Electrohypersensitive, in the direction of the top of an “epidemic of beliefs”? | EUROtoday
Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.
LThe report was printed on November 26, 2025. The press didn’t make headlines about it, and it’s in itself data. The National Health Security Agency (ANSES), on the idea of the newest research, confirmed final week that there is no such thing as a proof of a carcinogenic impact of waves from telephones, relay antennas, Wi-Fi bins, 5G, and so on.
The Priartem affiliation (“To gather, inform and act on the risks linked to electromagnetic technologies”) denounced a biased report, insisting on the dearth of perspective. The most cancers registries “will only deliver conclusions after decades”, says its press launch, which concludes with a darkish prophecy: “As in other health scandals, we will count the dead. »
In reality, the decades are behind us and the death toll has been counted. There isn’t one. The widespread use of cell phones will soon be 30 years old. There will be 83 million active SIM cards in France in 2025, more than one per inhabitant. Impact on brain tumors, none. As for electrohypersensitivity to waves… “The number of electrohypersensitive people continues to grow”, “50% of the population is likely to become electrohypersensitive by 2017”, wrote the Independent Research and Information Center on Electromagnetic Radiation (Criirem) in 2007.
Nothing like that occurred. Electrosensitive individuals have develop into rarer in magazines and on tv channels. Some have been the topic of a number of reviews through the years, as if the associations lacked witnesses. None of those witnesses has ever demonstrated to a journalist their potential to detect a mobile phone or a relay antenna with their eyes closed.
The sick had been publicized, and the media created sick individuals. This is how the epidemic was born. This is the conviction of Sébastien Point, physicist, holder of a psychology diploma, president till 2023 of the non-ionizing radiation part of the French Society for Radioprotection. In 2021, he printed a e-book titled The Anti-Wave Religion: how the media and associations manufactured electrosensitives. Time appears to show him proper. Interview.
The Point : There have been hundreds of reviews on electrohypersensitive individuals. How are they at this time, to your information?
Sébastien Point : They have gotten rarer. The improvement of a phobia is dependent upon the data acquired. They dry up. There is a physique of proof converging in the direction of an absence of results on cancers, as recalled by ANSES in its newest report. The ideological and financial curiosity in spreading anxiety-provoking messages can also be diminishing.
The scapegoated expertise is altering. After cell telephones and Wi-Fi, the blue gentle of LEDs and the mercury of compact fluorescent lamps, radical ecology is now focusing its assaults on 5G. Protection or pseudo-protection gear towards waves sells much less. Therefore, if electrohypersensitivity was certainly “an epidemic of beliefs”, as I wrote in 2021, it ought to step by step finish.
Have you ever met an individual identified or self-diagnosed as electrosensitive who made you doubt?
Never, at any time, have I encountered an actual EHS. I usually interacted with them. I met individuals who had been anxious and in ache, however from what? The attainable well being impression of waves is undoubtedly the topic that has been most studied by science, together with GMOs. There had been 46,000 research! Some have proven an in-vitro organic impact, however in circumstances very removed from precise makes use of.
If you expose rats for 2 years to waves highly effective sufficient to warmth their tissues, the stress linked to the thermal impact will have an effect. In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer categorized electromagnetic fields as 2B “possibly carcinogenic”, however this class additionally contains espresso. Something stays, the obscure worry of an impact on well being, regardless of the commentary of large-scale consumption with out seen impression.
Do those that bought or nonetheless promote anti-wave clothes actually imagine within the usefulness of their product, in your opinion?
Some, sure. There are additionally opportunists who’ve embraced the discourse of the second.
To what extent does the scientific group contribute to perpetuating unfounded fears by ritually reminding us, as ANSES does in its newest report, that nothing may be excluded? Everything is reassuring, however “the Agency nevertheless maintains its recommendations of caution” and “does not exclude the possibility that future work will provide new elements”… The basic public is confused.
As Carl Sagan stated, “We live in a society delightfully dependent on science and technology, in which few know anything about science and technology.” It is clear to a researcher that science can’t show an absence of impact. We do not know every part, analysis is progressing in phases. But for most people, you’re proper, we must always undoubtedly emphasize extra on the notion of plausibility. Is an entire reversal of the reassuring state of amassed information on the dangerousness of waves believable? I do not assume so.
Today we’re asking science to show its security, which isn’t attainable. I’ve labored quite a bit on blue gentle from screens, remaining rational and rigorous, with out extrapolating from work on laboratory rats to customers. This blue gentle doesn’t current a threat of oxidative stress. Its depth is simply too low, by a number of orders of magnitude. There stays just one matter on the publicity of younger kids. I gave lots of interviews, I defined why there was no have to be afraid of screens, that publicity to the noon solar in the midst of summer time was extra harmful. Journalists usually ignored my arguments, preferring a sensationalist editorial line.
They in all probability noticed themselves as whistleblowers.
Probably. Those who give a reassuring speech are handled as researchers bought to lobbies and pseudo-journalists. But in actuality, who has sustained the struggling of EHS? It was the medical doctors who issued them certificates out of compassion, the magistrates who granted their requests pondering of offering reduction, and the journalists who reported with out hindsight.
To Discover
Kangaroo of the day
Answer
And now, whose flip? What expertise has the potential for brand new psychosis?
Artificial intelligence. Tomorrow, I’ve a sense it will likely be accused of distracting customers from their pure cognitive talents and harming the setting. It has already began.
https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/electrohypersensibles-vers-la-fin-d-une-epidemie-de-croyances-03-12-2025-2604644_23.php