The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) on Monday announced it will participate in a new project that includes assessing the health risks of exposure to 5G technologies.

According to IARC, the project will “develop tools and instrumentation for reliable evaluation of exposure, conduct experimental studies (in vitro, animal, and human studies) on potential cancer risks, and develop effective health risk communication materials for stakeholders.”

The project — Scientific-Based Exposure and Risk Assessment of Radiofrequency and Millimetre-Wave Systems (SEAWave) — aims to identify differences in exposure patterns between 5G and earlier mobile technologies, such as 2G-4G.

Horizon Europe and SERI (Switzerland) are co-funding the project, which will culminate with a risk assessment of 5G, set to be released in 2025.

Experts on the health risks of exposure to 5G technologies told The Defender that risk assessments should have been conducted years ago.

“A risk assessment should have been performed before the 5G rollout — and not years after it started,” Mona Nilsson, managing director of the Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation, said.

Instead, Nilsson said, “entire populations” have for several years been “effectively turned into 5G lab rats in a dangerous experiment.”

Eileen O’Connor, co-founder and director of the EM Radiation Research Trust in the U.K. and board member of the International EMF Alliance, agreed.

“Why isn’t IARC calling for the precautionary principle as a matter of urgency rather than agreeing to an assessment on 5G?” O’Connor asked. “There is enough evidence and reason for concern regarding public health associated with 2G, 3G and 4G,” she said.

According to O’Connor, “The whole population will be exposed to untested and unregulated [electromagnetic] radiation, which they will absorb into their bodies and without any public agreement. Too many reports and reviews delay and deny the precautionary approach due to economic interests.”

“It’s time for action,” said O’Connor, adding that she is “deeply concerned” about the role “that special interests and industry lobbying are playing.”

“It’s time to demand accountability for the imposition of this technology in every corner of our lives, and time to demand accountability on the part of the individuals who are voting to put this technology in place without a single safety test having been conducted for 5G, as established by U.S. Senator Blumenthal during congressional hearings on 5G,” she said.

Why is ‘risk communication’ last on SEAWave agenda?

According to the IARC, the agency plans to “play a critical role in the later stages of the project by coordinating a comprehensive evaluation of the project’s experimental studies and a review of the latest literature on millimeter-wave frequencies and health effects” — effectively making it the main arbiter for which scientific studies are considered when determining whether there is scientific evidence of health risks posed by 5G.

According to its website, the SEAWave project consists of completing 11 interlinked smaller projects — called “work packages” — initiated at its kick-off meeting and co-design workshop.

SEAWave plans to complete eight work packages, including studies focusing on types of 5G exposure and health outcomes, and then assess the risk of 5G on human health as its ninth work package.

After that, the project will address how to communicate risk to the public.

Scientists who invoke the precautionary principle said risk communication regarding 5G and wireless technologies — such as the use of wireless headphones like Apple’s popular AirPods — should be proactive, not retroactive.

Health risks associated with 5G already known, critics say

Nilsson — who has authored two books on the health risks associated with wireless radiation and co-authored an academic publication titled “International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) 2020 Guidelines on Radiofrequency Radiation” — said the IARC press release “gives the impression that we do not already know that there is massive scientific evidence of harmful effects from previous generations of telecommunication technology (2G, 3G WiFi).”

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It has been more than a decade, O’Connor explained, since members of the IARC classified the entire RF-EMF spectrum as a “2B Possible Human Carcinogen.” The vote was “nearly unanimous: 29 to 1,” she added.

Since then, O’Connor said, more human studies and toxicology studies in animals, which demonstrated clear evidence of tumors, have added to the evidence of increased cancer risks.

In 2018, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) — part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — determined in a $30 million study that there was “clear evidence” that electromagnetic radiation is associated with cancer and DNA damage.

“The $30 million U.S. National Toxicology Program RF [radio frequency] studies and the Italian Ramazzini Institute’s 10-year research project both found clear evidence of malignant tumors,” she said.

“Two different institutes,” O’Connor emphasized, “with laboratories in different countries, totally independent of each other and both producing parallel consistent findings, reinforces the validity of these groundbreaking animal studies.”

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O’Connor noted that a worldwide list of all peer-reviewed scientific studies, through May 2020, on human health around mobile phone base stations and cell towers, compiled by Karl Muller and the EM-Radiation Research Trust, showed consistent findings of health problems. “Out of 33 studies, 32 (or 97%) reported health problems,” she said.

The only study that did not find health problems was a “very poor study of cancer in Bavaria that by its own admission did not have sufficient controls,” she said.

Just last year, 250 scientists signed a petition to the United Nations that took aim at both non-ionizing electromagnetic fields (EMFs), which are used by AirPods and other Bluetooth devices, and cellphones and Wi-Fi, which emit RF radiation.

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Nilsson also noted that IARC’s press release included the “misleading claim” that many exposure parameters of 5G are similar to those of 2G-4G. “But we know that 5G has already led to a massive exposure increase compared to previous generations according to the measurements performed so far during the 5G rollout,” she said.

“The fact that 5G massively increases radiation exposure is also why the telecom sector has lobbied various governments — such as Brussels, Switzerland and Italy — to relax their radiation limits, because they will not be able to roll out 5G as planned otherwise.”

Now years into the 5G rollout, she said, exposure levels “exceed 1 million microwatts per square meter in peak values — which is far above what is known to cause harmful effects in terms of sleep disturbances, headache, dizziness, tinnitus, heart arrhythmia, and fatigue.”

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Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/5g-health-risks-world-health-organization/