Holding hand-written cloth banners and wearing weaved straw hats and raincoats, hundreds of people paraded through the rainy streets of Taipei yesterday afternoon in a protest calling for safe neighborhoods without the threat of exposure to electromagnetic and low-frequency radiation.
People from more than 50 self-help groups and non-governmental organizations called for a safe living environment with extremely low frequency (ELF) and electromagnetic radiation exposure levels below 2mG, which is the legal limit in government offices, they said.
Yan Hsiu-lan (顏秀蘭), who said she was a victim of long-term exposure to electromagnetic radiation in Wufeng Township (霧峰) in Greater Taichung, wept as she told the crowd how ELF exposure has impacted her life.
Photo: CNA
“I have to sleep in an aluminum box every night because my head aches,” she said, kneeling on the ground.
“Let’s ask our government not to joke around with our lives. The government uses our [tax] money to protect government employees from ELF, so why can’t we be protected as well? We are victims...” she said before breaking down in tears, unable to finish her sentence.
Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華), the founder and chairperson of the Taiwan Electromagnetic Radiation Hazard Protection and Control Association, urged the government to stop using 833mG as a safety measure.
Chen said that figure is a reference level that could cause transient effects to the human nervous system, which the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection suggested as safety level for long-term (above four hours) exposure.
Other demands included providing the public with a source of inquiry when facing uncertainties; making public information about the harmful effects of ELF; amending the Environmental Protection Administration’s administrative regulation of ELF; and stating explicitly that long-term exposure to ELF above 3mG or 4mG may cause cancer.
The protesters also urged authorities to move facilities that emit electromagnetic radiation away from schools, hospitals and residential areas.
They said that electronic goods that emit electromagnetic radiation, such as mobile phones, should be labeled with a safety range and the specific absorption rate, which is the amount of energy absorbed by the body when exposed to a radio-frequency electromagnetic field.
The government should establish a system in which citizens can participate in the planning and location of ELF emitting facilities, they said.
The rally was attended by mostly elderly people, with some taking their grandchildren along. Shouting “833mG is unsafe, household safety level should be 2mG” and “I don’t want to be harmed by electromagnetic radiation,” the protesters marched through the busy streets near Taipei Train Station before arriving at Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office.
A skit showing residents crying for help while being trapped in a large fishing net was played out at the site, symbolizing the increasing threat of electromagnetic radiation.
Following a meeting between 10 representatives of self-help groups and an official from the Presidential Office’s petition section, Chen told the protesters that the official had promised to respond to their demands within a week.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods