Non Thermal RF Hazards

Researching Non Thermal RF Hazards

Non thermal effects such as calcium ion efflux, blood/brain barrier, melatonin, alterations in EEG, etc., have been observed for low-intensity modulated radio frequency fields. The biological significance remains unclear as to exactly how biological effects resulting in adverse health effects in people. There have been a number of studies looking for DNA damage from non thermal rf exposures. Some studies have shown DNA damage at lower than cell phone handsets! 

5.12 The energy quanta of radiation at 0.9 and 1.8 GHz equal 4 and 7 µeV, respectively (1 µeV is a millionth of an eV). Both these values are extremely small compared with the energy of around 1 eV needed to break the weakest chemical bonds in genetic molecules (DNA). This is why the scientific community in general is stuck on a thermal threshold (SAR),   it being impossible. Therefore, history is simply repeating itself,  popular belief is close to be proven incorrect.  Ever more proof is coming to light a microwave effect truly exist. It’s a scary thought to think that RF radiation effects bioatomic resonant frequencies damaging DNA directly, which might effect mechanisms of Cellular Mitosis becoming a precursor for cancer.

 

5.13 Radio frequency radiation could, however, produce other effects. In general, detectable changes can arise only if the effect of the electric field within the biological system exposed to RF fields is not masked by thermal noise. Thermal noise or random motion, also known as Brownian motion, is due to the thermal energy that all objects possess at temperatures above absolute zero. In solids, the atoms vibrate and in gases and liquids they move erratically to and fro following very frequent collisions with other atoms. So all components of biological tissue – ions, molecules and cells – are in constant motion. The thermal energy of each component has an average value of about kT, where k, Boltzmann’s constant, is 86 µeV per degree and T is the absolute temperature measured in kelvin, K (T = 273 + t, where t is the temperature in degrees centigrade). The value of T is about 300 K at body temperature so that kT is 26 meV and, if this is much larger than the energy of the motion produced by the electric field, any effect of the field will be completely masked (not detected by any component of the biological tissue). This comparison with thermal noise should then provide a good measure of the minimum electric field necessary to produce detectable biological effects. It should be noted, however, that if there was a special case in which the biological system were resonantly sensitive at the frequency of the electric field and rather insensitive to fields at other frequencies, the comparison would need to be made with the thermal motion taking place at frequencies close to the resonant frequency. If the resonance was very sharp, this would be very much smaller than the total thermal noise, so that quite small electric fields might produce detectable effects in resonant systems of this type, should they exist in biological tissue.

 

5.14 This argument can be used, for example, to see whether non-thermal effects could arise from the motion of the ions discussed above. The ions are driven to and fro by an oscillating electric field, although the extent of the motion is severely reduced by the viscosity of the surrounding liquid. For a field of 100 V/m the movement is in fact less than 10–14 m – the diameter of an atomic nucleus – and the energy associated with this motion is less than that of the thermal motion of the ion by about a factor of 1015*. This is so small that it can safely be concluded that this ionic motion could not result in any non-thermal biological effects. The expression (in the footnote) shows that the energy increases with the mass of the charged object, although, for E = 100 V/m, it would still appear to be small at these frequencies compared with thermal noise for objects such as cells of average size which have radii around 10 µm (Adair, 1994). Adair notes, however, that it could become significant for larger cells with correspondingly greater masses.

 

5.15 Another mechanism involving cells concerns the attraction between them in the presence of an electric field (Schwan, 1985; Adair, 1994). The electric field polarises the cell, that is to say

* The velocity of the ion is µE = µE0 sin(2πνt), where µ, the mobility, is about 10–7 m2/(V/s) for chloride, the ion of highest mobility, and ν, the frequency, is 0.9 or 1.8 GHz. This leads to a maximum displacement of µE0/2πν which, for an electric field E0 = 100 V/m, equals 2 x 10–15 m and 10–15 m at frequencies of 0.9 and 1.8 GHz, respectively. So the average kinetic energy of an ion of mass m in this field is mµ2E0 2/4 or mµ2E2/2, where E is the rms value of the electric field. For a chloride ion this energy is equal to about 10-17 eV, or about 10–15 kT.

charges in the cell move so that one side of it becomes positive with respect to the other. The cell is then an electric dipole (like a tiny torch battery) and attracts similarly polarised cells. For typical cells and frequencies below about 100 MHz, the energies involved are calculated to become comparable to thermal noise in electric fields of E = 300 V/m. The energies are calculated to become appreciably less for RF fields, but Adair (1994) suggests that, since these values would depend on the detailed structure of the biological elements involved, the possibility of biological effects for fields of this size cannot be excluded.

 

5.16 Other possible biological effects are associated with cell membranes and the movement of currents through the membrane in either direction. Membranes are known to have strongly nonlinear electric properties (Montaigne and Pickard, 1984). When a voltage is applied across the membrane, the current that flows is not always proportional to the voltage. Part of this no linearity may, in fact, be due to the effect of the electric field on the proteins in the membrane or nearby, which assist the flow of the product currents through the membrane. The membrane also acts as a rectifier. If a voltage is connected across the ends of a wire, the size of the current that flows depends solely on the magnitude of the voltage: if the polarity of the voltage is reversed, the current changes direction but its size is unchanged. However, if the polarity of the voltage applied across a rectifier is reversed, the current changes direction but now its size also changes. So, if an oscillating voltage (electric field) is applied across a rectifier, the total current that flows when the field is in one direction is not balanced by the current when the field is in the other: an AC field produces a net DC current and hence a net flow of products through the membrane. However, the response times of the ion gates are very much slower than the period of microwave frequencies and, using data obtained from measurements on membranes (Montaigne and Pickard, 1984), it has been shown that, for electric fields of 200 V/m, the relative change in the membrane potential is very small (Adair, 1994; see also Foster, 2000a). Therefore no biological effects seem likely from this mechanism.

 

5.17 Many other mechanisms have been proposed by which significant biological effects from RF fields might arise, but very few, if any, appear to stand up to critical analysis of the sort presented above (Foster, 2000b). One, for which there is recent experimental support (Bohr and Bohr, 2000), is that microwave radiation might cause proteins to unfold (denature). The experiments were carried out in a modified microwave oven at 2.45 GHz, a frequency comparable to the likely torsional modes of the protein. The intensity was not specified, but seems likely to have been above ICNIRP guidelines. The experiments were very recent and have not yet been replicated. Another mechanism that has continued to create interest is based on the assumption that biological systems might interact resonantly with microwave fields. This possibility was initially discussed by Fröhlich (1968, 1980) and his work has had a considerable impact (see, for example, Penrose, 1994; Pokorny and Wu, 1998). 

 

5.18 Fröhlich was interested in the mechanism through which the chemical energy taken into the body (food) was channeled into highly ordered processes, such as cell building, rather than into heat. His model involves the mechanical vibrations of large molecules or components of biological tissue and the way they interact with each other, which he argued could lead to the existence of a band of frequencies into which energy could be absorbed, plus a particular “coherent state” of vibration. He also considered whether quite small oscillating electric fields might put energy into this state and hence trigger significant biological changes; that it is to say, whether a living biological system might behave in a manner roughly similar to a radio receiver. A radio can detect and amplify an extremely small signal against a background of very much larger signals. It does this when the operator tunes a resonant circuit to the frequency of the carrier wave. The resonant circuit essentially responds only to electromagnetic waves of frequencies (including those generated by thermal noise – see paragraph 5.13) within a narrow bandwidth. The power needed to amplify these waves comes from the power supply of the radio. A number of solid state systems behave in similar ways, such as narrow-band optical amplifiers, which are the basis of lasers.

 

5.19 The Fröhlich model has stimulated a range of other work. However, so far there appears to be no direct experimental evidence, and no convincing indirect experimental evidence, for the existence of Fröhlich’s coherent state in biological systems. Moreover, the present theoretical treatments of the model do not provide estimates for the magnitude of the electric fields needed to produce biological effects. Fröhlich suggested that the findings of a number of experiments carried out at frequencies of 40 GHz and above on systems such as E coli bacteria and yeast cultures (see Fröhlich, 1980) might be (indirect) evidence for his model, since these frequencies lie in the range where cell membranes are expected to resonate mechanically. Four recent attempts to reproduce some of this work have failed to do so (E coli: Athey and Krop, 1980; Santo, 1983; yeast cultures: Furia et al, 1986; Gos et al, 1997), although there have been further reports from Balyaev and colleagues that appear to endorse the earlier research (E coli: Balyaev, 1992). A recent appraisal of all this work (Foster, 2000a) notes that the experiments present formidable technical problems and that, while their results may be statistically significant, it may not always be possible to eliminate systematic errors. In view of this appraisal, it is not possible to conclude that this work provides support for the existence of resonant absorption by biological tissue.

 

5.20 Hyland (1998) has suggested that the mechanism proposed in Fröhlich’s model might lead to biological effects from  electromagnetic fields at the appreciably lower frequencies of mobile phones. This would require the presence of components in the biological tissue with sharp resonant vibrational modes in this frequency range. The frequencies are lower than those expected for most components, although theoretical work (Kohli et al, 1981; Van Zandt, 1986; Porkny and Wu, 1998) suggests that DNA polymers and elements of fibre structures (cytoskeletons), such as microtubules and actin filaments, could have modes in this range. However, since these components are surrounded by relatively viscous fluids, their mechanical vibrations would normally be expected to be very highly damped. Thus, resonance’s they might have out of solution would be almost completely smeared out when they are immersed*. Certainly no evidence of resonant absorption† was found from DNA in solution (Gabriel et al, 1987), although this might not rule out the possibility that it occurs under the conditions in which DNA exists in tissue.

 

5.21 CONCLUSION This work on DNA should be repeated under conditions more closely matched to those in tissue and similar measurements should be made on microtubules and actin filaments.

 

5.22 Another hypothesis is that the interaction with biological tissue depends on the coherence of the electromagnetic fields (see paragraph 4.36). Experimental evidence in support of this idea has been given by Litovitz et al (1993, 1997a,b) but not yet independently replicated.

 

5.23 In summarising the physical basis for non-thermal effects, it is convenient to consider separately the situations near to the antenna of a mobile phone and near to a base station.

* Water provides an example of this effect. Water vapour shows strong resonant absorption but the resonances are smeared out in liquid water and absorption occurs over a wide range of frequencies. Scott (1984) and Van Zandt (1986) have, however, proposed models to explain why this might not happen for DNA in solution. 

† Earlier work on DNA in solution appeared to show strong resonant absorption in this range (Edwards et al, 1984). It was shown, however, that this could have been the result of an experimental artefact (Foster et al, 1987) and, as noted, the work of Gabriel et al (1987), carried out on samples chosen to be as close as possible to those of Edwards et al, failed to see any such effects. In this work, three different techniques were used in two different laboratories and the results were essentially identical. It can be concluded, therefore, that DNA in solution does not have resonant modes that couple to microwaves in this range.

Mobile phones

 

5.24 In Chapter 4 it was noted that the maximum size of the electric fields produced in the head by the antenna of a mobile phone is around 100 V/m, although the fields inside the brain would be appreciably less. For fields of this size the mechanisms most likely to produce non-thermal  biological effects would be through the movement of large cells (paragraph 5.14) or through the attraction between neighbouring cells (paragraph 5.15). At this stage, although there is no experimental evidence to support these mechanisms, the possibility that both of these could produce effects cannot be excluded (Adair, 1994).