Statement on the “BioInitiative Report”

The first report of the “BioInitiative Working Group”, a group of scientists from Europe and the US who are critical of mobile communications, was published on 31 August 2007 and has sparked national and international public debate.

The 2007 report shows clear scientific weaknesses

The authors of the “BioInitiative Reports” conclude that the current limit values do not adequately protect the population from the health risks posed by high- and low-frequency EMF and therefore call for the limit values to be lowered.

The BfS examined the report and found clear scientific weaknesses. In particular, the health effects of low-frequency and high-frequency fields are mixed up; this is not technically permissible.

Most studies on which the report is based are not new. They have already been taken into account when setting the current limit values. As part of the German Mobile Telecommunication Research Programme (DMF), the studies on which the report is based and the report itself were re-evaluated by the BfS (see final report of the DMF).

2012 BioInitiative Report

Five years later, the “2012 BioInitiative Report” was published. According to this report, many studies show adverse health effects at low to very low exposures. Since the first report in 2007, the authors have even seen increased evidence of a health risk from both low-frequency and high-frequency fields.

The assessment of the “BioInitiative Working Group” is not shared by other international and interdisciplinary bodies. One example is the document “Opinion on Potential health effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields” of the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR), a scientific committee of the EU.

From a technical perspective, the quality of the individual chapters in the 2007 and 2012 Bioinitiative Reports varies greatly and depends on the author(s). This concerns the selection and completeness of the literature cited as well as information on the reliability and reproducibility of the results presented. Only some authors consider the methodological and content-related strengths and weaknesses of individual studies.

However, the state of scientific knowledge is always derived from all studies published. The quality of the results must be considered and evaluated in each case. Internationally recognised quality criteria have been firmly established for decades. They relate to the choice of study design, study size, selection of suitable controls, statistics, and possible blinding. When it comes to EMF, the actual exposure of the test subjects, the animal model, or the cell cultures plays a decisive role.

The radiation protection standpoint describes how the BfS assesses health-related risks. Furthermore, interested laypersons can use the guidelines to assess study results in the area of mobile communications.

In contrast to other bodies, Bioinitiative requires protection against not only proven health-relevant effects but also all possible or suspected biological effects. Because the effect thresholds for unproven effects are generally unknown and are often based only on individual, non-replicated indications, Bioinitiative demands low limit values that are not scientifically justified as a precautionary measure. In the research project “Divergent risk assessments in the field of mobile communications”, the BfS has investigated how different risk assessments are made on the basis of the same scientific data.