Notes from the 11/7/08 Living with Cancer Conference

Joanne  Rawlings-Sekunda from the Maine Bureau of Insurance

• 800-300-5000
  
• http://www.maine.gov/pfr/insurance/
  
• They have a staff of 11.
  
• 8 of the 11 deal with consumer complaints
  
• In general with insurance, the fewer restrictions, the more expensive.
  

Steve Brakey(sp?) is a Technical Expert from the Bangor SSA office

• He acknowledged that it's hard to reach the Bangor office by phone. They have one line for all of Maine and Eastern Canada and Quebec.
  
• If you call the national 800 number, they're looking at the same computers that they look at in Bangor.
  
• If you must call, the best times are Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. 
• Since I worked in Canada I may be able to get benefits from Canada. I should contact the office in Fredericton NB

I'm not sure who said this:

• File complaints online - I guessing this is Maine Insurance complaints.
  

Other notes here

Wifi risks & benefits: What if?

What if we limit the use of wifi in public libraries and it turns out that the current evidence of linkage turns out not to be causative and as a result of limiting the use of wifi we have limited public access to information which allows the public to inform themselves about their own health issues and make well informed decisions?

And this:

There have been a large number of occupational studies over several decades, particularly on cancer, cardiovascular disease, adverse reproductive outcome, and cataract, in relation to RF exposure. More recently, there have been studies of residential exposure, mainly from radio and television transmitters, and especially focusing on leukemia. There have also been studies of mobile telephone users, particularly on brain tumors and less often on other cancers and on symptoms. Results of these studies to date give no consistent or convincing evidence of a causal relation between RF exposure and any adverse health effect. On the other hand, the studies have too many deficiencies to rule out an association.

• Anders Ahlbom, et al. “Epidemiology of Health Effects of Radiofrequency Exposure: CNIRP (International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection.” Environmental Health Perspectives 112 no. 17(2004): 1741–1754 (accessed June 29, 2008).
• (my emphasis)
• via Progressive Librarians Guild Statement on WiFi in Libraries and the Precautionary Principle June 16, 2008 (accessed June 29, 2008)
• via email from Wendy

Two more documents relating to wifi and health

• Mobile Phones and Brain Tumours – A Public Health Concern - pdf - html
• Analysis of Health and Environmental Effects of Proposed San Francisco Earthlink Wi-Fi Network - pdf - html

My original post on the topic is here.

Health and Microwave (and other) Radiation

So far I have not found convincing anything I've heard or read about the danger of cell phones and wifi and similar technologies.

• Disclaimers:
• I have not myself read any actual scientific studies that discuss these issues.
• It is my hope that these technologies do not affect human health adversely.
• I think it is possible that these technologies cause measurable health effects.
• I think it is possible that these technologies don't cause measurable health effects.
  
• What I've heard and read:
• A panel discussion at the Commonwealth Club of California. What I heard of this discussion (I didn't hear all of it) was focused around the Bioinitiative Report.
• Back in December I did some searching and found and an article "How Cell Phones May Cause Autism"
  
• Why am I skeptical?
• None of what I've read or heard so far is at all specific about the dangers. It doesn't discuss or differentiate:
• different frequencies of radiation
• different power levels of radiation
• The discussions have a fearmongering style
• In at least one case it seemed as if the guy had hooked onto this issue and was riding it for all it's worth.
• There's no discussion of comparative risks. For example, if a study shows some risk, how does that risk compare with the risk of riding in an automobile? As Marvin Minsky said, we need a department of homeland arithmetic.
• There's reference to information bearing radiation, or something like that - I don't recall the exact wording. But it's as if the information in the radiation will somehow mess up the information in our DNA. But perhaps they're just using the term to differentiate wifi and other fairly low energy radiation from microwave radiation which is actually strong enough to cause heating.
  

My Google Notebook on the topic is here and here are my del.icio.us links tagged radiation.