Posted By Garry Homer
The politics of health and safety!
The ICNIRP committee worked for years setting the levels they determined as necessary to prevent acute effects and issued their guidelines in 1998.
These were the basis for the Directive set in 2004 to take effect by 2008.
Now it seems someone has bothered to read the guidelines in detail and discovered the wide implications they have. Whoops.
Better delay it then!!!!!!!!!
It is a bit late in the day to say the levels that were set are too restrictive, that should have been done much earlier. The NRPB were solidly behind their own guidelines but the EU effectively took the ground out from under their feet.
Now we see an inconvenient Directive being challenged. If there are effects to guard against, then we should bite the bullet and find solutions. If there are no effects to bother about, why did we get into this mess in the first place?
Having monitored research for the last 15 years or so, the research clearly shows there are effects at high levels, hence there is a need to restrict access where these levels may be approached. The ICNIRP guidelines use safety factors of around 5. This value may be too high. ICNIRP stated the application of these safety factors were for individual governments to determine as it was their right to decide what levels their people were exposed to. Acceptance of the Directive took away this flexibility.
Now it looks like the problems associated with MRI will stop the protection of other workers for another 4 years beyond 2008.
If you think your company will not have any problem with compliance, then think again. It is possible for the switchrooms in office blocks to be non-compliant. It is not just in industry where problems exist.
If you want to see photographs of a non-compliant switchroom, email me direct.
garry@ieee.orgOf course there are many who believe the ICNIRP guidelines are too slack, but these are usually the overhead line and mobile phone base station protest groups.
The real problem we are seeing played out here is where the introduction of valuable new technologies out-paces the creation of safety guidelines.
If a line is not drawn somewhere, we will never have a legal framework of emf protection for our workers. If MRI is seen as the sticking point, then exclued medical applications. This has been done before.
Garry Homer