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Electromagnetic fields, 5G and health: what about the precautionary principle?
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  • Published on:
    ICNIRP Response to: John William Frank “Electromagnetic fields, 5G and health: what about the precautionary principle?”
    • Rodney Croft, ICNIRP Chair ICNIRP and Australian Centre for Electromagnetic Bioeffects Research, University of Wollongong, Australia
    • Other Contributors:
      • Eric van Rongen, ICNIRP Vice Chair
      • Tania Cestari, ICNIRP Member
      • Nigel Cridland, ICNIRP Member
      • Akimasa Hirata, ICNIRP Member
      • Guglielmo d'Inzeo, ICNIRP Member
      • Anke Huss, ICNIRP Member
      • Ken Karipidis, ICNIRP Member
      • Carmela Marino, ICNIRP Member
      • Sharon Miller, ICNIRP Member
      • Gunnhild Oftedal, ICNIRP Member
      • Tsutomu Okuno, ICNIRP Member
      • Martin Röösli, ICNIRP Member
      • Soichi Watanabe, ICNIRP Member
      • Gunde Ziegelberger, ICNIRP Scientific Secretary

    Frank’s essay contains several statements about 5G, its relation to the radiation protection science, and related to this, ICNIRP’s guidance and integrity more generally. ICNIRP considers this to be seriously inaccurate and in need of correction for the sake of both scientific accuracy and development of effective public health policy. However, due to journal word limits we must restrict our response to Frank’s misleading claims about ICNIRP’s integrity (for full response see https://www.icnirp.org/en/activities/news/index.html).

    Frank’s essay accuses ICNIRP of unmanaged conflict of interests, and uses this accusation to attempt to throw doubt on ICNIRP’s scientific evaluations. However, ICNIRP has a very rigorous procedure to avoid conflicts of interest (https://www.icnirp.org/en/about-icnirp/commission/index.html), and Frank did not provide any evidence in support of his statement - he merely referred to ‘persistent allegations’ from the Swedish epidemiologist Lennart Hardell. For example, Frank repeats claims made by Hardell that “ICNIRP’s membership includes over-representation of vested interests, especially the giant multinational telecommunications firms who are heavily invested in the roll out of 5G systems internationally”, and no supporting evidence was provided by either author. To be clear, there are no industry r...

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    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.