[SPAM][ RadSafe ] Cell Phone Hormesis and Alzheimer's

[Wes Van Pelt]

All,

I read the full paper regarding the so called beneficial effects of cell
phone radiofrequency radiation. The authors exposed mice to emissions from a
vertical half wave antenna transmitting at 918 MHz. They submitted the mice
(with and without Alzheimer's type condition) to various cognitive
interference task tests and showed that the radiofrequency exposed mice did
better than non-exposed mice. The authors seem to me to be very well versed
in biology, but not in the physics of radiofrequency radiation.  They may be
on to something, but their paper if full of deficiencies. Some of the items
I noticed are listed below.

1. The mice are located almost exactly one wavelength away from the antenna
and in the near-field. At this distance, The situation in the near-field
region is rather more complicated because the maxima and minima of E and H
fields do not occur at the same points along the direction of propagation as
they do in the far field. In the near field, the electromagnetic field
structure may be highly inhomogeneous, and there may be substantial
variations from the plane-wave impedance of 377 ohms; that is, there may be
almost pure E fields in some regions and almost pure H fields in others.
(See ICNIRP, GUIDELINES FOR LIMITING EXPOSURE TO TIME-VARYING ELECTRIC,
MAGNETIC, AND ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS (UP TO 300 GHz).)

2. The mouse cages all have metal wire cage tops which can absorb and
distort the radiofrequency field.

3. They report a SAR of 250 mW/kg. Quoting from their paper, "The antenna
was connect to an Hewlett Packard ESG D4000A digital signal generator
(Houston, TX) set to automatically provide two 1-hour exposures per day at
918 MHz and a whole body SAR (specific absorption rate) of 0.25 W/kg +/- 2
dB."  This is the only experimental data they report on the electromagnetic
field exposure. They do not indicate how the SAR was calculated or measured.
I seriously question whether they can support this SAR value at all.

4. The controls were housed in a separate room from the exposed mice. This
allows for differences in environmental conditions that could affect the
outcome. More important is that the experimenters, when testing the mice,
are aware which are the controls and which are the exposed mice. This allows
for experimenter bias, whether conscious or unconscious. In other words,
this is not a blinded study. 

The full text of the article is found here:
http://iospress.metapress.com/content/d6r1371722422hg2/ 


Best regards,  Wes
Wesley R. Van Pelt, PhD, CIH, CHP 
Wesley R. Van Pelt Associates, Inc.  
 

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On Behalf
Of Cary Renquist
Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 11:52 AM
To: radsafe at radlab.nl
Subject: [SPAM][ RadSafe ] Cell Phone Hormesis?

The experiment hasn't been duplicated yet, so the results might be just
a fluke.

Cary
--
Cary.renquist at ezag.com


http://bit.ly/4YnP4r

Cellphone radiation is good for Alzheimer's mice

Despite years of demonization, mobile phones might actually do us more
good than harm. Regular exposure to an electromagnetic field identical
to the ones produced by mobile phones seems to improve memory in mice
with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.