In 2007, a number of libraries employees in Paris complained about headaches, nausea… right after massive installation of wifi emitters in their offices. This led to a fight between Paris’ city hall and worker unions (giving way to the set up of a citizen conference on proliferation of EMFs in Paris)At French National Library BNF, and more recently in Paris subway transport company RATP, it is in the same deleterious conditions that the debate takes place between unions and corporations, relative to questions about health implications at work relative to the in-flow of those new wireless technologies in businesses. Everyone in this file has now access to a first medical answer relative to intolerance to EMFs published in Canadian Newspaper ” La Maison du 21ème Siècle”

French researchers have just shown that Electromagnetic Fields (EMFs) does notably modify blood and grain physiology in ES people, and that the impact on those biological markers rises and falls with intensity of the exposure. “We do know with certainty that Electrohypersensitivity is not psychosomatic”, tells us Oncologist Pr. Belpomme in a telephone interview. “EMFs do trigger major effects in the brain. The most important effect is the opening of the blood-brain barrier. This allows mercury, organochlorates and other toxics to pervade through the brain, where they cause diverse ailments and neurodegenerative diseases.” Pr Belpomme records having 20 new patients per week.

An Oncology Professor at Paris Descartes University, Pr. Belpomme is president of the Association for Therapeutic Research Against Cancer (french acronym ARTAC, artac.info), which shifted to cancer prevention from 2004 on. Since may 2008, his team studies what he named Electromagnetic Fields Intolerance Syndrom (french acronym SICEM). “I have 450 patients and I see up to 20 new patients each week, including children with headaches, memory loss, attention or language troubles. We have the biggest cluster in Europe of electrosensitive patients. This is a major problem in public health.”

ES, or SICEM, is an extreme reaction to fairly low exposure levels to electric and magnetic fields of low frequency (50-60Hz) emitted by electric wires and electrical appartus, up to 10MHz or 300GHz radiofrequencies, including microwaves, of wireless devices and their antennaes. This syndrome is recognized in Sweden as a handicap giving way to diverse modifications of the environment by protecting devices that can be state-subsidized to lower exposures.

Most sensitive cases are wrongly imputed to psychiatry : their symptoms (cardiovascular, dermatological, neurological and muscular) are so strong they have to protect themselves with special clothing, paints, metal shieldings, ideally connected to the electrical ground. Others move to forests, caves, and remote places, far away from EMF emissions.

Pr. Belpomme’s team put up a diagnosis method based on blood tests and a special type of electroencephalogram (pulsed doppler echographics) which enables them to visualize blood flows in the brain. “Those kind of patients are sure to have troubles in brain vascularization”, says the oncologist.

Besides, biological tests demonstrates that 30% have elevated histamine rates, 50% have elevated rate of stress proteins, most of them have a very low rate of melatonin (anticancer hormone), and 30% have antibodies and protein rates which indicates a thermal shock and speak for brain suffering.” he adds that half of his patients also develop hypersensitivity to man-made chemicals, both syndromes sharing common brain anomalies.

The oncologist explained us there were 3 distinct levels of sensitivity to pollutants. At first, there is intolerance, triggered by pollutants polymorphism. “This means we are all different. For instance, 30% of the general population has the biggest risk of contracting cancer.” Then lies susceptibility, a factor demonstrated by his Swedish colleague Lennard Hardell who observed 16 families with bigger ES because of heredity. There also are active susceptibility factors “such as dental amalgams which act up as antennas” catching the waves. Then, ES manifests in two steps : “the first step is that of induction with overexposure to a specific frequency of EMFs, either acute or chronic way, such as speaking on a mobile phone for 20 minutes a day, says Pr. Belpomme. The first signs of hypersensitivity are pain and a feeling of heat in the ear. The second step is constitution of the disease. Then sensitivity builds up and the person becomes intolerant to all frequences.”

The scientific council of ARTAC, a team made of experimented researchers, is presided by Dr. Luc Montagnier, co-Nobel Prize 2008 for discovering AIDS causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). ARTAC research coordinator, nutrition specialist Dr Philippe Irigaray, is one of the 5 international experts to have been recently invited by Health Research Funds in Quebec and who selected the best research project in Environmental cancer prevention. Philippe Irigaray underlines that the human brain contains magnetosomes, iron oxides which behave like magnets. ES could depend on their quantity, which varies from person to person.

Those researchers are nowadays preparing 5 articles on electrosensitivity. “This requires a lot of time, says Pr. Dominique Belpomme. They will be published in one year or two.” But independent and immediate action is required to reduce overexposure of people to EMFs, adds he. In France alone, an estimates gives 5% of people being electrosensitive, and the proportion rises up with the spreading of wireless technologies. “Studies show that 10 to 50% of population will face becoming very intolerant to EMFs in the next 25 to 50 years. Two patients of mine have been hit by multiple sclerosis triggered by overuse of cell phones, 3 cases of breast cancer, among which 2 relapses after overexposure to EMFs, daily use of computers – and proof is building up against autism and Alzheimer’s disease, which seem to be triggered with higher risk than cancer by EMF exposure. Causality is really possible.”

Fortunately, this practitioner does provide relief to patients as he administrates them nervous system tonics and helps blood brain barrier close down with antihistaminics. According to World Health Organization (WHO), there is no established link. In 2005, WHO claimed that ES symptoms could be psychosomatic or linked to other causes (bad vision, poor air quality, poor ergonomics, etc…) “There is no such thing as clear diagnosis criteria to this health problem, neither is there any scientific basis permitting to connect ES symptoms to EMF exposure (…)Well controlled studies in double-blind showed that those symptoms were not correlated to EMF exposure.” To Pr. Dominique Belpomme, this is utter nonsense. “This is a political backwardness which shows nothing of scientific nature. WHO will have to revise its judgment in the upcoming months. This is societal denial which doesn’t take into account nowadays knowledge which permanently builds up.”

According to this oncologist, the cause-consequence link between EMF fields and leukemia is no longer to be doubted. “When doses shoots up, leukemia shoots up accordingly. Dozens of toxicological lab studies show that in the most obvious way, in vivo and in vitro.”

Ontarian Researcher Magda Havas, from Trent University, claims that negative results to ES testings are compromised by major flaws “Researchers would presume that reactions are instant albeit very often there is a backlash delay. People are not instantly reactive electrical switches. Those studies erroneously infer that if nothing can be felt, then it shouldn’t be harmful. We do very well know that you cannot detect the taste of arsenic, lead, DDT, asbestos ; yet all of those are toxics.”

—
Link to article in french : http://www.robindestoits.org/Wifi-dans-les-bibliotheques-et-ailleurs-L-intolerance-electromagnetique-enfin-elucidee-Blog-social-et-culturel-de-la_a1648.html

—
Translation courtesy Emilie Paniagua from Robin des Toits french national EMF and Health association.