Mobile Phone Health Debate - Impaired by Unreliable Scientific Research
Mobile phones and pylons and the possible harmful health effects continue to be of interest and concern to the general public - however a new report, published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has questioned the reliability of scientific literature.
The paper is based on the review of 829 relevant scientific papers from across the world.
The IET is at the forefront of rigorously examining scientific evidence and, to this end, maintains its Biological Effects Policy Advisory Group (BEPAG), a group of six of the UK’s top scientists and engineers in the subject area.
Chairman of BEPAG, Professor Tony Barker, a Fellow of the IET, said, “Of particular note in this new position statement is that whilst, on balance, there continues to be no robust scientific evidence of harm, many experimental studies on magnetic fields associated with electricity power distribution do report effects.
“However, when these same experimental studies are repeated by independent groups of scientists, no effect is found. This conundrum is suspected by BEPAG to indicate an underlying weakness in much of the published literature.
“To improve the robustness of the literature, it would be desirable for studies which report apparent low level effects in the absence of plausible mechanisms to be confirmed by other groups prior to publication. Pressures to publish studies as soon as possible, however understandable, may not necessarily be in the best public interest.”
The IET publishes its position statement biennially. It is of the opinion that the public availability of electricity and the widespread use of telecommunications both have many demonstrable benefits to society, including those associated with health.
Professor Barker continued, “We are of the opinion that all factors, together with convincing scientific evidence, should be taken into account by policy makers when considering the costs and benefits of both the implementation of precautionary approaches to public EMF exposure and also in the development of exposure guidelines.”
The position statement can be downloaded at: http://www.theiet.org/factfiles/bioeffects/postat02final.cfm?type=pdf
The literature searches retrieved a total of 829 relevant papers in 2006 and 2007 combined, a publication rate largely unchanged since 2000. Of these 47% (previously 51%) covered static and low frequencies, primarily relating to power-frequency fields associated with power generation and distribution. 42% (previously 37%) of the papers dealt with RF fields, of which 64% (previously 55%) were specifically related to mobile-phone frequencies (equivalent to 27% (previously 21%) of the total relevant literature). These figures show the continuing trend, observed in previous BEPAG Position Statements, for EMF research to refocus from power frequencies towards mobile-phone frequencies.
Posted to the site on 29th May 2008
