**2.3 Reports from the Dutch health council**

*Health Council of the Netherlands. Electromagnetic Fields: Annual Update 2008. The Hague: Health Council of the Netherlands, 2008; publication no.2009/02.*  http://www.gezondheidsraad.nl/sites/default/files/200902.pdf

The Health Council is an independent scientific advisory body. Its task is to provide the government and parliament with advice in the field of public health and health/healthcare research. The Standing Committee on Radiation and Health deals with questions relating to the health effects of exposure to radiation and questions surrounding the use of medical imaging techniques. Following the rise of technologies such as mobile telephony, attention has in recent years mainly focused on the risks of non-ionizing radiation. Applications, such as high-voltage power lines, also give rise to queries from time to time. The standing committee also monitors scientific developments in the field of ionizing radiation, ultraviolet radiation and ultrasound. Members of the standing committees are carefully selected so as to form a multidisciplinary group of independent experts.

The annual update 2008 (published in 2009) considered two different aspects of RF-bio effects: RF-effects on brain function and 'Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity'. It was prepared by the members of the "electromagnetic field committee" and discussed and approved by the standing committee "Radiation". The report includes a description of the criteria used in the evaluation process. These were inclusion of peer reviewed scientific papers of 'sufficient' quality only, attention for dose-effect relationships and reproducible or consistent results that were supported by quantitative and statistical analyses. Possible working mechanisms were also taken into consideration although absence of such mechanisms did not necessarily exclude plausibility of a causal relationship between exposure and effect. For human studies further attention was paid to 'double blind studies', the constitution of the control populations and other methodological aspects of the study (exposure regimes etc.). Minority opinions were allowed.

The Health Council's conclusion was that effects on brain function were described in some papers but that there were no indications that they might be hazardous. They also concluded that good quality papers do not support the existence of a causal relationship between RF-exposure and symptoms like headache, migraine, fatigue, itching, insomnia etc. But there was a relationship between supposed RF-exposure and subjective symptoms indicating the presence of a nocebo effect. No advises were formulated.

The Dutch health council also published other reports or advises on the subject that we do not consider here (see http://www.gezondheidsraad.nl/en).
