NLBS #34: EMF Sensitivity Syndrome Is Nothing But Junk Science and Misinformation

a reply to: deadeyedick

If I understand you correctly, your belief is that inter-cell connunication use EMF, possibly radio wave. It "may" be possible to a certain extent and I'm somewhat open to the possibility of some involvement.

But, for radio communication, you must consider the wavelength. If you try to make a radio wave to interact with an antenna, be it a "biological cell antenna" if you like, wavelength do matter a lot. Given a good old radiating stream of 2.4GHz RF coming from WiFi, lambda = 125mm, then take a receiving antenna of 1um long, your 125000 time smaller, even with resonnance effect (that will increase effective size), the antenna efficiency is ludicrous. Just take a good engineering book on antenna theory and resonnance and check theory for 'electrically short antenna'

Even if the signal would be to interact in a non-negliegable level to the cellular machinery, there is the signal to noise aspect. It mean that every receiving equipment (biological or man made electrical) can tolerate up to a specific level of perturbation before loosing the signal in too much noise, that the S/N tolerable level of the communication channel. Then there may exist an error correction mecanism, and I'm sure there would be one present as most of the time, biological entities made by nature, are much more better engineering creation than the human's ones.

a reply to: theNLBS

American Cancer Society:
www.cancer.gov...

"A recent study showed that when people used a cell phone for 50 minutes, brain tissues on the same side of the head as the phone’s antenna metabolized more glucose than did tissues on the opposite side of the brain (2). The researchers noted that the results are preliminary, and possible health outcomes from this increase in glucose metabolism are still unknown.

(2) Volkow ND, Tomasi D, Wang GJ, et al. Effects of cell phone radiofrequency signal exposure on brain glucose metabolism. JAMA 2011; 305(8):808–813"

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC):
www.cdc.gov...

"Do cell phones give off (emit) radiation?

Yes – cell phones and cordless phones use radiofrequency radiation (RF) to send signals. RF is different from other types of radiation (like x-rays) that we know can be harmful. We don’t know for sure if RF radiation from cell phones can cause health problems years later. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified RF radiation as a “possible human carcinogen.” (A carcinogen is an agent that causes cancer.)"

World Health Organization (WHO):

"...However, because many cancers are not detectable until many years after the interactions that led to the tumour, and since mobile phones were not widely used until the early 1990s, epidemiological studies at present can only assess those cancers that become evident within shorter time periods. However, results of animal studies consistently show no increased cancer risk for long-term exposure to radiofrequency fields..."

"...There are some indications of an increased risk of glioma for those who reported the highest 10% of cumulative hours of cell phone use, although there was no consistent trend of increasing risk with greater duration of use. The researchers concluded that biases and errors limit the strength of these conclusions and prevent a causal interpretation."

"Based largely on these data, IARC has classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), a category used when a causal association is considered credible, but when chance, bias or confounding cannot be ruled out with reasonable confidence."

"While an increased risk of brain tumors is not established, the increasing use of mobile phones and the lack of data for mobile phone use over time periods longer than 15 years warrant further research of mobile phone use and brain cancer risk. In particular, with the recent popularity of mobile phone use among younger people, and therefore a potentially longer lifetime of exposure, WHO has promoted further research on this group. Several studies investigating potential health effects in children and adolescents are underway."

a reply to: Trihalo42

Right! Ambiguous, non-repeatable. If there were something so profoundly bad there, you'd be seeing a clear cut easy to find and repeat sort of association. But you don't.