Two scientists sidelined after testifying before House health committee

Two European professors say their research careers have suffered after testifying last April before the House Standing Committee on Health about health risks associated with wireless signals. “I was kept back from doing experiments. I was gradually excluded from lectures and remained a post-doctoral fellow while I should have been already an assistant professor,” Dimitris Panagopoulos, a researcher at the University of Athens’ department of cell biology and biophysics, told The Wire Report by email. “Then right after the Canadian I was asked to leave my office.” On April 29, 2010, Panagopoulos told the health committee about his research, in which he found that cellphone radiation between 900 MHz and 1800 MHz can reduce the reproductive capacity of insects. “lthough we cannot simply extrapolate the above results from insects to humans, similar effects on humans cannot be excluded,” Panagopoulos told the committee as it undertook a study on the potential health risks posed by cellphones and other wireless devices. “On the contrary, they are possible. First, because insects are, in general, much more resistant to radiation than mammals, and second, because the presented findings are in agreement with the results of other experimenters who are reporting DNA damage in mammalian cells or mammalian and human infertility.” The University of Athens did not respond to interview requests about Panagopoulos’ status with the institution. Olle Johansson, a researcher with the department of neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, also told The Wire Report that he was moved into a smaller office after addressing the committee as part of the same study in April. “As a scientist, in my work I must look for definitive proofs or correlations between cause and action,” Johansson said by email to The Wire Report. “But as an ordinary human being, I must admit it is a lot of coincidence … to explain the fact that three of the witnesses (Dimitris Panagopoulos, Annie Sasco and myself), shortly after we had addressed the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Health, were asked to move out of our premises.” Sasco is the director of epidemiology for cancer prevention at France’s Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale and also addressed the health committee in April. She told The Wire Report by email that “her work situation is not improving” for reasons including “severe personal difficulties” but did not make any direct link between her work status and her appearance before the committee. Still, she added that university departments are “generally in favour of non-controversial topics, at least for some researchers.” Staffan Cullheim, head of the Karolinska Institute’s neuroscience department, has said that Johansson’s allegations are the result of a misunderstanding. In a letter last August to the Human Ecological Social Economic Project, a loose union of scientists and scientific institutions, Cullheim wrote that Johansson’s move to a smaller office is only temporary. “In reality, there is a plan to move his laboratory within our department, and he will be offered premises and conditions that will suit his activities well,” Cullheim wrote. “This is the first time Olle Johansson needs to move since the department assembled in the Retzius building in 2000. Almost all other researchers, including myself, have already moved within the house at least once during this time.” Johansson told the health committee that the federal safety codes for the Canadian wireless industry are out of date and should be stricter. Health Canada’s Safety Code 6 sets the standards for exposure to radio frequencies in Canada. “It's obvious that your safety code is completely out of date and obsolete, and that goes for any form of international or national standards body throughout the world, including the American IEEE and FCC and the international ICNIRP standards and so forth,” Johansson told the committee. “Low-intensity, non-thermal bio-effects and adverse health effects are demonstrated at levels significantly below existing exposure standards. These standards are inadequate and obsolete with respect to prolonged low-intensity exposures.” Marc Choma, a spokesman for the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA), told The Wire Report that there is already a “huge safety margin” built into the safety standards that Industry Canada administers for the wireless industry. But Magda Havas, an associate professor of environmental and resource studies at Trent University who has been an outspoken critic of the wireless industry, has questioned whether Industry Canada has enough independence from the wireless industry. “Industry Canada is supposed to enforce the guidelines for exposure,” Havas said in an interview. “They’re getting millions if not billions of dollars from the wireless industry every time they sell licences to operate. So how can you have the Industry , which is making the money, also regulating?” Michel Cimpaye, a spokesman for Industry Canada, said by email that Health Canada’s Safety Code 6 guidelines came about after peer reviewed scientific study and that the Industry Department adopted it “for the purpose of protecting the general public.” Cimpaye noted that “Industry Canada performs no research in this area” and that spectrum revenues generated by Industry Canada’s policies are directed into the federal government's consolidated revenue fund. Controversy over the health risks related to electro-magnetic fields surfaced earlier this year when questions were raised in an Ontario school board over the safety of WiFi networks in elementary schools. In August the Simcoe County School Board in Southern Ontario stuck by a decision to keep WiFi access in its schools in the face of protest from parents who said the technology was making their children sick. The school board said there was no scientific or medical evidence to show that WiFi in classrooms was responsible for complaints from children about headaches, dizziness and nausea. Lorne Trottier, co-founder of computer equipment company Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd., runs a website called emfandhealth.com, which has criticized Havas and maintains that there are no health risks associated with exposure to radio frequencies. Trottier said his work on wireless and health is associated with Joe Schwarcz, director of the office for Science and Society at McGill University, and said there has been no increase in the incidence of brain cancer worldwide over the last 25 years—the same period of time that cellphones have been in use. “There are four billion cellphones in the world and if they are in any way contributing to brain cancer it would show up like a jack rabbit on these charts, and there’s absolutely nothing,” Trottier said. Havas said she was not surprised that Panagopoulos was asked to leave his office. “This has happened time and again in science. When you’re up against a fairly powerful industry, they want to make sure that your voice isn’t heard,” she said. Havas said that she has also faced obstacles in her career because her research has questioned the safety of wireless devices. “They try to discredit you. They take away your research funding if you have any. They try to get you fired or removed from your duties at the university,” she said. But Havas added that she has tenure at Trent University and that the institution has always supported her research. Choma told The Wire Report that the “overwhelming evidence” from the scientific community is that wireless devices pose no health risks. Earlier this year, the largest study yet on the potential link between cellphone use and brain cancer, the Interphone Study, suggested an increased risk of cancer for the most active cellphone users but remained inconclusive as to whether it is caused by cellphone radiation. “An increased risk of brain cancer is not established from the data from Interphone,” Christopher Wild, director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), said in a release in May. “However, observations at the highest level of cumulative call time and the changing patterns of mobile phone use since the period studied by Interphone, particularly in young people, mean that further investigation of mobile phone use and brain cancer risk is merited.” Critics of the Interphone Study have said much of the funding was provided by the wireless industry, skewing the results. But Choma said Canadian research for the study was conducted in Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver, and that only the Ottawa portion received funding from the Canadian wireless industry. “Research costs a lot of money,” Choma said. “Because we are a responsible industry, we have provided that funding, but that is the end of it. There is no further involvement. There is no say in the study design or the research methodology. It is completely independent.” jmigneault@thewirereport.ca

Two scientists sidelined after testifying before House health committee

News | October 6, 2010

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