Reality Check

EMFs Again

A recent issue of Science (29 September, 1995) reports on two papers in the October 1995 issue of the Journal of Radiation Research, describing attempts to replicate the earlier work, with negative results. The new research not only repeated the older work, but improved on the methods of analyzing the data. According to Jeff Saffer, of the Pacific Northwest Laboratories, Goodman and Henderson had failed to include certain controls and calibrations. When these precautions were taken, "There was no observable effect," Saffer said.

Here we go again. One experiment says yes, another experiment says no. Well, this often happens in science. We won't know the final result until enough different people repeat the same work. In the meantime, the EMF work begins to show ominous similarity to the cold fusion brouhaha of a few years ago. Great initial excitement, followed by a simmering down of claims as more careful research finds nothing to get excited about.

In the cold fusion case, physicists with experience in fusion work were initially skeptical because they could not imagine any kind of nuclear reaction that would produce the effects claimed. They thought they had a quite complete knowledge of all the nuclear reactions in existence. But, on the off chance that there were obscure reactions lurking about, they could not come right out and say "cold fusion is impossible." Therefore a great deal of time, effort, and money had to be spent replicating the original experiments.

In the case of EMF and cancer the situation is even more complex. Here we are dealing with living cells, and we don't know everything that goes on inside them. We really don't know much about the interaction between 60 Hertz electromagnetic fields and living matter.

My own initial skepticism on the subject was colored by my experience in working with powerful magnetic fields. When I was at the fusion lab in Princeton I worked with a machine called a stellarator, the precursor of the present tokamak. This was a large device about twenty feet long and eight feet high, consisting of a racetrack-shaped vacuum vessel surrounded by magnetic coils encased in blocks of stainless steel. Occasionally when the coils were being tested I would stand on the platform adjacent to the stellarator and watch in wonder as the four-inch steel slabs would slowly bend toward each other when the magnetic field was pulsed. This was a strong field! But standing a few feet away I felt nothing. Therefore I didn't think magnetic fields had any effect on me.

However, fields from power lines alternate at sixty cycles per second, quite different from the slowly varying field from the stellarator. These alternating magnetic fields are accompanied by electric fields whose strength is not insignificant. However, to calculate the electric field strength inside a living person and to calculate the effect of this field on living cells is a very complex matter. For this reason it would be foolhardy to claim ahead of time that alternating electromagnetic fields do not have an effect on the health of people exposed to them. The subject is not at all like cold fusion. We have no theoretical reasons for saying EMFs are either good or bad for people. The question must be answered with careful experimental tests.

And I'm glad to see that they are being done.

There's no answer to the population problem other than zero population growth.

Feedback | Reverse links for this page | Translate this page