Tri-Conference Trip for PhD Student Mary Redmayne
Mary Redmayne, a PhD student studying Environmental Studies, recently attended a three-conference trip, taking in Slovenia, Portugal and Nova Scotia!
This was a costly undertaking but greatly eased thanks to the support from the Science Faculty and SGEES.
Mary’s research is about the health effects and policy implications of children’s cellphone use – a topic that’s been in the news again recently. There are very few people researching this area in New Zealand so it was a great opportunity for Mary to talk with many of the movers-and-shakers in her field, and of course to get her own work out there.
Mary was given a lot of encouraging feedback and advice as well as given the possibility of a small collaboration with a senior researcher in Israel. Mary also learnt more about the involvement and influences of various players in the field.
"While I was overseas, the IARC classified radiofrequencies as 2B on the carcinogen scale. This is the first time that a World Health Organisation subsidiary has acknowledged that research indicates that a very low level of radiofrequency exposure such as from cellphones appears to be linked with increased incidence of brain tumours. Until now, bodies such as these have denied this because the mechanism of interaction is not understood", says Mary
Mary thinks that her trip has proved to have been a significant step in her career and well worth it.