**2.7 The Bioinitiative report (2007 – updated 2010)**

*BioInitiative: A Rationale for a Biologically-based Exposure Standard for Electromagnetic Radiation*  www.bioinitiative.org/report/index.htm

This report was written by a number of individual scientists and public health and public policy workers who believe that existing public exposure standards for as well extreme low frequency fields (power lines) as radiofrequency radiation (mobile phones) are inadequate. Notably, not all authors were scientists and not all can be considered 'independent'. Possible conflicts of interest were not assessed. The purpose of this report was to assess scientific evidence on health impacts from electromagnetic radiation below current public exposure limits and to evaluate what changes in these limits are warranted now to reduce possible public health risks in the future. The report is a collection of a number of chapters, called 'sections', written by the individual authors. The sections were not written in a standardised way and there was apparently no consultation or discussion on these sections between the authors. The methods used to collect literature data were not defined. In most cases a selection of the available scientific material has been made in favour of those reporting alarming data (also from the non peer-reviewed literature) whereas negative (reassuring) data were often not reported. The selection criteria for inclusion or rejection of papers were not stated. The report is not a consensus report and the overall summary is often an over exaggeration that does not always comply with the content of the sections.

According to the report it is obvious that exposure to the electromagnetic fields, even at environmental exposure levels, constitute an important health risk for humans and that positive (alarming) data are reported (and considered very likely if not proven) for almost all biological endpoints that were investigated. The report therefore contains recommendations on establishing limits for exposure to electromagnetic fields that are much lower than the limits that are currently applied in many countries all over the world.

The report certainly has some merits but as stated above there are many shortcomings. A detailed evaluation of the Bioinitiative report and its shortcomings is for example given on the website of the Dutch Health Council and will therefore not be further detailed in this paper (http://www.gezondheidsraad.nl/sites/default/files/200817E\_0.pdf).
