Electrohypersensitivity in school: a mother goes to court
André Fauteux | September 10, 2015
Photo: A new French law prohibits Wi-Fi “in the areas dedicated to home, to rest and activities of children under three years” and requires that it be turned off in primary schools when not in use for digital activities teaching.
A Montreal lawyer has filed a discrimination complaint against the Public Health Department (DSP) of Montreal and the Quebec government who refuse to give her and her three children reasonable accommodations due to their electrohypersensitivity.
According to their doctor, mother and children have developed a severe intolerance to radiofrequency (RF) electromagnetic fields (EMF) emitted by antennas and wireless devices such as wireless modems and routers. The mother filed her complaint with the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission 28 August and is also about to file proceedings in Quebec Superior Court.
“The DSP violates Canadian law on human rights,” says the lawyer who asked to remain anonymous to protect her children’s identity. She refers in particular to the report Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Radiation and the Health of Canadians, filed on June 17 by the Standing Committee on Health of the House of Commons, which recommended notably that: “The Government of Canada continue to take reasonable accommodation in cases of environmental sensitivities, such as electromagnetic hypersensitivity [EHS], as required under the Canadian Charter of Human Rights.”
Tachycardia, tinnitus, headaches …
Searching for healthy schools for her children since May, the lawyer said she had “only good words” for Dominique Bertrand, deputy director of the Marguerite-Bourgeoys School Board (CSMB) and its coordinator of Health and Safety, Marc Bisson, who acted to reduce two of her three children’s RF exposure in west-end Montreal schools. “Mr. Bisson agreed to disconnect the Wi-Fi in their classroom and nearby routers. And he wrote a directive prohibiting activating a cell phone in the presence of my nine-year-old daughter. » The lawyer said the girl often has nosebleeds when exposed to Wi-Fi, even unknowingly, evidence that her reaction is not psychosomatic.
Finding a school without RF radiation is harder in high school, when most students have a cellphone. And in some schools, even after turning off the Wi-Fi, radiation levels exceed the recommendations of the Austrian Medical Association for exposure to RF, the lawyer said. “At the Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, the main entrance is overexposed by emissions from cellular antennas installed on the other side of the street, on the roof and walls of Sainte-Justine Hospital! “
Her other daughter, who is 12, suffers from stomach aches and headaches arising after sustained exposure to RF microwaves. The mother said she also had to remove her 14-year-old son from the College of Montreal where he suffered from heart palpitations, tinnitus, as well as concentration and memory problems. (The symptoms were documented since the Second World War in certain radio operators suffering from what was then called microwave sickness.) On August 27, the deputy director of the CSMB finally enrolled the teenager in a class without Wi-Fi in a Mount Royal high school.
“The inaction of the Ministry of Health and the Public Health Department is outraging. When there is a slightest doubt of a serious risk to public health, the precautionary principle should prevail, » said the mother who sent the DPS formal notice on July 22. The only response she received was by email, by DSP Director Dr. Richard Massé, on August 27. He referred to reports by Health Canada, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international bodies quoted in an advisory entitled Wi-Fi in schools written in 2014 by DSP toxicologist Monique Beausoleil for the Montreal School Board. Her review concluded that “until now, research has not been able to provide data that demonstrate a causal relationship between exposure to RF and symptoms reported by people who say they have “electromagnetic hypersensitivity » (EHS). Given, on the one hand, the levels of exposure to RF attributable to the Wi-Fi technology, and secondly, the results of rigorous scientific studies on the effects of RF on health, the use of Wi-Fi in primary schools does not constitute a risk to the health of teachers nor the students.”
Although WHO recognizes the existence of EHS since 2005, the agency says it is not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that its symptoms are triggered by electromagnetic fields (EMFs). But this opinion is disputed by a growing number of experts and the Austrian Medical Association, which published in 2011 a Guideline for the diagnosis and treatment of health problems and diseases associated with EMFs. Moreover, as early as 2000, the Council of Ministers of European Nordic countries (including Sweden) recognized EHS as a disability entitling accommodations, adding that its symptoms (fatigue, memory problems and concentration, etc.) disappear in “non-electrical environments”.
At the CSMB, spokesman Jean-Michel Nahas said it requires Wi-Fi devices comply with Health Canada’s Safety Code 6 (CS6) whose guidelines for human RF exposure aim to avoid tissue heating from a six-minute exposure. But in 1993, three US federal agencies (EPA, FDA and NISOSH) reported that the US FCC guideline akin to CS6 had “major flaws” because it ignores the non-thermal effects of low RF exposures long term, recognized in 1986 by the US National Council for Radiation Protection
and Measurements in its report Biological Effects and Exposure Criteria for Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields. Moreover, in 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics, representing more than 60,000 pediatricians, asked the US government to adopt RF exposure limits taking into account the greater vulnerability of children.
Why did the CSMB accommodated the lawyer’s children? “Exceptional measures may be considered in specific cases where a student or a teacher complains of symptoms supported by the diagnosis of a doctor. Nevertheless, we ensure that services, including wireless internet, are not diminished by these compromises,” said Nahas.
Public Health dissent
The lawyer has such a letter from her physician, Dr. Louis Jacques, Professor of Medicine at the University of Montreal, a clinician at the Notre-Dame Hospital’s Occupational and Environmental Health Clinic and… a medical adviser at the DSP. In his letter, he recommends replacing wireless internet connections with cable, as Israel does in classrooms of younger students and as recommended in Switzerland, Germany and other countries. Since late January 2015, Wi-Fi is even banned in France in child care and early childhood centers and it is restricted in primary schools.
“Note that the withdrawal of Wi-Fi in the whole school and all schools is a preventive measure among others against EMFs that has been recommended by many scientists around the world,” wrote Dr. Jacques in his June 11 letter to the primary school of the the lawyer’s daughter. He added: The potential effects of EMFs on health are many: in addition to hypersensitivity syndrome which affects 3 to 5% of people (prevalence appears to be growing), there may be effects on cancer, on the heart and on the brain.” In concluding that “the literature is enormous”, he referred in particular to the www.emfscientist.org website which presents a call for precaution issued in May 2015 by 190 experts who authored more than 2,000 EMF/health studies. Among the experts who recommend the removal of Wi-Fi schools include Dr. Anthony Miller, emeritus professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto and head of epidemiological studies at the National Cancer Institute from 1971 to 1986. “Children should reduce their exposure to wireless emissions and pregnant women should avoid putting a laptop or tablet on their belly,” he told us in an interview last year.
Scientific debate
The absence of scientific consensus surrounding EHS did not prevent the French disability tribunal in Toulouse, in early July, from recognizing medical evidence supporting an EHS complaint. It concluded Marine Richard suffers from a syndrome whose “clinical description is irrefutable” reported Le Figaro on August 25 Le Figaro. This first by a French court allowed Ms Richard, who suffers from functional impairment (85% level) preventing her from working, attributed to EMFs by her doctor. She was granted “an allowance of 800 euros per month for three years and possibly renewable”.
In its opinion on EHS published in December 2005, WHO declared that the majority of studies on the topic “indicates that individuals complaining of EHS are unable to detect more precisely exposure to EMFs that ordinary individuals. Well controlled and conducted double-blind have shown that symptoms were not correlated with EMF exposure.” However, according to the British website Powerwatch.org.uk, there are many studies showing the opposite and they were carried by non-industry nor state-funded experts. I met some of them last May in Brussels, at the 5th Paris Appeal Conference, which focused this year on environmental sensitivities. One of these experts, Igor Belyaev, PhD in genetics and radiation biology and head of the Radiobiology Laboratory at both the Russian and Slovak Academies of Sciences, explained to me that several studies appear designed to make believe that EHS is psychosomatic. They do not take into account for example the fact that the symptoms often appear hours after EMF exposure. Moreover, in general, subjects are exposed in laboratory to pure RFs which in no way reflect the characteristics (multiple frequencies, bandwidths, modulation, polarization, intensity, variable exposure times, interference, etc.) of RF microwaves that we are exposed to daily. (Read his article on the physical and biological variables influencing the non-thermal effects of RF, which it recommends to consider to publish studies reproducible and realistic safety standards.)
For the last four years, the organizer of the Brussels conference, Parisian oncologist Dominique Belpomme, has treated more than 1200 patients (read his Powerpoint presentation) he diagnosed with EHS, which he renamed EMF Intolerance Syndrome (SICEM). He reported they all show clinical signs of brain damage such as poor cerebral vascularisation, high levels of histamine and heat shock proteins or a decrease in vitamin D as well as melatonin, the powerful anticancer hormone responsible for our biological clock. “Their symptoms are not explained by a known disease, they appear and are reproducible under the effect of electromagnetic fields and they regress or disappear in the event of avoidance of these waves », he added.
Among the conferences most appreciated speakers was an octogenarian from Dallas, Texas, Dr. William J. Rea. A thoracic and cardiovascular surgeon, he has treated more than 30,000 people with environmental hypersensitivities since the early 1970s. In 1991, he coauthored a study in the Journal of Bioelectricity explaining how he induced neurological and cardiac symptoms in EHS patients. First he had them rest a few days in a pollution-free environment to calm their nervous and other systems. His team then exposed patients to RFs and sham placebos in double-blind challenges (neither the researchers nor the subjects were aware which exposures were real). In an interview in Brussels, he told me that 80% of his EHS patients had previously been poisoned by mold or chemicals which notably harmed their immune and neurological systems.
It so happens that our Montreal lawyer and mother also suffers from severe vitamin D deficiency, and she told me that her symptoms and her children’s appeared two years after leaving a water-damaged house where they suffered repeated infections caused by significant mold exposure. The triggers, she said, was the wireless Bell Fibe modem next to her computer and a new smart meter, both RF transmitters whose power peaks are never mentioned by the public health authorities, which only talk of average levels of exposure.
“Wi-Fi exposes many children to annual RF doses that are much larger than those received from a cell phone that can give you a higher dose but to which we are much less exposed”, explained in Brussels toxicologist Magda Havas, an expert on EMFs health effects at Trent University, in Ontario. ”Since 2010, there have been several cardiac arrests among schoolchildren in Collingwood.”
For his part, California physician Dr Karl Maret measured cumulative RF exposure levels higher in a hypersensitive child at school than he measured in an internet cafe. “EHS children and pregnant women are at most risk, he said in a lecture at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on June 2015. They are like the canaries we used to send in mines and who tell us there is a problem and it is high time we deal with it.”
At the DSP, spokeswoman Marie Pinard denied that Dr. Louis Jacques was reprimanded for contradicting the view of his colleague Monique Beausoleil. ‘’Clinical doctors are totally independent in determining their diagnoses and treatment advice they give their patients”, she said. Dr. Fernand Turcotte, who co-founded the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Laval University, said he would be surprised if Dr. Jacques was the subject of any blame. “Louis is a guy who knows his job, I have no doubt about his credibility and independence.”
