Thanks Lawrence. I appreciated the links you shared as I was unfamiliar with ‘Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity: A Systematic Review of Provocation Studies’. None of those studies specifically address wearable technology or the resulting pain experienced by some Apple Watch owners here. They tend to focus on headaches, fatigue and other more psychological responses, but also recognise that further research is needed into this field.
I am very interested in this area of study, although only recently. I spent the past ten years ridiculing those who felt there were possible health risks associated with prolonged exposure to low-level, non-ionising radiation. However, after finally deciding to evaluate the reasons I had for presupposing the absolute safety of EMR, I realised that I really didn't have any firm foundation.
I had always referenced the Interphone Study as absolute proof that EMR didn't pose a health risk. It cost $24,000,000 to perform, was conducted by IARC across 13 different countries and was the largest study every undertaken to see if mobile phone use increased the risk of certain tumours. It found that ‘overall, mobile phone use did not increase the risk of glioma or meningioma, and that, in fact, a decrease in risk was observed[!]’. It seemed to hard to argue with that… until I actually looked into this study in more depth. Participants were restricted to 30-59 years olds and did not include children who absorb much more radiation; a regular user was defined as someone who made at least one phone call each week for six weeks!; 25% of the funding came from the mobile/wireless industry; it treated cordless phone users as ‘unexposed’ and the list goes on.
Even Dr Elisabeth Cardis who headed this study even thought it was severely flawed: “In my personal opinion, I think we have number of elements that suggest a possible increased risk among the heaviest users, and because the heaviest users in our study are considered the low users today, I think that’s something of a concern’.
Also Appendix 1 and 2 to the Interphone study were published separately (very unusual in scientific publications) and actually showed an 84% increase rise of meningiomas for those who used a phone for 1640 hours or more contradicting their reporting on their own study. And yet most government health boards still refer to this flawed study, despite IARC going on to classify EMR as a class 2b possible carcinogen based on a literature review.
I have spent considerably longer than 5 minutes on Google over the past year and wanted to share a few of the studies that made me rethink my evaluation of the safety of this technology (I shared these in response to another thread here and they were deleted without warning so I’m not sure how long they will remain viewable here); all of them prove biological effects through non-ionising radiation. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the following as I think this is an important discussion for those heavily involved in the tech industry to have (without resorting to ridicule and name calling like KiltedTim). At present I am simply applying the precautionary principle and reducing my exposure to EMR but still use an iPhone 6s Plus, iPad Pro, Macbook Pro etc, albeit mostly on a wired network (yes even my iOS devices!). I really do hope that more definitive studies prove beyond all doubt in my mind that the technology is safe (especially as I would love an Apple Watch), but currently I think the pendulum is swinging more and more in the opposite direction (about 70% of the studies listed on the ARPANSA literature review show impacts on health).
Mobile Phone Radiation Induces Reactive Oxygen Species Production and DNA Damage in Human Spermatozoa In Vitro (source: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006446)
Use of laptop computers connected to internet through Wi-Fi decreases human sperm motility and increases sperm DNA fragmentation. (source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22112647)
2.45 GHz radiofrequency fields alter gene expression in cultured human cells. (source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16107253)
MAPK activation by radio waves (source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2267311/)
Tumor promotion by exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields below exposure limits for humans (source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006291X15003988)
The last study above by Alexander Lerchl confirms a 2010 study that found the same thing. Exposure to low level EMR promotes tumour growth (does not cause it) and the lower the frequency, the greater the promotion. If you look into Lerchl or Jacobs University, they are very reputable and he was one of the greatest defenders of the technology until completing this study.