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By
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
The current debate
over the health hazards of mobile phones is a continuation
of the debate over the health hazards of weak electromagnetic
fields in the entire frequency spectrum that began in the
1950s.
The first experiment
on the biological effects of electromagnetic fields dates
from the end of the 19th century when Russian scientist Danilevsky
observed effects of radio-frequency fields on a muscle preparation
that included the nerve supplying the muscle. Investigations
peaked simultaneously with the development of radar between
1930 and 1940 but ended abruptly with World War II.
Interest in the
subject was rekindled by the discovery that animals and plants
failed to thrive and even died in areas exposed to radio waves
beyond a certain minimum power density; and also by complaints
of workers at radar stations. Research resumed in the 1950s
in the former Soviet Union and the United States, as well
as in Poland, Italy, and later, Britain.
Public debate over
the health hazards of electromagnetic fields began in the
United States. In 1973, biologist Robert Becker was approached
by the U.S. Navy Commander Paul Tyler to serve on a panel
of experts to evaluate some experiments that the Navy had
funded. These were in connection with an antenna system the
Navy was planning to build in northern Wisconsin that involved
grids of buried wires that would extend over thousands of
square miles of land. It was to be used for communication
with submerged submarines.
Because of the
large size of the antenna system, and fears that the non-ionizing
electromagnetic radiation (NIEMR) it would emit, might have
impacts on health and the environment, Congress had ordered
the Navy to carry out the studies.
The New York Academy
of Sciences had sponsored a conference on "Electrically
Mediated Growth Mechanisms in Living Systems," and Becker
had delivered a brilliant keynote paper that summarized his
work up to then, which revealed how electrical fields and
currents produced by the body are controlling growth and regeneration.
By the 1960s, Becker had already proposed a theory that an
electrical communication system exists within all living things,
and also showed that externally applied fields could influence
the processes of growth and regeneration.
But Becker was
also worried about the undesirable, harmful effects that could
come from exposures to external electromagnetic fields that
were often orders of magnitude stronger than the fields within
the living body. He had taken on a graduate student, Andrew
Marino, to conduct some studies on mice and rats.
Marino had indeed
found that animals exposed to NIEMR suffered adverse effects
when Becker was asked to review the studies that the Navy
had funded.
There were seven
scientists on the panel reviewing more than 30 studies. Nearly
two-thirds of the studies had found biological effects from
exposure to NIEMR; and these were in a variety of species,
including slime-mould, rats, birds and humans. The upshot
was that all the panel members thought the proposed antenna
was a potential hazard to human health, and they drew up a
long list of recommendations and further studies.
In the middle of
deliberations, someone pointed out that the Navy’s proposed
antenna produced NIEMR similar to that produced by high-voltage
power lines, and that in the largest lines carrying 765 000
volts, the strength of the NIEMR might be as much as a million
times stronger. That threw the panel into disarray. The discussions
became heated, but, eventually, the scientists agreed they
had to recommend some action: that the Navy should inform
a special committee advisory to the President that many Americans
might be "at risk" from NIEMR from power lines.
Marino, who told
his story in a book published years later had no idea that
he and his supervisor were about to be drawn into one of the
most acrimonious and lonely battle against the industrial-military
complex, and prominent figures in the scientific establishment
were to play the key role in victimizing him and his supervisor.
When it was all over, Becker would lose all grant support,
and would have to close his laboratory in Syracuse, New York,
after 20 years of pioneering research on the electromagnetic
basis of living organisms.
Marino had found
that animals exposed to NIEMR of 60Hz from the wall outlet
gained less weight and drank less water. The exposed animals
also had altered levels of blood proteins and enzymes. That
was precisely the same NIEMR that would come from power lines.
He had repeated the experiment twice, with the same results.
By then, at least
two 765 000 volt lines were being planned, and Marino and
Becker were called to give evidence at a power line hearing,
which arose from Becker’s warnings. Their experiments
had confirmed what the Navy’s own studies had found.
Becker had no doubt that the power line was a potential health
risk.
Unfortunately,
they were up against Herman Schwan and other scientists who
would be defending the industry and their own prestige in
the scientific establishment.
Schwan had come
to United States from Germany in 1947 under Project Paperclip,
a controversial government program to import German scientists
after WWII. He worked for the U.S. Navy until 1950 when he
became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Schwan
had done some research on NIEMR in Germany during the war.
After arriving in the U.S., he began to publish papers saying
that ‘the laws of physics’ showed that the only
effects of NIEMR on living things would be through heating
or electric shock.
Schwan’s writings
were bound up with the federal government’s concern,
which surfaced in the 1950s, over military employees who were
reporting various injuries from working around radar --
eye injuries, temporary and permanent sterility, internal
bleeding and other problems. In response to these complaints,
an Air Force surgeon, Colonel George Knauf was asked to determine
how much NIEMR was safe. Knauf and Schwan began to work together,
with Schwan being the expert on biological effects.
Schwan regarded
the stories of non-thermal injuries anecdotal and unreliable.
Accordingly, he regarded NIEMR safe if it did not cause heating.
What was the maximum level? Schwan‘s answer was that
the body could handle a certain amount of heat, for example
by sweating, but if the heat reached the point at which the
body’s regulatory mechanisms broke down, temperature
would rise and injury would result. According to his calculations,
the ‘safe’ level would be 10 milliwatts per square
centimetre (mW/cm2).
This level was
adopted provisionally by the Department of Defense in 1955,
and Knauf got the go-ahead to fund a series of animal experiments
to verify Schwan’s calculations.
One of the researchers
funded was Solomon Michaelson at the University of Rochester,
who used beagle dogs as a test animal, and, "in a revolting
series of experiments, he literally cooked dogs alive with
NIEMR at levels of 50 to 100mW/cm2". He recorded burns,
fluid oozing from the brain and eyes and body temperatures
rising to 106-108F.
Other investigators
confirmed Michaelson’s work. Gross acute effects had
been observed at NIEMR levels only slightly above the safety
limit set by Schwan. There was not one instance of an experiment
funded by the program that was conducted at power densities
below the limit. In other words, non-thermal effects were
never investigated.
Schwan was subsequently
appointed chair of a committee of the American National Standards
Institute (ANSI), whose goal was to set a NIEMR limit or industry.
It came as no surprise that ANSI accepted Schwan’s position
and 10mW/cm2 became the "safe" level for such industries
as radar and radio and others whose employees would be exposed
to electrical equipment.
Over the next 20
years, Schwan published dozens of papers and gave hundreds
of lectures, which culminated in his election to the National
Academy of Engineering.
What Schwan said
in most of his papers was that there were no known biological
effects of NIEMR below 10mW/cm2. There were in fact such reports,
particularly from the former Soviet Union, that were never
acknowledged by Schwan. Schwan’s limit came solely from
calculations based on non-biological models, or dead tissues;
and all subsequent experiments were simply rationalizations
of it, as Marino pointed out.
Michaelson, too,
declared that so long as NIEMR levels were below Schwan’s
limit, they were completely safe. He was especially critical
of Soviet scientists who found non-thermal effects below that
threshold, and had set safety limits far more stringent that
that in the U.S. He said that the harm done to industry and
the military from such stringent limits would outweigh any
proposed public-health benefit.
In 1965, the safe
exposure limit set for the general public in Czechoslovakia
was in the range of microwatts/cm2, 1,000 times smaller than
that in the United States.
Michaelson’s
public declarations brought him many important appointments
to committees of the National Academy of Sciences, the World
Health Organization, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
President’s Office of Telecommunication Policy, Electric
Power Research Institute, etc.
Both Schwan and
Michaelson were to be major witnesses on behalf of industry
against Marino and Becker.
It turns out that
in the mid-1960s, the power industry in the U.S. had already
obtained copies of Soviet studies on the biological effects
of NIEMR from powerlines. The American Electric Power Company
(AEP), one of the largest in the U.S., commissioned a study
by scientists in Johns Hopkins University, the results of
which were released in 1967. In a survey involving 11 linemen,
two were found with reduced sperm count. In a second study,
mice exposed to NIEMR were not harmed, but their offspring,
which were not exposed, were stunted. No more follow-up studies
were carried out, and request by the John Hopkins team for
further funding was turned down.
At an international
conference on high-voltage power lines in Paris in 1972, Soviet
engineers announced for the first time to the West that they
had performed investigations on the effects of NIEMR on workers
and concluded they needed protective clothing. They reported
reduced sexual potency and adverse effects on the central
nervous system, the heart and circulatory system.
The power industry
released translations of the Soviet reports, which were prefaced
by Howard Barnes, an engineer for AEP involved in the John
Hopkins studies. The Soviet scientists had studied hundreds
of linemen, compared to the 11 in the American study. And
while the American study involved only physical examinations,
the Soviets had performed psychological and neurological tests
as well.
But Barnes, in
his introduction, invoked an argument that’s all too
familiar in the current GM debate. He pointed out that there
were then 500,000 miles of high-voltage lines in the U.S.,
and there wasn’t a single report, not one confirmed case,
of anyone being killed or made ill by the NIEMR from such
lines, so they must be safe.
As in the case
of GM food, that statement was based on there having been
no studies on the effects of living near the power lines.
The story that
unfolded makes riveting reading. Research findings were suppressed
and falsified. Important scientific witnesses failed to turn
up or were not contactable. Committees were stacked with industry-friendly
scientists.
Marino, Becker
and citizens won in the end, at tremendous personal costs
to themselves. They prevented one of the two big power lines
from being built, and the company that built the first announced
it would not build another 765,000-volt line.
Most revealing
in the entire episode was the way Schwan defended the indefensible
orthodoxy. He denied all scientific evidence that went against
his a priori calculation based on the ‘known laws of
physics’ and the utterly false assumption that the living
organism was to be regarded as no different from dead or inanimate
matter.
As Marino wrote,
"...Schwan seemed to view the studies [reporting non-thermal
NIEMR effects] as weeds in the garden of known physical laws.
Because the know laws did not predict the results of the studies,
Schwan’s reaction was to denigrate them, rather than
assume that there existed unknown laws, or unknown interpretation
of known laws.."
Schwan was not
alone, the scientific establishment had thrown its weight
behind his position until it became untenable. But there has
been little change in scientific outlook since.
To this day, the
‘safe’ exposure limits recommended by the international
authority, International Committee for Non-Ionizing Radiation
(ICNIRP) take no account of non-thermal effects, despite the
mounting evidence of health hazards from such effects.
By the 1980s, Marino
could already point to the studies reporting NIEMR links to
depression and suicides in England, to cancers in both children
and adults in Colorado in the United States. Housewives in
Oregon who lived in houses with radiant electric heating were
subject to increased cancer risk. In Sweden, a correlation
was reported between cancer in juveniles and proximity to
high-voltage power lines in the Stockholm area. A cluster
of rare and lethal ovarian tumors was found in five young
girls living near a 69,000-volt line in Florida.
Similar association
between NIEMR and cancer was reported in Wichita, Kansas.
Men and women living in counties containing cities near Air
Force bases were more likely to get cancer than people in
similar counties not located near Air Force bases.
Finally, a correlation
between electric blankets and miscarriages was also reported.
Successive reports
since then, including the latest from the UK National Radiological
Protection Board that accepts the links to childhood leukemia,
stops short of drawing any firm conclusions because of the
absence of "any proven biological mechanisms."
Institute
of Science in Society
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