News from ESC
ESC Conference 2024
The ESC Organiser Team would like to thank all the participants for joining this year's EHS summer gathering in Kassel, Germany.
The ESC Conference was a huge success...
- people from Brazil, the States, Finland and many more countries joined
- we had high level scientific presentations
- interesting stands from member organisations
- several sales booths with EMF protecting materials
- joyful music and dancing
- high spirited participants
- ... overall a fantastic atmosphere
More text and pictures from the conference can be found on our website: A retrospective on a very successful ESC Conference 2024
You can find the slides of the speakers' presentations (in PDF format) here:
Speakers at ESC Conference 2024
See you at our next conference!
News from the ESC board
We are happy to report on our conference held this summer. As you can read below it was a very successful one. Not least because people enjoyed being with like-minded people, hearing about progress in science and thinking together about possible solutions to get the world to recognise EHS.
ESC’s main engine is its working groups. We have several groups working along different paths to achieve our common goal of general acceptance that EMFs have harmful effects and that people's lives and nature must be protected. During the conference, we also held meetings of working groups to present their activities, give participants a chance to get involved, contribute new ideas or establish new working groups. It was really great to work together and meet so many enthusiastic people.
In the past, ESC members may have focused mainly on influencing policy and legislation. In its first year, ESC also started focusing on working groups with a more educational goal. Not only do people have the right to be informed about harmful EMFs, they could ultimately help change the system.
For instance, the Smart Meters, Technical Solutions and EMF Protection for Children working groups are examples of this informative approach. The Law and Politics and Have Your Say working groups clearly work in the area of policy-making and regulation. You can read about many of these working groups later in this newsletter.
The conference also introduced new working groups, such as Housing and UN. The latter recently had its kick-off meeting. And of course, there are many more useful topics to think of. If you are interested in joining a working group, if you have new ideas or see opportunities for your national project at the European level, please let us know. We are very happy if you would like to contribute your talents and time to our common cause.
Some working groups were already initiated in 2023 in Rièzes but are still waiting to be continued. The working group Education hopes to find more members to make the initiative work. This working group is dedicated to crafting succinct, impactful strategies for raising awareness and knowledge across all age groups about environmental well-being and responsible technology use.
What is required to establish or participate in a working group? At least 3 people appointed by ESC organisations are needed. The project must be approved by the ESC Board. The project should focus on the European level and, if useful and possible, create a spin-off for the national level. Within the working group, any language can be chosen, but communication with ESC must be in English.
ESC is now an alliance of many ESC members, representing lots of people who have an interest in a safer world with fewer EMFs. Together we can make our message heard; together we can make it work. We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Contact@ESC-info.eu
Working group resumés from the conference
Working Group EMF Protection for Children
The working group was visited by 6 guests from the conference. (The group now has 8 members.) The attendees talked about the following issues:
- Informing about the radiation hazards to:
- Parents – they need to be educated
- Kindergartens, schools, educational staff
- Doctors
- Supporting parents with EHS children
- How to get through to the media
- Suggestions to contact:
- AMNESTY, UN, Save the Children, UNICEF
- Legal action - European Court of Human Rights
We have had our first meeting where we decided to work on these two projects:
The Children's Declaration – a video has been made and will be translated into different languages
Supporting the screen time addiction movement that is growing every day. A letter will be written to support this movement and to inform about the radiation issue. See what is going on in:
Italy: https://www.change.org/p/stop-smartphone-e-social-sotto-i-16-e-14-anni-ogni-tecnologia-ha-il-suo-giusto-tempo?
Denmark: https://www.smartphonefribarndom.org/
USA: https://www.waituntil8th.org/
See also here
Working Group Law and Politics
The meeting was attended by 12 people. The agenda was how to monitor legal and political developments on an international level – mainly EU or other European developments. This was discussed in the group and they came to the following conclusions and further ideas for a strategy:
- to plan, coordinate and execute campaigns on a European level in close reconciliation with the board.
- to ask what future projects and campaigns we should get into
- “delete ICNIRP“
- “get the people on streets“
- work on some of the 23 demands of the ECI
- wait for legislation projects by the EU that fit our purpose then jump on it
See also here
Working Group Smart Meters
14 people attended this very interesting meeting where Petra Bertova explained many details with very good slides. Petra gave a presentation about the use of smart utility meters (the Qundis calorimeter) in apartments in her country, Slovakia. Not only is the radiation of these smart meters a problem there, but also privacy, because they could see the data of other apartments.
After the presentation there was an animated discussion about several aspects of the smart meters:
- the EU law doesn’t say that the smart meters have to be wireless, so we can ask for a wired smart meter;
- Marleen gave a short explanation about the court cases and the situation in Belgium – Flanders, where smart meters are an obligation and the so-called ‘wired’ smart meter is a meter with a cable to an antenna in the front yard.
- Charlotte told about the Danish court case
- In France there have been 2 court cases
There was also a more general discussion/question about how to form a group, how to organize the group, how to have contact and do it in the wired way, is there some training?
A proposal of the working group was to start with a questionnaire to the ESC members about the current situation in the different EU member states.
Working Group Technical Solutions
The attendees had a more or less open discussion on what should be accomplished by the group. Nine people from seven counties attended the (English) meeting. One new person would like to join the group.
The group came up with these solutions:
- Producers of equipment should be asked to keep products without radiation.
- ESC website should have more advice, like how to connect / EcoWifi/…
- Summary of places and solutions (like: doctor/public places/…)
There was also a meeting in French, but we have no report from that. We hope it went well.
See also here
Working Group White Zones
Nine people attended this working group. They talked about the following:
The strategy of putting the nature problems in the centre and working with the fact that the European parliament agreed on a law, which wants to restore the nature in Europe.
The idea is to 'help' them by working on the nature 2000 areas (18% of the territories). By working together with ecological organisations, we should make an advice document about the different pollutions in these areas. For the moment, there aren't real laws to protect these areas. The electromagnetic pollution should be considered as an important pollution among the rest.
One half of the group was very enthusiastic about this idea. The other half did not believe in a timely effect of citizen lobbying towards the government.
One of the propositions was to create places in white zones where ehs and other people would be able to do activities to make people aware of the electrosmog – specifically a lot of activities for children and youngster.
Meanwhile, the white zone group is making the observation that the situation in Europe is declining very quickly and that it is urgent to go quicker and engage ourselves in
- Legal actions
- Political lobbying
- Recognition of ehs and of EMF's as being harmful
- Very visual actions with a big impact all over Europe.
Because:
-The Gigabit Infrastructure Act has been voted in this year. This means that the legal limits of exposure set by local authorities have been eliminated and therefore local authorities can't protect us anymore
- That the politics of Europe is to cover 99% of the territory and that they invest 23,5 billion euros to cover the rural zones without an economic interest, which means all the places where ehs people have their refuge.
See also here
News from our members
Slovakia - Our member Elektrosmog a zdravie has started a petition for new smart meter rules. They ask to stop using HTAs, to analyse health impact and to declare it is not cost effective.
Read more here
The Netherlands - This autumn the EHS Foundation is again organising Regional Contact Days
Once a year, the EHS Foundation organises living room-scale meetings at various locations in the Netherlands. The local organiser is an expert by experience and the location is as radiation-free as possible. The aim is to discuss how to deal with all kinds of EHS problems. Also a technical expert on electromagnetic fields will be present to answer the more technical questions. These meetings are a good opportunity to meet new people, exchange experiences, learn from and support each other. Read here
Please send us news from your organisation to share.
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