www.energyfields.org/science/CWTI.Hylandreport11.2000.doc
How Exposure to Mobile Phone
Base-station Radiation can Adversely Affect Humans*
G J Hyland,
November, 2000
Department of Physics International Institute of
Biophysics
The claim made by the
from the antennae of a GSM Base-station are many
times lower than the limit to which the
Government’s Statutory Body the National
Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) maintains it is safe for us to be
exposed to, is perfectly true.
The NRPB exposure limits are, however, purely
thermally based - i.e. they simply limit the intensity of the radiation to
ensure that tissue heating by the absorption of microwaves is not in excess of
what the body can cope with. If heating
were the only effect of the radiation,
the NRPB guidelines would afford adequate protection;
unfortunately, however, this is not the case.
For microwaves are, after all, waves, and, as such, have properties
other than solely intensity. In
particular, the pulsed microwave radiation used in the digital GSM system of
mobile telephony has certain rather well defined frequencies, which facilitate
its discernment by the alive human organism, and via which the organism can, in
turn, be affected in a purely non-thermal way.
This is so because the alive human organism (and only the alive one)
itself supports a variety of oscillatory electrical biological activities, each
characterised by a specific frequency, some of which happen be close to those
used in GSM. Thus, the microwave carrier
frequency is close to those characterising the highly organised electrical
activities that are involved in the
control of certain biological processes in living
organisms at the cellular level (including processes as fundamental as cell
division), whilst the rates at which the microwaves are emitted in distinct
groups of flashes (or pulses) are close to the frequencies of some of the
brain’s own electrical activities; this makes them vulnerable to interference
(or even entrainment) by the radiation.
It is to be stressed that unlike heating, such
non-thermal influences are possible only when the organism is alive: the Dead
have no electrical brain activity with which an external electromagnetic field
can interfere!
What the Industry and the NRPB dispute is that the very
weak, pulsed microwave radiation used in the GSM system can non-thermally
affect these various biological (electrical) activities in ways that can
provoke adverse health reactions. Their
difficulty in accepting this reality is due to an out-dated ‘linear’ mentality,
which leads them to believe that exposure to weak radiation
can entail only correspondingly weak effects, and
vice versa. Whilst this is true in the
case of
inanimate systems or dead organisms, it is certainly
not so either for energised electronic equipment, or for living organisms. For the latter, in consequence of their
vitality, are themselves electromagnetic instruments of great and exquisite
sensitivity, and thereby vulnerable to interference by weak external
electromagnetic fields whose frequencies are close to those found in the alive
organism. The situation is not
dissimilar to the way in which the reception of a (turned-on) radio that is
tuned to a particular frequency can be interfered with by a signal that is
slightly off-station. In both cases, it
is more a question of the ‘information’ content of a given (interfering)
signal, rather than how much energy it contains (or equivalently, its ability
to heat
tissue).
Whilst the importance of ensuring non-thermal electromagnetic compatibility
between mobile phone radiation and energised electronic equipment (in aircraft
and hospitals, and with heart pacemakers, for example) is accepted and
generally respected, the same, unfortunately, does not yet obtain in the case
of the alive human organism!
Despite persistent claims to the contrary by the
Mobile Phone Industry, the existence of non-thermal effects of low intensity,
pulsed microwave radiation is established
beyond dispute, on the basis of many replicated
experiments that have been performed over the last 30 years on a variety of
living organisms. The results of these
experiments have been published in international, peer reviewed scientific
journals, and are acknowledged by the 16 signatories (of international
standing) to the 1998 Vienna Resolution, the only non-signatory being the head
of the WHO Project on Electromagnetic Fields.
Of particular relevance is the way in which this
radiation affects brain function specifically, its
electrical activity (EEG), its electro-chemistry, and
the blood brain barrier - and degrades the immune system. For these established influences are of a
kind that are consistent with the nature of adverse health reactions reported
both by some users of mobile phones and by
some people (involuntarily) subject to long-term
exposure to the radiation from a Base-station.
For example, the radiation is known to affect the dopamine-opiate system
of the brain and to increase the permeability of the blood brain barrier, both
of which are medically considered to underlie headache one of the most
persistently reported adverse health effects.
Similarly, the duration of REM sleep is shortened by exposure to
radio-frequency radiation, whilst nocturnal secretion of melatonin is partly
inhibited, both of which are consistent with reports of sleep disruption.
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*The opinions expressed herein are based entirely on
my own independent research, and are neither endorsed nor rejected by the
University of Warwick. Furthermore, the fact that microwave radiation has been
discovered to target the hippocampal region of the brain is consistent with
reports of memory problems and, in some epileptic children, with an increase in
the frequency of seizures. The latter
finding is not at all unreasonable, given the known ability of a visible light
flashing at a rate somewhere between 15-20 times per second to induce seizures
in the 5%
minority of epileptics who are photosensitive. For visible light and microwaves are both
simply different realisations of electromagnetic radiation, and the microwave
radiation used in GSM similarly ‘flashes’ in a way that the brain is able to
recognise, as has already been mentioned; unlike visible light, however, pulsed
microwaves can penetrate the skull directly.
It should be noted that although microwave radiation
is non-ionising i.e. does not have enough energy to break chemical bonds,
particularly in DNA exposure can still cause interference with the natural
DNA repair process, and produce chromosome aberrations and micronuclei.
Such effects are consistent with the finding that
exposure to pulsed microwave radiation promotes the development of cancer in
mice that have been genetically engineered so that they have a predisposition
to cancer, and also with the 3-fold increase in the incidence of a rare form of
cancer in the periphery of the human brain (where the penetration of the
radiation is greatest) - the laterality of which correlates with that of
handset use -which has been found in a recent nationwide epidemiological study
in the US. The relevance of these
disturbing findings to the less intense, but often more prolonged,exposure to
Base-station radiation is at present unknown, although the increasing number of
reports of serious adverse effects in animals could
well be valuable warning portents that should not be
ignored.
It is essential to realise that because the
possibility of non-thermal influences is dependent on the
organism being alive, it necessarily follows that not
everyone will be equally susceptible - even under the same exposure conditions
- susceptibility depending on the physiological
state of the individual when irradiated, such as the
stability of the brain’s electrical activity and
the person’s level of stress prior to exposure. Whilst this admittedly makes the occurrence
of non-thermal effects more difficult to predict, than is the case with thermal
effects and hence to regulate against it does not mean that they can be
safely ignored, or that they cannot provoke adverse health reactions in some
people, the severity of which will again vary from person to person, according
to the robustness of their immune system.
It is probably true to say that if the same degree of risk and lack of
consensus as to noxiousness obtained in the case of a new drug or foodstuff,
they would never be licensed. In
connection with the biological noxiousness of low intensity microwave
radiation, it should not be forgotten that during the ‘Cold War’, such
radiation was used (rather successfully) by the Soviets to induce serious
adverse health effects in
the staff of Western Embassies in Eastern bloc
countries, as well as in their children!
Quite apart from their weaker immune systems,
children are particularly vulnerable because of the increased rate at which
their cells divide (which makes them more susceptible to genetic damage) and
their still developing nervous system - the size of their heads and the
thinness of their skulls causing them to absorb more
radiation than do adults. Particularly
vulnerable to interference by the pulses of microwaves, is their electrical
brain-wave activity, which does not settle into a stable pattern until about
the age of 11 or 12 years. The use of
mobile phones by pre-adolescent children is thus to be strongly discouraged,
and the siting of Base-station masts in the vicinity of schools and nurseries
resisted: financial gain must not be allowed to be the overriding
consideration!
To cite the examples of radio and television
transmission in an attempt to support the claim that
exposure to the (much less intense) radiation used in
mobile telephony is flawed, on account of (i) the occurrence, in any case, of
certain health problems that correlate with exposure to the radiation from
these installations, (ii) the fact that, unlike the radiation used in GSM, this
radiation is not emitted in pulsed patterns that the brain can recognise, and
(iii) the fact that the lower frequency carriers used in radio and TV are
somewhat less biologically active than are higher
microwave carrier frequencies used in GSM.
In conclusion, it can hardly be disputed that to
enjoy an acceptable quality of life requires more than simply an absence of
terminal disease. Adverse health effects
in humans of the kinds already consistently reported worldwide such as
headaches, sleep disruption, impairment of
shortterm memory, etc. - whilst maybe not
life-threatening in themselves, do nevertheless have a
debilitating effect that undoubtedly undermines the
general well-being of those affected, and
which in the case of some children could well
undermine their neurological and academic development.
It should, of course, be stressed that the apparent
absence to date of life threatening adverse effects on a global scale that are
attributable to exposure to GSM Base-station radiation is no guarantee of
immunity in the long-term. For exposure
to this kind of radiation is still in
its ‘early days’ in comparison to the much longer
(10-15 years) latency period of the kinds of cancers that could well be
promoted or initiated in certain people.
REFERENCE
G.J. Hyland, ‘Memorandum’ - Potential Adverse Health
Impacts of Mobile
Telephony - see EMF??, in: http://www.emfguru.com