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agnes
# Posted: 2 Dec 2005 02:26
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Electromagnetic Radiation and Epilepsy
Andy Davidson, Tetrawatch

Abstract
People report adverse health symptoms which they attribute to the radiation of microwave signals from Mobile phone and TETRA masts.
The validity of such reports cannot be safely rejected, either on the grounds of current safety compliance, nor on the grounds that such symptoms cannot be replicated in laboratory experiments in search of a simplified mechanism.
Biological effects caused by such electromagnetic fields (EMF) are widely attested by research, but there is lack of clarity about how this occurs and why certain individuals should be more susceptible than others.
In the case of electrical hypersensitivity, and in the particular, though more rare, case of exacerbated or instigated epilepsy, there are two candidate mediating factors: (i) the direct effects of coherent frequencies, and (ii) disruption of the nitric oxide synthesis process.
This paper takes the second, and examines how the potential causal link is borne out by both likely and observed subject outcomes, and by observed EMF/nitric oxide synthase interactions.
There is sufficient suspicion that a mechanism lies here to help validate the personal reports, and therefore action should be taken to verify that operation of such EMF sources is not the cause, rather than requiring the affected person to prove that it is.
There have been many reports from people living in proximity to Mobile phone and TETRA masts, of adverse health effects.
One of these effects is increased incidence of epileptic seizures, and indeed onset of epilepsy.
Many of these effects relate to what has come to be referred to as electrical hypersensitivity or EHS.
These medical reports largely go uninvestigated, for two reasons:

1. the symptoms are wide ranging, from headaches and nausea to sleep disturbances and
nosebleeds, but are categorised as common and minor complaints
2. there is no laboratory confirmed conclusion as to precisely why or how such effects
should be induced at such low signal energies.

On the first count, the complaints may appear to be minor, since many of us have one or another of them from time to time.
This ignores that they may be unusual to the people concerned, or correlate to the onset of a transmitter’s operation, or relate to particular signal levels (Oberfeld et al., 1998; Santini et al.,2002; Navarro et al., 2003) or cease when operation is suspended.
It also ignores the manner in which they suddenly become chronic and persistent for the people concerned, and the resultant effect on well-being.

Electromagnetic Radiation and Epilepsy 2
On the second count, there has been a widely held presumption that the mechanism might be simple and single-stranded.
If this were so, the cause might be isolated, it is argued, and a direct cause and effect be demonstrated in vitro, and that this should be easily replicated.
Primary refutations of this approach include (i) the complex electromagnetic environment caused even by a single transmission base station within the natural electromagnetic environment (Silk, 2004), (ii) the effects on the whole body, or significant parts of the body (eg Hyland, 2003; Silk, 1999), and (iii) lag effects, where separate results from different effects from common causes have separate onsets, but combine under exposure times longer than laboratory exposure tests.

Much has been written about the difficulties of in vivo laboratory set-ups to test the validity of claims to EHS, even though the manifestation of EHS is itself irrefutable.
Nonetheless, the symptoms are separated from the attributed electromagnetic cause by reviewers not least because either a mechanism is not apparent and there is no assured laboratory-replicability.
In the case of epilepsy, once it was realised that light-pulse frequency from flashbulbs, disco strobes, television or video games could induce seizures, this was accepted, warnings made mandatory, and advice given.
We now know better why the effect occurs, and in particular that frequency is a central factor.

Taking reports seriously
Technology has raced ahead in recent decades, providing much opportunity for people to resist, either because they feel they cannot keep up, because it is becoming too complicated, or because its novel nature might not be all good.
Communications technology has been adopted enthusiastically by most people, with its obvious advantages.
Disadvantages are mostly reported as being cost, manners/etiquette, over-independence by youngsters, bullying, commercial advantage being taken by operator companies, the unsightly physical appearance of masts etc.
It is not therefore immediately apparent quite why a Luddite tendency should emerge, based on grounds of fears of endangerment to health.
And yet the primary reason for not listening and responding to very ordinary people who report adverse health reactions when masts become operational near their homes, is that it must be some form of induced hysteria generated by fear of new technology.
This would appear to be poor scientific justification for a lack of intervention or even scientific curiosity.

Are reports of increased or induced epileptic seizures in some way psychosomatic?
The obvious answer would have to be no, especially in cases of children unaware of the issues or even of the presence of roof-top antennae.
For this reason alone, the reports must be given due attention.
Perhaps the causality is only partly to do with the operation of base stations?
Perhaps some other environmental factor comes into play when they are introduced?
The most curious aspect of the whole issue of these adverse health reactions is that there is no epidemiological investigation done in the UK at all.


Electromagnetic Radiation and Epilepsy 3
There is no other response than that attribution to base station must be false.
Worse, the single most common premise, that base stations operate well within international guidelines for exposure, completely ignores the now well-known fact that the guidelines1 expressly relate only to acute short-term effects of heating by the radiation, and neither to chronic exposure nor non-thermal biological effects.
The guidelines explain that at the time of their devising, there was insufficient research material upon which to construct practical exposure levels for protection from potential longer-term, low-level influences on biological functions.
Nevertheless, such effects are well-attested and expressed as such in the UK government’s own advice from the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones and Health (IEGMP, 2000; committee chaired by Sir William Stewart, updated and reiterated NRPB, January 2005).
It is therefore entirely reasonable to take correlations of reported effects and attributed sources from base stations, where there is a common theme (such as EHS symptoms or epilepsy) and to investigate them thoroughly.
Returning to the fundamental question: can exposure to low level EMF have implications for epileptic seizures?

Possible causal relations
How can electromagnetic fields (EMF) from Mobile phone or TETRA base stations impact on the human body?
This is a vital question, and several routes can be reasonably pursued:

1. Since currents can be induced in the body by external varying fields, and since the body is both conductive and employs DC and
AC currents at minute levels for its messaging, direct electrical interference may occur (eg Becker, 1985 & 1990; Lai, 1994).

2. The human body has evolved to utilise a number of frequencies key to its operations, such as ‘brain waves’ (which in fact
permeate the body), pulse rate etc
I t is possible that induced currents at particular frequencies present significant influences, including issues of entrainment,
whereby biological frequencies ‘lock on’ to external drivers.
(Brain entrainment happens internally between neurons, but is used via acoustic coupling — of binaural beats — for therapy or
meditation.)

3. Since everything with bounded mass has its own natural or harmonic resonance frequency relating to its dimension, incident
frequencies may cause resonance at atomic level, or ionic, molecular, cellular, organ, cavity (eg skull, eye sockets, heart
chamber), extension (eg limbs) or whole body levels (eg Silk, 1999; Bruel and Kjaer, 1982).
1 ie, from the International Commission of Non-ionising Radiation Protection – ICNIRP Electromagnetic Radiation and Epilepsy 4

4. Since resonance with biological processes naturally depends on interference with the body’s active whole-body processes,
investigation of the whole person is more likely to yield meaningful results than isolated tissue/culture samples, therefore
ambivalent results from the latter may not be informative (Hyland, 2003).

5. Nonetheless, understanding ionic resonance and its role in chemical progression is an important factor, in the context of
geomagnetic fields (Becker, 1990 citing Blackman and Liboff, and Adey).

6. The body contains many bioelectronic features, since by nature it operates and is maintained by subtle and complex circuits
(eg Oschmann, 2000; Becker, 1989).
The electronic properties of cell walls and cellular structures, the semiconductance of neuronal epithelial cells, the growth-guiding
piezo-electric effect of bone, the DC and AC pathways of the nervous system, semiconductance in DNA and electrical frequency
maintenance by the brain, whilst they cannot be construed as constituting a radio receiver, nonetheless imply acute sensitivity to
external EMFs, and these may interact in ways novel to the normal operation of biochemical and physiological functions
(Williams, 2002).

7. The body contains crystalline structures, including calcite and magnetite, which may produce piezo-electric effects under external
fields (Baconnier et al., 2002; Lang, 2003; Kirschvink, 1989, 1992).
This subtlety does make the scenario appear quite complex, and indeed it is.
Nonetheless, any view of the body as a purely

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