Subject: Re (Curry) Re Comments on Dr. Goldsmith's presentation (fwd)
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 033020 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To: emfguru@hotmail.com
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 08:47:13 +0200 (IST)
From: John Goldsmith
To: "Roy L. Beavers"
Subject: Re: (Curry) Re: Comments on Dr. Goldsmith's presentation (fwd)
Dear Bill:
Thanks for your comments on my presentation. It was focussed on
epidemiological issues for the very good reason that that is my
profession.
Now when it comes to likelihood of recovering the cost of a new bit
of fancy software, from reading between the lines, I don't think you
really want that question answered. If you do, the answer is probably no!
The question you want answered is are there any of us who would like to
use the program, and the answer I believe is a resounding yes. For those
of us retired, what counts is how useful we can be, and this program, the
cost of which you haven't even hinted at, sounds as though, in your hands
it could be most useful. Warm Regards, John Goldsmith
On Sat, 19 Sep 1998, Roy L. Beavers wrote:
>
> ---------- 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 There is recent evidence (as yet unpublished - but which was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 |
> | for engineering and the physical sciences |
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
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