Cellular
Phones: Are They Safe To Use
By: Allan H. Frey (Biologist with Randomline Inc.)
November 27, 2000
Resolving the
question of whether cellular phones are safe has been complicated by
conflicting information about electromagnetic fields (emfs): no danger; yes
there is danger; well, we don't know. This has been unsettling for the public
and has put pressure on health policy decision makers to act. But can they
take action based on the biological data now available? I think not. In fact,
I believe it would be unethical to use much of it to make public health
decisions.
This area of
research in the United States did not evolve as biological research normally
does. It basically had its origin in the physics and engineering community's
concern about the hazards of their high-power radio equipment in the late
1930s. This led to that community's initiation and substantial control of the
funding for biological research and a persisting mind-set. The result has been
biological research corrupted by conflicts of interest, research based on
implicit assumptions that make little sense biologically, and research
inappropriate because of erroneous notions. Even today, the physics and
engineering community's mind-set, prominence as spokesmen, and influence over
research funding decisions continue. As a consequence, we don't have a
credible body of biological data involving electromagnetic fields on which to
base public health decisions.
What must be
done to provide the decision makers with a biological input? A sampling of
documented events will indicate the answer. The key fact is that the mind-set
of those who control the funding determines what is looked at and thus what is
found. And this must change if we are to obtain the biological data necessary
to decide if cellular phones, with the characteristics they have today, are
safe to use.
Conflicts
of Interest
In the 1980s, Nicholas Steneck, who at the time was director of the
Collegiate Institute for Values and Science at the University of Michigan,
received a major grant from the National Science Foundation's Program for
Ethics and Values in Science and Technology. He and institute fellows in
biology and physics used it to do an in-depth case study of this area of
research; many of the conflicts of interest they uncovered were documented in
two books.1
One example
is that for many years a U.S. Air Force office has decided what research the
Air Force will fund to determine if emf exposure is hazardous. This same
office has been responsible for assuring residents that there is no evidence
of hazard, when the Air Force wished to place radar (an emf source) in a
residential area. Among Steneck's conclusions: "The establishment that
controls RF (emf) bioeffects research has misled the public and researchers.
... Key decisions on such research have been influenced by persons with vested
interests."
There are
unjustified implicit assumptions underlying much of the research. One recent
example is the multimillion dollar National Toxicology Program studies on
carcinogenesis and promotion of 60-Hz magnetic fields of the National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). It was assumed, for these
studies and many others, that the relevant magnetic field parameter for
inducing biological effects is a pure 60-Hz sine wave; and such was used in
these studies. But the public is exposed to something very different, as the
authors of the Toxicology Program studies admit2: "While power
line magnetic field exposures are predominantly sine-wave fields, residential
and occupational exposures may include square waves, sawtooth waves, and other
wave forms. Harmonics (120 Hz, 180 Hz, etc.) may also be found. Further, as
appliances are switched on and off, spikes or transients in fields may
occur.... This study used linearly polarized, pure sine-wave exposures at 60
Hz, with the fields turned on when the sine wave was at zero amplitude and
gradually increased over seven to nine cycles (between 0.11 and 0.15 seconds)
to full intensity, and similarly gradually decreased to avoid transients. The
NIEHS studies evaluate the predominant component (60-Hz sine-wave magnetic
fields) without all the complexities of the exposures that occur in
residential and occupational settings." The authors make the implicit
assumption that a pure 60-Hz sine wave is the relevant variable. In fact,
there is reason to believe this is not true. Others have also concluded from
their research that emf characteristics are critical as would be expected with
biological organisms.3
Another
implicit assumption is that a toxicology model (the higher the dose, the more
the effect) should be used as a frame of reference in the selection, design
and analyses of experiments. Thus experiments are funded to look for a
dose-response relationship between electromagnetic field exposure and a
biological variable. But is a toxicology model appropriate as a guide for
biological research with electromagnetic fields? It's a crucial question, for
our frame of reference determines what we look at and how we look; as a
consequence, this determines what we find.
Electromagnetic
fields are not a foreign substance, a toxin to living beings, like lead or
cyanide. Rather, living beings are themselves electrochemical systems that use
electromagnetic fields in everything from protein folding through cellular
communication to nervous system function. Toxicology is the wrong model as has
been detailed in depth.3
There are
other implicit assumptions that have crippled research in this field. This
area of biological research is encumbered, for example, with a vocal few who
imagine that they are the possessors of "real truth." They like to
talk about the dogma, the "laws of physics." If the data do not
conform to the dogma, then the data must be wrong.
But one does
not challenge data with the current dogma. That's upside down, it's the dogma
that is tested by data obtained with constantly increasing precision of
measurement and observation. This is the great leap in thinking that created
science out of the thinking of the Medieval Age. It is to be expected that
theories conceived at one level of observation will have to be modified as
observational ability improves. But some scientists in this area implicitly
assume that they have reached a "fundamental" level of
understanding, which leaves no room for even more fundamental levels of
understanding.
A brief
illustration will make this point clear. In 1850, a trip from Washington,
D.C., to Los Angeles would have taken more than six months in a wagon pulled
by mules. Many times I have had breakfast in Washington and flown 2,500 miles
to Los Angeles and arrived in time for lunch. If I went back in time to 1850
and stated the above, I'm sure there would be some physicists who would flatly
say that the laws of physics show this is impossible--and then
"prove" it with elegant calculations on the muscle energy output of
mules and wagon axle friction. They would have been right in their
calculations but wrong in their implicit assumption that they knew everything
that will ever be known. This kind of thinking has been frequent in this area
of research, and it has crippled the research and resulted in misleading
information in the literature.
Inappropriate
Research
One example is all that is needed to show why so much of the research has been
fruitless. Twenty years ago, an epidemiological study indicated power lines
may be associated with cancer genesis or promotion. Since then, numerous
epidemiological studies with the apparent intent to prove or disprove that
emfs cause or promote cancer have yielded conflicting results, yet more are
under way.
This is a
misuse of epidemiology. Epidemiological studies can't provide proof either
way. Physicians do not have a full understanding of cancer genesis and
promotion, and we lack emf measurements at individual residences in the years
before the diagnosis of cancer. Thus we have critical unknowns. We don't even
know what characteristics of the fields, those many years ago, were important
and what should be measured. Clearly, endless epidemiological studies of
unknowns cannot prove or disprove anything about emfs and cancer.
The foregoing
is a tiny sample of the mind-set, conflicts of interest, implicit assumptions,
and inappropriate research, all well documented, that derailed biological
research needed to determine if emfs are a health hazard. As a consequence,
policy makers don't have the biological data needed to determine if there is a
hazard, and the public is confused. And a hundred million cellular phone
users, who have not given informed consent, are unwitting guinea pigs in a
grand biological experiment.4 S
References
1. N.H. Steneck, Risk/Benefit Analysis: The Microwave Case, San
Francisco, San Francisco Press, 1982, and The Microwave Debate,
Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1984.
2. National
Toxicology Program, Toxicology and Carcinogenesis Studies of 60-Hz Magnetic
Fields in F344/N Rats and B6C3F1 Mice (Whole-Body Exposure Studies)-Draft,
Research Triangle Park, N.C., National Toxicology Program, 1998.
3. A.H. Frey,
editor, On the Nature of Electromagnetic Field Interactions with Biological
Systems, Austin, Texas, R.G. Landes Co., 1994.
4. A.H. Frey,
"Headaches from cellular telephones: are they real and what are the
implications?" Environmental Health Perspectives, 106[3]101-3,
1998.
