Tribune. In our modern society, the management of environmental health risks is rational and science-based, and that is fortunate. The crises of recent decades, from asbestos to the Mediator, including endocrine disruptors such as distilbene or bisphenol A in baby bottles, have sufficiently marked public opinion for an anticipatory approach to these risks to be implemented.
It has become obvious that a technological innovation is not progress in itself, if it generates major health and environmental costs out of proportion to the benefits it is supposed to bring. It is also necessary to evaluate both, according to the most recent scientific knowledge and this in a transparent manner. This is the logic of the precautionary principle, which is, let us remember, a constitutional principle. In this process, civil society cannot be a passive actor because it is they who suffer the consequences of these choices.
The 5G dossier illustrates a step backwards. Since the 1990s, mobile telecommunications technologies have changed every ten years: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G today and we have already been told 6G. Since the beginning of the XXe century, that is to say from the origin of the use of radio frequencies, health risk signals call out: risks associated with intense exposure to high doses: burns, cataracts, but in a more insidious manner , long-term risks associated with low-dose exposures are discussed: cancer, disturbance of metabolism, brain and nerve activity, sleep disorders, etc.
The question of the variability of the sensitivity according to the individuals, the sex, the age, the size, the physiological condition and the question of the variability of the effects according to the dose received or the period of exposure – like the disruptors endocrine – is also part of the scientific debate.
Limit values
Unfortunately, France, by complying with the European recommendations of 1999, has chosen to base its regulations on exposure limit values that only retain the effects of heating of the tissues, while completely freeing themselves from the effects of nerve stimulation. yet today admitted, especially on the electrical activity of our brain!
In 2009, the French Agency for Environmental and Occupational Health Safety, ancestor of the current National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (ANSES), recommended reducing exposure, especially for the youngest; in 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified these radiofrequencies as possible carcinogens; in 2016, ANSES recommended in its report “ RF exposure and children’s health », To reconsider the regulatory exposure limit values and exposure indicators, in order to ensure sufficiently large safety margins to protect the health and safety of the population, especially that of children.
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