Activists from civic groups campaigning against exposure to electromagnetic radiation protested at the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday, demanding that the chairman of the advisory committee on non-ionizing radiation (NIR) be replaced because of a “conflict of interest.”
The protesters said the chairman of the committee, Lin Ji-shing (林基興), also serves as secretary-general of the Taiwan Telecommunication Industry Development Association.
Lin, who was presented at an NIR precautionary mechanism and risk evaluation advisory committee meeting later yesterday, dismissed the accusations.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
He said he no longer holds the post of secretary-general of the telecommunications association and that he is now a member of the Executive Yuan’s Science and Technology Advisory Group.
Unconvinced, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) questioned why Lin had accepted a position on the committee since his former position in the telecommunications industry would affect the credibility of his opinions.
It is like asking a manufacturer of toxic food additives to become an advisory committee member on food safety, Tien said.
Chiou Hung-yi (邱弘毅), dean of Taipei Medical University’s College of Public Health and Nutrition, one of the specialists invited to participate at the meeting yesterday, suggested that in order to maintain the credibility of the committee, specialists should disclose any possible conflict of interest before joining the committee.
Chien Hui-jhen (簡慧貞), deputy-director of the EPA’s Department of Air Quality Protection and Noise Control, dismissed the conflict of interest concerns, saying that the six members of the advisory committee were either specialists in “electrical and telecommunication engineering” or “public health and risk evaluation” and that they had been recommended by environmental groups, the business sector, the Department of Health and the National Communications Commission.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,