Victims and self-help groups from across the country gathered in front of the legislature yesterday in a protest that urged the government to recognize the harm caused to the public by extremely low frequency (ELF) and electromagnetic radiation.
Tseng Pi-ching (曾碧清), a woman in a wheelchair, said she has been suffering from leukemia since 1994 after 11 years working as a cartographer for long hours in an office exposed to electromagnetic radiation at the Aerospace Industrial Development Corp.
Eight other workers at the company aged between 29 and 38 had also been diagnosed with leukemia, she said.
After years of failed attempts to file for occupational accident compensation from the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA), the Taipei High Administrative Court eventually ruled that Tseng’s illness was indeed an occupational accident caused by a harmful work environment.
Tseng said she joined the protest because she doesn’t want any more people to have to work in the same situation.
CARCINOGENIC
Taiwan Electromagnetic Radiation Hazard Protection and Control Association (TEPCA) founder and chairperson Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) expressed the hope that government agencies would at least recognize that electromagnetic radiation is capable of causing cancer and take stricter precautionary measures against the possible harm to the public.
The group made the appeal ahead of a public hearing at the legislature to discuss such issues.
The public hearing, held by the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee, discussed issues pertaining to environmental impact, cancer prevention, public nuisance control and administrative regulation of ELF and electromagnetic radiation.
EXPOSURE LIMITS
Two main issues discussed at the hearing were whether long-term ELF exposure has an effect on health, what the limit of exposure should be and how administrative regulation, drafted by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), should be amended.
The reference level for exposure to ELF suggested by the EPA is 833mG, but TEPCA along with academics and doctors at the hearing said that was based on guidelines set by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) for transient or very short-term peak fields and that it should not be used to regulate long-term exposure.
They urged a limitation of 2mG for long-term exposure to ELF, the same level allowable at the workplaces of government agencies.
REFERENCE LEVEL
According to a written report provided to the legislature by the EPA, the ICNIRP modified the reference level from 833mG to 2,000mG last year.
Asked whether the EPA would raise the reference level, Department of Air Quality Protection and Noise Control Director-General Hsieh Yein-rui (謝燕儒) said the agency had no intention to do so.
According to the latest amendments to the Telecommunications Act (電信法) and the Power Industry Act (電業法), high-voltage pylons and high-voltage sub-stations cannot be constructed within a certain distance of schools and hospitals, Hsieh said.
He said the agency would seek the advice of specialists and further consider how far the distance should be and whether to amend the regulations.
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