or another. It is the regrouping of all the data that will provide an answer”, continues the researcher. But we do not expect very disturbing revelations. “If the risk is so difficult to highlight, it is because we are looking for a low risk,” she warns.
Reassuring data for cell towers
“We are already unable to prove the harmfulness of cell phones, so relay antennas, think so! Their power is 100 to 100,000 times lower than that of cell phones,” said Professor Aurengo. And it is true that, if one actually bathes in an ambient “electro-smog”, the exposure turns out to be relatively low. Thus, in Lyon and Besançon, Martine Hours and her colleagues asked 440 volunteers to wear 24 hours a day and for several days a dosimeter to measure their exposure to twelve frequency bands of electromagnetic waves (cell phones, TV, radio FM, cell towers, WiFi, microwave, etc.). Result, “most of the time, we are below 1 V / m, which is well below the regulatory values. We only exceed them in two cases, when we telephone with a cell phone and when we use a microwave oven “, explains our specialist.
Still, she and all scientists readily admit that we lack perspective. Tobacco or asbestos cause cancer twenty or thirty years after the onset of exposure. However, few are those who regularly use a cell phone for more than ten years. “If current studies still show little, it may be that we are only at the beginning of the problem. But the risk still seems low. While smoking increases the risk of developing lung cancer twenty-fold, we are only talking about a doubling of the risk here, but 75% of the population has a cell phone, so the health crisis could still prove to be important, “said Dr Sasco. Not to mention that the lack of perspective is even more obvious for emerging technologies such as WiFi. As for the cumulative effect of all these waves? Even among researchers, uncertainties remain.
