Posted By Garry Homer Directive 2004/40, that gives the EMF guidelines a new legal status, will be implemented by the HSE by the end of April this year according to the Radiation Policy section of the HSE yesterday. I had asked for their clarification following their commissioner's request for a delay that has not generated any concrete response from Europe other than to put a proposal forward for a 4 year delay last October. Nothing else has happened since. I know a few of people want this one to go away. There are only some minor implications for most businesses but there are perhaps major implications for some industry sectors. Unlike the previous NRPB guidelines that excluded the medical use of equipment, this Directive does not. This concerned the HSE as MRI equipment is unlikely to comply in the situation where an operator or nurse closely attends a patient undergoing a scan. It has been known for more than a decade this situation was likely to exist but no work was carried out to confirm it until last summer when the starting post was coming into view. The use of some welding equipment may also be in doubt. Is it time to lift heads out of sand and start thinking about the subject with the intent to protect employees? Regards Garry

Posted By Garry Homer Jay To repeat. The HSE said yesterday implementation will be before 30 April this year. The proposal made last October to delay it is only that, a proposal. It is a statement the idea should be given consideration, it is not a statement it has been delayed! Why is there such antipathy for protecting the workforce from EMF so often voiced on this forum? Garry

Posted By C.J. It could be argued that the current ICNIRP guidelines are a little 'risk averse'. ICNIRP are going to review their guidelines later on this year, and from that a new directive will probably be written.

Posted By Garry Homer Jay How do you know the risks are not high? Is it risks to health or the risk of being caught with work situations that exceed the levels laid down in the Directive and having done nothing about it? Do you have any experience of carrying out compliance assessments? I have been in factories that could not meet the requirements of the NRPB guidelines that had been in place since 92. Places where commercially available instruments display overload conditions before you reach the position of the operator of a machine. HSE could do very little as they were dealing with guidelines, not something that had a legal status. It is only a few employers that have taken on board their responsibilities fully and had their workplace checked. It must be said, this is usually after presentations have been received from their staff who ask questions they could not answer. CJ It now does not matter if you consider the ICNIRP guidelines to be 'risk averse' anymore, they have been used as the basis for the directive that was adopted in 2004. The directive is flexible enough to adopt any other sets of figures should ICNIRP change, or some other guidelines be chosen. Any idea that ICNIRP will radically change is a false one as the underlying scientific principles are well established and are in line with how the NRPB used to set their guidelines and also the guidelines set by other countries. When ICNIRP issued its guidelines it stated the safety factors they had applied were only suggestions and that it was for each country to chose other safety factors if they so wished. The directive took this flexibility away. ICNIRP basically use safety factors of 10 or 50 for the employee or a member of the public. Protesters against mobile phone masts or pylons argue the ICNIRP guidelines are set too high to protect the health of their children etc. and some planning inspectors agree with them! With almost 4 years being squandered away, it is a bit late to raise objections with less than 11 weeks to go. Garry

Posted By C.J. Garry, I personally do not have an opinion on whether the ICNIRP limits are risk averse or set too high. I mearly stated that it can be argued as such, and have heared many express that opinion, including persons within the HSE. I have also heard it stated that a directive is not needed as HASAWA is sufficient. In light of that i find your claim that the 'HSE could do very little as they were dealing with guidelines, not something that had a legal status.' a little misleading as they could have used the NRPB guidelines as evidence for a prosecuation under HASAWA if they felt persons safety was at risk.

Posted By Jay Joshi It is not factually correct to state that "this directive is the first that requires each member state to report back after 5 years with details of its implementation" My understanding is that almost ALL health and safety related directives have this requirement. e.g. Article 18(3) of Council Directive 89/391/EEC of 12 June 1989 on the introduction of measures to encourage improvements in the safety and health of workers at work(implemented in GB primarily as The Management of Health and Saety at Work Regulations"):- "Member States shall report to the Commission every five years on the practical implementation of the provisions of this Directive, indicating the points of view of employers and workers."

Posted By Jay Joshi Garry, You refer to "they in HSE" have indicated that the EMF directive will be implemented by April 2008. Can you name the department within HSE that gave you this information? I contacted the HSE policy unit person that deals with the EMF Directive. The response was that they have no indication from the European Commission/Parliament that will block the postponement proposal of October 2007 of its implemetation to 2012.

Posted By Jay Joshi The HSE infoline is not the HSE. If the HSE infoline is referring to the directive being adopted, what it refers to is likely to be the adoption of the postponement of the directive! There is no need for the directive to be adopted again at EC/EU level unless it is to do with the postponment part.

Posted By Garry Homer Thank you Jay for your time getting to the bottom of this. My apologies to all our readers! I take it you have an inside line to the HSE while the rest of us make do with the information routes they have set up on their website. It is a pity my question to the HSE info line was not answered in the manner that you were given. I believe my question was clear enough. Perhaps it is a case of 'Chinese Whispers' when direct routes are not offered to you, something always gets lost in the translation. We can all sit on our hands for another four years now. ;-) Garry

Posted By Garry Homer John I share your scepticism. There are only a few employers to my knowledge who have embraced the ICNIRP guidelines that were applicable since 2004. With little good information about, the others can not be blamed. Most believe it will be heavy industry that will have problems, but I can take you to commercial buildings where the guidelines can be exceeded and not just exceeded by a small margin. Therefore I do not automatically share Jay's opinion there is not a high risk of exceeding the guidelines for most employers. Anyone operating a large office building can potentially have a situation that exceeds the guidelines and where the corrective action is simple, but without suitable instrumentation you do not know the fields are there so nothing is done. Ignorance is bliss. The Directive took this on-board by requiring employers to make an assessment of their workplace and recording it. Situations do exist where an employee's head can be in 50Hz fields of more than 2000 microtesla, exceeding the guideline 'reference' level of 500 microtesla and very likely exceeding the 'basic restriction' for exposure of the head. I found this situation in the basement of a large office block! While some want to cast doubt upon the ICNIRP guidelines and others want to delay the directive, there is not much visible positive pressure to get to grips with this subject is there? Most employers do not react until their workforce raise the issue and that usually follows some media hype. So perhaps we should all air our views via the national press if we want to improve safety in this country. As for the HASWA, the chance of a prosecution is low. I have not seen any evidence of this so far and I do not believe it will happen. Garry

Posted By Garry Homer Thanks Arran. It is a pity people have been sitting on their hands with their heads in the sand pretending the day will not come. This problem has been expected for some time. I was asked in 1999 if I could conduct tests on MRI equipment as it was considered possible for the ICNIRP guidelines to be exceeded. Nothing came of this inquiry and then surprise, surprise, last year there was panic. The NRPB used to exclude medical equipment to avoid this pit fall, but Europe knows best. Now they have thrown it all away and will look at everything again instead of simply declaring medical equipment exempt.

Posted By Jay Joshi Garry, I do not understand how you can claim that everybody, including HSE, HPA(ex-NRPB), and now even European Commission & Parliament has a head in the sand attitude. The reality is that to the EMF directive had binding exposure limits based on what were supposed to be only guidelines from ICNIRP. In context of the uncertainity of the scientific evidence, it does not make good law. There were discussions facilitated independent of HSE—see below:- EU EMF Physical Agents Directive EC/40/2004 Implementation into UK National Legislation Report of Roundtable Discussions 5th January 2006 http://www.hse.gov.uk/ra...on/nonionising/notes.pdf In order to support a transparent and credible process, the roundtable discussions were independently facilitated by Dr Ray Kemp, of Galson Sciences Limited. The sorry saga of this directive is clear from the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Watching the Directives: Scientific Advice on the EU Physical Agents (Electromagnetic Fields) Directive Fourth:- Link below http://www.publications....t/cmsctech/1030/1030.pdf Some extracts:- This Report is the first of three case studies under the Committee’s over-arching inquiry into how Government handles scientific advice, evidence and risk in policy making. We examined this subject to test the way in which scientific advice is used by the UK Government to influence policy at an EU level, and also in response to concerns from the medical research community about the potential impact of this Directive on the use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) equipment for diagnosis, treatment and research. The Committee has discovered failings in the way that scientific advice was used to inform the EU Physical Agents (Electromagnetic Fields) Directive, both in Brussels and in the UK. We found that the Commission was heavily reliant on one source of advice, the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), and was not sufficiently responsive to concerns raised by the magnetic resonance community. As a result, it is deeply regrettable that the research necessary to establish whether or not the Directive will inhibit the use of MRI scanners is only now being carried out, with a risk that it will not be complete in time to inform the implementation of the Directive, due by 2008. On the basis of the level of certainty in the available scientific evidence, we agree with the Government that there was not a strong enough case for a Directive covering MRI: existing guidelines are sufficient. Finally, we used this case study as an opportunity to examine how the precautionary principle is applied in practice. Unfortunately, we found no clear evidence as to how it was applied in the context of this Directive, nor any satisfactory definition of the principle or explanation of how it should be applied. If this really was a risk as you make it out to be, I am very sure that other member states would not have supported the UK position. The fact that the European Commission in the first instance proposed the postponement and the European parliament voted in favour indicates that all have perhaps realised the problems.

Posted By Garry Homer Jay Your statement: "I do not understand how you can claim that everybody, including HSE, HPA(ex-NRPB), and now even European Commission & Parliament has a head in the sand attitude." I have not said these organisations have a head in the sand attitude and never would. Perhaps it is time for you to consider who the other players are/have been in the MRI/ICNIRP debate. You have issued a statement that I consider to be both maliciously contrived and offensive. Are you simply presenting your own views on this forum or those of your employer? Garry

Posted By Garry Homer Thank you Jonathon for your views. However, I am past providing names of individuals or organisations but I will leave it to you to consider who might have had a vested interest in MRI equipment. Start the time-line with the issue of the ICNIRP guidelines a decade ago. Where were the impacts to be felt? You need to look backwards beyond the activity of recent years. I believe ICNIRP created a good set of guidelines and so did the NRPB who endorsed them in 2004. These guidelines were also endorsed by the WHO. You should have seen the guidelines proposed by CENELEC in the mid 90's! Whoops, another organisation to be held against me, but remember, I did not say they were good or bad did I? I think this thread has wandered way off course. I started it with the good intentions of providing you all with up-to-date information, but I was mislead. I thanked Jay for ferreting out out what was really happening with this Directive but it has not stopped there. Garry

Posted By Garry Homer As the last correspondent expressed: "It was my deduction that by choice in the use of words by Garry....................." Analysis of my use of words by Jay should have revealed a different meaning early in these exchanges. By applying use of the technical sounding tool of deduction, ANTIPATHY was interpreted as APATHY. Applying the same level of deduction I accept the appology given! Garry Homer B.Sc. MIEEE