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37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, May 21, 2002

0910

The Chair (Mr. Charles Caccia (Davenport, Lib.))

0930

The Chair

Dr. Magda Havas (Associate Professor, Environmental & Resource Studies Program, Trent University)

Mr. Peter Adams (Peterborough, Lib.)

0935

Dr. Magda Havas

0945

0950

0955

1000

The Chair

Mr. Bernard Bigras (Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, BQ)

1005

Prof. Vernon Thomas (Department of Zoology, University of Guelph)

Mr. Bernard Bigras

1010

Dr. Magda Havas

The Chair

Mr. Joe Comartin (Windsor--St. Clair, NDP)

1015

Prof. Vernon Thomas

Mr. Joe Comartin

Prof. Vernon Thomas

Mr. Joe Comartin

Prof. Vernon Thomas

Mr. Joe Comartin

Dr. Magda Havas

1020

Mr. Joe Comartin

Dr. Magda Havas

Mr. Joe Comartin

Dr. Magda Havas

Mr. Joe Comartin

Dr. Magda Havas

Mr. Joe Comartin

The Chair

Mr. Julian Reed (Halton, Lib.)

Prof. Vernon Thomas

Mr. Julian Reed

Prof. Vernon Thomas

Mr. Julian Reed

Prof. Vernon Thomas

Mr. Julian Reed

1025

Dr. Magda Havas

Mr. Julian Reed

Dr. Magda Havas

Mr. Julian Reed

Dr. Magda Havas

Mr. Julian Reed

Dr. Magda Havas

Mr. Julian Reed

Dr. Magda Havas

Mr. Julian Reed

The Chair

1030

Mr. Roy Bailey (Souris--Moose Mountain, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

Mrs. Karen Redman (Kitchener Centre, Lib.)

Dr. Magda Havas

Mrs. Karen Redman

Dr. Magda Havas

Mrs. Karen Redman

Dr. Magda Havas

1035

Mrs. Karen Redman

Dr. Magda Havas

Mrs. Karen Redman

Prof. Vernon Thomas

Mrs. Karen Redman

Prof. Vernon Thomas

1040

Mrs. Karen Redman

Prof. Vernon Thomas

The Chair

Mr. Roy Bailey

1045

Prof. Vernon Thomas

Mr. Roy Bailey

Prof. Vernon Thomas

Mr. Roy Bailey

Dr. Magda Havas

Mr. Roy Bailey

Dr. Magda Havas

Mr. Roy Bailey

Dr. Magda Havas

Mr. Roy Bailey

Dr. Magda Havas

Mr. Roy Bailey

The Chair

1050

Prof. Vernon Thomas

The Chair

Dr. Magda Havas

The Chair

Dr. Magda Havas

The Chair

Dr. Magda Havas

The Chair

Dr. Magda Havas

The Chair

Dr. Magda Havas

1055

The Chair

Mrs. Karen Redman

Prof. Vernon Thomas

The Chair

Ms. Nancy Karetak-Lindell (Nunavut, Lib.)

Prof. Vernon Thomas

Ms. Nancy Karetak-Lindell

The Chair

Dr. Magda Havas

The Chair

CANADA

Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development

NUMBER 072

1st SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Tuesday, May 21, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿ (0910)

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Charles Caccia (Davenport, Lib.)): We definitely have a quorum.

[Translation]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are beginning our work today with two special witnesses.

[English]

From Trent University, we have Dr. Magda Havas, who is a well-known scientist and researcher in the field of electromagnetic impacts on human health. And from the University of Guelph, we have Dr. Vernon Thomas, a very well-known scientist and researcher on the effects of lead on the environment and lead poisoning of wildlife.

Welcome, members, new members, guest members, and members we thought we had lost in some distant wilderness, in electoral battles.

Without further delay, each witness is more than welcome to speak for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then we'll have a good round of questions. Who would like to go first?

¿ (0930)

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Thomas.

Dr. Havas.

Dr. Magda Havas (Associate Professor, Environmental & Resource Studies Program, Trent University): Thank you very much. I'd like to thank Charles Caccia for making it possible for me to come to talk to this group today.

What I have to talk about is probably the exact opposite of what Vernon Thomas talked about. His focus was on lead, something that has been around for a very long time, since we know the Romans suffered from lead poisoning by drinking wine out of lead vessels. What I'm going to be talking about is electromagnetic fields. Electricity has been around for a little over a hundred years in wide use. Cellphones have been around for a much shorter period than that, so I'm talking about a more recent environmental hazard.

Instead of wildlife, my focus is primarily going to be on human health. I'm going to be talking about wired and wireless electromagnetic energy, an overview of health concerns, and a call for action. I was planning on talking about both wired and wireless, but in all honesty, I don't think I can do that in twenty minutes. I've therefore decided to just focus on wireless electromagnetic energy. Very quickly, though, I'll explain the difference between the two.

Wired electromagnetic energy refers to anything that actually has to be plugged in and to the electricity that we get for it. The power lines, the transmission lines, the vacuum cleaner, or the hairdryer are all things that are wired. In order to get the energy, you have to plug them in. There are all sorts of health concerns related to them, including childhood leukemia in residential exposure, as well as occupational-exposure cancers. But I'm not going to be talking about wired—this is my little plug for question period—I'm going to be talking instead about wireless electromagnetic energy. Here, I'm referring primarily to broadcast signals coming in through radio and television. The ones we're most concerned about, though, are cellphone telecommunications, simply because there are so many antennas going up and so many people using cellphones.

There are technical terms for these, by the way. For wired, the term is “extremely low frequency” electromagnetic fields, or ELF for short. For wireless, we're really talking about radio frequencies, microwave frequencies, and radar.

The success and widespread use of cellular telephones has led to the rapid proliferation of cellphone antennas worldwide. This is a problem not just in Canada, but also in all developing countries. Often these antennas are erected in residential areas, near schools, on churches, or on high-rise office buildings within the downtown core of large urban centres, with little regard for the exposure of the surrounding population. We're not talking about rural areas, which are more related to wildlife and lead; we're talking about urban corridors.

Exposure guidelines in various countries range from 0.001 to 10,000 microwatts per centimetre squared, and this alone should alert everyone. How can you have guidelines that are so diverse in different countries? Since we're all equally susceptible to electromagnetic radiation, whether we live in Finland or Canada, the health effects of our exposure should be identical. So this is one thing that should alert us to a really serious problem here. The guidelines that we have are in Health Canada Safety Code 6. These are among the worst in the world, so we really do have a very serious problem.

Mr. Peter Adams (Peterborough, Lib.): The highest means the worst?

¿ (0935)

Dr. Magda Havas: The highest means we can actually get up to that level before any guidelines kick into effect.

Furthermore, antenna sites are seldom tested by Health Canada or by Industry Canada, which is the agency responsible for regulating the telecommunications industry and for issuing licences, I might add. Multiple antennas often appear on towers with little regard for their combined radiation pattern. The City of Toronto's attempt to reduce the current Canadian guidelines to one one-hundredth of the federal ones has been relatively unsuccessful.

The key point here is that biological effects occur below the Canadian Safety Code 6 guidelines. Hence, these guidelines need to be reassessed. Also, the areas surrounding cellphone towers with multiple antennas need to be properly monitored—this monitoring is not being done at the moment—and we need to do more research on the biological effects of these towers and cellphones. Currently, we are conducting a human experiment on a massive scale by exposing a large population worldwide to microwave radiation without understanding the long-term biological and health consequences.

That is the summary of my presentation. What I now hope to be able to do is provide you with some of the evidence for the statements I just presented.

I was debating whether or not I wanted to show one particular graph. It's really a technical way of showing the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Scientists have divided this particular spectrum into different frequency bands. Extremely low frequency is at the bottom, so this is the increasing frequency of the spectrum. Power frequencies at 60 cycles per second are part of that extremely low frequency, which I simply termed “wired” electromagnetic energy.

Once we start coming into radio frequencies and higher, I call them “wireless” because their kind of energy propagates through space. It doesn't require wire to get the information. Radio, television, cellphones, and radar are all units that fall within this very massive radiofrequency band. Sometimes you hear people referring to microwaves. They are actually part of the radiofrequency band. They just have a different name for the higher levels of that band. Sunlight is also part of it, and light is part of this spectrum. All the things that happen to light, like reflection and focusing, are part of the electromagnetic spectrum and happen to occur for radio frequencies as well.

The real concern is that once we get above this level, we get into ionizing radiation. There's probably no well-respected scientist who will say X-rays are not harmful, because they are. They cause ionization, and that has been recognized. Within this band here, we know we have heating problems. The real question is what the health consequences are at the low end of this band, and what the mechanisms are by which organisms are affected. This is where the debate arises. There's some controversy as to what those mechanisms are. If you talk to some very well respected and distinguished physicists, they will say there are no harmful effects at this lower level, but they're wrong.

I teach a course called “Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields”. A few years ago, a student came to me with the idea of mapping antennas in the city of Peterborough. We simply tried to find out where these antennas were that were associated with broadcast frequencies or with cellphone communications. He went to the City of Peterborough offices to find out the information, because the city has to give permission for the siting of these antennas. One of the things he found out was that, first of all, they have a record, but it's not something that's organized in any way. He would have had to filter through everything, spending hours and hours going through paperwork to try to figure out which antennas were licensed, where they were located, and all of those things. We were simply hoping to map the locations of these antennas to find out what the radiation patterns were and to begin to understand what people are actually exposed to. It turned out that this would have been virtually impossible in the amount of time we had available for this student.

But one of the things we did learn is very positive news at the federal level. Industry Canada, which licenses all of the antennas, keeps a record of every single antenna that they license, and they make that record available to anyone who can find it on their website. This is something that I don't think any other country is doing. I know they're certainly not doing it in the United States, where the Federal Communications Commission has a role equivalent to that of Industry Canada. In the U.S., for those like me who are interested in finding out where these antennas are and what their radiation patterns are, they have to actually go out and measure them, getting that information directly. But if you go to Industry Canada's site, they will give you this information for Canada.

I had the student begin to document antennas in various communities, and this is the information I'm going to present to you today as part of this presentation. I'll show the different provincial capitals, as well as Ottawa, and the number of licences that were granted. This is everything except military, as of October 1999. There are many more than this at this moment. The numbers are constantly changing, and they're broken down by year.

One of the things you can see is that we have no information for a very small percentage of the licences that have been granted. In the 1950s and 1960s—the yellows—there were very few of these. Most were broadcast antennas for two-way radios used for police and telecommunications. Once we got into the 1970s—the green bands—more and more antennas were erected. By the 1980s, the number had jumped enormously, with almost all of them for cellphone telecommunications. In the 1990s, the number jumped again, and I suspect that it will jump again if we look at it within the next ten years. So we have an exponential increase in the number of antennas being erected everywhere, not just in capital cities.

Toronto has a particular problem. The number I have here is the number of licences granted in the 1990s—in other words, over a ten-year period. If we look at all of the licences present in the city of Toronto, they come up to almost 10,000. If we look at Ottawa and add all of its antennas up, the value is very close to 3,000, meaning that you had about 3,000 antennas in the city of Ottawa as of 1999. Now, I think a question arises: Can we be assured that all of these towers, acting together, have no health effects? I think the evidence is very strong that they do indeed have health effects on the surrounding population.

A few years ago, the City of Toronto was concerned about the fact that so many antennas were being erected in the city. A public meeting was held, and I was invited to it. At this public meeting, an alternative to our federal guidelines was presented. The alternative was a request that the guidelines be lowered a hundred times below the existing ones in order to ensure the protection of the public. That was for new antennas.

The bad news was for any existing antennas. If you are concerned about them, you can actually go to the cellphone providers and ask them to monitor the area and give you the information. But they don't have to do that. In my mind, that’s like going to the fox and telling it how many chickens you have left in the chicken house. They're the wrong organizations to go to.

If you request Industry Canada to come out to do measurements, you really have to give them justification. Very often, what you need to do is hire an engineering firm that will do the measurements and show that they're very high, and then Industry Canada will come out to try to verify them. It's the same in the United States as well, so we're really quite similar in that regard.

I mentioned that this is an issue elsewhere, and I just have a few examples for you.

In Germany, they erected a telecommunications mast for wireless telecommunications, for digital communications. It was erected in the country, near a dairy herd. They found that milk production decreased substantially and that the cows were miscarrying. That hadn't happened before the tower was erected. In order to study this a little bit more scientifically, the scientists removed the dairy herd to another pasture that wasn't in direct line of the telecommunications antenna. The milk yield went up. Therefore, there is a relationship with exposure to that particular mast. They claim a mast should be 200 to 250 metres from any inhabited area. I think the mast in this particular example was within about 50 metres, so it was really quite close.

¿ (0945)

Another example comes from Latvia. They erected a telecommunications antenna that was being directed with a school in its pathway. One of the teachers learned that students simply did not pay as much attention when they were learning. Parents complained that their children were not sleeping well. The government was sufficiently concerned about this. These things hadn't happened before the tower was erected. They were things that came on several months after the tower became operational, so what they did was they actually shut down the transmitter, thinking that there was a cause-and-effect relationship.

Another example is a rather interesting one. In Switzerland, they were doing a study on the health of individuals and were using a lot of subjective methods to determine how healthy people were or what symptoms people had. They had a fairly large population taking daily notes on their health. If they had a headache, they would write down the date and the fact that they had a headache or that they were feeling some sort of other discomfort. When scientists reviewed this data for a large percentage of people—I think they had over 2,000 participants in the study—they found that for a three-day period, a very large percentage of those people simply did not have the symptoms they normally had. When they went through the records for the telecommunications tower, they found that it wasn't working for three days. It had been shut off during repairs. So once again, I think this is fairly powerful evidence that there are health effects associated with these towers.

In Great Britain, telecommunications are very often regulated at the federal level, but it's at the municipal level that they have to give permission for siting. In different parts of Great Britain, they've either stated that they won't allow these antennas on council property, or they call into effect something called the precautionary policy or the precautionary approach. I think the important point about the precautionary approach is the bottom sentence: “The decision making process…based upon waiting for ‘conclusive scientific evidence’ before acting, is potentially flawed.” I think that really applies to wireless telecommunications. I think if we wait for all scientists to agree on this, we will end up having some fairly major human epidemics related to brain tumours, leukemias, and other types of health effects.

I'm going to make a quick comment about standards, limits, and guidelines—all of the information that we have in Canada. Safety Code 6 is a guideline. It's not a standard and it's not a limit. Because of that, it is not enforceable. The concept of prudent avoidance, which is also being mentioned a lot in relation to electromagnetic fields, simply means that we try to minimize our exposure. We can be prudently avoidant ourselves, or we can ask the telecommunications industry to be prudently avoidant by avoiding exposure of populations. But once again, this is a guideline and it's not enforceable. What we really need are standards that can be enforced.

In the summary, I mentioned that different countries have different standards or guidelines. For some of these, they are standards. For other countries, like Canada, they're guidelines. The standards are frequency-dependent because we know that there are frequency effects. Something cycling a million times a second has an effect different from that of something cycling a hundred billion times a second, so we know that, biologically, they differ. Because the guidelines are actually frequency-dependent, I've tried to pick ones that at least overlap, in order to give you a sense of how variable these standards or guidelines are.

Some of the best ones are from the former Soviet Union, from the east bloc communist countries. Some of the worst are in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain. The U.S. has one of the worst standards in the world. The Americans also have an amazingly powerful telecommunications lobby, so to change anything in the United States is extremely difficult. I think we have a better chance in Canada, but you can see that ours are 10% lower than one-tenth of the ones in the United States, and a thousand times higher than some of the most stringent ones in other parts of the world. And as I mentioned earlier, whether you live in Russia or whether you live in Canada, you're going to be affected the same biologically.

¿ (0950)

Cataracts are one of the health concerns associated with electromagnetic fields. Your eyes are extremely sensitive, as are your testicles. These are two parts of the body that have very little blood flow. Because of that, if you expose them to microwave radiation, you have a localized heating effect. These are two parts of the body that therefore need to be protected. Regarding the testicles, peer-reviewed articles and reports on police officers who sit with radar guns between their legs have been published. They have a greater incidence of testicular cancer than the normal population within the same age group.

Some people are actually able to hear microwaves. They hear a buzzing or clicking sound in their head. Other people, believe it or not, are able to pick up radio communications if they have metal fillings. Sometimes they will tune in to a radio station and hear the music or the sound, and they can't turn it off and can't change the station. It's extremely annoying. It has to do with the frequency, because it's like they have a little antenna in their mouth.

Asthma has also been associated with it, as have blood disorders, including leukemia. But by far, most of the health problems relate to the brain. Some people will document headaches. There is evidence that brain wave activity is affected if you're in the vicinity of these radio frequencies. There's an increased incidence of brain tumours. Right now, a case is going to be heard in the United States regarding Dr. Christopher Newman, who has used a cellphone since the mid-1980s. He's a medical doctor with a brain tumor. A firm there is run by Peter Angelos, the same lawyer who had class-action suits dealing with tobacco and asbestos, and he's taking this on as a class action against cellphone manufacturers.

The interesting thing about this—and I'll just comment on it very briefly—is that the brain tumours that we're finding are slightly different from the ones that have been normally recorded. They're very close to the surface of the brain. We know that the microwaves from the cellphone that you're using actually penetrate about 2 centimetres. That's the depth of penetration into the brain, and that's exactly where we're finding the brain tumours. We're also finding that they're laterally on the same side as the side on which you use your cellphone. In some cases, it's the antenna and you can actually map the brain tumor and house the radiation pattern of the antenna. This evidence is incredibly powerful, and it's probably going to be in the news starting in the fall in the United States because of this class-action suit.

There's evidence that the blood-brain barrier is affected by microwaves. This is a barrier that basically protects the brain against chemicals in the environment. It prevents them from getting in there. By changing the blood-brain barrier and making it more permeable, it means other toxic and potentially toxic chemicals can get in there.

Microwaves are also known to affect sleep—and I mentioned the incidence of children who were in the way of that tower.

There's DNA damage at levels that are extremely low. This has just been documented and is going to be part of the evidence that will be used in the Newman case.

But the really interesting part is that these signals can also be used for healing. We use radiofrequency radiation to heal bone fractures that are in the hips, in the knees, and in the ankles—places that are really difficult to heal. So we know these frequencies have biological effects. They can be harmful or beneficial, based on their intensity and frequency. The problem is that we're irradiating a very large group without really knowing what all of the potential biological effects are likely to be.

I bring this to this particular group because you're the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, and Gro Harlem Brundtland, who used to be Prime Minister of Norway, was one of the key people who made the public aware of the concept of sustainable development. This was translated from a newspaper article just a few months ago:

WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland (62), gets headaches from talking on a mobile phone. That is not enough: People in her proximity must turn their phones off in order to prevent discomfort.

“It's not the sound, but the waves I react on. My hypersensitivity has gone so far that I even react on mobiles closer to me than about four metres.”

She went on to say:

“People have been in my office with their mobile hidden in their pocket or bag. Without knowing if it was on or off, we have tested my reactions. I have always reacted when the phone has been on - never when it's off. So there is no doubt.”

So there is no doubt about what I've presented, and there is no doubt that these phones are affecting her.

¿ (0955)

The concept here is hypersensitivity. Some people have an abnormal reaction to this type of radiation. Very often when they go to their family doctor, the family doctor thinks they've gone crazy, and what that doctor recommends is that they go to a psychiatrist. I think this type of hypersensitivity is going to be on the increase, just as chemical sensitivity seems to be on the increase. A group in Sweden is dedicated to helping hypersensitive individuals. If anyone's interested in it, I can provide you with all of that information.

If we begin to look at the existing standards—which I have here in purple—and the actual effects that have been documented in laboratory studies, based on the total amount, the intensity, of the power that's emitted…. I just want to draw your attention here to the fact that I'm using a logarithmic scale, which means that each division is ten times higher rather than one time higher. First of all, you can see that exposures vary enormously. I have Canada's in green, and there's a range because they're frequency-dependent. If we were to allow anything up to that point, we'd have all sorts of biological effects, which have been documented and include increased melatonin in cows and irreversible sterility in mice.

These facts are based on laboratory studies, so some people will say we're not laboratory animals. They want to know what kind of evidence we have for human studies. The evidence is very similar. We have the effects on people. Childhood leukemia has been documented over a certain range of exposure, yet Canada's guideline is extremely high. We're basically allowing all of these things to happen before we are willing to act. The problem is that we actually can't even act because it's a guideline, so this is really quite a serious concern.

A few years ago, Health Canada asked the Royal Society of Canada to look at the Safety Code 6 guidelines. The document that was produced is called A Review of the Potential Health Risks of Radiofrequency Fields from Wireless Telecommunication Devices. I'd just like to quote a few paragraphs for you.

In Canada, the safety guidelines for devices which produce radiofrequency fields are set out in Health Canada’s Safety Code 6. Although Safety Code 6 only applies directly to federal employees and to federally operated devices, Industry Canada bases its licensing agreements for radiofrequency field emitting devices on the guidelines in Safety Code 6.

So it actually doesn't even apply beyond federal employees.

People who quote this particular document say the Royal Society basically stated that the guidelines that we have in place are fine and that nothing has to be done. I'd just like to contradict that view, based on things I'm quoting directly from this document. To begin:

The panel concluded that the local exposure limits may not fully protect workers from the thermal effects associated with exposure to RF fields.

By “local exposure”, what they're referring to is exposure in your neck region, in your ankles, and in your wrist. The thinner your body part, the higher the exposure. If you look at the whole organism, this particular committee said that's fine. The whole organism is unlikely to be heated when you're exposed to this radiation at the levels that we've set. However, your neck might get very hot if you're talking on a cellphone or if you're exposed to the radiation from the antenna, so these kinds of factors have to be looked at.

To continue:

There is a growing body of scientific evidence which suggests that exposure to RF fields at intensities far less than levels required to produce measurable heating can cause effects in cells and tissues.

The Safety Code 6 guidelines are for heating alone. They don't take into account any other possible effects except heating, and even those heating ones are inadequate. If you have an effect that's non-heating and can demonstrate it biologically, the real problem is whether or not you can say it's an adverse health effect. This is where the controversy lies.

Moving on:

Biological effects include alterations in the activity of the enzyme ornithine decarboxylase.

À (1000)

This is an enzyme that is high in cancer tissues. If you can reduce the concentration of the enzyme, you can reverse cancer. So there's a really strong link between the presence of this enzyme and cancerous tissue, and it tends to increase when you're exposed to radiofrequency radiation.

Some of these biological effects brought about by non-thermal exposure levels of RF could potentially be associated with adverse health effects.

In other words, there really is growing evidence that there are possible adverse health effects.

The panel...recommends that these local exposure limits for workers be reviewed, both in terms of the level and duration of exposure.

And the panel also suggests that even lower exposures for the eyes are desirable and should be brought into effect.

What the panel is really saying is that the heating effects are adequate if we consider the whole body, but not adequate if we consider parts of the body. Non-heating effects that are present in the literature need to be considered.

The scientific controversy has been used as a means to non-action. I'd just like to quote from something Charles Caccia presented to the University of Guelph last year. It's from his talk entitled “The politics of sustainable development”:

In Canadian legislation we find the precautionary principle in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act:

“where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

I think we need to use this precautionary principle when we're dealing with the siting of cellphone towers, and I think we need action both at the federal and at the municipal levels. What I have here, then, is an attempt to answer the question about what needs to be done regarding wired and wireless electromagnetic energy, although I'm just going to focus on the wired part of it.

We need to increase public awareness. People have to know what they're exposed to and how to reduce their own exposure. We need to alert the medical profession, because people are coming to them and medical professionals simply don't know how to deal with these individuals who have unusual electrical sensitivities. We need to encourage the concept of prudent avoidance by individuals, but they can't do that until they know what they're exposed to. Therefore, we also need for prudent avoidance to be practised by any of the manufacturers of cellphones and any of the companies responsible for designing and erecting antennas.

We need to set standards, not guidelines. We need something that is enforceable. What I would like to suggest is that, for wireless telecommunications, the base stations be at least 500 metres from where people normally spend any length of time. This is not my recommendation. It's something present in the literature, but I think it's the one that's most reasonable.

We also need to set radiation standards that are there to protect public health. I think the value ultimately should come down to 0.1 microwatts per centimetre squared. But even if we went down to 1 microwatt per centimetre squared, it would be taking a huge step forward.

Areas need to be monitored, particularly where there are children, because children are much more susceptible to this kind of radiation. That's why it's so disgusting that these telecommunications companies are trying to market cellphones for young children, particularly in Europe.

We have to be concerned about urban centres. We have multiple antennas there, and they interact with each other.

And we also need to encourage and support research on the effects of this type of exposure. There's really very little funding dedicated to this type of research.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Havas.

All right, we'll start with Monsieur Bigras, Monsieur Comartin, Mr. Reid, and Madame Redman.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras (Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, regarding the use of lead fishing jigs, should I remind you that my colleague from Saint-Bruno, when she introduced Motion M-414 aimed at banning that use, she was acting as a fisherman, naturally, but, as the sponsor of the motion, she also intended to protect the environment. In a presentation she gave us, she said that lead sinkers were responsible for poisoning 5 to 50% of the Canadian loons. So, there is quite a spread in the mortality following ingestion of this type of lead sinkers and jigs.

I want to ask you the following question. How many studies are there and what is the average mortality rate linked to the ingestion of these lead weights? She said that the death rate associated with the ingestion of these lead weights was between 5 and 50 per cent. What is the average and are there studies on the death rate of loons?

À (1005)

[English]

Prof. Vernon Thomas (Department of Zoology, University of Guelph): The very high figure for the death rate of loons is from the New England states, the area where we have a lot of adult birds spending the majority of the winter. The figure that is at about 47% or higher is for loons in the wintertime. If you take the average for North America, it is about 25% to 26% for all loons across all age categories, meaning both immature birds and adult birds.

Where does the evidence come from? The evidence is from the following sources: published evidence from the School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in Massachusetts, under the supervision of Dr. Mark Pokras—evidence that has been published extensively in the refereed literature; studies from New York that are not published but are part of the State of New York research from the state wildlife pathology department; studies from the State of Michigan that are unpublished as of yet but are from the state wildlife pathology laboratory; and a study from the State of Minnesota, again unpublished as of yet but from their fish and wildlife pathology laboratory.

The work in Canada comes primarily from two sources. One has been published in the International Journal of Environmental Management by a graduate student and me, and this is the principal study so far. We also have work coming from the Atlantic Veterinary College, at the University of Prince Edward Island, which is doing the analysis for the Atlantic provinces.

All of the Canadian data are part of the very large database that has been collated by the national wildlife health research program. This is a federal government-Canadian Wildlife Service-university program, with input from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph, at Université Laval, and at the University of Prince Edward Island. We combine our data into one major database, but my study is the only actual publication from that database so far.

The numbers are large. They're at almost 600 birds in the case of Maine, and I referred to others from other states of the United States. In the case of the published study that I produced in 1988, the sample size was almost 215 dead loons that had been examined by certified pathologists. Quite clearly, there are many more dead loons than that, but we chose to report only the results for birds examined by pathologists.

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Bigras: My question is now for Ms. Havas. I would say that your presentation is rather worrisome because we're all affected in our ridings. About two kilometers from where I live, there is even a communication tower on a church which is about three meters away from a school yard. So from this perspective, it's rather scary.

As a legislator however, I would like to do something, but you mentioned in your document that Health Canada's Safety Code 6 Guidelines are among the highest in the world. So, my question is as follows. Could you give me two or three things on which we could act to get better standards and tell me which countries have been the most active, the most careful in terms of protection? Are there other examples? You're telling us that Canada is probably one of the countries where the standards are the highest, along with the United States and Great Britain. Are there other references? Are there countries, either Sweden or other European countries, where the standards would be more stringent and where we could find models which would allow us to ensure a better protection?

À (1010)

[English]

Dr. Magda Havas: By saying they're “high standards”, I'm not referring to them as being good standards. What I'm saying is that the levels of exposure that we're willing to tolerate are high. That's just the opposite of the interpretation.

The worst countries are the U.K. and the United States. Japan, Canada, and Germany all use a lot of radiofrequency communications, and they have the second-worst levels. The countries that are the best are Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Italy is beginning to look at this very seriously, and the Italians now have guidelines that are becoming much more reasonable. They're less than 10 microwatts per centimetre squared for radio frequencies. They're also becoming quite progressive when it comes to extremely low frequencies. And Sweden is also looking at this very carefully.

A few years ago, there was a conference in Salzburg, Austria. They came up with the Convention on the Protection of the Alps, which is the one I was referring to and sets the figure of 0.1 microwatts per centimetre squared.

I think 0.1 microwatts is actually quite difficult to achieve. I've done measurements in the city of Toronto in order to try to understand what the levels would be. They're even below the guidelines suggested by the City of Toronto. When I spoke to the medical officer of health who came in with this one one-hundredth of the federal guidelines, she told me that when she spoke to representatives from Industry Canada, they told her this would simply not be achievable in Toronto, based on what we already have.

You mentioned that there's a church with a telecommunications tower on it. This is very common. Churches usually have high peaks. There are possible problems with respect to their charitable status if they accept money for this. Many of them are paid between $1000 and $3000 per month to allow for these communications towers to be erected.

I think the fact that one is so close to a school is particularly disturbing. Indeed, some schools have allowed telecommunications providers to erect antennas because the schools are so strapped for money.

So I think two things need to be brought into effect. One is distance. Make sure there's a minimum distance, a buffer zone, between the antennas and important areas like schools. The other is trying to reduce our actual guidelines. But if you're going to try to do this, you're going to meet a heck of a lot of opposition. I can certainly help by providing you with the relevant references that document the health effects, but you're still going to meet a lot of opposition. No one in the telecommunications industry wants these lowered.

Because Industry Canada gives money for selling the licences, I don't think it’s the appropriate body to also regulate them, because it is benefiting by selling them. Perhaps some other organization needs to be developed to deal with this.

[Translation]

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Bigras.

[English]

Mr. Comartin.

Mr. Joe Comartin (Windsor--St. Clair, NDP): Dr. Thomas, I'm going to ask you a series of questions.

You talked about the loons dying very quickly. Can you give us a sense of the time involved from when they first ingest the lead weights to when they die? In terms of the amount of lead in the environment now, is there any way we can do anything to get it out of the environment, or are we going to be faced with it for hundreds of years in terms of our bird population? Finally, on the other alternatives that you mentioned, have they been studied in terms of their long-term impacts on the natural environment, again if they’ve been ingested by other birds?

À (1015)

Prof. Vernon Thomas: With respect to your first question on how long it takes a loon to die, we believe it is between ten and fourteen days. This is based upon two actual observations of loons having taking a fishing weight from an angler in the summertime, on a lake where there was only one pair of loons breeding. The birds were later found after thirteen days in one case and fourteen days in the other, having died from ingesting lead fishing weights.

We do not like to do the laboratory experiment on this sort of mortality. It's unnecessary. But we believe less than two weeks is what it takes, given the average weights of fishing weights and loons.

Could you remind me of the second question again, please?

Mr. Joe Comartin: It was about so much lead being in the environment. Is there anything we can do about it, and how long are we looking at it as a problem?

Prof. Vernon Thomas: Lead in the environment is going to be there for hundreds of years, or even thousands of years if we look back at some of the Roman and Grecian lead. Lead does break down in acid waters and does become moved into groundwater vegetation, but the majority from shot and sinkers is going to be there for several hundred years that we know of.

There are two types of lead that do concern us. In the case of shot, it is the shot that is at the bottom of the marsh and is going to be ingested by birds well into the future. By moving to non-toxic shot, we do know that we have been able to reduce substantially the amount of mortality that comes from lead poisoning in waterfowl. A published study in the Journal of Wildlife Management, which is the gospel for wildlife managers, indicated that from 1991—the year when the United States banned lead shot—to 1996-97, approximately 1.4 million waterfowl per year were saved from lead poisoning by the adoption of non-toxic shot. That is an enormous saving. That's twice the saving you would ever get by generating waterfowl by producing more habitat through Ducks Unlimited.

In the case of fishing weights, we know a lot of loons—we don't know the proportion, but certainly the number we find would indicate that perhaps as many as two-thirds of the loons that die from lead poisoning—are picking up lead that has just been released with a piece of live bait, whether it's a fish or a worm. By switching to non-toxic forms of lead weights, we would prevent that type of lead poisoning in loons. There are still those lead weights at the bottom of the marsh, though, and the birds do consume them.

Is there a way to get the lead out of the marshes? Short of excavation, no. It's there for the long haul. The same is true for lead that is deposited by shotgun activity on shooting ranges. It's there for the long term, although in the case of shooting ranges, one can chemically moderate the lead so as to try to fix it locally in the soil. But that is impractical over a very large range, such as all the lakes and marshes of North America.

Mr. Joe Comartin: And I had asked about other alternatives. Has there been any study done on potential negative impacts there?

Prof. Vernon Thomas: Any material that is approved as a substitute for lead in Canada and the United States must go through a rigorous program of evaluation that lasts approximately two and a half years. All of the substitutes allowed legally at this point in time have been evaluated both for their short-term impact upon birds when ingested, and for their impacts upon other dimensions of the ecosystem, whether that ecosystem involves plants, invertebrates in the water, invertebrates on land, or, by inference, humans. Anything we have approved has been approved with all dimensions of the ecosystem in mind. Our approval process is by far the most rigorous of any country you would ever wish to find.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Dr. Havas, since we all use cellphones, does it make any difference in terms of risk exposure if you use the ear piece and keep the device further away from your brain?

Dr. Magda Havas: It does make a difference. It's the antenna that is emitting the radiation, so when you speak into the cellphone, you're emitting through the antenna. The further away you can hold the antenna from your brain, obviously the better it is. Distance makes a huge difference in this regard. I mentioned that it only penetrates about two to three centimetres into your brain, so if you can simply even tilt the antenna away from your head, that'll make a big difference.

Ultimately, I think they're going to have to come in with some sort of shielding devices so that you can place the shield between your brain and the antenna.

So using the earphones will make a difference. The problem is, though, that you'll probably keep in a breast pocket and—

À (1020)

Mr. Joe Comartin: Actually, I keep it in my lower pocket, and that's giving me some concern as well. You talked about testicular cancer, so I may be adjusting that in the next few minutes.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Dr. Magda Havas: The cellphone is in constant communication with the tower, so it's basically live.

Mr. Joe Comartin: In terms of technology, other than the points that you made with regard to what we should be doing, you didn't talk about an alternative technology. Is there in fact an alternative technology, or is that just impractical given how far we've gone down the road with this?

Dr. Magda Havas: Are you talking about an alternative technology to cellphones?

Mr. Joe Comartin: Yes, and about the whole use of electromagnetic energy.

Dr. Magda Havas: I don't think this is something we're going to be able to change. All we can really, ultimately do is to try to minimize our exposure to this type of energy. It's going to be ubiquitous.

We can minimize our exposure. There are ways in which towers can be aligned so that they're not actually pointing…. Some of them are omnidirectional, and some of them are almost like flashlights. If you take that flashlight and simply make sure it's not aimed at a building, you can make a huge difference. The problem is that the telecommunications industry doesn't think there's a problem, so it’s not going to make the fairly small, fairly cost-effective changes that would be required to do that. So I think we're just going to be exposed to this vast array of energy.

I think the other thing requires research, because we don't have the answers for this. Some of the frequencies are biologically active, while some are not. If we could begin to do some research on which ones are more harmful than others.... I mentioned that some are actually beneficial. If we could begin to understand how humans interact with the frequencies, we could then limit some of these telecommunications to frequencies that are less noxious than other ones. But this is something we simply don't know enough about, so we need more research on that.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want to acknowledge both witnesses. The work that they do is very helpful, and I appreciate it that they came in today.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Comartin.

Mr. Reed.

Mr. Julian Reed (Halton, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, I apologize for my lateness this morning. I'm a victim of aircraft.

Dr. Thomas, are birds themselves more susceptible to lead poisoning than other forms of life, like mammals or humans?

Prof. Vernon Thomas: The answer is yes, and what makes them more susceptible is that birds do not have teeth. They very often reply upon small stones in their stomach to grind up their food. Lead, being soft, is very easily ground up into very small pieces, and it does not leave the stomach until the pieces are small. So lead in the form of a pellet, pellets, or fishing weights, will remain in the gut until almost completely ground up. In those very small particle forms, it is easily dissolved in the acid environment of the intestine and is absorbed. That is what makes them more susceptible than, say, a human being.

Mr. Julian Reed: Thank you. That's very enlightening, because I remember that a lot of the older homes in Ontario were plumbed with lead pipe.

Prof. Vernon Thomas: That's right.

Mr. Julian Reed: The water storage up on the second floor of the home I live in was lined with lead. My late grandfather actually died young at the age of 96, but he was exposed to that lead all his life, from birth to death.

Prof. Vernon Thomas: In the case of lead, what makes that more of a concern is when you have rather acidic waters, which are capable of drawing that lead from the pipe and into the water.

To go back to your question about humans and their susceptibility to lead, one thing that gives us a problem is the fact that we have an appendix. Lead that you might ingest if you were to, for example, swallow a fishing weight—lots of fishermen hold them in their mouth—or eat a piece of meat that has been shot with lead shot, will pass through the stomach very quickly, but it will very often go into the appendix. That is where it is going to give you an enormous problem of appendicitis. And prior to that, there will be absorption of lead into your body. That’s why this is a concern for native people.

Mr. Julian Reed: Thank you.

Dr. Havas, I'd like to ask you about what you call wired electromagnetics. You spoke of power lines and your concern about power lines. What about generating plants?

À (1025)

Dr. Magda Havas: I'm most concerned about generating plants simply because of the people who are exposed to them. There aren't as many people exposed to them, but once you have a generating plant and you begin to distribute that energy through the wires, you're producing an electromagnetic field around the wire. If this wire happens to be close to your home, you're not going to be able to avoid that field in any way. It's a fairly large field.

There have been a number of studies now—more than two dozen—that have looked at childhood leukemia in children who live near these wires. One of the things they've found is that there's an increased incidence of childhood leukemia that is anywhere from about a two- to fivefold increase, depending on the magnetic field coming from the particular wire. They found that younger children are much more sensitive than older children. If you're under the age of 6, you have an even higher risk than if you're up to the age of 16. Adults don't seem to be affected by this level of energy. The limit that has been identified, based on these epidemiological studies—and this is now the strength of the magnetic field, not power density; it's something quite different—is about 2 to 4 milligauss, which are the units that are used. We know nighttime exposure is very critical, because a child will be in one location for 8 to 10 hours. That's true for adults as well, so you have to make sure your nighttime exposure is very low. Things like electric blankets will increase that substantially, and there have been studies showing an increased risk of women miscarrying if they're exposed to a magnetic field, if they happen to sleep under an electric blanket, or if they happen to sleep on a waterbed that's heated electrically and hence produces a magnetic field.

In addition to all of those childhood types of studies with residential exposure, we have increased incidents of brain tumours, breast cancer, and leukemia in adults who are occupationally exposed. Those results come from a whole range of studies as well, so both occupational and residential exposures are another very serious concern.

With children, one other environment is very critical, and that's the school environment because of the amount of time they spend in it. We're actually doing some studies at schools, but we're not getting a heck of a lot of support from superintendents and from those schools. At one of the schools we wanted to get into, I got a phone call from the superintendent, who asked me what we would do with the information. When I told her we would make it publicly available, she denied us access to her whole school system. So this is something superintendents don't want to know about.

We are now getting measurements done by having the students do them themselves. We're going into physics classrooms, giving the students the instrumentation, and giving them quick lessons on how to do the measurements, and students are actually mapping their own schools in order to find out what they're exposed to. We know the levels that shouldn't be exceeded, so I think this is going to be very powerful information for school boards to consider.

Mr. Julian Reed: Have you done any work with power workers?

Dr. Magda Havas: I personally haven't, but there have been studies. Ontario Hydro conducted one of the largest ones, jointly with Hydro-Québec.

Mr. Julian Reed: Do you know what their findings were?

Dr. Magda Havas: They found an increased risk of a rare form of adult leukemia in their electrical utility workers. It seemed to be higher the longer they were exposed, which suggests that there's a dose–response relationship. And this was all standardized for age, so we're not looking at older workers having an increased risk of leukemia.

The results were not something they were terribly thrilled about getting, obviously. I was told by people from Ontario Hydro that they did the study because they were hoping to disprove all of the other studies that had been done, yet they came up with this rare form of adult leukemia. They didn't find an increased risk of male breast cancer, which other studies have found, and they didn't find an increased risk of brain tumours.

Mr. Julian Reed: These were people who worked on the power lines themselves. Was there any differentiation made between those people and those who worked in the power plants?

Dr. Magda Havas: Actually, it was everyone. It was all the power plant employees.

Mr. Julian Reed: Oh, it was everyone.

Dr. Magda Havas: That's right.

Mr. Julian Reed: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Reed.

Before recognizing the next three questioners, I would like to take advantage of the fact that we have a very healthy quorum, and put forward a motion prepared by Mr. Mills. It is on your order paper, and it was put forward according to the rules.

An interest has been expressed by the two vice-chairs about this conference. The motion is written in a manner that would permit any member of this committee who so wishes—provided, of course, that the House leaders give their final approval—to go to Washington in early June to attend this conference. The motion by Mr. Mills was presented before last week, so it has more than the 24 hours’ required notice.

Could I have someone to move it?

À (1030)

Mr. Roy Bailey (Souris--Moose Mountain, Canadian Alliance): I so move.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Bailey. Are there any comments or questions? No?

(Motion agreed to)

The Chair: Thank you.

The next questioner is Madame Redman, followed by Mr. Bailey, followed by the chair.

Mrs. Karen Redman (Kitchener Centre, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Havas, I have to tell you that this really takes me back in time, to when I was a school trustee. We had a school that was built under power lines, and it ended up going from being a case of “Our scientists are smarter than your scientists”, to one of “Our lawyers are better than your lawyers”. The dynamic that you mentioned is very unfortunate, but it's probably less the superintendent than it is the school board that is compelling those actions.

Given the fact that you've talked about the need for education—and clearly there's a health aspect to this; indeed, however, we are the environment committee—and that you've already acknowledged the mandate of Industry Canada, what is the best venue from which to come at the kind of research and support needed to tackle this issue?

Dr. Magda Havas: Are you talking about wired or wireless? It's slightly different for the two.

Mrs. Karen Redman: You seemed to focus more on wired right now, but if you want to answer both questions, that's fine.

Dr. Magda Havas: For wireless research, one of the things we need is to really understand fundamentally what the biological effects are. That means understanding mechanisms. Right now, we have a sense of which mechanisms are involved. I mentioned the blood-brain barrier and I mentioned the enzyme linked with cancer, so we're beginning to get a handle on those things. But this research has to be taken to a level such that those opposed to changing the regulations will actually not be able to deny this is a problem. We need to do research on really fundamental issues dealing with the biological response to difference frequencies, different intensities, and different mixtures of these electromagnetic fields. Those things comprise one area that needs to be studied scientifically.

The other area that needs to be studied scientifically is monitoring. We simply don't know what these fields look like. I have instrumentation that I carry around with me to most places, although I didn't bring it here today. One of the things I've noticed is that, with respect to radio frequencies, if I'm on one of the top floors of a hotel when I stay in Ottawa, radio waves are coming into my room. Very often, what I chose to do is sleep in the bed furthest from the window, because the waves are almost like a flashlight beam coming into my room. I can't actually see that beam, but I'm not being exposed to it if I'm outside of the beam.

Little work is done on monitoring. Industry Canada simply does not do it. They rely on the cellphone antenna providers to do that kind of research, but the providers don't actually do monitoring either. What they do is calculate what the field should look like, and they calculate it for the one antenna that they have up there. The problem is that if you have a tower, you have multiple antennas. On the CN Tower alone, there are 280 antennas, all of which are interacting in different ways. They have additive effects, meaning that they're superimposed. They can cancel each other out. They can do all of these things.

We simply don't know what the effects are. We don't know what they would look like visually if we were to convert them into light. So there has to be quite a bit of research done on monitoring to find out what people are actually exposed to.

Those are the two key areas of the scientific research that I think needs to be done.

Mrs. Karen Redman: If we're going to attempt to find the end of the string in order to start pulling this…. You talked before about the difference between guidelines and regulations. Are the regulations what you would see as the impetus for this kind of scientific research? Is this research something that universities aren't taking on because there's no appetite for it? I'm just trying to get at what the next step is. If we're acknowledging that this is troubling and that more research needs to be done, what can the government do to help move this forward?

Dr. Magda Havas: I think funding has to be made available. Originally, I was in acid rain research. There was a huge impetus to try to get answers to acid rain questions, both federally and provincially. The amount of money set aside for anyone who wanted to do acid rain research was phenomenal, so you had scientists of all different backgrounds coming together and cooperating. Within a ten-year period, we made advances that would have normally taken thirty years, simply because of the type of funding that was made available.

Right now, there's a lab in British Columbia at which they do this kind of research, there are some people at McGill University, and there are little pockets of individuals who try to scrape together enough money to do it. If funding was made available to NSERC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, I think that would help enormously. This was identified as an area that really requires people to look into it, so that would actually bring in some of the physicists who are very critical of what's going on. They could then do some of the essential monitoring that is really required.

À (1035)

Mrs. Karen Redman: I read something in the newspaper this morning about the disposal of cellphones. I don't know about anybody else, but I put mine in my briefcase, thinking, “Boy, am I going to get rid of this thing.” And I'm also wondering if there has been any research done on BlackBerries?

Dr. Magda Havas: They emit very little, so they're totally different. They're not worked on unless you're using them for connecting with your e-mail. BlackBerries are actually using infrared energy, and you have to be fairly close to your contact source to activate them. Once again, they're line-of-sight devices, so the line of sight is really important. You wouldn't put your hand in the beam and keep it there for any length of time, because that would interfere with your communication.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Thank you very much. I think you've raised a really important issue. Unfortunately, I had to go between Dr. Thomas' presentation and your own. I was trying to square you with lead sinkers and jigs when I came back in, but it wasn't working.

Dr. Thomas, thank you very much for bringing your very important intervention as well. Given the strong negative reaction that has been received so far around lead and lead sinkers, should we wait for the research results on the effects on wildlife before enacting a further ban on the foreign migratory species that are currently excluded from the legislation?

Prof. Vernon Thomas: I don't think so, and I say that for the following reason—and let me first begin with lead fishing weights and loons.

Over the fifteen years that we have been looking at these results—this is in both Canada and the United States—all we have done is increase the total sample size of loons. What is interesting is that the percentage of loons that have died from ingesting lead has stayed remarkably constant during that time. I would therefore say that if this is the pattern that has emerged, why add yet more samples to that? It's not as though there is a critical threshold or a critical level below which we do nothing, but above which we do something. That is essentially a subjective procedure.

Also, in the case of the species I mentioned, the woodcock, this was not based upon a small sample. This was based upon hundreds and hundreds of birds from the northeastern United States, eastern Canada, and Ontario. That body of evidence is quite compelling. What Dr. Scheuhammer indicated was that about 40% of the birds he examined—he examined the bones of these birds—had been exposed to lead. If that criterion of 5% that was used by Canada to ban lead shot for waterfowl were applied to woodcocks, we would put woodcocks in the same schedule as waterfowl tomorrow.

So we're not looking at critical numbers of studies. Rather, we're looking at the quality of the research and at the sample sizes that have been used. In my opinion, we can move today if we want to.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Before we started this meeting, you and I were having a brief conversation about the relationship between the provincial governments and the federal government. Have you researched the views of the provinces on the further ban of hunting of species that are their responsibility? If you have, what was their reaction?

Prof. Vernon Thomas: We've looked at the situation primarily with Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta. All three were very similar in their response, in that they say they recognize that a problem has been identified by pathologists. However, as of yet, they do not see it as being a large enough problem. Ontario certainly would argue that there are more loons lost to fishing weights than are lost by lead sinker poisoning. To that, I say we lose more people in road accidents than we do in airplane disasters, but we still attempt to increase safety in our airport system and our airplane system.

The other attitude of the provinces is that, again, we have not been able to show that there is this enormous poisoning problem in waterfowl. Somewhere along the line, that is somewhat of an artifact of looking for it. In both the United States and Canada, we're now starting to see that there are, in some species, rather substantial problems of lead ingestion and lead poisoning in upland game birds.

Another argument brought forth is that the substitutes that are out there are not really the same price as lead, and that we have to be concerned about the costs. At this point in time, we're seeing that the cost of lead ammunition, and particularly high-quality lead ammunition, is about the same as the price of high-quality steel, non-toxic ammunition, so that argument is now disappearing. Certainly some of the other substitutes, such as substitutes made from bismuth and tungsten, are more expensive. But if we take a look at the total costs of hunting and fishing, the actual costs of ammunition and the actual costs of fishing weights are a relatively small component of the total activity.

À (1040)

Mrs. Karen Redman: I have one final question: In your view, is the Canadian Environmental Protection Act an effective tool for banning lead shotgun pellets, or would you suggest a different approach that would be more effective?

Prof. Vernon Thomas: I believe it could be an effective tool. Remember that this committee made a recommendation in 1995 that the CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, be used as a legislative tool not only to ban the use, but also the manufacture, sale, and importation of lead fishing weights and lead shot. I see nothing that has changed. In fact, I've written something about this in one of my published, refereed, international journal-type papers. I have said that lead is already listed in schedule 1 of CEPA. But that listing was meant to pertain to lead that is in the atmosphere and the ground and lead that is derived from lead smelters. With it being in schedule 1 of the act, the minister is obliged to pass regulations, if he so feels, to control manufacture, sale, and importation. If the act were to be amended or if it were made clear that lead in the environment from shot and fishing weights is environmentally and chemically no different from lead from smelters, CEPA could very easily be invoked to control the importation, sale, manufacture and use of lead shot and sinkers. This is where we would achieve compliance, because we would solve the problem at the level of sale, importation, and manufacture. It would not be at the discretion of the user.

The Chair: Thank you, Madame Redman.

Mr. Bailey.

Mr. Roy Bailey: Thank you very much. I apologize to our witnesses for having to move out and move back in, Mr. Chairman. Some of the questions I would have asked have probably been answered. I'm quite sure they have been.

I was particularly interested in both of your topics, basically because they are so timely. Lead has cost me a lot of money over the years in a number of different ways, but mainly through carelessness on my part, in leaving old batteries around when I should have immediately taken them to the garage.

I recognize what you are saying about one province legislating and the others not, and so on. It seems to me that the responsibility, both in Canada and the United States, is not only for the welfare of the country, but that it also includes the North American continent. I don't think there's any advantage whatsoever in Michigan—I think you mentioned Michigan—outlawing lead shot and so on when the neighbouring states do not. If that happens, you just move it back and forth by doing so.

You mentioned the cost element. May I suggest to you that once the lead is banned and there is more of the new variety of shot, it will become cheaper with the volume of it?

When alternatives were first introduced on the Prairies—and I happened to live in the great Canada flyway—there was compliance. The only complaints we ever heard were that the new steel shot didn't have the range. But after that, it was totally accepted.

I can understand that lead shot should not only be outlawed for waterfowl, it should be outlawed for upland game as well. Upland game is also a big industry where I live. But it seems to me that Saskatchewan should not try to do that on its own. It should be a national thing. And it’s the same with the U.S. Most of our upland game are not migratory. Nevertheless, they pose a problem because the dogs don't always go out and find the pheasants or the upland game. A bird will lie there and will eventually be eaten by a coyote or some other animal, and the process continues. So I would emphasize that it has to be a national thing.

The other thing I'm concerned about is the type of lead that you use. Mr. Reed mentioned the type of lead that was in lead plumbing. When I brought an animal in that was suffering and you could see it was anemic, the most common thing was what we call “hardware disease”. It had swallowed a staple from the grass, and we would have to inject a magnet into the cow. That magnet stayed there for the life of the cow, and the metal would be attracted to the magnet. Wouldn't that magnet have been made of lead?

À (1045)

Prof. Vernon Thomas: No.

Mr. Roy Bailey: Oh. I always thought it was.

Prof. Vernon Thomas: Lead is completely non-magnetic. Magnets are made from iron material—iron with manganese, iron with zirconium—and that is what makes them magnetic, not lead.

Mr. Roy Bailey: Well, that's one big thing I've learned today after you got started. I considered that the magnet we had to put in the stomach was lead, but it wasn't lead at all.

I listened to the same thing as Madam Redman on the disposal of cellphones. I listened to it for one hour. They were talking with a number of people who had a great deal more information than I had on this same topic. It seems to me that we're going to need something like what we have for PCBs. We're going to need special storage for them. Based on what you've said and what I've heard, I would suggest that we should get with it and establish them at the city level, the provincial level, and so on. To me, what's inside them is a real health hazard even after they're no longer viable instruments to use. Is that correct?

Dr. Magda Havas: I think it is. I think we should try to get away from the throwaway cellphone concept. I think we should design them so that they last a long time, or design them in such a way that they can be pulled apart and recycled, so that we can reuse different parts of them.

Mr. Roy Bailey: Right.

And this is the last point I want to make: You said the industry itself doesn't have proper ways of measuring. When a tower goes up, would it not automatically be that the installation package would provide the radiation frequencies? Do they all come in the same package?

Dr. Magda Havas: Yes, they do. They provide the frequencies. They provide all of that information. The problem is that once you start having more than one antenna, they interact with one another.

Mr. Roy Bailey: On the same—

Dr. Magda Havas: On the same tower, yes. No one provides that information. That's actually so mathematically complex that you couldn't calculate it. You'd have to measure it.

So, yes, they have to provide it for every antenna that they provide, but they don't have to do it cumulatively.

Mr. Roy Bailey: As each one is added, then that isn't—

Dr. Magda Havas: Exactly.

As soon as someone builds a cell tower, they want to rent it out to as many providers as possible because they're making money on it. In the United States, they call it vertical real estate. People are simply buying packets of land, putting towers on them, and getting permission, knowing that every time a cellphone provider wants to put something up there, they're going to get $1000 a month as income as long as that antenna is there. So people are actually investing in this, which is really quite disturbing.

Mr. Roy Bailey: Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Bailey.

I have a couple of questions, and then we can have a brief second round for those who are interested.

Dr. Thomas, in reply to Madam Redman's question, you indicated that since lead from smelters has already been included in CEPA, it would be possible to pursue that path and ensure that lead from pellets is included in CEPA. Isn't there a considerable difference between lead from smelters, which would be in a vapour form, and lead in a solid form? How do we handle it, in other words?

À (1050)

Prof. Vernon Thomas: You may think there is a difference, in that the lead coming from the smelter is in a small atmospheric particle. It is still a very small particle of lead. Chemically, there is no difference between a milligram of lead in the soil from the smelter and a milligram of lead in the soil from shot pellets. Chemically, they are identical. They're both metallic lead. They both go through the same pathways in the soil. They can both be taken up into animals, whether human or otherwise. Chemically, they go through the same transformations. Chemically, they have the same fate. The same is true with fishing weights, even though fishing weights may be in water. Again, they all go through the same chemical fate. There is no distinction between them.

It’s really a question of whether or not we are prepared to bring into this one category several different forms of lead that are nonetheless identical at the level of the environment. As a scientist, I think it is conceptually possible to bring about that amendment.

The Chair: Thank you.

Dr. Havas, in your presentation, you made reference to the City of Toronto and its application. Would you know to whom that application was addressed by the City of Toronto?

Dr. Magda Havas: It was to Industry Canada. Industry Canada had representatives at the public meeting that the city held.

The Chair: So Industry Canada is the agency that decides on standards?

Dr. Magda Havas: It is the agency that sets the standards federally, yes. However, I don't know if other levels of government have the authority to set standards that are more stringent than the federal ones for this type of radiation. I simply don't know if that's a possibility. It's something that is being looked into in the States, for example. Quite recently, they had an issue there dealing with water quality in one of the states. It might have been Michigan, but I simply can't remember. Anyway, one of the states wanted to set more stringent standards than the federal ones that they have there, and permission was given to do that. But on the degree to which we could do the same thing in Canada, I simply don't know if that's a possibility.

The Chair: Have the current, existing Canadian standards been set by Industry Canada?

Dr. Magda Havas: That's correct, based on information from Health Canada, yes.

The Chair: Has any province attempted to set standards?

Dr. Magda Havas: Not that I know of. Most provincial governments simply don't know enough about this. It’s a relatively new area. The fact is that we don't have enough information to let the appropriate people who are making decisions about these things be knowledgeable, and that really impedes what we're doing. Indeed, provincial governments are not even involved with the siting of cell towers, municipal governments are. The responsibility is federal and municipal. Those are the two levels that seem to be responsible for the siting of these towers. Very often, the only criterion for the siting of these towers is whether or not they will fall on a building when they fall down. They're not even using radiofrequency as an important issue to consider municipally.

The Chair: Finally, do you think there is sufficient scientific evidence to involve the precautionary principle?

Dr. Magda Havas: Most definitely. I have absolutely no doubt about that. I think we have sufficient scientific evidence to begin to reduce the guidelines below what they are in Canada. I think what we're doing is irresponsible.

When we look at evidence, not every scientist will look at the same evidence and agree. We really have a lot of disagreement. But the evidence is really beginning to…it's almost like you're getting parts of a jigsaw puzzle, and those pieces are really beginning to fit together. Within the next five to ten years, I suspect that we will have powerful biological data suggesting that these are harmful, and if any government is then unwilling to react, it will simply be irresponsible. The problem is that the telecommunications industry is so powerful that, once you get their scientists involved, there’s a real problem.

In the hearing in the case in the United States that I was talking about, one of the things the judge is actually beginning to consider is whether or not to admit any scientific evidence that has been funded by the telecommunications industry. A level of credibility just isn't there when your money is coming from the providers. And I know medical journals are now asking scientists to disclose their sources of funding when they're publishing papers dealing with pharmaceuticals, because of this level of credibility.

À (1055)

The Chair: Are there any further questions? Madame Redman.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, I want to thank both of you for your very interesting interventions.

Dr. Thomas, I think the most outrageous thing I've heard this morning, the thing I'm going to take away that troubles me as much as anything, was the comment you made about the lead that has been found in the Cree. I'm just wondering how that was come upon? What study brought that to your attention? Was that a health study? What, if anything, has been done to redress that finding?

Prof. Vernon Thomas: I have the paper here in front of me. It is one of several published studies, and it comes from York University and McMaster University, from the departments of biology and biochemistry. These are studies of the Cree in medical situations, and studies of the Cree in terms of the food that they take and how it is procured. There has also been a tremendous amount of information given to the Cree in James Bay and Hudson Bay on the risks created by lead and on the availability of substitutes.

We know the compliance of the Cree with non-toxic shot regulations is poor. This is essentially the heart of the issue. It’s how it gets into these people. A little point of the interest for this committee is that, according to the terms of Treaty No. 8, which covers the Cree of James Bay and Hudson Bay, the federal government pays in full the cost of the ammunition they use every year. To me, it seems appropriate to say that, in terms of the interest of these native people, in terms of the interest of the environment around them, and in terms of the birds upon which they rely, it would be useful to order non-toxic shot. Given the situation that we have at present, with the sale and availability of lead permitted for provincial hunting, people can order lead designed to be used in the province in order to use it against waterfowl that are federally regulated. This is how the problem persists, particularly for people who do consume a large amount of shot meat as their principal source of meat every year.

The Chair: I have to move on, because we have to leave the room.

Madame Karetak-Lindell.

Ms. Nancy Karetak-Lindell (Nunavut, Lib.): Thank you.

My question is very similar to Karen's, in that my riding is Nunavut and we're also relying on the very same situation every year. Do you know if there have been any studies done at all for the Arctic part of the country?

Prof. Vernon Thomas: None that are published so far. The Canadian Wildlife Service has been doing a survey of all Arctic residents. It has a certain amount of information, but that has not been published in the literature. I would therefore not like to comment on it.

However, if we were to move to a similar community in another country, Greenland, I can give you a paper that was published in the international, refereed literature. It shows that lead ingested from shot birds constitutes the single biggest lead source and the source of risk to the Inuit of Greenland. Given that the two cultures practise hunting and reliance upon shot meat in very similar if not identical ways, I would assume there is a risk for the people of your riding, too.

Ms. Nancy Karetak-Lindell: Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Bailey, did you have a last question? No?

Thank you very much. Our colleagues from the Standing Committee on Health now have the room at eleven o'clock, but Dr. Havas would like to make a final comment.

Dr. Magda Havas: I just wanted to say that I've made all of my overheads available for anyone who would like a copy of them.

The Chair: Yes, we found your presentation extremely helpful. Thank you very much. We are very grateful.

The meeting is adjourned.