Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me. My name is Anne-Marie Nicol. I am a Ph.D. epidemiologist trained at the University of B.C. in the faculty of medicine. I'm a professor at Simon Fraser University. I also work at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. My usual area of expertise is ionizing radiation. I deal predominantly with radon. I was asked to be part of the Royal Society panel as an expert on risk communication and risk perception, which is where I do a majority of my research.

In my capacity on the panel, I was not asked there to be a radio biologist or a radiation scientist. I was there to help with the public meeting and to understand better the perceptions of the public through the Royal Society process. To speak quickly to the Royal Society process, we were asked to review Safety Code 6. We were given a very clear mandate to evaluate the science. The Royal Society decided that it would be prudent to provide a day in which we listened to people's perceptions, given that there had been a number of inquiries from the public and different NGOs regarding their desire to speak to the process.

I sat for nine hours and listened to the testimony from people all day long, both in person and over the Internet, about their concerns around Wi-Fi, EMF, and RF in general. My job was to collate that input, organize it, and provide the information back to the Royal Society.

In doing so, I came up with four major areas. The first was major concerns about health impacts and health effects, which Dr. Bray has eloquently described. There were also serious concerns about exposure. People were very worried about what they were exposed to. People were very concerned about the Royal Society process and whether or not it was being manipulated or controlled by Health Canada. There was also a very clear desire for more communication about RF in general.

I'm going to unpack each of those four. There were other findings, but these were the four findings, overall, that we tried to address in the final report for Safety Code 6 from the Royal Society.

Regarding health effects, there was incredibly poignant testimonies from a number of people who have obviously been affected by something in their lives. I'm not a clinician, nor am I a diagnostician, so I can not tell you what was causing these people's pain, but I can tell you in a very heartfelt way that it was hard to sit and listen to person after person discuss how their life had been significantly affected.

One of the recommendations that I feel is prudent, which Dr. Bray has also discussed, is that we need a place for people to go and discuss their symptoms or the constellations of symptoms. Here in B.C. we have what are called complex chronic disease clinics. I know in Ontario we have environmental health clinics. I think these are very important places for people to be treated and to start to collect data for surveillance.

As an epidemiologist I believe it's important that we understand what people are exposed to, or their symptoms, so that we can at least come up with an overall sense of what's going on in this country. Currently that data is not being collected. In fact, we allow these people to be shunted from one specialist to another where they get increasingly frustrated and become incredibly vulnerable to non-medical interventions. I think, as a society, we need to be doing a better job of addressing these people who appear to be very seriously affected by this.

On the topic of exposure, it's very clear that most people have very little understanding of what radio frequency is. Most people do not realize that this is a question of proximity. They're very concerned about the ubiquity of exposure without an understanding that the closer a technology is to your body, the more dangerous it possibly could be to you. This is a question of proximity and a question of education. Given the ubiquity of radio frequency in our society, I do find it amazing that we are not doing a very good job either in the public school system, or in general, of discussing what RF is.

I think one of the more poignant stories was a conversation with someone regarding a baby monitor. People had no idea that baby monitors emitted some kind of radio frequency. They put the baby monitor next to the child, which would be a normal thing that you would want to do with a baby monitor. Then they were shocked to realize that was emitting something that could potentially have some impact on a child. They felt essentially deceived both by the product manufacturer and the government in part because they don't understand what RF is or how the technology exists.

I'm sure these people are not alone, and as a result we are essentially breeding—if you think about risk-perception research—a whole group of people who are suddenly very distrustful of both the government and the manufacturers for not telling them what's actually in the product and how it emits.

When we think about cellphones, it's the same issue. Many people were concerned about Wi-Fi, but less concerned about cellphones. If we look at how much RF is emitted between Wi-Fi and cellphones, it is clear that a cellphone is a major emitter of RF, and Wi-Fi much less. Again, this is an issue of proximity. Most people don't realize that a cellphone used like a normal phone is not the most prudent way of operating that device—that again, distance is important. There's interesting messaging that's coming out, for example, that texting is safer than talking on the phone, yet we have whole public health campaigns around not texting during certain activities.

So you can see we're getting very mixed messages to the public—if they even understand this at all—around the technology. I think we need overall much better information to consumers about what their exposure is, about this issue of distance. It could be done in a number of different modalities, but it is a very important component that is missing in our dialogue with the public around RF.

Regarding the process, I was brought into the process because my predecessor on the board had to step down due to a potential conflict of interest. I did come to the board as a independent academic. We had no involvement from Health Canada; I can speak to that. We were not micromanaged by Health Canada in the Safety Code 6 review process at the Royal Society, although there was a lot of mistrust in the community around that. You can see why that would occur, given some of the other factors that have gone around. These are people who have not been heard, people who are potentially suspicious of a process that they have had no real dialogue with.

In terms of risk communication overall, people want more education. Perhaps this would be labelling on products, or a basic primer that a cellphone is not like a normal phone. People don't even realize that cordless phones—your home cordless phone—emit RF. I believe that people have the right to be informed of what they are exposed to regardless of whether or not it's at a level that can cause them something like a thermal heating effect. I like to use the analogy of salt. We all know that salt is in our diet. Some people choose to pursue low-sodium options for a number of reasons. We make those labels very clear to people. From a communication perspective, I don't see this as being much different.

I know we don't have a lot of time. There were more findings from the public input that the Royal Society collected. I commend the Royal Society for including a space for a public voice on this issue, because I believe it is important.

I will stop here and anticipate any questions you may have.

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