Professor Olle Johansson is a leading member of a growing group of scientists who have worked tirelessly, and against significant both overt and covert opposition, to give scientific basis to their concerns over the health effects of the massive increases in man-made electromagnetic radiation to which we are subjecting ourselves and, more importantly, our children.
You will find many of their papers, and links to many more, in the electrosensitivity section of the FM website, including the BioInitaive Report, a comprehensive collection of research papers which has been presented at the European Parliament and greatly influenced the parliament’s increased concern (last paragraph) about effects of electrosmog.
Professor Johansson lives and works in Sweden (at the prestigious Karolinksa Institute); Sweden is far ahead of the rest of Europe in actually recognising electrosensitivity as a disability. Yet, even in Sweden he has difficulty in getting support and space in which to do his work.
Yet both for those who live with electrosensitivity and for those who are concerned about the long term fall out, the future is starting to look a little less bleak. In Canada, Dr Magda Havas and her colleagues are increasingly gaining the ear of the government in her fight to reduce ‘dirty electricity’ from devices such as hands free phones; in France and Germany there are attempts to restrict the use of mobile phones by young children while wifi is being banned or removed from public places such as libraries; in the US, California has just passed a law requiring mobile phones to be labelled with the amount of radiation that they emit and, although it was narrowly defeated, the state of Maine attempted to have health warning labels placed on cell phones earlier this year. Although none of these measures has much effect on the actual levels of emissions/electrosmog they are at least an indication of increased awareness.
Possibly more encouraging is the recent, if deeply flawed Interphone Study which, despite all its faults, did suggest that using a mobile phone for more than ten years could increase the risk of brain cancer. Already there are murmurings among cancer sufferers in the US about suing mobile phone companies for having caused their illness. The threat of a few class actions (which could turn out to massively exceed the size of asbestos or smoking related suits) might concentrate minds wonderfully on technological adaptations which would continue to deliver the wonderful benefits of mobile telephony without seriously damaging the health of its users.