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The Melatonin Hypothesis Revisited

September 25, 2013
Last updated October 7, 2013

"Now it is enough!" claims Maria Feychting of Sweden's Karolinska Institute. Feychting wants to stop wasting money on any more epidemiological studies of breast cancer risks from power-frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF EMFs).

"We can be confident that exposure to ELF magnetic fields does not cause breast cancer," she writes in an invited commentary published last week in the influential American Journal of Epidemiology (AJE). Feychting's call to stop research was prompted by a new study of breast cancer among Chinese textile workers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, which found no association with ELF magnetic field exposures. Feychting's confidence is based in large part on the exposure assessment used in the textile study, which, she believes, was "better than in previous studies."

If Feychting's call to halt research is heeded, she will have shattered a key driver for EMF–cancer research that has held sway for the last 25 years: the melatonin hypothesis.

Fourth Study To Show Tumor Link
Is This Really Prospective Epidemiology?

May 10, 2013
Last updated October 6, 2013

A new study from the U.K. is adding support to the still controversial proposition that long-term use of a cell phone increases the risk of developing acoustic neuroma, a tumor of the auditory nerve. No higher risk of glioma or meningioma, two types of brain cancer, was observed.

Women who used a mobile phone for more than ten years were two-and-half-times more likely to have an acoustic neuroma than those who never used a phone. The finding is statistically significant. This is the fourth epidemiological study that shows an association between long-term use of a cell phone and acoustic neuroma.

An Industry Insider Speaks Out

April 2, 2013
Last updated November 11, 2014

The Federal Communications Commis-sion (FCC) has never levied a fine against a cell phone company for exceeding its RF exposure limits from a base station antenna.

That’s not because all of the 300,000 cell sites in the U.S. comply with the FCC rules, according to an Industry Insider with years of training and experience measuring RF radiation. He told us that he has found RF levels higher than those allowed under the FCC rules at sites across the country. The real reason there have been no fines, he said, is “because there’s collusion between the companies and the government.” The insider, an RF engineer, calls himself “EMF Expert”; he asked that his real name not be used.

"The carriers and the FCC have an extremely cozy relationship," said the engineer. "Whenever there's a problem, someone in the FCC's RF safety office warns the carrier and the company then puts the 'fire' out."

Squashing the Cheshire Cat 

March 12, 2013
Last updated July 18, 2014

Lucas Portelli just ran over the Cheshire cat. He didn't know it was there. He's too young to appreciate how this fictional feline has held sway in the EMF-health controversy.

A little background for newcomers: the Cheshire cat is a metaphor for the lack of reproduciblity of EMF effects observed in some laboratories —but not others. It’s a favorite of those who see the study of EMFs as pathological science. The effects come and go, like the Cheshire Cat. Sometimes you see them, sometimes you don’t. EMF effects are not thought as being robust. Or more plainly, they are not to be believed.

But what if there was an unregognized confounding factor that was playing havoc with the EMF experiments? Portelli may well have found such a confounder.

ICEMS vs. ICNIRP; Hardell vs. Interphone

October 23, 2012
Last updated October 24, 2012

The Supreme Court of Italy has affirmed a ruling granting worker's compensation to a businessman who developed a tumor after using a cell phone for 12 years. This is the first time that a high court —in any country— has ruled in favor a link between mobile phone radiation and tumor development.

Innocente Marcolini, a financial manager at an industrial plant in Brescia in northern Italy, used cell and cordless phones for five-to-six hours a day for 12 years. Then, one morning ten years ago, Marcolini sensed an unusual tingling in his chin while shaving. He was soon diagnosed as having a benign tumor on the trigeminal nerve, which controls facial muscles and sensations.

Marcolini filed for workers' compensation alleging that his wireless phones were responsible for the tumor. At first, his claim was rejected. But, in December 2009, the Court of Appeals in Brescia reversed that decision and, on October 12, Italy's Supreme Court affirmed the Appeals Court's ruling. No further appeals are possible.

 McGill University Professor Proposes Radical New Outlook

September 27, 2012
Last updated August 12, 2013

Paul Héroux has a problem. He believes he has identified a way to control the growth of cancer cells, but he can't get his ideas into print. "We think we have the Rosetta Stone that will allow us to unravel the intricacies of cancer physiology," says Héroux, a professor at McGill University in Montreal.  Yet, one scientific journal after another has refused to publish what he has found.

Part of Héroux's problem is that his argument is based on an even more controversial proposition than a possible cure for cancer: That extremely weak magnetic fields can bring about major changes in DNA. That is a tough sell. Héroux ups the ante another notch by claiming to show that those changes are so easy to spot that you don't need hi-tech instruments to see them, just a standard issue microscope. All you have to do is count chromosomes, admittedly with close attention to detail.

And that's not all. Héroux says he has pinpointed where and how the magnetic field acts on the cell.

Kaiser’s De-Kun Li Second Prospective Study

July 27, 2012

De-Kun Li is the last man standing. Not long ago, many of the leading environmental epidemiologists in the U.S. were working on EMFs of one kind or another. They've all moved on —all except De-Kun Li, and he continues to break new ground in one study after another.

Li, a senior researcher at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, CA, has now shown that EMF exposures in the womb are linked to an increased risk of childhood obesity.

"Maternal exposure to high [magnetic fields] during pregnancy may be a new and previously unknown factor contributing to the world-wide epidemic of childhood obesity/overweight," Li writes in a paper posted today by Scientific Reports, a peer-reviewed, open access journal owned by the group that publishes Nature.

Cell Phone Radiation Limit Will Be Reviewed, But Why Is It News Now?

June 19, 2012
Last updated August 15, 2012

Bloomberg News caught a lot of people by surprise last Friday morning with a story announcing that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would review its rules on radiation exposures from cell phones. As  Bloomberg's Todd Shields pointed out, the move was long overdue: The FCC's current exposure standard was set in 1996.

Just as interesting is a question no one seems to be asking: Why was this in the news?

U.S. Military Sought To Discredit His Theory of Microwave Cataracts

June 5, 2012
Last updated June 12, 2012

Milton Zaret, an ophthalmologist who was one of the first to warn about long-term health hazards of microwave radiation, died on May 29. He was 91.

"Dr. Zaret was an extraordinary pioneer who showed that microwaves have a profound effect on the eye," said Paul Brodeur, who chronicled Zaret's career in The New Yorker more than 35 years ago and in his subsequent 1977 book, The Zapping of America. Brodeur called Zaret an "early prophet" of the biological hazards of microwaves.

March 18, 2012

IARC has closed the book on the Interphone project, its study of mobile phone tumor risks. A couple of days ago, the cancer agency quietly issued a final report, stating that its work "has now been formally completed." The report, though dated October 3, 2011, was released on March 16th.

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