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Man made EMFs differ in one important aspect from natural EMFs: they radiate with steady, regular oscillations or pulses with mainly constant frequencies and amplitudes, whereas natural EMFs are highly irregular with mixed, random frequencies, amplitudes and waveforms.
Understanding how EMFs affect life processes requires a new paradigm in the understanding of life itself. Many scientists are still lost in inadequate classic beliefs of mechanistic chemistry which do not recognize how fundamental electromagnetism is to biology and life. Throughout this century, most biologists and doctors have believed only chemical processes were involved in growth and healing.
Our body consists of about 50,000 billion cells, each of which is a living entity in itself, and all of these cells are somehow interconnected, organized and specialized in a finely tuned equilibrium. In reality, scientists understand very little of what is going on even in a single cell, which is an incredibly complex organism where millions of interrelated and carefully balanced biochemical processes are happening every second. These processes all involve electromagnetism in some form. The brain and nervous system are characterized by an incessant activity involving weak electrical currents, which can be read in the electro encephalogram (EEG). Every heart beat is initiated by an electrical stimulus which can be read in the EKG (electro cardiogram). DNA replication and division in each and every cell is in some way controlled by an electromagnetic stimulus.
An EKG from the heart. (bottom)
The research team at the Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, DC, headed by Professor Litovitz, has hypothesized and tested that an oscillating EMF needs to be steady for a certain minimum time period (approx. 1 second) for a biological response to occur [ref. 16]. This constancy allows cells to discriminate external fields against thermal noise fields, even though the exogenous field may be orders of magnitude lower than the endogenous noise field. Also, the cell discriminates by spatial coherence, i.e., cooperative sensing by a large number of receptors in the cell membrane. Both temporal and spatial sensing is known from bacterial chemotaxis.
The same medical community largely ignoring that EMFs have any influence on biology and health have for the past couple of decades been using steady pulsed ELF magnetic fields in hospital therapy to accelerate bone growth in fractures that otherwise would not heal, and MW fields to accelerate healing of surficial wounds. The background for this treatment is easily explainable in light of recent laboratory experiments showing that ELF as well as MW frequency EMF accelerate cell growth.
The famous 16th century doctor Paracelsus emphasized that all stimuli are poisons when applied at an improper dose level. When using a mobile phone, hair dryer or electric shaver, we are exposing our brain and nerve cells to a stimulus which – among a variety of induced biological effects – accelerates cell growth, without controlling the dose level. No one can tell the consequences relating to long term repeated, daily dosages of such cell growth accelerating stimuli; but clearly, we are dealing with something which might be potentially hazardous. Laboratory evidence has repeatedly shown that rapidly growing cells like transformed cancer cells are significantly more enhanced in growth rate than normal cells; this is among the factors adding to the conclusion that EMFs are possibly carcinogenic, as expressed by the NIEHS work group in July 1998.
Scientists looking for the mechanism by which EMFs interact with living matter first recognize that living cells are bio-electro-chemical structures which interact with their environment in many ways including physically, chemically, biochemically and electrically. Biological tissue consists of cells in a fixed structure, each cell surrounded by a conducting medium containing charges (ions) more or less free to move around each cell, a setup with extraordinary electrical properties which is ideal for establishing amplification effects with external constant oscillating EMFs.
Many scientists believe the cell membrane plays a leading role in the interaction mechanisms between EMF and biological matter. The European Parliament Resolution B3-0280/92, clauses D and E, bases its concern on the matter of EMF health effects, in part, on recognition that the cell membrane is the primary site of cellular interaction of EMF and living tissues:
D. whereas, according to an increasing number of epidemiological and experimental studies, even slight exposure to non-ionizing electromagnetic fields increases the risk of cancer, can be accompanied by nervous disorders and disruption of the circadian rhythm and seems capable of affecting developing organisms,
E. whereas the results of many in vivo and in vitro studies show increasingly clearly the interaction mechanisms underlying such disorders and illnesses, centered mainly in the cell membrane, lead to disruption of melatonin secretions, ornithine decarboxylase activity and T-lymphocyte efficacy, testifying to the probable role of non-ionizing radiation in promoting cancer…
Since electromagnetism is fundamental to all cell types, organs and life processes, it can be expected that man-made EMFs will have a very broad impact on life and may cause many different biological effects and health disorders.
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