Saturday, September 28, 2013

Review of Safety Code 6: Potential Health Risks of Radiofrequency Fields from Wireless Telecommunications Devices (EXPERT PANEL REPORTS)


EXPERT PANEL REPORTS

Review of Safety Code 6: Potential Health Risks of Radiofrequency Fields from Wireless Telecommunications Devices

Abstract: 
At the request of Health Canada, the Royal Society of Canada has assembled this expert panel to conduct a review of Safety Code 6, which concerns the potential health risks of radiofrequency fields from wireless telecommunication devices. Please click here to read the original report.

Updates from the Panel



Dr. Paul Demers
Dr. Paul Demers, Chair (University of Toronto)
Paul Demers is the Director of the Occupational Cancer Research Centre, based within Cancer Care Ontario and is also the Scientific Director of CAREX Canada, a workplace and environmental carcinogen surveillance program, based at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver.   He is a Professor with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and a Clinical Professor with the University of British Columbia.  Paul is an epidemiologist whose research has focused primarily on the impact of pesticides, asbestos, wood dust, and other occupational and environmental exposures on cancer, lung disease, and heart disease. In addition, he has an interest in both occupational carcinogen and cancer surveillance.  He has been a member of many national and international expert panels dealing with occupational and environmental cancer for organizations such as the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the U.S. National Toxicology Program, the U.S. Institute of Medicine, the Canadian Cancer Society, and the Council of Canadian Academies.

Dr. Richard FindlayDr. Richard Findlay (EMFcomp, UK)Dr Richard Findlay, PhD is a physicist with over 25 years’ experience. He has previously worked for the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) and the Health Protection Agency (HPA) in the UK. In this capacity he carried out extensive work in the field of computational electromagnetics and gave advice relating to the safety of electromagnetic fields. He has developed code for the computational modelling of electromagnetic field absorption in biological materials, created new human voxel and NURBS hybrid phantoms, provided expert scientific advice regarding electromagnetic fields to various advisory groups and published a number of papers in the peer-reviewed literature on the subject of human electromagnetic field absorption. Richard is currently a computational physicist at EMFcomp where he uses state-of-the-art hardware and bespoke software to model the interaction of electromagnetic fields with the body.

Dr. Kenneth FosterDr. Kenneth Foster (University of Pennsylvania)Kenneth R. Foster is Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Since receipt of the Ph.D. in physics in 1971, Dr. Foster has been engaged in studies on the interaction of nonionizing radiation and biological systems, with more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals on topics including biophysical mechanisms of interaction, electrical properties of biological materials, and medical applications and possible human health effects of radiofrequency (RF) fields. He is a registered professional engineer, and a fellow of the IEEE and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering . He has long been involved with professional activities related to radiofrequency fields and human health, including longstanding membership on the IEEE International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety (SCC39) that sets safe limits for human exposure to RF fields and the IEEE EMBS Committee on Man and Radiation as well as membership on the Physical Agents Committee of the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH). He spent a sabbatical year (2000) with the EMF Project of the World Health Organization, and has consulting with a number of government and commercial firms on the issue of human health and safety as related to exposure to nonionizing electromagnetic fields. A former president of the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology, he has written numerous articles on social and ethical implications of technology and on the public controversy surrounding the possible health effects of RF energy. He is coauthor or coeditor of two books on risk assessment and the law.

Dr. Bryan KolbDr. Bryan Kolb, FRSC (University of Lethbridge)Bryan Kolb is a native of Calgary and is currently a Professor in the Department Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge, where he has been since 1976.  He received his PhD from Pennsylvania State University in 1973 and did postdoctoral work at the U of Western Ontario and the Montreal Neurological Institute. His recent work has focused on the development of the prefrontal cortex and how neurons of the cerebral cortex change in response to various developmental factors including hormones, experience, stress, drugs, neurotrophins, and injury, and how these changes are related to behaviour.  Bryan Kolb has published 5 books, including two textbooks with Ian Whishaw (Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology, Sixth Edition; Introduction to Brain and Behavior, Fourth Edition), and over 350 articles and chapters.  Kolb is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Killam Fellow of the Canada Council. He is currently a member of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research program in the Child Brain Development program.

Dr. Anne-Marie Nicol - Simon Fraser University

Dr. John MoulderDr. John Moulder (Medical College of Wisconsin)
Dr. Moulder, Ph.D., is Professor of Radiation Oncology, Radiology, and Pharmacology-Toxicology at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), and Director of the MCW Center for Medical Countermeasures against Radiological Terrorism.  His primary research interest is the development of methods to detect, prevent and treat injuries from exposure to ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.  This has led to his work in areas as diverse as the radiobiological risks of space travel, the development of methods to mitigate injuries from radiological terrorism, and evaluation of the biological risks of mobile phone use.  Dr. Moulder’s work has been supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association; he is the author or co-author of over 150 peer-reviewed articles on radiation biology and radiation-related issues.

Dr. Frank PratoDr. Frank Prato (Western University)Dr Frank S Prato is the Research Imaging Program Leader and Assistant Scientific Director at the Lawson Health Research Institute. As a researcher/scientist he has implemented $34,000,000 in molecular and hybrid imaging including, as of Feb 7 2012, the first PET/MRI whole body hybrid imaging platform in Canada. Dr Prato has a background in both Nuclear Medicine imaging and MR imaging and has published close to 200 peer review papers including 55 in the last 5 years. Dr. Prato has discovered how Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be used to "see" the extent of permanent heart muscle damage caused by a heart attack, better than any other imaging method. He also discovered that exposure to extremely low frequency magnetic fields can affect opioid related behaviours and induce analgesia in humans. With the Lawson imaging team of 31 researchers his group  is a recognized leader in non-invasive biomedical imaging with new developments in hybrid imaging platforms currently being applied to the areas of cardiology, neurology (including mental health), metabolic disease and cancer. Newly-acquired cyclotron and radiochemistry facilities will provide key resources for this research. Also at the forefront of biomedical imaging are the emerging technologies of photoacoustic and optical imaging and optical spectroscopy as well as the investigation and therapeutic application of bioelectromagnetics.

Dr. Rianne StamDr. Rianne Stam (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands)Rianne Stam was trained as a medical biologist at Utrecht University. She subsequently conducted scientific research and taught medical and biology students at University Medical Center Utrecht, first as post-doctoral fellow and then as assistant professor. Her main area of interest at university was the neurobiology and physiology of stress. Since 2007 she works as senior scientist at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (Bilthoven, the Netherlands), where she performs risk assessments and policy research on the biological effects and possible health risks of electromagnetic fields (EMF). She has published over 30 peer-reviewed research papers and has regularly acted as a reviewer for neuroscience, physiology and pharmacology journals. She was actively involved as an invited scientific expert in the preparations and negotiations for a new EU Directive on worker protection against the risks of EMF in the Advisory Council for Safety and Health at Work and in the Council of the European Union. She has also developed information documents on EMF for the non-profit public outreach organization “Knowledge Platform Electromagnetic Fields”, in which her employer participates.

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