Education and Technical Assistance Unit Activities and Products

Telephone, E-mail, and Other Public Contacts

Education and Technical Assistance Unit staff responded to questions about EMF from members of the public. Staff received many letters, telephone calls, and E-mail messages every week requesting information on this subject.

Status: Public Response ended May 31, 2001.

EMF Program Glossary of Terms

This Glossary provides definitions of terms used throughout the EMF Program documents. It is a comprehensive glossary, and therefore contains a variety of definitions, including terms used in statistics, physics, and epidemiology. You can use the Glossary to look up unfamiliar words you find in the Program's documents. We hope that by understanding the terms and phrases used, you will better understand the documents themselves.

EMF Program Glossary of Terms

California EMF Program Newsletter

The newsletter, introduced in December 1998,contains program announcements and updates on the progress of the various program projects. The purpose of this newsletter is to keep Stakeholders Advisory Consultants (SAC) members and interested parties informed about program progress.

Status: The newsletter is produced bi-monthly and mailed to our stakeholders and interested parties on our mailing list. You can also view them on our Web site.

View Newsletters

School Design Guidelines Checklist

These EMF design guidelines provide information about how to use no-cost and low-cost EMF avoidance when building new schools and remodeling existing schools. The primary target audiences are school architects, school facilities planning managers, engineers, and school building advisory committees.

Status:Completed. The guidelines were developed Brooks Cavin, III, a professor of architecture at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona with advice from DHS staff and technical advisers. The U.S. Department of Energy provided major support to Cal Poly for this project. These guidelines are posted on this Web site and paper copies are available on request.

View School Design Guidelines Checklist

School Utility Survey

This project was a collaboration between the major California utilities and the California Department of Health Services (CDHS). This project involved the collection of data by utility staff that visited public schools in their service areas and recorded information about the proximity of the schools to different types of power lines.

Status:Completed. Data collection by the utility companies is complete, and the data has been used (1) as a sampling frame for the school. exposure assessment project; and (2) to estimate the proportion of schools near to and far from different types of overhead power lines and substations, for use in the School Policy Analysis Project.

School Exposure Assessment Project Participation Protocol

This protocol was developed to ensure the successful recruitment of participants schools for the school exposure assessment project. These protocols were established to recognize and help overcome barriers that could discourage participation. They also describe the benefits for individual schools of participation in a study that will be used in developing sound state-level policies.

Status: Completed. Staff developed a plan to select and approach schools to participate in the School Exposure Assessment project. The State Superintendent of Schools and the California Parent/Teacher Association sent letters to prospective participants endorsing the project.

General and Research-related Educational Materials

Education and Technical Assistance Unit staff prepare general educational materials for distribution on the General Information page of our Web site and in hard copy upon request. Staff are also preparing a notebook of materials produced by the Research and Education Units of the California EMF Program, to provide for institutional memory within CDHS of the program's activities.

Status: Staff have produced several EMF fact sheets. To view these and other educational materials, please see the General Information page of this Web site. Staff have also produced a volume of materials documenting Program meetings, mailings, and newsletters from the Program's beginning in 1994 through the end of 2000.

Web Page

EMF staff have developed this site to help our stakeholders and members of the general public remain informed about this program.

Status: The California EMF Program Web site went on line in the summer of 1997, and is revised and updated periodically to reflect new developments.

Workshop Preparation

Staff organize and facilitate workshops on topics relevant to EMF and health.

Status: Workshops that have taken place include: (1) an Electric Car Workshop to familiarize car manufacturers with this issue; (2) an Environmental Justice Workshop; (3) an Analytica Hands-on Training Workshop; (4) Policy Project Draft Clarification Workshops; and (5) Risk Evaluation Guidelines Clarification Sessions in northern and southern California. This unit also helped staff the Research Unit's Epidemiology Workshop.

Program Synthesis and the Public

During the final phase of this program, unit staff will prepare plain language summaries of the Program's research results. These summaries will be available on this Web site, and hard copies will be available upon request.

Status: Workshops with state, local and utility decision-makers, as well as the public were held in January 1997 to discuss preliminary options for analysis and criteria to use in assessing these options. These workshops laid the groundwork for the Program Synthesis outreach and dissemination efforts. Program staff have begun working on the plain language summaries of the completed research project reports, and may prepare summaries of the other projects as they near completion.

Other Educational and Technical Assistance Activities included:

• Reviewing the factual contents of the annual California utility companies 'EMF bill stuffers (in cooperation with the California Public Utilities Commission staff).
• Providing technical and consultative services for individuals and governmental and community agencies.
  
• Coordinating with other local, state, and national EMF education and technical activities.
• Performing liaison activities between stakeholders and program staff.