A retired telecom researcher advocates precautionary limits, balanced standards bodies, clinical reportin…

I am a retired scientific researcher and strategy adviser having worked mainly in telecom R&D, industry and academia, living in Norway. Only late in my career, around 2010, I became aware of the abounding scientific research indicating health issues from cell phones and other RF-EMFs, as well as of tricks used to build a boolwark against such results. Since then, I have full time studied the scientific results and conveyed them to others, as I find the evidence overwhelming. On the way, I wrote books reviewing the science, translated books, and collected 150 selfreported descriptions of unhealth reactions experienced by electrohypersentive persons mainly from smartmeters, and from some other transmitting equipment. The stories include several in practice blind folded tests, and a wide range of so called "diffuse" acute symptoms, which vanish when away from the transmitting source. The 150 stories are included. (Publication consented.). However, listings of symptoms such as requested here and found in the 150 stories, do only register acute reactions, not long term effects from well documented impact on biosystems, e.g. DNA breaks or opening of the blood-brain-barrier. As unhealth from such effects is stochastic, multifactor and spread on a wide range of possible diagnoses, no valid conclusions can be drawn from registering acute symptoms. One must rely on huge epidemiological studies, realistic lab studies on basic mechanisms, and a precautionary approach. Therefore, as to relevant standards, the present standards from ICES/IIEEE and ICNIRP are irrelevant, as they only accept acute heat effects as proven, and set the recommended exposure maxima accordingly, only to protect against heat effects and demand presize measurements relevant for heat as causation. Such standards are unsuitable for protecting against (athermal) long term effects, and not precaucionary and have no predication value and therefore unusable for public radiation protection. Federal health agencies should in stead consider exposure standards based on experience cum science, and base standards on a precautionary approach. The best and most relevant such guideline and standard with recommended max exposure limits at present is: Belyaev I, Dean A, Eger H, Hubmann G, Jandrisovits R, Kern M, Kundi M, Moshammer H, Lercher P, Müller K, Oberfeld G, Ohnsorge P, Pelzmann P, Scheingraber C, Thill R. EUROPAEM EMF Guideline 2016 for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of EMF-related health problems and illnesses. Rev Environ Health. 2016 Sep 1;31(3):363-97. doi: 10.1515/reveh-2016-0011. PMID: 27454111. What would improve the assessment, disclosure, and regulation of wireless radiation exposure the most, would be to get the bodies shaping the norms have a balanced representation of industry, independent researchers and government - not only industry and/or personell accepting to work on the premises that heat only effects is all there is to protect, and neglecting all other effects, although very well proven (or even probable only). To include taking advice from the ICBE-EMF (The International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields) would be such an important step in the right direction. A very efficient step to develop, test, and evaluate the effectiveness of procedures and techniques for minimizing exposure to electronic product radiation, would be to establish a lab test site and approval system based on measuring oxidative stress in cells from microwave exposure. (This can easily and cost-effectively and fast be measured by standard equipment. Ask prof. em. Martin L Pall for further advice for set up of such a lab.) As effects from RF-EMF are in part acute, in part long term and just one of several vectors, trying to list the risk picture per item is a futile exercise and disturbs real risk assessments. In stead, to Measure Human Exposure and Public Health Surveillance, MDs should start registering and reporting suspected cases of EMF-caused unhealth. Any radiation protection strategy must be based on standard environmental medicine / toxicology procedures as to already present toxic matters: i.e. based on precaution and with a low, not an extremely high, demand for proof as at present, and not demanding sigle factorial proofs. Einar Flydal, cand. polit.; Master of Telecom Strategy, retired from telecom & academia, writer and blogger Oslo, Norway