EMF CONTROVERSY

["Fritz A. Seiler" <faseiler@nmia.com>]

A Comment by Fritz Seiler and Joe Alvarez
on the renewed flare up of the EMF discussion.

As scientists, we find it is our duty to speak out and express
our disapproval when self-serving , non-scientific statements
are made, specifically tailored for the press.  Yet we must do
this from a position of strength and use both the facts and
the Scientific Method.  Above all, we must neither sink into the
depths of scientific arrogance, nor join certain people in their
strident and often ad hominem attacks.

Many letters in this mailing list have complained about biases
one way or the other.  Yes, we must admit that we too are
biased and very much so; we are biased in the direction of
Good Science and that means the uncompromising use of the
Scientific Method.

Like a bad penny, the EMF discussion comes around every 2-3
years.  Essentially these events are due to some committee or
other, which consists of persons who - for whatever reasons -
decide to ignore basic requirements of the Scientific Method.
Despite massive evidence to the contrary, they make confident
pronouncements about EMF exposure to the effect that it is still
a "possible carcinogen."  And the press loves it, laps it up, and
blows it even more out of proportion.

We are distressed by the statement of the EMF panel and are
at a loss to understand how they could come to their statement
in the face of the experimental evidence and of the carefully
considered analyses which are readily available.  Consequently,
we will try to analyze the situation in an unemotional way, or at
least in as unemotional a manner as we can muster, given the
enormity of the violation of both good science and good sense.

So, the NIH Committee report has rekindled the discussion in
the press and on both the RADSAFE and the RISKANAL
mailing lists.  Actually, we find it kind of strange that, whenever
these "uncaring physicists" (and that is a quote!) blow some
biological correlations or model concepts out of the water, some
EMF committee or other will launch a scientifically insupportable
statement which is designed to maintain the viability of EMF
related cancers.

It may be just a coincidence that the big EMF controversy in 1991
and 1992 erupted just after the well known physicist Robert Adair
at Yale, showed that a direct correlation of EMF and any biological
effect on the cellular level was extremely unlikely [R.K. Adair,
"Constraints on biological effects of weak extremely-low frequency-
electromagnetic fields," Physical Review, A43, 1039 (1991)].  In
the same year, he published the paper "Biological Effects on the
Cellular Level of Electric Field Pulses," in Health Physics, 61,
395 (1991) and a more generally understandable paper in the
HPS Newsletter, October 1991, p.18.  In these publications, he
points out that biological-effects are highly unlikely because the
ambient electromagnetic fields can, at the cellular level, generate
only fields which are 1,000 times smaller than the fields generated
by the thermal agitation of the ions in the cell at body temperature!
Any direct EMF effects are thus drowned in the thermal noise.

In the same issue of the Health Physics Society Newsletter, Bob
Adair's wife (Eleanor Adair, a microbiologist or biochemist, we
seem to remember) took the EMF biologists to task in her paper
"Pathological Science for the ‘90s: Health Hazards from Electric
and Magnetic Fields" October 1991, p. 10.  She used the criteria
for "pathological science" as they were laid out by the physical
chemist and Nobel prize winner Irving Langmuir in his famous
lecture on the subject of bad science (a copy of his talk is reprinted
in the journal Physics Today, October 1989, p. 36; great reading!),
and showed that some of the claims of the EMF supporters come
dangerously close to meeting these criteria.

This latest outbreak of the EMF controversy may well have been
provoked by the excellent reviews in issue No. 1 of the journal
Technology: Journal of the Franklin Institute, vol. 334A, 1997
(Guest Editor, Richard Wilson, Harvard), which is dedicated to the
EMF problem.  Its first paper is a thorough review of 86 epide-
miological studies of EMF Effects.  Even though the data plotted
in the paper show only the 95% confidence limits which are due to
the random errors (sample size!), there is no discernible effect.  If
the limits are amended to include also the systematic errors (those
caused by unsuspected or incompletely controlled confounding
factors, non-equivalence of the cohorts, etc.), the total uncertainty
increases and there is even less reason to believe that there could
be a nonzero effect.  The other four papers and the section devoted
to a general discussion, relate to biophysical and other aspects of
the problem, but none of them are encouraging for the EMF
supporters.  Thus, this negative review may well have caused the
renewed uproar.

To add our input to the rather complete and conclusive discussion
in the literature, let us look at the requirements of the Scientific
Method.  In order to claim a viable cause-effect relationship, at least
two conditions must be met: One, a causative link must be established
between the agent, its biological action, and the health effect; and Two,
an experimental correlation must exist between agent exposure and
health effect.  With regard to condition One, there is no causative
mechanism known at present.  Actually,  not even a plausible
cellular or molecular effect of EMF is known, which could be
presented as a possible step that could lead in the direction of the
processes that may eventually lead to cancer.  With regard to the
second condition, a realistic estimate of the total uncertainty leads
quite clearly to a result of 1 for the relative risk, independent of
exposure (Y.S. Loh, A.I. Shlyakhter, and R. Wilson, "Electro-
magnetic Fields and the Risk of Leukemia and Brain Cancer: A
Summary of the Epidemiological Literature," Technol. J. Franklin
Inst., 334A, 3-21,1997).  It therefore also means that we have a
zero excess relative risk due to EMF exposure.

The argument "but what if?" cannot be used anymore because we
now know that even if the risk exists at all, it is very small.  Using
a rather cursory cost-risk-benefit evaluation leads immediately to the
conclusion that the so-called "prudent avoidance" policy can only be
legitimate, if it costs next to nothing, not the hundreds of millions of
dollars and more that some measures are estimated to cost.  These
funds should be used to mitigate some real risks in our society, not
some vague potential risk of small size.

Finally, let us stop flogging that dead horse. If there is some evidence
of a potential damage mechanism that satisfies the criteria of the
Scientific Method, then by all means let us pursue it.  But let us also
behave like scientists, and use the Scientific Method in all aspects of
our activities.  So, until an appropriate damage mechanism is found,
no more studies are needed to investigate potential epidemiological
effects.  What little money may be available should be used to follow
up promising biophysical or biochemical leads, if there are any.


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Fritz A. Seiler, Ph.D.
Principal
Sigma Five Associates
P.O. Box 14006
Albuquerque, NM 87191-4006
Tel.     505-323-7848
Fax.    505-293-3911
e-mail: faseiler@nmia.com

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