Dr. Barnes is a Distinguished Professor in the biomedical group of the Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering Department at the University of Colorado Boulder and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. His research group is examining the effects of electromagnetic (EM) fields on biological systems. His research has shown changes in cancer growth rates by changing magnetic fields. His work is of interest to people worried about the safety of cell phones and living near power lines with possible applications in sending signals to biological systems.
Barnes and Freeman conclude,
“Forcing a solution that eliminates all wireless communications is not a reasonable approach. Allowing the telecommunications industry and users to ignore the potential harm indicated by some of the experiments showing the effects of weak field exposures is equally unsatisfactory given the data that are currently available. Imposing operating standards without understanding the root causes in science, and social impacts and costs is tempting, but also potentially dangerous and can potentially lead to health problems for a large fraction of the population.
In the US, most industries can be held liable for not pursuing research on the safety of their products. With such a large number of users, it is incumbent on system designers, operators, managers, and regulators to invest the time and energy to understand the risks of long-term exposure to low-level EM fields to determine potential health hazards. In the short term, implementing ways to reduce exposure voluntarily is likely to be the cheapest solution, but human behavior is often unpredictable and unreliable. Ultimately more research will better define the conditions where EM exposures can lead to changes in the biological system that are not compensated by biological control systems and repair mechanisms.”
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Barnes F, Freeman Jr ER. Some thoughts on the possible health effects of electric and magnetic fields and exposure guidelines. Frontiers in Public Health. Vol. 10. 2022. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.994758.
Abstract
The central problems to be solved include:
1. Determining the exposure amplitude, polarization and duration of electromagnetic fields at specific positions of interest in the body as a function of the exposing fields as a function of time.
2. Determining causal relationships between long duration exposure to low-level EM fields and the various biological responses reported in current research.
3. Quantifying the interactions between EM fields and biology with measurements that are not only accurate but repeatable. Some of the low energy EM effects on micro-biological systems are well documented in laboratory experiments but are difficult to translate to macro-biological system responses.
4. Sorting out which aspects of biological systems are directly driven by RF fields vs. the myriad of other independent variables at work.
5. Understanding how the repair mechanisms in biological systems alter biological processes in the presence of low-level EM fields.
… Several issues confront regulators:
1. Should regulations be set that “protect” all the population all the time, including those with other health conditions that make them more susceptible to EM exposure, or should regulations only protect most of the population most of the time. The degree of control has huge implications on cost and efficacy.
2. Simplifying the explanations of the physical mechanisms involved such that there is general acceptance of the need for regulation is a non-trivial part of the regulatory process. Scientists, producers, operators, and users have differing imperatives that need to be considered. Such situations invite a lot of political hubris and conflict.
3. How regulators quantify and then rationalize the tradeoffs between the economic and social benefits of cellular technology vs. potentially damaging health effects of long-term exposure to low levels of EM energy is important in determining the regulations that are proposed.
… Four strategies for reducing RF exposure might include:
1. Designing the transmitter in user devices to reduce the instantaneous RF power levels emitted is the most direct way to reduce RF exposure but this has serious system performance implications and high implementation costs. Manufacturers already try to minimize the instantaneous RF power output of cell phones to maximize battery life. Further reductions in RF power output will significantly impact signal to noise ratio and reduce the maximum range of any given phone within a cell phone tower matrix. This will have a significant impact on system infrastructure (number of cell phone towers needed to provide coverage) and operating cost. Another technique for reducing instantaneous power output absorbed by users is to use narrow beam directional antennas in user devices that focuses the output power on the closest cell tower receiver. This approach is being incorporated into 5G systems. Size and weight considerations are a major constraint in mobile devices.
2. Reducing the density of RF power (Watts/M2) being absorbed by the body of a user can also be accomplished by increasing the distance between the transmitting antenna and the user’s body and head. Power density falls off very rapidly with increasing distance from the transmitting antenna typically as 1/Rn reduction where n is a number usually >1. It is to be noted that increasing use of data and moving a smart phone away from the body reduces the power levels incident on the head.
3. Research data indicates biological effects of RF signals are frequency dependent. Redesigning transmitters to eliminate frequencies that are proven to produce biological effects could be employed, but this could have a significant impact on system capacity since each frequency band carries a lot of data in today’s system.
4. The last, and least expensive approach is to limit cumulative user exposure to RF energy in a given period of time by shutting the phone “Off”. Establishing limits for the maximum accumulated duration of an individual’s exposure would require extensive clinical testing on large populations of users. Once those numbers were set, there would be very little cost impact on the operators or the users to implement. Major issues would be lack of access in emergency situations and gaining user acceptance on such limitations and the self-discipline to avoid over exposure. To help with that applications software could be installed on the phone that calculates the accumulated exposure and then reports the data on the phone’s visual readout….
ConclusionThe data above and many more papers not cited indicate that biological systems can sense and respond to very weak electric and magnetic field by changing biological parameters such as reactive oxygen species concentrations at the cellular level which affect health and wellbeing of living organisms. High concentrations of reactive oxygen species for extended periods of time are known to be associated with adverse health effects (19). There are also many cases where no damaging effects have been observed. It is presumed that the body’s feedback and repair systems keep the concentrations of these molecules within the normal operating ranges and the cumulative effects of RF energy are negligible. We hypothesize that EM effects vary from person to person and are a function of exposure conditions in conjunction with other stresses that affect concentrations of these molecules. Note this degree of variability explains why many papers do not show EM effects while some of the experiments on hypersensitive people show effects. We have chosen not to go into discussion of hypersensitive people as it would take more space than we wish to devote to it in this paper.
It is clear that more research needs to be done to enable definition of standards for RF exposure that are reasonable and allow a simple, low-cost communications system to function safely. Although both industry and government have funded significant amounts of expensive research, relatively few studies have used radical pair theory and other quantum mechanical models to guide their experiments or track the chemical changes induced by exposures to weak electromagnetic fields. Additionally, they have not dealt with long term effects of exposure to low-level exposure that take into account biological feedback and repair systems that may not be able to handle the effects of compounding stresses and the fact that humans have different responses at different times.
Forcing a solution that eliminates all wireless communications is not a reasonable approach. Allowing the telecommunications industry and users to ignore the potential harm indicated by some of the experiments showing the effects of weak field exposures is equally unsatisfactory given the data that are currently available. Imposing operating standards without understanding the root causes in science, and social impacts and costs is tempting, but also potentially dangerous and can potentially lead to health problems for a large fraction of the population.
In the US, most industries can be held liable for not pursuing research on the safety of their products. With such a large number of users, it is incumbent on system designers, operators, managers, and regulators to invest the time and energy to understand the risks of long-term exposure to low-level EM fields to determine potential health hazards. In the short term, implementing ways to reduce exposure voluntarily is likely to be the cheapest solution, but human behavior is often unpredictable and unreliable. Ultimately more research will better define the conditions where EM exposures can lead to changes in the biological system that are not compensated by biological control systems and repair mechanisms.
Conclusion
The data above and many more papers not cited indicate that biological systems can sense and respond to very weak electric and magnetic field by changing biological parameters such as reactive oxygen species concentrations at the cellular level which affect health and wellbeing of living organisms. High concentrations of reactive oxygen species for extended periods of time are known to be associated with adverse health effects (19). There are also many cases where no damaging effects have been observed. It is presumed that the body’s feedback and repair systems keep the concentrations of these molecules within the normal operating ranges and the cumulative effects of RF energy are negligible. We hypothesize that EM effects vary from person to person and are a function of exposure conditions in conjunction with other stresses that affect concentrations of these molecules. Note this degree of variability explains why many papers do not show EM effects while some of the experiments on hypersensitive people show effects. We have chosen not to go into discussion of hypersensitive people as it would take more space than we wish to devote to it in this paper.
It is clear that more research needs to be done to enable definition of standards for RF exposure that are reasonable and allow a simple, low-cost communications system to function safely. Although both industry and government have funded significant amounts of expensive research, relatively few studies have used radical pair theory and other quantum mechanical models to guide their experiments or track the chemical changes induced by exposures to weak electromagnetic fields. Additionally, they have not dealt with long term effects of exposure to low-level exposure that take into account biological feedback and repair systems that may not be able to handle the effects of compounding stresses and the fact that humans have different responses at different times.
Forcing a solution that eliminates all wireless communications is not a reasonable approach. Allowing the telecommunications industry and users to ignore the potential harm indicated by some of the experiments showing the effects of weak field exposures is equally unsatisfactory given the data that are currently available. Imposing operating standards without understanding the root causes in science, and social impacts and costs is tempting, but also potentially dangerous and can potentially lead to health problems for a large fraction of the population.
In the US, most industries can be held liable for not pursuing research on the safety of their products. With such a large number of users, it is incumbent on system designers, operators, managers, and regulators to invest the time and energy to understand the risks of long-term exposure to low-level EM fields to determine potential health hazards. In the short term, implementing ways to reduce exposure voluntarily is likely to be the cheapest solution, but human behavior is often unpredictable and unreliable. Ultimately more research will better define the conditions where EM exposures can lead to changes in the biological system that are not compensated by biological control systems and repair mechanisms.
