Letter to Italian Government re RF RExposure limits DG et al April 26th 2021

Dear Presidente del Consiglio Mario Draghi, Presidente della Camera, Roberto Fico and Presidente del Senato, Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati

We understand that your Government is seriously considering significantly raising the Italian public exposure limits for radio frequency radiation (RFR)s.

As senior scientists with relevant experience of EMF/RFR we are writing to you to caution against raising, by 100 times in terms of power density, the 20 year- old, and path- breaking, Exposure Limits for protecting the Italian public from EMF/RFR, and to replace them with the higher exposure limits recommended 20 years ago (and reiterated in 2020) by the private sector body, ICNIRP.

The ICNIRP exposure limits are essentially based on acute, thermal biological effects only and not on the strongly emerging and chronic biological and environmental effects from RFR exposures.  These longer term effects now include reasonably strong evidence of cancer in humans, notably for glioma (brain) tumours and acoustic neuromas.

Since 2018, the human evidence has been supported by “clear” evidence of cancer in animals from two complementary and mutually supportive long term research studies by the US Governments’ National Toxicology Programme and by the independent Italian organisation, Institute Ramazzini, which has helped to lead the way in large scale animal carcinogenicity testing for the last 50 years.

This more recent evidence means that the current classification of the cancer risk from RF from mobile phones by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO,2011), as a “possible” human carcinogen, will certainly be re- evaluated to at least a “probable” and possibly a “proven” human carcinogen when IARC comes to re-evaluate the  RFR evidence which is expected in the next 2 years.

In light of this emerging evidence, and the already widespread and increasing public and environmental exposures to RFR from Telecommunications devices (which will, in general, be exacerbated by the roll out of 5G), we consider it would be a retrograde and unwise move to increase the prescient Italian RFREMF exposure limits by 100 times to reach the inadequate exposure limits recommended by ICNIRP.

Senior experts from within the Bio electromagnetics field, such as Professors s James Lin and Frank Barnes, are now questioning the ability of the ICNIRP exposure limits for RF to fully protect public health.

They, and many other EMF experts, are recommending the ALARA principle (ie to keep exposures “as low as reasonably achievable”) which has been long  used in the ionising radiation field to protect the public and sensitive sub groups from ionising radiations.

Italy has led the world for the last 20 years in demonstrating that their lower and more health protective exposure limits for RFR can be reached by the Italian Telecommunications industry without significant economic or technical barriers to their expansion into 4 and 5G systems.

We are available for further advice, if requested.

Short cv s are available on request,

Yours sincerely,

David Gee and other signatories below.

David Gee, Retired Senior Adviser, Science, Policy, Emerging Issues, European Environment Agency, Copenhagen (1996-2012); Visiting Fellow, Brunel University, London. Fellow Collegium Ramazzini

Linda Birnbaum, Retired Director National Institute Environmental Health Sciences, USA. Fellow Collegium Ramazzini

Chris Portier, Former Director, National Center for Environmental Health, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Lennart Hardell, Professor Department of Oncology, Faculty of Medicine and Health, Örebro University, Sweden (retired)  and The Environment and Cancer Research Foundation, Sweden.  Fellow Collegium Ramazzini

Magda Havas, B.Sc., Ph.D., Professor Emerita, Trent School of the Environment, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada,

Eli Richter, Professor Elihu D Richter MD MPH Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine Jerusalem Israel. Fellow Collegium Ramazzini

Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D.,  Director, Center for Family and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA USA.

Devra Davis PhD, MPH President, Environmental Health Trust, USA Fellow Collegium Ramazzini

Cindy Sage,  Co-editor and principal author of the BioInitiative Reports (2007 -2020), Member, Physicians for Safe Technology

Published research

Several reviews now conclude that the latest data supports a an updated conclusion- RFR is at least a probable carcinogen and even a proven Group 1 human carcinogen ( Miller et al., 2018; Peleg et al., 2018; Carlberg and Hardell, 2017; Belpomme et al., 2018; Melnick, 2019; Portier 2021; Lin, 2019; Directorate-General for Parliamentary Research Services (European Parliament) & Belpoggi, 2021).