Radiation ruling weak: scientist

By SIMON COLLINS

New Zealand's official standard on safe levels of electromagnetic radiation has been described as weak by a former member of the committee that adopted it.

Auckland University honorary associate professor Dr Ivan Beale has disclosed that he resigned from the committee in protest when it adopted the standard last year.

Australian members of what had been a joint Australasian committee also refused to endorse the standard, which will allow radiation emissions by "third-generation" cellphones in this country up to five times above the previously allowed limit.

New Zealand will become the fourth country in the world to allocate part of the radio spectrum for the new-generation cellphones in an auction that is due to start on Monday, unless stopped by the Court of Appeal.

A similar auction in Britain raised more than sterling 22 billion ($72 billion).

Dr Beale has given the Herald correspondence, dating back to the formation of the joint Australian standards committee in 1993, in which he consistently attacks the committee's "narrow" New Zealand membership.

"I thought the whole committee process was a farce," he said this week.

While the Australians on the committee included three unionists and two people from the Consumers' Association, New Zealand members were predominantly from the telecommunications industry.

Dr Beale requested in 1993 that New Zealand should appoint more scientific and medical experts and people from community health, environmental and public interest groups. But his suggestions were rejected.

After six years of debate, the New Zealand members of the committee agreed last year to adopt guidelines based on those proposed by the Geneva-based International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection.

In the frequency band used by the present generation of cellphones, this meant doubling the previous maximum allowable radiation.

At the higher frequencies that will be used by third-generation cellphones, the new guideline maximum is five times higher than the previous Australasian maximum.

The new standard also allows radiation exposure to be averaged over a 30cm square area and over a period of six minutes, whereas the old standard required that the maximum not be exceeded at any point, and allowed time averaging of only one minute.

Dr Beale said the worst element of the new standard was that it provided only a "weak precautionary principle" that radiation levels should be kept as low as possible within the allowable limit.

The new New Zealand standard requires "minimising, as appropriate, radio frequency exposure which is unnecessary or incidental to achievement of service objectives or process requirements, provided that this can be readily achieved at modest expense."

Dr Beale said this put economic considerations ahead of public safety.

Ian Hutchings, a Ministry of Economic Development official who now chairs the New Zealand electromagnetic radiation standard committee, said the apparent relaxation of limits was because the previous standard was out of line with scientific understanding.

"The change we made last year was to bring it up to the World Health Organisation curve."