Transcript der umstrittenen Wi-Fried-Sendung (II) (Allgemein)

Gast, Samstag, 05.11.2016, 11:37 (vor 2941 Tagen) @ Gast

Dr Ken Karipidis
We've been doing research in this area for a very long time and our assessment of the evidence suggests that although some studies do show effects, there is no established evidence that the low levels of radiofrequency radiation from tablets and phones and wi-fi and what have you causes health effects.

Dr Maryanne Demasi
So ARPANSA's not actually saying these devices are safe.

Dr Ken Karipidis
We can only provide advice on assessment of the evidence. We do not provide guarantees of safety. I don't think a scientist can do that.

NARRATION
In Ontario is the former head of Microsoft Canada, Frank Clegg. He has gained valuable insight into the machinations of the tech industry.

Frank Clegg
I've been in the technology industry all my career and I've seen the tremendous benefits that technology can provide. My concern is nobody can say that it's safe. All my industry and all government agencies say is there is no proof of harm. To my mind, that's not the same as saying it's safe.

NARRATION
Mr Clegg points out that the safety standard only protects people from thermal damage that can occur through overheating. But scientists have demonstrated that radiation emitting devices can cause DNA damage without heating tissue. These are non-thermal effects.

Frank Clegg
Unfortunately, the safety standards in North America and Australia are based on this theory that's many decades old that if tissue doesn't get heated, then it can't cause harm. That's just out of date, and what the biologists tell us and have shown in many experiments, and again, peer-reviewed published papers, that there is damage done at the DNA level, and from a biological standpoint, non-thermal radiation can cause and does cause harm to humans.

NARRATION
For example, there is strong evidence to suggest that mobile phones can damage sperm, as might occur when a male keeps his smartphone in his pocket.

Dr Devra Davis
If you take sperm from a healthy man and you put sperm in one test tube which gets no exposure with a mobile phone and the other gets exposure, the mobile phone exposed sperm die faster, have more damage to their mitochondrial DNA which is the engine that makes the cell run, and studies around the world consistently find the heaviest cell phone users have the lowest sperm count. Those studies have not been considered recently in reviews and there are new data emerging all the time.

NARRATION
This BioInitiative Report sets out hundreds of peer reviewed papers confirming the biological changes caused by wireless transmitting devices which can occur thousands of times below the safety threshold. It's been formulated by independent doctors and scientists from over ten different countries, but ARPANSA has a different view.

Dr Ken Karipidis
There's certainly some studies that have shown effects on sperm, but there's many other studies that haven't. There is no consistent evidence that there's established biological effects other than rising temperature. The evidence is really inconsistent, and it's not good enough at the moment to say that mobile phones do affect sperm.

NARRATION
Since IARC's decision in 2011, more evidence has emerged which adds strength to the findings. The CERENAT study and Hardell's study both found a link between heavy mobile phone use and rare head tumours.

Professor Bruce Armstrong
Those studies do suggest rather more strongly than the body of evidence available to IARC at the time that there is an association between heavy mobile phone use and brain tumours.

NARRATION
These studies have sparked calls for the classification to be upgraded from 2B to 2A.

Dr Devra Davis
My colleagues and I since then, some of whom have worked at the World Health Organisation with me in the past, have just published an article saying mobile phone radiation is a probable human carcinogen with newer studies showing that people who begin to use cell phones regularly and heavily as teenagers have four to eight times more malignant glioma, that's a brain tumour, ten years later.

NARRATION
The fear about mobile phones causing brain tumours is not a new debate.

Crowd
Cell phones cause cancer!

Woman
We have the right to know!

NARRATION
Previously, industry co-funded a study hoping to settle the debate once and for all.

Dr Devra Davis
The Interphone study was carried out from 2000-2004. The results were supposed to be released in 2005. It took five years to release the results of the Interphone study, and it was not because the science wasn't clear, it was because of the intense politics that took place between members of the team, some of whom had been heavily sponsored by industry, and others of whom were more independent. The bulk of the study said the results were inconclusive. The actual findings, in technical appendix 2, showed there was a significantly increased risk of brain cancer in the heaviest users.

NARRATION
Mobile phone manufacturers themselves are aware of the potential risks which is why they recently put warnings in each device.

Dr Devra Davis
First you go to Settings then you go to General. Then you go to About at the top. Then you have to look hard, you have to go all the way down to something called Legal, and then you go to RF Exposure.

Dr Maryanne Demasi
Of course. I've never been into this part of my phone.

Dr Devra Davis
Well, there you see, it says... Yours says 'Carry iPhone at least 10mm away from your body.' Mine says at least 5mm.

Dr Maryanne Demasi
What do you think about this warning?

Dr Devra Davis
I think the warning is... I think they're being a bit hypocritical to be trying to get you to buy more and more free talk time, then telling you you should limit your exposures.

NARRATION
It's not only telco companies who are cautious about potential risks. Insurance giant Lloyd's of London excludes cover for illnesses caused by electromagnetic radiation. When it comes to microwave transmitters like mobile phone towers, several other countries around the world have maintained more stringent safety thresholds compared to Australia.

Frank Clegg
We know that in China, Italy and Switzerland and Russia have standards 100 times safer than Canada's standards, and that's the same as Australia's standards.

NARRATION
It sparked concerns that ARPANSA is out of touch with the latest evidence.

Dr Maryanne Demasi
When was the last time ARPANSA updated their safety standards?

Dr Ken Karipidis
We published the standards in 2002, but we did a review of the science that underpins the standards in 2014. The review actually found that the limits of the standards still provide adequate protection from the known health effects of radiofrequency energy.

Frank Clegg
Any government agency, in my opinion, that has done a review in the last two or three years and hasn't made a significant change to their safety standard has not done a proper thorough review of the science. If you think back to what happened in the last decade, the smartphone was launched, wi-fi was not available 12 years ago, so any government agency that claims their standards that are a decade old are current is out of date.

NARRATION
When it comes to mobile phone risk, ARPANSA quotes brain cancer rates in the Australian population which they say refutes the idea that mobile phones cause brain cancer.

Dr Ken Karipidis
We've looked at the brain tumour rates for the last 30 years. The brain tumour rates have remained quite stable.

NARRATION
I confronted Dr Davis with this data while she was here in Australia.

Dr Devra Davis
Those who say the lack of increase in brain cancer tells you cell phones are safe don't understand brain cancer. It has a long latency. When the bombs fell at the end of WWII on Japan, we followed every person who survived. 40 years is how long it took for brain cancer to develop after that exposure.

NARRATION
Since cell phone use has exponentially increased only in the last five to ten years, Dr Davis says it's far too early to rule out the possibility that mobile phones are causing a problem in the general population.