[Glenn Romaniuk (OP)]

Glenn asked the Naked Scientists:

I wear wireless headphones. Specifically Sennheiser RS145. I wear these at work to listen to your shows. I work in a very quiet office environment. The volume is set very low.

I've heard stories about excessive use of cell phone and potential health risks; brain tumours etc. With wireless headphones its one way communication and is only receiving a signal. Is this any different from any other signal in my house or office and are their any health risks?

Thanks,
Glenn Romaniuk
Canada

What do you think?

[Bored chemist]

The only risk I can see from noise cancelling headphones is you won't hear someone yelling "look out!" sometime.

[rosalind dna]

Also if you are walking down a road with your noise cancelling headphones, you might not be aware of a car about to knock you down or crash into your car etc.

[Glenn Romaniuk (OP)]

The title was incorrect. What I meant to ask was "Are wireless headphones a health risk?". The receiver is in close proximity to your head and is receiving a signal from a transmitter.

[Pumblechook]

Any danger would be from the transmitter and not the headphones unless continuous use at high volume damages your hearing.   But the transmitter is not next to your head and in any case is very low power.

There is no clear evidence of any danger from the mobile phones next to the head so I wouldn't worry at all about 'flea power devices'.

Prof Moulder is maybe the World's number one expert on the subject and he is not convinced that there is any danger at all..


http://www.mcw.edu/display/docid5175.htm

[blaze]

I'm going to jump in here.

My ex-husband had a brain tumor removed last year, and yes, it was on the side of the head against which he'd hold his cell phone. Headsets are no better - they just move the radiation to a different part of your body. So maybe you won't get a brain tumor, but does no brain tumor equal safe?

I say this as an 'electrosensitive'. I have been ill since the advent of wireless technology, especially so since the mid-90's when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed giving the cell phone industry free reign to place cell phone towers anywhere and everywhere, with no argument or accountability.

I suggest you read Dr. Robert O. Becker's "Cross Currents" and "The Body Electric". Also, B. Blake Levitt's "Cell Phones: Wireless Convenience? or Environmental Hazard?"

Also, the Bioinitiative Report below...

Bioinitiative Report:

http://www.bioinitiative.org/report/index.htm

This article might help put things in perspective, too...

Attitudes to the Health Dangers of Non-Thermal EMFs:

http://www.powerwatch.org.uk/news/20080117_bevington_emfs.pdf

Researchers though are finding that there appear to be 'windows' of non-thermal bioeffects, so less power doesn't always equal safer. Also, the current guidelines for exposure to this radiation were based exclusively on thermal effects. In other words, if the radiation does not heat tissue, it is, therefore, safe, but every biochemical reaction that occurs within the human body involves electricity and magnetism, and each of these are very precise - not to mention the signals our brains rely on to complete these reactions.

We are truly playing with fire. And when I say this, I am not only referring to the cell phones themselves, but also to the cell phone masts that blanket this planet.

[Pumblechook]

Fear of masts is nonsense.  The power resching a person is tiny. We have had VHF radio/TV transmissions for 60 years.  UHF for nearly 50. 

Read up an how many people die due to exposure to solar radiation particularly UV. 

Read up on how many people die due to the use of asbestos.

Read up on how many people are killed in or by motor vehicles.

Read up on how many have been PROVED to have died due the radio frequency transmissions..

 

[blaze]

Oh, I get it. You're one of those who say something isn't so because there's no 'proof'. I imagine you're a cell phone user, too, huh? - one whose life would completely collapse if you couldn't phone your mom to ask her which brand of cornflakes to buy at the store because they both are on sale?

Did you ever think that maybe those who have had the 'proof' have an economic reason or some other reason not to share it?

And I'm not singling out cell phone signals either. I'm against wireless internet, power lines, AM/FM radio, radar, you name it - why? Because I've been affected by these frequencies since the day I was born, and I've even measured my exposures with the aid of an electrosmog detector to prove that these signals were indeed the cause of my symptoms - and they are.

The only difference today is there is no let-up - the concentration is so great that my body (and yours) has absolutely zero opportunity to heal. For one thing, these signals prevent me from sleeping, but that's just the beginning.

So please don't compare this radiation to the sunshine - they're not the same. And why aren't cell phones allowed to be used in hospitals or at the gas pump or by those who have defibrillators? I'd even go so far as to blame one or more of these frequencies on Colony Collapse Disorder among the honeybees and the dying bats in the northeastern U.S. These signals are LETHAL, unless, of course, you've been bred to be germ- and virus-free, and even then you might be screwed...

Cross Currents by Dr. Robert O. Becker (pages 194-197)

In the early 1980's, the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine funded a very large, very expensive study at the University of Washington, under the direction of Dr. Arthur W. Guy. In this study, rats were continuously exposed to high frequency microwaves of 2.45 gigahertz (with one gigahertz equaling one billion hertz) at approximately 0.5mW/cm2, twenty times lower than the "safe" thermal level. The exposures lasted for as long as 25 months, and 155 different measures of health and behavior were collected.
 
This appeared to be a well-designed study that would finally answer the question of whether there were any potential hazards to human beings from chronic exposure to microwave radiation. According to Guy, "The results revealed few differences between the exposed and control rats, and those differences for the most part were either not statistically significant or came and went, suggesting that they may be due to chance."
 
However, one striking observation was noted: "Primary malignant tumors developed in eighteen of the exposed animals but in only 5 of the controls." Guy hastened to explain that the incidence of cancers even in the experimental group was actually lower than normally expected for the strain of rat used in the experiment. He suggested that no hasty conclusions should be drawn, and that a "consensus among most investigators that the only strong evidence for the hazards of microwaves is found at high levels of exposure" was still valid.
 
The project was wide reported in the press and discussed in scientific meetings, and it was the subject of a major article in the September 1986 issue of Scientific American (from which the quotes have been drawn). A significant aspect of the experiment was not reported either in that article or in the popular press - but at the scientific meeting at which the results of the study were first reported, it was revealed that all of the animals used, both experimental and control were gnotobiotic (a term meaning germ and virus free). This circumstance alone was responsible for a major part of the $5 million cost of the project.
 
To produce gnotobiotic animals, the young must be delivered by cesarean section under the strictest possible sterile operating-room conditions (much more stringent than those in use in operating or delivery rooms for people). Following delivery, the animals must be raised and then housed in totally sterile environments for the entire duration of the experiment. This type of environment is akin to the decontamination rooms used to house the astronauts after they returned from the moon, or the "bubbles" within which children born without immune systems are housed.
 
The use of gnotobiotic animals seems to be not only totally unnecessary, but undesirable as well. Neither we nor the laboratory rat normally live in a sterile world, devoid of bacteria or viruses. On the contrary, we live surrounded by uncountable numbers of organisms. We generally do not get sick unless we are injured and bacteria enter the body through the wound, or unless our immunity is inadequate and we get a communicable disease or infection. An experiment on germ- and virus-free animals has no relevance to the real world.
 
The point becomes even more apparent when two established facts are considered. First, present evidence shows that at least 20% of human cancers are caused by viral infection, and the percentage is considerably higher in animals. Therefore, animals that are maintained in a germ- and virus-free state have an incidence of cancer that is much lower than expected. Second, it is well-established that exposure to any abnormal electromagnetic field produces a stress response. If the exposure is prolonged, the stress-response system becomes exhausted, and the competency of the immune system declines to below normal. In such a state, animals and humans are more susceptible to cancer and infectious diseases.
 
One can only conclude that the experiment at Washington was deliberately designed to sharply reduce the incidence of cancer and infectious diseases in the exposed animals. There can be no other reason for the requirement that the animals be gnotobiotic.
 
Therefore, if we knew the facts in advance, and we wanted to set up a "scientific" project to expose animals to microwaves for a long time but were required to get negative results, we would have only one choice - to use germ- and virus-free test animals. Being gnotobiotic, both the unexposed control animals and the exposed experimental animals would be protected against the usual dangers of infection and cancer. In Guy's study, the fact that the experimental animals had a lower-than-normal incidence of cancer was totally expected. What was unexpected and highly significant was that even with this protection, the cancer incidence in the animals exposed to microwaves was four times that in the control animals.
 
The well-designed experiment that should have "proved" that microwaves are safe fell into a trap, and the nature of the trap is revealed by the types of cancer that occurred in the experimental group. These were mainly limited to cancers of the pituitary, thyroid, and adrenal glands; these cancers were accompanied by a significant number of pheochromocytomas, which are benign tumors of the adrenal glands. There were no significant cancers of any of the usual tissues.
 
The experiment was designed to prevent the results of stress, but the planners forgot that it would produce stress. Because stress resistance is mediated chiefly through the three glands just mentioned, we must conclude that the microwave exposure produced an extremely high level of stress - so much so that the resultant prolonged hyperactivity of these glands led to their becoming cancerous. Considering the extreme stress experienced by the exposed animals, if the animals had been normal (rather than gnotobiotic) the entire experimental group would have died of infection or cancer before the close of the experiment.
 
Some of the 155 biochemical determinations done by Guy in the course of the experiment confirm this interpretation. Plasma cortisol is one of the chemical substances produced by the adrenal glands under conditions of stress, and it was one of the substances measured in the experiment. At the start, the plasma cortisol was equal in both the control and experimental groups; in the early months of microwave exposure, however, cortisol in the experimental group was elevated above that in the control group, indicating that the experimental animals were reacting to stress. By the latter phase of the experiment, the plasma cortisol of the exposed animals was depressed below that of the controls, indicating that the stress response systems of the experimental animals had become exhausted. This result is exactly as expected for a condition of chronic stress.
 
These data, which are buried in a multivolume official Air Force report of the project, were first published in the July-August 1984 issue of Microwave News. The experiment was planned cleverly, but not cleverly enough. It clearly indicated that chronic exposure to microwaves at levels 20 times below the established safe thermal level, produced profound stress and ultimately exhaustion of the stress-response system. Because the experiment involved gnotobiotic animals, this resulted only in an increase in cancers of the stress-response glands. Had the experiment been performed under real world conditions, the result would have been catastrophic for the exposed group of animals.

[Pumblechook]

Utter nonsense.

[BenV]

Oh, I get it. You're one of those who say something isn't so because there's no 'proof'.

As this is a science forum, I think the default for most people here is to say something isn't so because there's no proof.  I'm afraid the burden of proof is on you, rather than on the people who don't share your experiences.

Did you ever think that maybe those who have had the 'proof' have an economic reason or some other reason not to share it?

We've discussed this on the forum elsewhere, and I disagree with you.  It's very difficult to silence all the people who are involved in this sort of research and, more importantly, there is huge competition between different companies.  If there was good evidence that mobile phones, wifi, radios etc were dangerous, there would be an almighty rush to make 'safe' versions - or more importantly - safer versions than your competitors.  The markets would force this through within weeks of the discovery of any real danger.

I haven't looked into electrosensitivity personally, but I'm interested to hear more about it - how long after exposure do you feel the effects?  What sort of effects do you feel?  All of the trustworthy research I've seen so far shows that it's a placebo, or rather nocebo effect, but it hasn't had much research, so I'm intrigued.

Please don't think I'm being unsympathetic - there's clearly something going on that makes electrosensitive people ill, but no evidence yet that it is caused by EM radiation.  I'm just interested.  In fact, there's some evidence that low-level exposure to radiation stimulates DNA repair mechanisms, and so could improve health & lifespan.  How do you feel about the research that showed that electrosensitives were just as likely to feel ill in the presence of an 'on' mobile phone as an 'off' one?  It worries me that a community with a genuine illness looking for a reason are very open to propaganda and being misled - I know there are people making money from electrosensitives, who would be very interested in denying any results which show that EM radiation is not the cause of your illness.

[Pumblechook]

Yes, it is some of the anti-brigade who make money by offering to an RF audit on your house and then sell you special screening curtains at a heck of a price per metre.  Some of these people claim that HAARP is Alaska is causing women in Tokyo to miscarry by bouncing microwaves off the ionosphere which is as stupid as you can get.  Not that HARRP radiates microwaves and in case they don't bounce off the ionosphere.

Tests done by a London University college and published in the BMJ found that so called electrosensitive people couldn't tell whether a mobile phone was radiating normal signals, plain carrier or no signal at all. 

""""We found no evidence to indicate that self reported sensitivity to 900 MHz GSM mobile phone signals has a biological basis. Nor did we find any evidence to suggest that the pulsing nature of GSM contributes to these symptoms. These findings agree with the large majority of previous blind or double blind provocation studies for electromagnetic sensitivity, which have found no differences in the severity of symptoms elicited by active or sham exposure to electromagnetic"""

Kings College London..  Who have also researched any possible health effects from TETRA ((digital radio system) for the Police Federation.


One loony who is also making money out of scaremongering..  Barry (Barrie) Trower claims to have be consulted by the Police Federation.  This is not the case but he has lectured to small groups of Police Officers.   Trower calims to have briefed spies (??) on the use of underwater microwave weapons (??).  Microwaves don't penetrate far (matter of mm) into water particularly sea water.  Trower is almost sensible compared to Tim Rifat.  Google.


http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/332/7546/886


I am a retired engineer with no vested interest all at.

You can bet that if 19 out of 20 studies can find no evidence of any harmwell effects it will be the one which does which gets reported in the press and words like 'maybe' and 'possibly' are missed out.

[blaze]

Right there is one of the problems - the burden of proof is on 'me'? The wireless industry is the one industry that has been allowed to release something into the environment without proving its safety first. (Non-thermal) biological effects have been reported (see the Bioinitiative Report), and just because we don't know what these effects mean long term, that does not automatically equal safe. Just the fact that the cell phone industry is now utilizing a SAR rating for these devices would indicate that there is at least some justifiable concern, at least with the phones themselves.

And my ex had a brain tumor removed - he also spent 6 years in the Navy and was exposed to radar. Now we can blame the radar for his tumor and say that it was just a freak occurrence that it occurred on the side of his head against which he'd hold his cell phone, but that wouldn't be very scientific either, because the radiation that causes brain tumors could be of a cumulative nature. And if that's the case, no human being out there today has much control over the amount of radiation he or she is exposed to in the day to day environment, nor is he able to measure individual exposures to know when he has reached his own particular threshold of exposure.

Electrosensitives, on the other hand, can tell you they have reached their threshold of exposure because they can feel these frequencies.

I would pass a test to prove I'm sensitive with flying colors, provided there was enough time allotted for me to recover in between exposures. What I am saying is that once I experience what I'll call an 'episode' or 'attack' from an exposure, the symptoms will often last hours following the exposure, so a 'new' exposure would be hard for me to distinguish from the remnants of the old exposure, unless I have recovered to baseline again.

What do I experience upon exposure to electromagnetic radiation? - I experience extreme anxiety, often coupled with profuse sweating. I cannot focus, make decisions, become confused, and my ears will 'swoosh'. My pain increases, and often times I will notice a weakening of my facial muscles. My hallmark symptom though seems to be severe tension in my jaw - so much so that I have sawed my bottom teeth down.

Since I also suffer from Lyme/coinfections, I suspect that these bugs are swimming towards the magnetite in my brain, and that is indeed what it feels like - a magnetic pull of some type. Like perhaps all of these electromagnetic fields have changed their polarity?

Initially, I'd thought chemicals and scents were involved, but I noticed that my symptoms would occur even when I'd started using unscented, natural products and avoiding chemicals like the plague. By the way, I used a cordless phone, not a cell phone, but these are equally as dangerous.

What got me thinking electricity was somehow involved was that, when my symptoms were most severe, I could point a hair dryer to the left side of my head, and my left eyelid and the left side of my mouth would droop ever so slightly every single time.

Also, before I even knew electrosensitivities even existed and before I knew I had Lyme, I kept telling family members that I always felt ill, but especially so when I'd drive my car, or when I'd get to a certain intersection or road, or in certain stores, or when my heater ran more. There is no way this could have been a placebo or nocebo effect because, at the time, I had no clue why this was happening to me, and I was still blaming scents and chemicals for my symptoms.

Once I learned about electrosensitivity and got myself a special meter and measured my exposures, all the puzzle pieces finally fell into place.

But I have been on antibiotics for 2 years so far for my Lyme, and I'm still testing positive for Lyme - and I blame the wireless boom. Lyme researchers think the spirochete that causes Lyme is special in that it can cross the blood-brain barrier, but I don't think this bacteria is special at all - I think we made it special by altering the permeability of the blood-brain barrier.

http://www.mapcruzin.com/radiofrequency/henry_lai1.htm

Also, if cell phone emissions can do this to a nematode, what else could it be doing to other microorganisms that inhabit us?

Mobile Phone Emissions Increase Worm Fertility:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1889-mobile-phone-emissions-increase-worm-fertility.html

Again, proven or not, these signals are lethal.

[BenV]

Are you taking part in any double-blind studies to help people understand this?  You really should, as electrosensitivity is new and rare, and as you've seen all of the studies so far show that EM radiation is not the cause of the illness described.  If you feel that there is a real need to worry, you should be involved in a study and pushing everyone else to be involved in a study too.

I think there's also the epidemiological data to look at - as far as I know, the advent of wireless technologies has not shown an increase in cancer or illness.  And one study (i'll try to find it later) indicated that cognitive therapy was the most successful way to treat electrosensitives, again suggesting that radiation is not the cause of the illness.

Right now, with the data we have available, we cannot conclude that "these signals are lethal".  But I hope you will find the nearest research and get involved.

I'm very interested to hear - do you ever fly anywhere?  If so, how does that make you feel?

[blaze]

I would love to be involved in some double-blind studies, but I live in the U.S, where electrosensitivity isn't even acknowledged (yet). I'm hoping that will change.

The problem with all the studies which have been done thus far is that a person who is electrosensitive requires time in between exposures to return to baseline levels. And remember, some who have participated in these studies have managed to accurately pinpont an exposure, so you can't dismiss those.

Cognitive behavioral therapy would never help a true electrosensitive. Why? Because I was experiencing these symptoms long before I had any knowledge whatsoever about electrosensitivity - before I ever even knew electromagnetic/microwave/radiowave fields were involved. I showed up in the ER numerous times due to shortness of breath, anxiety, and sweating.

Cognitive behavior therapy I believe is based on the assumption of a fear or reluctance of some type. I had no fear of cell phone towers or power lines whatsoever at the onset of my symptoms. Do I now? Definitely, but you can't label that as a psychiatric disorder when I'm telling you the fear component is new, now that I know what is causing my symptoms.

I'd walk into a closet in my bedroom, for example, and every single time I would experience anxiety and severe shortness of breath. And months later, when I'd learned about electrosensitivities, I realized that this closet is situated right between my hot water heater, furnace, A/C unit, and clothes dryer - and it measured high with my meter.

I have not been on an airplane for decades, so I can't answer that question.

I will tell you though that at the age of 20 or 21 I passed out cold in a Circuit City Superstore, and while working on a Naval base, I had some close calls, though I never lost complete consciousness those times.

[Bored chemist]

"electrosensitivity isn't even acknowledged"
There might be a reason for that.

[blaze]

It's acknowledged in Sweden. Is there any reason for that? Or do scientists there think differently?

In other words, scientists in the U.S. don't acknowledge ES, and they're correct to do so. But scientists in Sweden do believe there is something to it, and those researchers are dead wrong?

Hmmm, sounds very biased to me, not very scientific.

[Bored chemist]

There's a post elsewhere that gives a reference to a study where so called electrosensitive people were found not to be sensitive.
It's possible that the Swedes are taking the view that "we will believe it until we have lots of data" whereas the others are saying "we will not believe it until there is suporting data" .

That's a political choice- nothing to do withscience or the data.

[Pumblechook]

What was that about Sweden?

A trial at Sweden's University of Uppsala's Department of Clinical Psychology took blood samples from subjects and analyzed them for indicators of stress, both before and after the test. Some subjects were secretly exposed to electromagnetic radiation, but there were neither any differences between ES sufferers and control subjects in how they reacted to it, nor were there any differences in stress among those who received radiation and those who did not.

Another such trial was performed at the Environmental Illness Research Center in Huddinge, Sweden. Half the subjects reported themselves as hypersensitive, half did not. Half received cognitive behavioral therapy, half did not. All were evaluated for stress before the study, after the study, and six months later. Just like in the other trial, subjects with perceived hypersensitivity benefitted more from cognitive behavioral therapy than did those who were not hypersensitive. There were no other significant differences among any groups.


And Germany.

A 2005 trial at the Psychiatric University Hospital in Germany found further support for the hypothesis that ES sufferers are not having a physiological response to electromagnetic radiation:

Research in Switzerland, United States and many other country all conclude that ES does not exists. 

Uinversity of Essex can find no eveidence of ES to phone masts.  Kings College, London can find no evidence of ES with a phone next to the head.


  

[blaze]

Okay, so when I would hold a hair dryer to the left side of my head, and every single time my left eyelid would begin to (visibly) droop, what do you suggest the cause was? A very vivid imagination?

By the way, before my hair dryer was causing symptoms - maybe 10 years prior - when I was still using a cordless phone (and yes, holding it to my left ear) - and I had mentioned to a psychiatrist that my left eyelid would sometimes droop (not realizing that this would only happen when I'd use the hair dryer or the cordless phone or otherwise be exposed), she laughed at me and said, "Everybody's face is uneven." !!!

I will have to read Dr. Becker's books again so that I can quote him accurately, but apparently there was one study done in which some animal was exposed to some source of EMR, and whatever blood tests were done immediately following exposure were normal - BUT, had researchers waited 3 days, they would have found significant abnormalities in the exposed compared to the controls.

And read this...

The Body Electric by Robert O. Becker, M.D. - (pages 276-278)
 
Subliminal Stress
 
After Howard Friedman, Charlie Bachman, and I had found evidence that "abnormal natural" fields from solar magnetic storms were effecting the human mind as reflected in psychiatric hospital admissions, we decided the time had come for direct experiments with people. We exposed volunteers to magnetic fields placed so the lines of force passed through the brain from ear to ear, cutting across the brainstem-frontal current. The fields were 5 to 11 gauss, not much compared with the 3,000 gauss needed to put a salamander to sleep, but ten to twenty times earth's background and well above the level of most magnetic storms. We measured their influence on a standard test of reaction time - having subjects press a button as fast as possible in response to a red light. Steady fields produced no effect, but when we modulated the field with a slow pulse of a cycle every 5 seconds (one of the delta wave frequencies we'd observed in salamander brains during a change from one level of consciousness to another), people's reactions slowed down. We found no changes in the EEG or the front-to-back voltage from fields up to 100 gauss, but these indicators reflect major alterations in awareness, so we didn't expect them to shift.
 
We were excited, eagerly planning experiments that would tell us more, when we came upon a frightening Russian report. Yuri Kholodov had administered steady magnetic fields of 100 and 200 gauss to rabbits and found areas of cell death in their brains during autopsy. Although his fields were ten times as strong as ours, we stopped all human experiments immediately.
 
Friedman decided to duplicate Kholodov's experiment with a more detailed analysis of the brain tissue. He made the slides and sent them to an expert on rabbit brain diseases, but coded them so no one knew which were which until later.
 
The report showed that all the animals had been infected with a brain parasite that was peculiar to rabbits and common throughout the world. However, in half the animals the protozoa had been under control by the immune system, whereas the other half they'd routed the defenders and destroyed parts of their brain. The expert suggested that we must have done something to undermine resistance of the rabbits in the experimental group. The code confirmed that most of the brain damage had occurred in animals subjected to the magnetic fields. Later, Friedman did biochemical tests on another series of rabbits and found that the fields were causing a generalized stress reactions marked by large amounts of cortisone in the bloodstream. This is the response called forth by a prolonged stress, like a disease, that isn't an immediate threat to life, as opposed to the fight-or-flight response generated by adrenaline.
 
Soon thereafter, Friedman measured cortisone levels in monkeys exposed to a 200-gauss magnetic fields for four hours a day. They showed the stress response for six days, but it then subsided, suggesting adaptation to the field. Such seeming tolerance of continued stress is illusory, however. In his pioneering lifework on stress, Dr. Hans Selye has clearly drawn the invariable pattern: Initially, the stress activates the hormonal and/or immune systems to a higher-than-normal level, enabling the animal to escape danger or combat disease. If the stress continues, hormone levels and immune activity gradually decline to normal. If you stop your experiment at this point, you're apparently justified in saying, "The animal has adapted; the stress is doing it no harm." Nevertheless, if the stressful condition persists, hormone and immune levels decline further, well below normal. In medical terms, stress decompensation has set in, and the animal is now more susceptible to other stressors, including malignant growth and infectious disease.
 
In the mid-1970's, two Russian groups found stress hormones released in rats exposed to microwaves, even if they were irradiated only briefly by minute amounts of energy. Other Eastern European work found the same reaction to 50-hertz electric fields. Several Russian and Polish groups have since established that after prolonged exposure the activation of the stress system changes to a depression of it in the familiar pattern, indicating exhaustion of the adrenal cortex. There has even been one report of hemorrhage and cell damage in the adrenal cortex from a month's exposure to a 50-hertz, 130-gauss magnetic field.
 
Soviet biophysicist N. A. Udintsev has systematically studied the effects of one ELF magnetic field (200 gauss at 50hz) on the endocrine system. In addition to the "slow" stress response we've been discussing, he found activation of the "fast" fight-or-flight hormones centering on adrenaline from the adrenal medulla. This response was triggered in rats by just one day in Udinstev's field, and hormone levels didn't return to normal for one or two weeks. Udinstev also documented an insulin insufficiency and rise in blood sugar from the same field.
 
One aspect of the syndrome was very puzzling. When undergoing these hormonal changes, an animal would normally be aware that its body was under attack, yet, as far as we could tell, the rabbits were not. They showed no outward signs of fear, agitation, or illness. Most humans certainly wouldn't be able to detect a 100-gauss magnetic field, at least not consciously. Only several years after Friedman's work did anyone find out how this was happening.
 
In 1976 a group under J. J. Noval at the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory at Pensacola, Florida, found the slow stress response in rats from very weak electric fields, as low as five thousandths of a volt per centimeter. They discovered that when such fields vibrated in the ELF range, they increased levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brainstem, apparently in a way that activated a distress signal subliminally, without the animal's becoming aware of it. The scariest part was that the fields Noval used were well within the background levels of a typical office, with its overhead lighting, typewriters, computers, and other equipment. Workers in such an environment are exposed to electric fields between a hundredth and a tenth of a volt per centimeter and magnetic fields between a hundredth and a tenth of a gauss.

[Bored chemist]

" A very vivid imagination?"
Yes, why not?
"she laughed at me and said, "Everybody's face is uneven." !!!"
Tactless of her to laugh, but she's correct.