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| WHO may be criminally liable for offences in the countries that follow the guidelines on electrosmog | |
| Canada | Created: 11 Nov 2005 |
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World Health Organization - WHO writes off electro-smog victims Is "dirty electricity" in your own suburban dream home making you ill? According to PooBahs at the World Health Organization, you’ve only come down with "Idiopathic Environment Intolerance" (IEI). Summer smog visible on the skyline over cities like Toronto and Los Angeles provides a perfect seasonal soapbox for headline hungry politicians. No politician or environmental activist is doing anything about the electricity pollution that an increasing number of people say is making them ill, and certainly not WHO. WHO, which last week held a workshop on "Electrical Hypersensitivity", in Prague, Czech Republic wrote off global victims of electricity pollution and electrosmog–and included a recommendation advising governments to "discourage measurement in homes". If electrosmog is not creating problems for human health, then why would WHO discourage measurement of electric magnetic fields in homes? Retired Toronto police officer Martin Weatherall, who suffers from an illness he believes was brought on by electricity pollution, says WHO may someday be found "criminally irresponsible" in writing off the victims of electrosmog. Weatherall, who works on behalf of other victims of electricity pollution, has dispatched a letter to WHO Director General Lee Jong Wok, included here: 10 November 2005 Director-General Lee Jong-wook World Health Organization Headquarters Avenue Appia 20 1211 Geneva 27 Switzerland Dear Director-General: I have recently read the document entitled "WHO Workshop on Electrical Hypersensitivity, Prague, Czech Republic, October 25-27, 2004. Working Group Meeting". I am now writing to advise you how disappointed I am with some of the recommendations. In particular, I am referring to the recommendations on page 8 under the headings Information for the General Public and Advice to Governments, both of which include the point: "discourage measurements in homes". This advice to the General Public and to Governments is so completely contrary to sensible thinking and so fundamentally wrong that the World Health Organization may be criminally liable for offences in the countries that follow these guidelines. I base this statement on my own experience and situations where I have had personal involvement. If the WHO is considering only simple EMFs as being the cause of many people’s illnesses, the WHO is quite wrong. A better way to describe the real problem is "electrical pollution" or "electrosmog". This includes: 1. Electromagnetic fields 2. Electrical fields 3. Ground current electricity 4. Dirty electricity on the power distribution systems 5. Broadcast signals from a variety of different sources, including cellular telephones, radar and wireless devices. If the WHO is not willing to consider how all of these problems interact and cause health problems, the WHO will fail to diagnose the true cause of many severe illnesses and will fail in its duties to the world population. In the WHO document, the working group has chosen a description other than electro hypersensitivity and has called the illnesses "Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance’ (IEI). My description is a little more simple to understand and is more to the point — "electrical and radio frequency radiation poisoning". The persons that you refer to as IEI suffer their illnesses only after being exposed to dangerous levels of electrical pollution. They have been poisoned, possibly by one of the above named toxic ingredients, but it is more likely that a mixture of two or more elements caused their illnesses. It is totally irresponsible for the WHO to discourage the testing of homes of persons suffering from EMFs and other forms of electrical pollution. Severe suffering and even death may result for those who do not get help. The WHO should reverse the current recommendations, and advise complete and thorough testing of victims’ homes and, possibly, their workplaces. It is very important to identify and quantify the reasons why so many people are being made sick by electrical pollution. Missing any one of the above "ingredients" of electrical pollution may fail to find the real reason for a victim’s sickness and cause further suffering and danger. If several new viruses were causing death and suffering throughout the world, surely the WHO would not simply say to Governments - "do not try to identify them". Why, then, has the WHO ignored the significant health damage already occurring in many countries because of electrical pollution? Is the WHO going to wait until a catastrophic amount of harm is visible to all the population, before taking action? My own situation is an example of the need to identify and measure the different elements of electrical pollution. Considerable ground current electricity was found inside my home even when all of the electricity was disconnected. High electrical fields were located throughout the basement and on the telephone lines. Electromagnetic fields covered the whole house and were particularly high at the outdoor drilled water well. Various low and high frequencies were located on the electricity flowing through the house. I suffered a variety of very adverse health symptoms and developed prostate cancer within one year of living at my home. My wife and I have been unable to live in our own house for ten months now, and we have been forced to find alternate accommodation because the electrical utility company has refused to correct problems with their distribution system. Canadian health care and government authorities have failed to provide any meaningful assistance or advice about our electrical pollution problem. Without the assistance of an electronics expert who provided detailed measurements, I would not have known what was causing my illness and would have probably continued to grow increasingly ill. Your recommendations enable governments and utility companies to continue their bad and dangerous practices, while at the same time leaving sufferers helpless to correct their situations. Within the last few weeks, I have been involved in three situations where the measurement of victims’ homes resulted in the discovery of dangerous electrical pollution that was causing serious illness. In a rural house northwest of Toronto, a wireless plug-in telephone jack was causing massive amounts of high frequency radiation inside the home. After the wireless jack and other problematic items were unplugged, a female occupant of the home reported a drastic improvement to her health. She was able to walk properly, climb stairs, and sleep all night, which she had not been able to accomplish previously. She also reported that she was no longer experiencing many severe migraines, only "normal" headaches. Only the use of special instruments located the problematic devices that were causing so much harm. Upon request, I recently attended in Toronto at the apartment of a woman who was disabled by electrical pollution. A defective fluorescent light fixture in the apartment below seemed to be the cause of very high levels of EMFs that were emanating from the kitchen floor. In the bedroom of the same apartment, near to the place where the victim’s head lies when she is sleeping, a very high amount of high frequency radiation was discovered coming from the wall. The problem was eventually located in the next apartment, where an almost new wireless telephone was found to be the source of extremely high amounts of radio frequencies. This was a problem even when the telephone was not in use, and simply resting in its cradle. Only careful testing with a variety of different sensitive instruments managed to locate these very serious electrical pollution problems. Unfortunately, the victim is so electrically hypersensitive that she still suffers greatly. In her previous efforts to get help from doctors, she had been referred to psychiatrists and had not been provided with any meaningful help. The WHO recommendations actually encourage this type of treatment by failing, as an organization, to explore the connection between electrical pollution and sickness, and by advising physicians not to search for causal factors when treating victims. Furthermore, the WHO undermines the serious nature of this problem by advising governments that there are no grounds to use IEI as a diagnostic classification. In a different situation, in a rural home located west of Toronto, I found another wireless telephone that was producing and transmitting very high levels of high frequency radiation, but only when the telephone was turned on and in use. The victim complained of tinnitus, severe ear pain in the area where the receiver was normally held against her head, and severe pain linked to her neck and back. In the short amount of time since this problem was identified and she stopped using the wireless phone, the victim has reported that her injuries have improved by fifty percent. In the workplace of an assistant professor at a Canadian University, extremely high levels of ground current electricity were located flowing through his office. He has developed such severe sensitivities to the electrical pollution, that he cannot work in that office and is experiencing great difficulty finding a place to live where he does not feel ill. A university office tower located near his office houses many different broadcast and cell phone antennae. Amongst the workers in the top floors of that tower, there are several persons who have developed cancer. In each of these situations, it was difficult to locate and identify the cause of the harm. Even simple EMF measurements, which you discourage, would have been inadequate. The victims would have continued to be harmed, their quality of life would have been degraded, and their lives would have been at risk. If the WHO continues with its recommendations to discourage the measurement of homes, you will be ensuring that many people will suffer, become ill, and possibly die, and that the real causes of their sicknesses will not be identified by health authorities. There are clear signs that electrical pollution is becoming a major health problem throughout the developed world. The recommendations from this working group will ensure that the WHO stays "willfully blind" to the causes of what appears to be a major environmental disaster. This health threat is so significant that the WHO should give it highest priority. Instead, your feeble response to date is compromising the safety of those you should be protecting. In conclusion, I recommend that the health dangers of electrical pollution be brought to the attention of all governments and health authorities throughout the world. Also, thorough and complete testing of victims’ homes should be recommended to governments, health authorities and health care professionals, so that the electrical pollution harming citizens can be identified. Only by this means will the WHO be able to properly recognize the real causes of these illnesses and be in a position to make recommendations for a safer world environment in the future. Yours sincerely, Martin Weatherall Cc Mr. Dave Stetzer, Electrical Specialist & Consultant, Wisconsin, U.S.A. Dr. David Fancy, Director - Safe Wireless, Electrical and Electromagnetic Policies. Dr. Magda Havas, Environmental and Resource Studies Program, Trent University. Canada Free Press founding editor Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the media. A former Toronto Sun and Kingston Whig Standard columnist, she has also appeared on Newsmax.com, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, and World Net Daily. Judi can be reached at: letters@canadafreepress.com. You can read your Letters to the Editor here. |
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| Source: Judi McLeod. Thursday, November 10, 2005 | |
| Childhood Cancer Survivors Face Social Challenges | |
| Canada | Created: 6 Oct 2005 |
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Childhood Cancer Survivors Face Social Challenges A new study finds children who survive cancer have about twice the rate of educational and social problems compared to children without a history of cancer. The study, published in the October 15, 2005 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, finds children with brain tumors, neuroblastoma, or leukemia and children treated with cranial radiation therapy (CRT) are at greatest risk for educational difficulties and social isolation. As therapies for childhood cancers have become more complex and aggressive, children have benefited with increased cure rates and longer survival. Increasingly, researchers are studying the long-term outcomes of these treatments and unearthing troubling findings for these children's development. Though studies are small and limited to leukemias and central nervous system tumors, the findings suggest increased risk of some secondary cancers and decreased quality of life and psychosocial adjustment. In the first large Canadian study of the long-term effects of childhood cancer and its treatments on survivors' educational and social development, Maru Barrera, PhD, from The Hospital of Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, and her colleagues surveyed the parents of 800 still school age cancer survivors and 923 age- and gender-matched cancer-free subjects (controls). The researchers found that survivors had more difficulties in school and suffered more often from social isolation. Academically, 46% of survivors reported academic problems compared to only 23% of controls. Compared to controls, cancer survivors more often repeated a grade (21% vs. 9%); attended learning disability (19% vs. 7%) or special education programs (20% vs. 8%). Children with brain cancers, leukemia, and neuroblastoma and those treated with CRT or combined CRT and intrathecal methotrexate (IT MTX) were more likely to report educational difficulties. Socially, cancer survivors reported no close friends (19% vs. 8%) and less often used friends as confidants (58% vs. 67%). Children with brain tumors were more likely to report difficulties with friendships. Children with leukemia or neuroblastoma are also at greater risk for social adjustment difficulties, which has not been previously reported. Also previously not reported, children treated with CRT alone were at greater risk of developing social problems. Dr. Barrera concludes, "Child and adolescent survivors of childhood cancer were more likely to experience educational difficulties and less likely to have close friends or use friends as confidants than population controls of the same age and gender." The authors conjecture that "the poorer social and educational outcomes of the survivors are the result of a multitude of disease, treatment and situational factors." REFERENCE: Barrera M, et al. Educational and Social Late Effects of Childhood Cancer and Related Clinical, Personal and Familial Characteristics. CANCER; Published Online: September 12, 2005 (DOI: 10.1002/cncr.21390); Print Issue Date: October 15, 2005. SOURCE: Wiley & Sons, Inc. |
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| Source: DGNews HOBOKEN, NJ -- September 9, 2005 -- | |
| WHO study examines cellphone risks to kids | ||||
| Canada | Created: 19 Jul 2005 | |||
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While cellphones are increasingly popular among kids, some scientists worry the devices are a health risk to them. The World Health Organization is completing a massive study to see if there's a link between cellphone use and brain cancer and other ailments. Cellphones emit electromagnetic radiation. Their design requires them to be held tight to a person's head. Scientists are concerned that childrens' skulls are thinner and their brains are still developing. Therefore, the risk of electromagnetic energy damaging their brains could be greater than the risk for adults. There are ways to reduce the risk, said a WHO spokesman. "With respect to children, WHO recommends that children should use hands-free headsets," said Mike Repacholi. "I have a headset, actually," one youngster told CTV News. "I use it when I'm biking." "It's a decision for them and their parents to make together," said Peter Barnes of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association about cellphones and kids. Barnes said if children limit their cellphone use to an hour per day, there should be no problems. One reason for concern is that the wireless industry is increasingly targeting children, coming out with Barbie or Hello Kitty-themed products. The Canadian research team contributing to the project has access to the phone records of cancer patients - and some of them are kids. "And if we're looking at chronic diseases like cancer, because they are exposed at an earlier age, they have a greater opportunity for that effect to manifest itself," said Daniel Krewski, who added there is no evidence so far that kids are at risk. Globally, the wireless industry predicts 1.6 billion cellphone customers in 2005. About 15 million Canadians are believed to use them. The cellphone industry in this country claims to employ 25,000 and generate about $10 billion in annual business. "Given the immense numbers of users of mobile phones, even small adverse effects on health could have major public health implications" the WHO said. Kids and cancer aren't the only focuses of the study, which will also look at conditions like memory loss and other decline in mental functioning. The study is also examining the questions of whether people can safely use cellphones while driving and how much they interfere with medical devices. The report should by completed by year's end. With a report from CTV's Rosemary Thompson. |
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| Source: CTV.ca News Staff | ||||
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