From: Misty 
Subject: IUFO: A Brief History of Microwaves
Date: 23 Jan 2001 06:33:25 -0500
To: IUFO , AltWritersFiles ,
        Armageddon or New Age? 

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A Brief History of Microwaves
http://www.cogreslab.demon.co.uk/gsmobil2.htm

Something strange is happening to our planet.Yesterday my newspaper reported
(for the third time in as many weeks) that a rare migratory bird had lost
its way and landed in Cornwall, whither birdwatchers were gathering from
miles around to glimpse it. This species, a Blackpoll Warbler, usually flies
two thousand miles south, guided by its sensitivity to the earth’s magnetic
fieIds, to overwinter in Africa (1-1). Elsewhere in Scandinavia
unprecedented numbers of whales, which also navigate using the earth’s
geomagnetic fields, are beaching themselves along the coasts(1-2). Whole
flocks of homing pigeons are reported to have lost their way back to their
lofts (1-3 ). This morning I received a letter from a lady I have never met.
She described how her husband, a sufferer from Alzheimer’s disease, had
suddenly and dramatically recovered his memory and clarity just two hours
after a brain scan which sent magnetic fields through his head. A few weeks
ago from my electronic typewriter could be heard the conversation from
someone’s car telephone, - to the great amusement of my son whom I called to
hear it. Then a lady wrote to say she could hear men talking in her brain.
She lives near Crystal Palace, from where the BBC transmits its radio
programmes. This winter huge supplies of influenza vaccine are being
stockpiled in advance because doctors know that influenza epidemics occur in
cycles corresponding to the peaks of the eleven-year sunspot index, when
electromagnetic radiation from the sun increases dramatically(1-4). All
these seemingly unrelated events chronicle that the creatures of our planet,
which are used to being affected by changes in its natural geomagnetic
fields, are also now being affected by the artificial electromagnetic fields
which we ourselves have created. All around us now, - for the first time in
the history of mankind - , flows a mighty ocean of electromagnetic waves of
a myriad different frequencies and strengths. All day and night they are
passing through the delicate cells of our bodies, which are by no means
prepared by evolution to withstand their diverse influences. We are not the
only targets: the ozone layer, a mere one inch thick at sea level densities,
is being continually bombarded by the same invisible energies from military
and commercial radar, microwave, and radio waves, and the entire apparatus
of the world’s telecommunications industries. A single century ago none of
this technology had been invented. This describes their growth and the
damage such waves can do to us. It also explains what we can do to prevent
their malign effects on our lives. Frankly, we are beginning to get into an
almighty mess. Hospital beds are beginning to be full with people whose
medical condition is a mystery to doctors: nervous and neurotic disorders
are growing daily.

And now we have AIDS to cope with, another serious disease which remains
without remedy. It all started just over a hundred years ago. In what must
surely count as one of the most important scientific discoveries ever, the
young German physicist, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, in 1888 at Bonn, produced and
detected the first man-made electromagnetic radiation. By first sending a
powerful electric charge across a gap and thereby producing a spark he was
able to induce a smaller spark, - evidence of the presence of an electric
field - , to jump across a second gap some distance away. This simple
experiment has completely changed the way we all live, more than atom bomb,
airplane, or even the invention of the wheel. The existence of
electromagnetic radiation had already been predicted in theory by the
diminutive thick-accented Scot, James Clerk Maxwell, in 1864. A few years
later a certain David Edward

Hughes had noted, in 1879, that when an electric spark was produced anywhere
in his house he heard a noise in his telephone receiver. Hughes patiently
traced the effect to the action of the carbon granules in contact with a
metal disc in his telephone transmitter. These granules were acting as a
detector of the space waves by sticking together slightly under their
influence, reducing the resistance of the mass, and in this way produced a
clicking in the receiver. By 1882 Professor Dolbear at Tufts University had
refined and publicly demonstrated the discovery. Mankind’s use of
electromagnetic energy never looked back from that date. In 1885 the great
Edison himself had successfully sent a ‘wireless’ message from a moving
train which had been equipped with a wire parallel to the telegraph wire
strung along the track by induction. In England W.M. Preece had performed a
similar experiment. But Heinrich Hertz alone supplied the definitive proof.
>From that moment inventors like Tesla, Marconi, and Braun were quick to
exploit this ‘wireless telegraphy’ for commercial ends. "Tesla took the
trouble", wrote John O’Neill his friend and biographer, "to repeat exactly
the experiments of Hertz: and he published his results, stating that he
found a number of important differences and calling attention to the
inadequacies of Hertz’ experimental methods"(1-5). Hertz himself never lived
to see the miracles which derived from his discovery. He died, sadly, in
1894 at the young age of 37, seven vears before Marconi succeeded in sending
a letter in Morse code between Cornwall and Newfoundland, thereby opening
the first chapter in the amazing story of wireless telecommunications. So
the whole history of ‘radio’ as it came to be called, is encompassed within
the twentieth century, a mere ninety five years as I write.


 During that time invention has followed invention, discovery overleapt
discovery, from the earliest days when the curiosity of many a suburban
household was whetted by popular books on how to acheive "wireless" with
simple apparatus, to the equal excitement of hearing radio satellite
broadcasts from the Moon. By 1912 slim volumes like Cassell’s fully
illustrated pocketbook "Wireless Telegraphy" was revealing to its readers
the intricate secrets of Wimshurst machines, coherers, and the method of
‘conducting light and heat by means of etheric waves’ (1-6). Cassell’s book
quickly ran through three editions during 1913, and a further six during the
Great War. Within its covers were advertised tappers, accumulators, and
Leyden Jars "for students and experimentalists alike’. In those days silicon
and platinum detectors could be had for five shillings and six pence (less
than 30p.) at distributors like Economic Electric Ltd. of Fitzroy Square,
London, W .

The public interest in radio, the latest miracle from the new world of
electricity, was intense. But before radio had begun to excite the
imagination, electric power for domestic and industrial use had already
changed the living environment so radically that peaceful scenes like
Constable’s Haywain (1805) were slowly fading from sight .... the noise of
industry had already taken command of the towns and could be heard distantly
in the countryside of England. To Yugoslav-born Nikola Tesla we owe many of
today’s electric advancements. One biography goes so far as to hail him as
‘the man who !nvented the twentieth century’. What he failed to invent, he
foresaw: from his fertile brain originated the incandescent light bulb,
alternating current, the electric motors which power so many of our modern
domestic appliances, and the radio control of remote vehicles. Among his own
claims he would add: the wireless transmission of electric power, the EMP
(electro magnetic pulse) death ray, and it is possible that he even
discovered X-rays before Roentgen in 1891. In those early days few believed
that such electric inventions might in any way but direct application be
harmful to organic life.

Though the application of an electric current, whether direct or
alternating, had been put to macabre use in the world’s first criminal
electrocution during 1890, and though Grover Cleveland was not allowed to
operate electric switches in the White House for fear the United States
might lose its President (1-7), such concerns were soon forgotten, and the
headlong enjoyment of electricity and electromagnetism in all its diverse
forms began in earnest during the first few years of the twentieth century.
The Curies discovered only years later how deadly could be the field effects
of ionising radiation. In the case of non-ionising electromagnetism it was
to take decades, and be bitterly argued all the way. Thanks to Lee de Forest
’s radio-wave detector, which replaced the crystal, radiotelephony became a
reality in 1915, when spoken words were transmitted from Montauk Point, Long
Island, to Wilmington, Delaware, some 214 miles away. Commercial radio
broadcasting itself began five years later: KDKA in Pittsburgh began
transmitting in November 1920, a year which had seen speech broadcast in
Virginia intelligibly received as far away as Honolulu some 4,900 miles
distant.

After this, thousands of amateur enthusiasts began assembling their own
receivers at home. Albert Abrams, by contrast, was assembling a very
different kind of radio receiver. A well-heeled San Francisco physician, he
was among the first to realise that the human frame could itself act as a
receiver and possibly even a transmitter of radio waves. In fact Tesla too
must also have known this: years previous, he had observed that the high
frequency electric "streamers" he created with his devices inevitably
shunned the approach of any human being, suggesting that wave pressure of
some sort was radiating from the human body. But Abrams, well before his
time,was the first to discover ‘electronic reactions’ in the stomach
muscular tone of his patients, which changed noticeably when X-rays were
turned on nearby, or when his instrument was primed with diseased tissue
(1-8). He was just in time. Dr. Jean du Plessis, another early pioneer of
research into the electromagnetism of living things, "considered it doubtful
whether Dr. Abrams, if he had begun today (1925), could have discovered and
developed his electronic reactions unless he first succeeded in screening
his subject and apparatus from the various "interference waves" such as
those emanating from radio stations". How prophetic du Plessis' words were
to prove!

 As it was, Albert Abrams' brilliant discoveries were destined, like certain
of Tesla's ideas, to be consecrated to ignominy, despite the laudatory
testimony of none other than an ex-President of the revered British Medical
Association, Sir James Barr. In a remarkably forward looking statement,
which would have caused more than raised eyebrows if uttered even a decade
ago, Sir James said: "When every important member of the community has a
wireless telephone in his house and on his person, then medical editors and
medical men will begin to perceive that there was more in Abrams' vibrations
than was dreamt of in their philosophy"(1-9). He wrote those words on 20th
May 1922. It was not sufficient however , to prevent Abrams from being
totally discredited, and he died ,perhaps of shame, in 1924. Today, mobile
phones are appearing everywhere, leading to a fundamental reappraisal of how
they might be affectign our health, at a distance, and Barr's incredibly
accurate prophesy is coming true. Even after his death the BMA set up a
ghostbusting exercise.

They planned a visit to the laboratory of one of Abrams' disciples, a
certain Doctor Boyd. Boyd's, 'Emanometer', a similar device to that of
Abrams, was to be tested by Sir Thomas Horder and a scientific team
comprising Major H.P.T. Lefroy, Head of Wireless Research at the Air
Ministry, Messrs llart and Whately Smith from the War Office, and Dr. Heald,
medical adviser to the Director of Civil Aviation. A curiously entrenched
bunch, with a surprisingly military flavour. They fully expected to unmask
the claims of the Glasgow doctor. But Boyd was no charlatan. He had already
foreseen the possible effects which stray radiation might have on his
delicate instrument, and the lab. was screened from floor to ceiling in
copper sheet, just in case any radio signals crept in. As a result Boyd's
instrument worked perfectly: the tests were confirmed by his sceptical
vistors as without doubt: his apparatus and the subject operating it could
distinguish at a distance between various substances in a glass bottle ,
simply from the radiations they emanated.

Despite this, since the inspecting party could not begin to explain the
phenomenon, their report was savagely denunciatory (1-10). After the war was
over the microwave advances it had engendered were redeployed for the
peaceful purposes of commercial radio and television. Paul Brodeur, in his
book "The Zapping of America" (1-11), succinctly described this phase of
microwave development in the United States: "A microwave radiotelephone
system using line-of-sight relay towers was opened between Boston and New
York in November 1947 - the same year in which large scale television
broadcasting, also transmitted on microwave frequencies, got underway. By
1951, a coast-to-coast radio-telephone system had been established; it
consisted of 107 hops, each about thirty miles long, and it used the tops of
buildings, the peaks of mountains, and two hundred foot towers on the plains
of the Mid-west.

By 1960, more than a third of Bell's intercity telephone communication was
being provided by microwave relay". Brodeur chronicles the post war impact
of radio frequency energy on America: "Since the end of the war, the growth
of sources generating microwaves and other radio frequency sources has been
phenomenal. During the last thirty years (to 1977) the number of radio
frequency transmitters authorized by the Federal Communications Commission -
a figure that does not include military devices or transmitters - has risen
from 50,000 to more than 7,000,000. Tne first microwave-telephone relay
tower was built on Asnebumskit Mountain, near Worcester, Massachusetts, in
1946; today, nearly 250,000 microwave-telephone and television-signal relay
towers - each with several microwave-generating sources - are strung across
the United States.....

ln 1945, there were only 6 television stations in the country; today, there
are almost 1000 all of them transmitting at either very high or ultra high
frequencies, and they are received by 121,000,000 television sets. At the
end of the war, there were 930 radio stations; today, there are nearly 8,000
AM and FM stations. In addition there are about 15,000,000 Citizen's Band
radio transmitters broadcasting on shortwave frequencies into homes and
vehicles throughout the nation".

Brodeur's book , one of the most detailed lay accounts of microwave impact,
was written in 1977, over a decade ago. Since then we have seen the massive
rise of car telephones, early morning television, a steady rise in microwave
ovens, VDU systems both in the office and at home, and the arrival of
electronic mail, to mention but a few post war additions to our
electromagnetic world. If the bombardment of our atmosphere with microwaves
occurred with startling speed in America, the pace was hardly any slower in
Britain and Europe. The first broadcasts from Alexandra Palace in London on
2nd. November 1936 were suspended during the war but began again soon
afterwards. In December 1949 Sutton Coldfield began BBC TV transrnissions
followed on 12 October 1951 by Holme Moss, and by the time when Kirk
O'Shotts and Wenvoe were both in commission in December 1952, over 80
percent of Britain could receive monochrome television pictures. During the
succeeding decades transmission hours steadily increased as colour TV, and
commercial TV channels were added to the background level of radiation
energy.

More recently satellite and cable TV have increased this still further, in
response to the public's seemingly insatiable appetite for electronic
entertainment. 1952 also marked the first sporadic outbreaks in North West
London of the ailment myalgic encephalomyelitis, often called 'Yuppie Flu',
soon to be followed by an epidemic of this mild immune deficiency at the
Middllesex Hospital in central London (1-13). Later in this book the
connection between such disorders and electromagnetic fields is spelled out.
When Brodeur wrote his book, which is curiously difficult to obtain either
in the States or in Britain, less than 60 percent of British households had
a colour television. By 1988 90 percent of British homes had colour TV and
43 percent also had a second monochrome set. What military installations
were being developed during the cold war of the fifties, accelerated by the
nagging need to protect the West against sudden nuclear attack, is for
obvious security reasons little chronicled.

But as Brodeur says: "Besides the tremendous increase in the use of
microwaves for radio and television broadcasting...hundreds of immensely
powerful microwave transmitters - some with antennas that scatter microwaves
from the upper layers of the troposphere, 7 to 10 miles above the earth -
have been installed in the United States and overseas during the past twelve
years (to 1977) to serve as links for civilian and military
satellite-communications". In 1976, moreover, at the other end of the
non-ionising EM spectrum, the "Woodpecker" announced its presence. Robert
Becker describes it in these words (1-14): "During the U.S. bicentennial
ce!ebrations of July 4 1976, a new radio signal was heard throughout the
world. It has remained on the air more or less continuously ever since.
Varying up and down through the frequencies between 3.26 and 17.54
megahertz, it is pulse-modulated at a rate of several times per second, so
it sounds like a buzz-saw or woodpecker. It was soon traced to an enormous
transmitter near Kiev in the Soviet Ukraine. "The signal is so strong it
drowns out anything else on its wavelength.

When it first appeared the UN Telecommunications Union protested because it
interfered with several communications channels, including the emergency
frequencies for aircraft on transoceanic flights. Now the Woodpecker leaves
"holes": it skips the crucial frequencies as it moves up and down the
spectrum. The signal is maintained at enormous expense from a total of seven
stations, the seven most powerful radio transmitters in the world. "Within a
year or two after the woodpecker began tapping, there were persistent
complaints of unaccountable symptoms from people in several cities of the
United States and Canada...The sensations, - pressure pain in the head,
anxiety, fatigue, insomnia, lack of coordination, and numbness, accompanied
by a high-pitched ringing in the ears- were characteristic of strong radio
frequency or microwave radiation". Not long afterwards the United States
began research into its own version of Woodpecker. The Project Sanguine
would have made use of some two fifths of Wisconsin in the construction of a
giant Extra Low Frequency transmitter (ELF) capable of being heard all round
the world, particularly by submerged submarines.

 A committee set up to investigate possible biological effects, including
Becker amongst its members, vetoed the concept. Nothing daunted, a new
variant, Project Seafarer, was next proposed. Again the system was halted.
Finally Project ELF, without Becker's evaluatory presence, was approved and
now broadcasts at 16 Hz., similar to the I0 Hz. of Woodpecker, all round the
world. It is said that ELF transmitting systems are for military
communications purposes, since they can thereby transmit information to
submarines even in the deep recesses of the Ocean, which have hitherto been
more or less impenetrable except for the communications systems used by
whales and other sea mammals. In 1985 Becker wrote: "ELF electromagnetic
fields vibrating at about 30 to 100 Hz., even if they're weaker than the
earth's field, interfere with the cues that keep our biological cycles
properly timed; chronic stress and impaired disease resistance result".

The frequencies that ELF systems use are very close to the natural brain
rhythms of cerebrate creatures, the aIpha and beta rhythms discovered in man
by Hans Berger only in 1929 (1-15). The coincidence of mass extinction of
sea mammaIs such as dolphins and seals, - even the curious new disorder in
cattle known as 'spongebrain' - , may not be entire!y unconnected with this
new kind of ELF transmitter, a variant of which, operating at 72Hz., is
right now being developed in Scotland. We, the public, simply do not know.
All we perceive is that on any FM radio set since 1976 can be heard the
Woodpecker. It is reliably said that the people of Russia cannot hear the
signal since it is pointing only towards the West. The postwar growth of
electric power consumption The majority of this chapter so far has been
devoted to chronicling the rising use of microwave and other kinds of
wireless telecommunications. Paralleling this rapid growth has been a
similar rise in electric power consumption, served by overhead and
underground high voltage power lines.

These lines too radiate weak electromagnetic fields. In 1920 only about 90
kW/hours of electricity per head of population in Britain was consumed. By
1987 the figure had grown nearly fifty times: we now consume a massive 4,400
kW/hours of electricity each in Britain (1-16). This electric energy is
brought to us by 14,571 circuit kilometres of mains lines, of which nearly
10,000 kilometres were 400 kV power lines, not used before the early 1960s.
In this way we are all bringing electromagnetic fields of a myriad types
into our homes, oblivious of the effects they may be having on our brains
and bodies. None of these fields existed in the houses of mankind ever
before in the history of the world, unless perhaps in the days of Atlantis.
Apart from any effects of domestic electric appliances, which in Britain are
mainly a post war phenomenon, there are other important sources of
electromagnetic radiation outside the home. Underground and overground
electric railways for example. When scientists from Stanford Radioscience
Laboratory were attempting to record geomagnetism at San Francisco in the
seventies they discovered that from 1972 the earth signals began to be
disturbed by a mysterious interference.

This was clearly man-made, since it didn't operate on Saturdays or Sundays,
and for only twenty hours during the five weekdays. At first they thought
the source might be the Stanford Linear Accelerator, but this proved not so.
Then they moved their instruments 14 kilometres. Only then did they realise
that the disturbance coincided with the new BART tube train arrivals and
departures at Fremont terminal within view! (1-17). The BART system ,like
other rapid transit systems, works by passing current from a
transformer-rectifier substation, driving the train's motors, and returning
by the running rails. As the train moves, the size of this loop changes, as
does the current: as the train accelerates it draws a large current, which
lessens as the speed levels. When it decelerates, its dynamic braking
returns power to the system, reversing the direction of the current.
"Together, this changing horizontal current loop generates a vertical ULF
magnetic field concentrated at frequencies predominantly below 0.3 Hz.

Because a heavily laden train can draw 7 Megawatts at 1000 volts DC, the
current can be as large as 7,000 amps, leading to huge electromagnetic
fields. In an article by Barry Fox in New Scientist (1Ith August 1977)
Antony Fraser-Smith of Stanford is quoted as saying: "The human body is an
electrically conducting fluid - just a big sack of salty water. Any
fluctuating magnetic field in a conducting fluid sets up electric currents".
Furthermore, cells have their own electric field, which would be affected by
a varying electromagnetic field. "There is a danger", argued Fraser-Smith in
the article, "that the large electromagnetic signals now being added to our
environment may generate currents in the body which have long term
disruptive effects. No one monitors our total exposure to electromagnetic
fields of all frequencies, and it is conceivable that the Bart signals,
although probably harmless by themselves, may increase the possibility of
harm from other electromagnetic signals". (The italics are mine). The
influence on trees, certainly, is so strong that it can be measured simply
by hammering two nails into the trunk a metre apart. A voltmeter connecting
the two easily picks up BART's signals, said Fraser-Smith. Just what the
fields from electric trains may do to our tender brains is discussed in a
later chapter.

There are other ways in which such fields are infiltrating our lives: some
clerical workers in this age of micro- desktop computing spend most of their
day glued to visual display units. The saving in manpower from the use of
such units is illustrated by Grattans mail-order warehouse in Bradford,
where full-time staff were reduced from 1000 to 550 and part-timers from 100
to 50 over a period of a few months when a new computerised system for
dealing with orders was introduced in 1979, despite an increase in the
volume of business (1-18). As more firms switch to this sort of technology,
millions of workers, mainly women of childbearing age, will be sitting in
front of the screen, with an electron gun firing electrons at their brains
all day. Even highly paid 'yuppie' market dealers in the City of london and
all other important financial centres face the same sort of screens. When
one firm, Nokia Data, brought onto the market a VDU which it claimed emitted
a much lower level of radiation , it quickly captured the lion's share of
the market, which even if the purchasers were only vaguely aware of the
safely levels in force, at least illustrates the public concern over VDUs.
Ursula Huws, in her VDU Handbook (1-18), graphically illustrates the
potential dangers: examples of miscarriages, deformed chiIdren, premature
and low weight births, are reported from VDU operators all round the world.

 In Japan, she records, the General Council of Trade Unions carried out a
survey of 13,000 VDU workers of whom 4,500 were women. Of these 250 had
become pregnant or given birth during the time they were working with VDUs.
Of these 91 - more than one in three - had abnormal pregnancies, including
eight miscarriages, eight premature births, and five still births. What was
interesting about the study was the fact that the researchers studied the
amount of time spent at the screen by these women, and discovered a close
correlation with pregnancy problems. Two thirds of the women who spent more
than six hours at the screen each day reported problems, compared with just
under half of those who spent 3 three to four hours a day at the terminal,
and a quarter of those who spent less than one hour a day there. Above those
same office workers in many cases the offices are lit by fluorescent light,
another unsuspected electromagnetic hazard. Studies by Valerie Beral from
London's School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on the effects of
fluorescent lighting reveal a higher incidence of malignant melanoma among
workers exposed to this sort of lighting (1-19), results confirmed by at
least another half dozen reports, according to a review of fluorescent
lighting hazards by the London Hazard Centre in March 1987. Slowly the
world's health authorities are becoming aware that the benisons of
electricity have a sinister counterpart: the U.S. safety standards for
microwave radiation are being tacitly revised downwards in a number of
states.

 Unofficially the New York standard is only 50 uW/cm2, even though the
official U.S. position (10mW/cm2) is a thousand times that of the Russian
maximum of 1mW/cm2 . Building near to power lines is also quietly being
curtailed. Studies are being carried out in European countries to examine
the effects of weak electromagnetic fields from all kinds of transmission
lines and electric machinery as diverse as fork lift trucks and electric
blankets. The changes are being implemented with great reluctance and a good
deal of incredulity. Meanwhile well-documented cases of microwave
irradiation, above average incidence of leukaemia in children living near
power lines, occupational hazards for those working in electric-oriented
jobs, suicides, depression, meningitis, abnormal births, continue to
surface. Even the mysterious incidence of cot death, now the largest source
of infant mortality, and the suspicion that many immune-related diseases,
from ME to AIDS, arise from exposure to EM fields is leading to a
fundamental reappraisal of the electromagnetic field intensities which at
first seemed innocuously weak.

 All the people, all the time A few years back the white heat of argument
about whether weak EM fields have biological effects was focused on the
power frequencies and the magnetic field. Nowadays the media and others
phone me more for information about mobile phones and radio frequencies
(where with increasing frequency the electric field becomes predominant)
than for any other subject I got asked by several groups concerned about the
possible health hazards from mobile phones(and they were probably also
worried about the visual amenity and potential property blight). As a result
I was able to put together reports on most of the scientific studies in the
literature, which the groups used to good effect in lobbying their local
councillors. It would therefore seem appropriate at this point to offer a
brief historical account of the research into these frequencies, such as it
is. A Brief Historical Overview Of Microwave And RF Health Effects Research.
One of the groups asking me to give them a brief on the research backgorund
was at Nettlestone, Isle of Wight, where the base station mast was planned
to be 600 metres from their little hamlet. This proposed mobile phone base
station at Nettlestone is likely to radiate at 1800 MHz., which is 1.8 GHz.

 Many of the studies already carried out were done at a frequency not far
from this, namely 2.45 GHz., principally because this is the frequency of
the domestic microwave oven, and therefore emitters at this frequency were
easy to come by in scientific laboratories. This overview therefore traces
the scientific studies which have led to our present concerns over possibly
hazardous interactions at very low power densities between such radiations
and biological systems including human beings. In the early 1950s
consideration was given to instituting exposure limits to microwave
radiation for the first time. One reason for this was that some reports of
low level exposure indicated disturbing effects: for example, in 1953 Dr.
John McLaughlin, a medical officer of the Hughes Aircraft Corpn. advised of
between 75 and 100 cases of unexplained bleeding tendency, as well as a
significant excess of leukaemias and brain tumours among Hughes Aircraft
workers occupationally exposed to low-strength microwaves. Another worrisome
report by Heller and Teixeira Pinto of the New England Medical Research
Institute reported in Nature during 1957 that a short exposure to pulsed
27MHz. RF fields produced chromosomal aberrations in the growing root tips
of garlic plants. (These findings were confirmed a decade later by Dr. David
James of the FDA).

On the basis of theoretical calculations it was postulated that microwave
exposure at a dose of 100 milliWatts of power to an area of 1 square
centimetre of body surface would exceed the ability of the blood circulation
to carry away the heat produced, and local tissue heating would occur. In
1957, after applying a safety factor of ten, the US military adopted a
standard for exposure to microwaves of 10 milliwatts per square centimetre
(10mW/cm2). Research activity accelerated in the early 1960s when Col Knauf
obtained Tri-Service US funding for the first large scale effort in
bioelectromagnetics, aimed specifically at microwave research. The centres
involved included the University of Rochester NY (J.W. Howland and Sol
Michaelson), UCLA Berkeley (Charles Susskind), the University of Miami
(Deichman) and University of Pennsylvania (Herman Schwan). The research was
aiming to validate the 10mW/cm2 standard, which it did, discounting the
effects of pulsed MW as being essentially thermo-acoustic, and largely
ignoring the reports by Deichman and Michaelson that disturbances of the
immune system followed MW exposure. Following the Tri-Service research
programme, in 1966 the American National Standards Institute ("ANSI")
accepted the same standard for recommended civilian maximum exposure.

There was then a gap in research, only resumed in the early 1970s, which
culminated in a New York Academy of Sciences symposium in 1975, to which
scientists working in the field from many countries contributed, including
Dr. Stanislaw Szmigielski from the Institute of Aviation Medicine, Warsaw,
Poland, an acknowledged world expert in this field with many peer-reviewed
papers in the literature spanning a 25 year period. It is instructive to
review briefly some of Szmigielski's studies of microwave bio-effects on
cells, since these are completely omitted by some reviewers, for instance by
by Dr. Tom McManus in his several reports to the Irish Government. Moreover,
only the Polish study and one other (a 1982 study on benzopyrene-induced
skin cancer accelerated by 2.45 GHz. radiation) were referenced by the NRPB
in their two MMDS reviews (M-194 and M214). (Incidentally, in these reviews
the NRPB refer to a non-existent study by Liang which is quoted properly in
the bibliography as the Chiang, Yao 1989 study of children living near FM
and radar), Next, though referring obliquely to the 18 malignancy cases
among the rats in Guy's gnotobiotic study (Kunz et al., 1983, 1985) the NRPB
conclude simply that this result precludes any firm conclusion from being
drawn. Finally, though the NRPB MMDS papers reference Szmigielski's review
paper which includes a study of the Polish Air Force in relation to MW
exposure (published in Marino's Modern Bioelectricity, 1988) they omit any
mention of this important contribution to human epidemiology of chronic low
level MW exposure, which caused a sensation when first reported in the West.

Dzmigielski's new (1996) review of 128,000 Polish Airmen which indicates
relative risks of haematological disorders from chronic RF/MW exposure is
included at the end of this document. In one of his 1975 NY Academy of
Sciences Symposium papers Szmigielski lists effects of MW irradiation as
found experimentally: inhibition of cell growth (Heller, 1970) chromosomal
damage (Baranski & Czerski, 1975) increased cell membrane permeability
(Baranski & Szmigielski 1975) depression of phagocytosis (Mayers & Habeshaw,
1973) formation of atypical cells (Sawicki & Ostrowski, 1968) transformation
of human lymphocytes (Stodolink-Baranska, 1968). All of these post-date the
Tri Service programme. One looks in vain for any discussion of any of these
in either the two NRPB reviews of MMDS, or even of the 1993 NRPB literature
review of relevant cell studies by Nigel Cridland (R256), all of which are
disappointingly incomplete. Szmigielski exposed WHISH cells for 30 mins. to
3GHz. microwaves at 5-15 mW/cm2 and then infected them with virus
parainfluenza 3.

Observation via nitro-tetrazolium blue staining 48 hours after infection
revealed that there were possibly disturbing effects on the mitochondrial
system and the appearance of widespread vacuolation. He concluded that
exposure to 5mW/cm2 stimulates oxidative metabolism and virus
multiplication. Though other studies have pointed to synergistic effects
between chemicals and EM fields, including the phenomenon of
electroporation, the NRPB did not discuss any of these issues apart from the
general admission that there are some aspects of responses at very low
levels of amplitude modulated radiofrequency and microwave radiation at very
low SAR values which seem to preclude heating as an explanation. They do
concede that exposure to microwaves can modify the effects of drugs, but in
rats, mice, and rabbits the exposure levels needed to produce these effects
appear to be in excess of SAR values of about 10W/kg.. In the same year
Szmigielski also followed up earlier studies by Baranski (1971), Deichman et
al. (1963), and Michaelson et al., (1968) all reporting changes in the
number and composition of leukocytes in the peripheral blood, as well as
disturbances in granulocytes and depression of phagocyte function (Petrow,
1972). His studies were unusual in that they involved not short term but
long-term exposure (several months) of small mammals (rabbits).

After 3mW/cm2 exposure for 6 hours a day over 6 and 12 week periods the
rabbits were infected with virulent staphylococcus aureus. Subsequent
functional tests on granulopoiesis clearly established significant
depression in the exposed versus the control group. Szmigielski concluded
that exposure to low power MW for several months resulted in lowered
production of mature granulocytes in the bone marrow. In 1977 Szmigielski
reported a fuller study of the effects of MW hyperthermia which appeared to
inhibit viral multiplication, but only after the infection had occurred.
More pertinent to this issue was further confirmation of adverse effects on
granulocytes, this time at levels as low as 1mW/cm2, also with 3GHz. MW
irradiation for periods upto 60 minutes. Granulocytes are used in such
studies because of the large amount of lysosomal enzymes they contain and
their high oxygen consumption.

Both these attributes allow any responsive effects to be seen definitively.
Even at 1mW/cm2 vacuoles were visible under phase contrast light microscopy
(x1300) in the exposed cells but not in the controls. It seems remarkable
that Szmigielski's work on low level chronic exposure to MW irradiation,
both in cells and in his epidemiological studies, which are highly regarded
by scientists throughout this field, should have been given such scant
attention by NRPB in its literature reviews. Another early approach was to
investigate the effect of MW exposure on animal behaviour. One such study
(Thomas, Finch et al., 1975) reported that the effect of irradiating rats at
2.86 GHz. with a power density of between 1-20mW/cm2 for one hour was to
lower response time sufficiently and progressively, establishing a
dose-response relationship with the exposure. These results indicate that
not only do low levels of MW radiation produce effects on the central
nervous system as evidenced by behavioural change, but also that such
changes are influenced by interaction of the organism with the environment,
the authors concluded. The greatest effect was found at 7mW/cm2, which at
that time was below the ANSI limits.

 By 1980 scientists were becoming concerned that USSR studies did not
support the US standard, and an effort was made (e.g. McCree, 1981) to see
why the eastern bloc scientists had been able to detect effects at such low
levels. A joint research programme was instituted which largely confirmed
the accuracy of the USSR work. Accordingly, in the early 1980s the USAF
School of Aerospace Medicine initiated a $5 million study under Arthur Bill
Guy in which rats were exposed for upto 25 months to 2.45GHz. at power
densities of only 0.5 mW/cm2 , - one twentieth of the safe thermal level
first established by Hermann Schwan in the 1950s. Guy reported in 1986 that
there were few differences between the exposed and the control groups, but
that there were nevertheless primary malignant tumours in 18 cases compared
with only 5 of the controls. Other more significant differences observed
were a diminution of oxygen uptake in the younger animals. The implications
of this finding were not quickly acknowledged: it implies that there has
been an effect on mitochondrial activity, which can not only lead to
carcinogenesis, but supports the previous reports of asthenias and myalgias
among exposed groups. Guy's study (referenced as Kunz et al.,, 1983, 1985)
was not easily obtainable, being issued by Brooks Air Force base. It was
however re-published in the BEMS journal in 1992 to mark Guy's retirement,
(after the MMDS installations had begun).

Guy's 1986 study was discussed by Dr. Robert Becker, a medical doctor and
professor at the State University of New York. The point made by Becker
(Cross Currents, 1990, page 192) is that the rats used in Guy's study were
all gnotobiotic, that is to say they had been reared in elaborate conditions
to ensure that they were all germ and virus free. This was in fact a major
cost element of the study. The result of this decision was twofold:
gnotobiotic animals have a lower cancer incidence: over 20 percent of animal
cancers are associated with viral infection. Secondly, exposure to EM fields
is known to elicit a stress response which can be measured hormonally. The
cancers observed in the Guy study were not normal: they were all related to
the pituitary, thyroid, and adrenal glands with pheocytochromes (benign
tumours of the adrenals), and these glands are all associated with stress
resistance.

A conclusion one might draw from the results is that exposure to MW produces
a high level of stress, and that with chronic exposure this ultimately
exhausted the animals' stress response system. Had the study used ordinary
animals, the results could well have shown a more significant effect, and
Becker was left wondering if the choice of gnotobiotic animals was
deliberate, aiming to reduce the number of positive effects. The next event
of major significance was the emergence of the resonance issue. It is well
known that if the length of any receiving antenna is made equal to the
wavelength of the desired frequency emitted by the transmitter (all EM
wavelengths can be calculated by reference to the frequency since wavelength
always equals frequency multiplied by the speed of light), maximum energy is
obtained for the signal (when l = d). For example, the FM frequency range of
say 80-100MHz overlaps both above and below a six foot wavelength, which is
roughly the height of a man. The resonance set up in the receiver can be
dramatic, as in the well known phenomenon of the opera singer shattering a
glass by singing one note of the correct frequency.

Professor Ted Grant of London University among others had previously pointed
to this possibility of hazard. To avoid resonance effects ANSI therefore
suddenly in 1982 sharply reduced the standard limit for exposure to FM, and
slightly reduced those for MW. There was no experimental support for this
theoretical decision, and what is more, the limits for frequencies below the
FM band were increased significantly on the basis that the longer the
wavelength the less likely were biological effects from resonance. As Becker
summed it up in Cross Currents (1990, page 197): While Guy's data disproved
the idea that only thermal effects were possible, that concept still
prevails at this time, and all levels recommended as safe are based on the
theoretical production of heat in the exposed body. One can only conclude
that the ANSI standards are not based on scientific data and are therefore
invalid. Only one year after the ANSI revision their compromise was
confounded by a new study, this time from the FDA's Center for Radiological
Devices and Health carried out by Drs. Manikowska-Czerska, Czerska, and
Leach. They found that sperm production decreased with a short (30 mins per
day) exposure to a non-thermal level of microwaves, and that this was
accompanied by a significant increase in abnormal changes in the chromosomal
structure of the sperm.

Had they known it they were also giving experimental underpinning to a 1976
study by two Yugoslavian doctors, Maicanescu and Lancranjan, who found
lowered spermatozoa counts and decreased libido among air force personnel
exposed to radar. Even during the Second World War rumours had abounded
among British air crew that a few minutes in front of the radar beam was
sufficient to induce temporary sterility, (a highly sought after condition
for those about to take a spell of leave to visit girl friends), and
confirmed by Susskind's studies in the Tri-Service programme. The
possibility of damage to sperm being translated into future generation
abnormalities has been an enduring focus of microwave health effects
research. As early as 1965 one study by A.T. Sigler in the Bulletin of the
Johns Hopkins Hospital had already reported elevated incidence of Downs
Syndrome children among the offspring of military radar operators. This was
subsequently hotly disputed in a replication study reported by B.H. Cohen in
1977, who could not find the same link, but neither could he rule it out.
More recently a study of Vernon Township in New Jersey (a town of only
25,000 population where microwave transmitters numbers are high enough to
make it the fifth in the US) found that the incidence of Downs Syndrome was
1000 percent higher than the national average.

Subsequent investigations by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
found nothing, but these were claimed to be poorly-conducted by those
connected closely with the issue. During the 1980s the possibility that low
level chronic MW exposure might be carcinogenic to humans first surfaced, in
a study by Ruey Lin of the Maryland Dept. of Health. Lin found in 1985 that
a significantly greater number of those whose occupations exposed them to MW
or radar developed cancer of the brain. Lin also re-evaluated a study by the
US Navy following the Korean War, - a study whose authors, (Robinette et
al., 1980) claimed showed no difference between the cancer rate in the
exposed and the control groups - and showed that the control group in the
Navy study had actually been exposed to radar at the same rate as the
exposed group. He then showed that in fact there had been a significantly
elevated incidence of brain tumours in the personnel chronically exposed to
radar. Lin pointed out that during the years 1944 to 1977 there had been a
massive increase in the use of microwaves, and during the same period
primary brain tumours among white Americans had risen from 3.8 to 5.8 per
100,000. This of course does not take on board that there had also been a
massive increase in other technological advances, e.g in the chemicals
industry.


In his own presentations of MW history to the Irish Dept of Energy in 1992
Dr. Tom McManus, (who gained his PhD for a thesis on chaos theory, and is
neither a biologist nor a medically qualified doctor), did not bring out
these concerns, and indeed does not even mention Lin's 1985 study: Two of
the most important studies involved US Embassy staff in Moscow (Lilienfeld
et al., 1978) and US Navy personnel (Robinette et al., 1980) Essentially...
[the Lilienfeld study] showed that embassy personnel, for 13 years
unknowingly subjected to upto 15 mW/cm2 of microwave radiation, did not
experience a greater incidence of adverse health effects than Embassy staff
working elsewhere in Europe. Robinette studied the mortality and morbidity
of 20,000 naval personnel who had been exposed to microwave radiation levels
as high as 100 W/m2 during the Korean war. He compared this data to that for
20,000 other US Navy personnel who were not exposed to radar emissions. The
results showed a slightly higher mortality rate for lymphatic and
haematopoietic cancers in the most highly exposed group. As far as general
health was concerned the hospital admission rates and their causes, and the
rates and reasons for disability compensation, howed no significant
differences between the two groups (McManus, 1992, 2.2.6). Smith and Best in
1989 also reviewed the saga of the infamous 1950s irradiation of the US
Moscow Embassy, but revealed a quite different picture:

 The private and public concern as to what effects the exposed personnel
might have suffered prompted a Congressional Enquiry and report (US Congress
Senate, 1979)... The congressional report showed that, rather than inform
their embassy staff or take any preventative action, the US military
authorities apparently allowed the former to act as guinea pigs to observe
what effects they might suffer. It was only in 1976, when the US finally
decided to install defensive screens to protect its personnel, that the
staff discovered what had been happening, a situation roundly condemned in
the official report: The State department thus used the analogy of
individual physicians withholding medical information from patients when, in
their judgement, the well-being of the patient was better protected by so
doing. But this substitution of a doctor/patient relationship for an
employer/employee relationship is not defensible, regardless of the outcome
of the studies. The employees should have been promptly informed of the
situation (US Senate, 1979). From August 1963 to May 1975 the frequency to
which US Embassy staff at Moscow were exposed ranged from 2.56 to 4.1GHz.
and the intensity remained at about 5 mW/cm2 at the strongest point of the
beam. The NRPB calculated M214, summary) that the maximum level of exposure
to the public [from the Cork transmitter] will be to a power flux density of
76mW/m2 (7.6 mW/cm2) which is above the level of the Moscow signal.

After the protective screening was installed the radiation dropped to about
2 mW/cm2. The signals were on only for a couple of hours each day, according
to a US State Dept. statement (Microwave News, March/April 1988). The
Nettlestone base station transmission systems on the Isle of Wight will be
on almost 24 hours each day, irradiating all the people all the time. Were
there any unusual adverse health effects subsequently noted among the Moscow
staff? A study by Dr. Cecil Jacobson of Geo. Washington University School of
Medicine compared blood samples of 71 exposed employees with 13 unexposed
controls, but failed to find any significant differences in the percent
which should be classified as either having actually experienced high risk
or mutagenic exposure, or were highly suspect thereof. A further Project
(Pandora) aiming to replicate the exposures using primates has remained
classified.

A subsequent study by Thomas Stoffel of Massachusetts General Hospital
examined the blood of exposed Moscow Embassy staff in February 1976, and
found lymphocyte counts elevated by 41 percent, which was attributed to a
parasite infection. These high levels fell off abruptly after August 1977,
according to Smith and Best, who noted that both Moscow Ambassadors Charles
Bohlen and Llewellyn Thompson died of cancer, and Ambassador Walter
Stoessel - on whose office the beam was centred - was in 1976 suffering from
a blood disease, nausea and bleeding in the eyes, and has since died of
leukaemia (Times, Obituary, 12 December 1986). Several studies of MW
exposure have implicated cataracts, e.g. those of Milton Zaret, reviewed in
1988 in Modern Bioelectricity (ed. Marino). Shortly after Lin's 1985 study
Margaret Spitz and Christine Johnson of the M.D. Anderson Hospital in
Houston reported that children of fathers employed in occupations with
electromagnetic field exposure were at significantly ncreased risk of
developing brain cancer before the age of two, which supported his
contention (Spitz & Johnson, 1985). About this time (1986) the Environmental
Epidemiology program in the State of Hawaii Dept. of Health investigated
cancer incidence in census tracts with and without broadcast towers.

 This followed persistent rumours which had brought about a negative EPA
study in 1984. When Standard Incidence Ratios (SIRs) were constructed it
emerged that though the SIRs for the tracts without towers did not differ
from unity, (male=1.05, female =0.85) those with radio towers were
significantly higher (males = 1.45, females = 1.27), both values being
significant at the p<<0.1 level. Adjusting for racial differences the SIR
for all towers was 1.88 (p<<0.01) and without towers was 1.01 (not
elevated). Meanwhile a number of cellular studies were being routinely
reported in the pages of the Bioelectromagnetics Journal, whose quality as a
peer-reviewed journal is unquestioned, even though it is still not taken by
most medical libraries (including the RSM library in London), and hence its
studies reach only a limited readership. Among its contributors were
Stanilaw Smzigielski, who for many years has conducted MW research in
Poland.

 Szmigielski reported in 1988 the results of a largescale study of Polish
airmen exposed to radar. Those most chronically exposed were found to have
an incidence of neoplastic disorder some seven times that of the unexposed
population. McManus surprisingly omitted this important contribution from
his references in September 1992. Szmigielski has released a follow-up study
of 128,000 Polish Air Force personnel, confirming highly elevated incidence
of neoplasms among those most exposed. Apart from this epidemiological
effort Szmigielski has carried out a number of cell and live animal studies
over the last two decades, mainly published in US journals of repute such as
the IEEE Proceedings. By the late 1980s sufficient evidence had accumulated
from studies in non-military establishments (the UK Ministry of Defence
claims it has never conducted research into microwave hazards, and has no
plans to do so, being content to accept the recommendations of the NRPB) to
make it obvious that non-thermal effects existed. Even the MoD Defence
Standard (Def Stan 05-74/1, 1989) concedes this. Typical of the earlier
studies was that of Elder and Eli of the US EPA, who in 1975 reported
uncoupling effects on rat liver mitochondrial processes following exposure
to 10mW/cm2 at 2.45 GHz. Since the installation of the first MMDS
transmitter at Tonybrocky, Ireland, in 1990 research into the biological
effects of low level chronic exposure to MW has intensified.

Most new bioelectromagnetics research is reported in four specialised
journals: the Bioelectromagnetics Journal, the Journal of Bioelectricity,
Biological Growth and Repair Society (recently amalgamated) and the
Bioelectrochemistry Society Journal. These largely concentrate on cellular
and live animal, mechanismic hypotheses or dosimetric studies. Important
epidemiology is reported in a handful of human mainstream epidemiology
journals, and an increasing number of studies find their way into Radiation
Research and similar ionising-oriented journals. The creation in 1991 of the
European Bioelectromagnetics Association, which is currently negotiating an
œ11 million research centre in Alcalar, Spain, focused European research
efforts which had previously lacked a central co-ordinating body, and
projects such as COST244 set in train European co-operation in
bioelectromagnetics by providing a central index of ongoing research, a
glance at which will reveal that the UK has much less in progress than other
European countries.

 The EBEA reports some 200 papers at its annual meetings, so that taking all
journals together at least 1000 new studies are now being published in this
field. Unfortunately these journals are not taken by many medical libraries
so their fruits are not easily accessible. The NRPB, formed in 1970 in the
UK, devotes less than 8 percent of its œ15 million budget to non-ionising
radiation research, and has only produced a handful of in-house laboratory
studies on non-ionising EM fields and radiations since the late 1980s. It
also publishes literature reviews of questionable quality, and carries out
contracts for third parties. Its major effort was in directly in response to
an US EPA staff review which argued that EM fields both ELF and modulated
RF, should be classified as probable carcinogens with a B2 category. This
unpublished but widely circulated draft caused the NRPB to institute an
Advisory Group under Sir Richard Doll, who reported in March 1992 that there
was a need for further research as soon as practicable but that there was
not enough evidence to alter the existing guidelines.

 A year later a new NRPB report recommended that the research be instituted
as a matter of urgency, and the guideline limits (now called investigation
levels) for magnetic fields were effectively reduced by 20 percent, (though
it would be difficult for the lay reader to find this advice spelled out
unequivocably in their text) to 1.6 million nanoTesla. The NRPB's 1992
recommendation was further contradicted by a subsequent statement by Doll in
a Panorama programme (Current Concerns, January 1994), when he conceded that
two years previously he would have been fairly certain that there was little
to concern him over EM fields, but now he was not so sure.This change of
heart appears to have been brought about by several large Scandinavian ELF
studies. The NRPB's own reviews are equally ambivalent: in 1991 an NRPB
review of the biological effects of EM fields and radiation (Saunders,
Sienkiewicz, et al., 1991) concluded: There are... several possible areas of
biological interaction at low levels of exposure which may have important
health implications and about which our knowledge is limited.

These areas include the possibility of a role in carcinogenesis, perhaps for
weak ELF fields or amplitude-modulated RF. Mechanisms of interaction have
been proposed but not established. The NRPB has also been accused (by
Microwave News, a respected US newsletter) of undue secrecy over its
recently announced study on the health implications of mobile telephones.
Attempts by this author to obtain details of dosimetric equipment used in a
study of SIDS (announced in 1989, but still not reported) have also proved
unsuccessful. Curiously the NRPB has stated that any connection between SIDS
and EM fields is fantasy (Sunday Express, 28 July 1991), whilst at the same
time its corporate plan to 1997/98 reveals that it has been funding an
epidemiological study of sudden infant death since 1990. Among the
extramural research contracts awarded by the NRPB are one of £30,000 to The
Robens Institute at Surrey University, which has also received an NRPB
lectureship in radiation physics worth £155,000, so that Surrey appears to
be the largest UK University recipient of NRPB funds.

 The NRPB review of cellular studies (Cridland, 1993) contains serious gaps:
mitochondria are indispensable and ubiquitous cellular organelles which
provide most of the energy used by organic life in the form of adenosine
triphosphate (ATP). They do this by a complicated process of electron
transport (oxidative phosphorylation), and use molecular oxygen as the final
electron acceptor, which is why we need to breathe oxygen. When there is no
need for muscular or other ATP-originating energy, self-regulating cellular
uncoupling agents prevent the unnecessary build-up of ATP while permitting
electron transport to continue. Such agents include Ca2+, possibly thyroxine
(a thyroid gland hormone), and certainly dinitrophenol. In 1992 Martin Blank
of Columbia University NY reported that ELF electric fields could also
uncouple the process of ATP synthesis. Cridland discusses studies of the
influence of radiofrequency EM fields on mitochondria (p. 21) but makes no
reference to ELF fields, nor to a 1984 study by O'Shea Feuerstein et al.. of
Bern University in 1984 which showed how the inner mitochondrial membrane
vicosity was upset by electric fields, nor to Elder and Eli's disturbing
1975 FDA study mentioned above, nor to Martin Blank's work, citing only two
RF studies. He cites Melnick, Rubenstein et al. (1982) which irradiated
isolated mitochondria for 2 minutes with 34.92GHz microwaves and reported an
uncoupling of oxidative phosphorylation. Cridland suggests that this effect
may be a thermal one. The other study cited is that of Dutton, Galvin et
al., (1984).

 In this study the MW frequency used was 2.45GHz. at an SAR of 100W/kg for
less than 10 minutes. Again an important effect was observed, a decrease in
the respiratory control index, which mediates the flow of electrons along
the inner mitochondrial membrane pathway, but only when glutamate rather
than succinate was used as the substrate. Cridland has no explanation for
the significance of this finding, and concludes that the relevance of these
findings is unclear. In fact there has been a long history of research into
effects of electric fields on mitochondria, commencing in 1952 with the work
of Abood from Illinois University, who discovered that electric currents
could uncouple oxidative phosphorylation. That ELF magnetic fields were also
able to depress oxygen uptake was shown by Russell and Webb in 1981.

 Allis and Sinha Robinson showed RF-induced inhibiting effects (2.45GHz., CW
for 20 minutes) on Na+, K+, ATP-ase, a vital mitochondrial membrane bound
enzyme, in 1987. Clearly any interruption of self-regulatory processes in
ATP synthesis is plausibly related to asthenia and myalgia, both of which
symptoms are reported separately by epidemiological studies describing
radiowave sickness (see Silverman, 1980). Back in 1964 Barnothy had noted
that rats exposed to magnetic fields showed depressed respiration rates, and
Prato, Shannon et al reported in 1992 a study of human subjects where RF
exposure also depressed respiratory processes. More recently Johann, Lederer
et al. (1993) found that mitochondrial activity and morphology was altered
by EM fields, this study being only one of many reported in the literature
in recent years. It is concerning therefore, given the fundamental
importance of the mitochondria and their crucial reliance on precise
electron transport for proper functioning, that Cridland only mentions two
mitochondrial studies, both over a decade old, and downplays their
implications for cellular respiration. No NRPB staff member attended the
most recent important bioelectromagnetics conference (the European
Bioelectromagnetics Association Meeting in Slovenia in December 1993) where
some 200 papers and posters were presented.

 Had they done so, they would have heard Serdyuk and Tomashevskaya from the
Ukraine Ministry of Health present evidence of depression of rats' brain
mitochondrial cytochromeoxidase activity after exposure to RF fields. The
authors concluded (in somewhat quaint English) that Such a decrease in
respiratory chain enzymes where conjugation of oxidation with
phosphorilising could testify to possible disorders in energy formation in
the oxidative way in the brain tissue affected EMF. Another study presented
at the 1993 EBEA conference as part of the COST 244 program (by Kubynil,
Thuroczy et al., of Hungary's National Research Institute for Radiobiology)
concerned 2.45 GHz exposure of uterine mice (470 exposed, 487 controls) at a
power density of 3mW/cm2 for 100 minutes daily for 19 days. The authors
found that there was a non-significant decline in certain enzymes, and that
mortality was higher among the exposed progeny. Body weight of the neonates
was not influenced. Several other microwave studies were also reported, all
confirming adverse effects: on red blood cell structure and function
(Artjuch et al, 1993); on chromosomal aberrations in lymphocytes
(Verschaeve, Maes et al., 1993); and on means of correcting the effects of
microwave irradiation (Koldayev, 1993).

Finally follow-up studies of 49 Zagreb radar tower operators exposed to
1.3GHz microwaves at power densities of only a few tens of mW/cm2 over a
five year period reported that The results of our study indicate a
possibility that long term occupational exposure to microwaves may damage
sensitive organic systems. The most significant changes were observed in
haematological, biochemical, and ophthalmological variables (Goldoni et
al.,1993) . In March 1993 concerns at the health effects of RF crystallised
at a meeting arranged by the EPA in Maryland at which a number of studies
which had been reported for some years but not ever replicated were
discussed. By October 1993 the official ANSI limits of 10mW/cm2 were being
disregarded in favour of a 100 mW/cm2 standard at the USAF base at Kirtland
in New Mexico, by the City of Los Angeles, by the Hughes Aircraft Corp. and
by Johns Hopkins University (where the American Journal of Epidemiology is
edited). This is one hundredth of the ANSI 1992 recommendation. The NRPB has
now changed its average whole body SAR period to 15 minutes from six
minutes, while continuing to maintain a level of 0.4 W/kg and a power
density limit of 10mW/cm2. above 10 GHz.

 By sharp contrast the US EPA assails the 1992 ANSI RF/MW standards as
seriously flawed and questions whether it is sufficiently protective of
public health and safety" because ANSI fails to consider non-thermal
effects. The US FDA Center for Radiological Devices and Health commented in
October 1993 that they too are somewhat concerned: With respect to the
specific levels cited in the standard for maximum permissible exposures and
SARS... we do not believe this standard addresses the issue of long-term
chronic exposures to RF fields. This view is opposed to those of the UK's
increasingly isolated NRPB, whose new guidelines again argue that there is
no firm evidence for an EMF cancer link. Some of the evidence is likely to
have been distorted by bias against reporting or publishing of negative
results, they claim. As this brief history of microwave research ends the
questions over adverse health effects from low level long term exposure are
far from settled, despite the official guidelines presently in place.

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