Subject: (Curry) Re Comments on Dr. Goldsmith's presentation (fwd)
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 081155 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To: emfguru@hotmail.com
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 15:50:48 -0600
From: "Bill P. Curry"
To: "Roy L. Beavers"
Subject: Re: Comments on Dr. Goldsmith's presentation (fwd)
Roy,
Having been at his presentation, I have a slightly different interpretation
of Dr. Goldsmith's points on which Marj commented. I think that the were two
reasons for his remarks about our fixation on cancer: 1) the latency period
for cancer is 15-20 years; whereas many other diseases that can be related to
EMF exposure can be observed in much shorter time periods and 2) some other
diseases that app0ear to have a causal connection with EMF (among other
causes) are just as devastating - neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's,
for example. At this point, I will add a related comment that Dr. Goldsmith
didn't mention. There is recent evidence (as yet unpublished - but which was
announced at the Tucson meeting) of a connection between EMF exposure and
heart disease. This was found in a study of electrical line workers, when
they were searching for a cancer connection.
The other main point concerned the spectrum of radiation and the arbitrary
division into ionizing and nonionizing radiation: Dr. Goldsmith thought that
this distinction was artificial and tended to mislead us. He wanted (in my
opinion) to make the point that ALL electromagnetic radiation affects living
things. Obviously, we depend on certain portions of the spectrum for the
sustenance of light itself, but when we build technology on specific regions
of the spectrum, we should be cognizant of the possibility for harful
interaction with biological systems. Dr. Goldsmith consistently urged a
policy of "prudent avoidance" whenever possible.
Since I have been following the reports on the effects of EMF on biological
systems for only a few months, I don't know as much history of this
controversy as your readers, but I have formed a few tentative conclusions on
what is happening - based on what I have read and heard and on my own
understanding of science: 1) on the cellular level, biological systems can
sense when they are under attack. Their typical reponse upon sensing danger
by heating, by an unfavorable chemical environment, or by EMF is to go into a
protective mode in which (through complicated biochemical pathways) stress
proteins are produced. These substances protect cells against potentially
lethal additional stresses, but their presence (just a guess) may also induce
undesirable responses, such as histamine reactions. (Maybe this is why some
people become electrosensitive).
Basically, the cells don't distinguish between thermal hazards and EMF -
except in certain details related to locations of genes which mediate these
protective responses. Significantly, as little fluctuating magnetic field as
2 milligauss can cause cellular stress responses. (I have stated this value
as a sort of threshold; I don't know whether the magnitude of the cellular
response changes greatly with flux level or not). Incidentally, some
experiments carried out on the cellular level (especially Carl Blackman's, but
other investigators as well) have looked for sensitivity to both electric and
magnetic fields. For reasons I don't understand, fluctuating electric fields
are usually lass important than magnetic fields in causing significant
cellular response - such as calcium efflux across membranes. However, in some
other experiments, fluctuating electric fields have also stimulated production
of stress proteins.
Although I should save these comments for my report on the Tucson meeting,
let me say that it has become apparent that one of the things wrong with the
EMF RAPID study is the predilection of the working group or else of the
report authors toward a toxicological point of view. This point of view
(because of required characteristics of the statistical analysis procedure
used to interpret the data) almost always assumes that if the dose of some
agent is increased the response of the organism will also increase. Data sets
that show either a decrease in response with dose or a flat response are
usually considered inconsistent and are thrown out. This is a serious mistake
of such analyses, as both in vitro experiments and the available theoretical
models indcate that the interaction between agents such as EMF and complex
biological systems are very nonlinear and the response of a given system is
often non-monatonic. This means that at certain levels of dose the reponse of
the system will be proportional and increase as dose increases, but at other
levels of dose, the system response will either be no change or a negative
change.
In other branches of science, non-monatonic behavior is the norm, and simple
linear behavior is the exception. For example, if light of a single
wavelength is scattered by either a single particle or an ensemble of
identical particles, the pattern of scattered light intensity - when measured
as a function of the scattering angle (the angle of deviation of the light ray
from its original direction) - has a very non-monatonic pattern with many
peaks and valleys. Crudely speaking, the number of peaks or valleys
correlates with the size of the particle (relative to the wavelength of the
light). In fact such experiments, if carefully carried out, agree so well
with the predictions of electromagnetic scattering theory (for spheres, this
is the Lorentz-Mie scattering theory) that the results are considered
"embarassingly good agreement." For some time, they were considered suspect
because there was so little deviation between predictions and observations,
now they are accepted as examples of what can be achieved when the experiment
is carefully planned and executed and the theoretical model is well defined
and mathematically accurate. (I apologize for this diversion, but particle
diagnostics based on light scattering was within my work area for 17 years and
is the subject of both my Ph.D. research and my sole patent, held by the Air
Force. It is also one of my favorite subjects, but it is not the area of my
most recent experience. That area is charged particle beams, such as electron
or ion beams. That area of expertise permitted me to get consulting work in
such areas as x-ray tube design, but light scattering is still one of my
strongest interests.
One more personal item on which I would appreciate your readers' advice: I
am pondering purchasing a computer code that will allow me to compute and
display graphically the fields radiated by arbitrarily shaped antennas and
arrays of antennas. This code was developed by a company that got an SBIR
grant from the Air Force to develop training materials for people who needed
to evaluate the hazards of RF emitters. If the code has the right
characteristics, I might be able to map out the field intensities (over a
spatial region) associated with installations of multiple cellular phone
antennas. For example, nearly every utility pole and water tank in our local
region has now sprouted cellular phone antennas and other microwave antennas
in some instanaces, as well. One wonders whether the top of the water tanbk,
acting as a ground plane, intensifies the radiation density in its
neaighborhood. In addition, I now see a lot of micro-antennas decorating the
traffic lights supports. These are smaller than the panel antennas or whip
antennas used in regular cell phone towers. Consequently, they have to be
placed closer together than regular cell phone towers. The question of
whether it is less offensive to have a lot of lower power micro-antennas or a
few regular power cell phone towers has not been resolved. Since the
micro-antenna option yields a more uniform distribution of field energy than
the regular cell phone towers, I suspect it is less harmful to health than
having a spikey radiation field over the same region, but I don't know. The
code I am considering purchasing might permit me to answer the question of how
the fields from the two different types of antenna systems would differ in
their geographical coverage and the unifomity of the radiation density.
My question to your readership is this: would such a tool be useful when
confronting "engineers" (who I think are really PR people with minimal
engineering education) who invoke the output of "magic black boxes" when they
show full color computer graphs to justify their choice of a cell phone
antenna location? Curiously, they never seem to be willing to state what
assumptions were built into their computer models. Does the fact that we are
all still chafing under the inability to raise health issues (on account of
the Telecommunications Act of 1996) as grounds for refusing cell telephone
antenna permits negate the usefullness of a field computation code in the
campaign against cell phone antenna proliferation? I am pondering this
question, because I have to consider whether I could recover the cost of such
an investment in consulting fees for organizations fighting specific antenna
locations, since most such organizations have minimal financial resources.
Incidentally, I am struck by the similarity and the phoniness of the arguments
of the "engineers" the big telecommunications companies always bring out to
"snow" the public and their official representatives. Occasionally, court
officers get fed up with this insult to their intelligence and react against
these companies. I have seen this happen, and it is a joy to behold!
--
----
Bill P. Curry, Ph.D. |Physics is fun.
EMSciTek Consulting Co. |Trying to make a living!
22W101 McCarron Road, |Phone: (630) 858-9377
Glen Ellyn, IL 60137 |Fax: same, but require prior notice
Home page: http://www.EMSciTek.com
____________________________________________________
| Analysis, experiment design & software development |
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Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html