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Emissions from mobile phones and phone masts are subject to limits defined in guidelines issued by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). Any mast which conforms to those limits is deemed by the government to be safe. The government does all it can to make it very difficult for local authorities to even consider the possible hazards to health that might be posed by a mast which conforms to ICNIRP guidelines.
But what exactly is ‘Non-Ionizing Radiation’? How does this differ from ‘Ionizing Radiation’ (which presumably also exists)? What quantity exactly is being measured, and limited, in these guidelines, and why is this quantity seen as so important? Why are so many independent scientists questioning the validity of these guidelines, and what possible hazards do they consider are not being covered by them?
The answer to the first question lies in the study of Quantum Physics – but don’t stop reading, all will be explained quite simply. Radio waves, microwaves, visible light waves, X-rays and gamma rays are all examples of Electromagnetic Radiation. The difference between them is in their frequency (the number of vibrations they make per second). Radio waves have a fairly low frequency – typically in thousands of Hz (Hertz = vibrations per second). Microwaves vibrate at millions or billions of Hz, light at millions of billions of Hz, and X-rays and gamma rays at higher rates still. An individual ‘bit’ of radiation, belting through the air (or space) at the speed of light – which is also the speed of microwaves, of X-rays, etc, etc – is referred to as a Photon.
Quantum Theory tells us that the energy carried by a photon depends on its frequency: a microwave photon carries more energy than a radio wave photon, and a gamma-ray photon carries much, much more than either of them. Quantum Theory also tells us that a high-energy photon can do things that any number of low-energy photons put together can’t do - for example, dislodge an electron from an atom, or break a chemical bond. It’s like saying that one really massive bullet can do these things but a hail of lesser bullets can’t, no matter how many of them there may be. The first of these examples, dislodging an electron, would of course result in a free negatively-charged electron and a remaining, now positively-charged, incomplete atom – a negative and a positive ion. This is ionization.
X-ray and gamma ray photons have enough energy to cause ionization, radio waves, microwaves and visible light waves don’t – the first two are ionizing radiation, the last three are non-ionizing radiation (no matter how intense their combined ‘fire-power’). For this reason microwaves (et al.) are seen as incapable of breaking molecular bonds. Most significantly in the health debate, they are regarded as incapable of breaking bonds in DNA molecules (unlike X-rays and gamma rays) and thereby leading to abnormal cell growth which can result in cancers.
So the ICNIRP’s brief is this: what harm can radiation do, if it is non-ionizing? One very simple answer to that, in the case of microwaves, is that it can cause heating effects in tissue. This is quite obvious to anyone who has cooked a meat pie in a microwave oven. Microwave radiation causes vibration within cell structures, leading to localized heating. In the early days of microwave ovens, before safety cut-outs were standard, some unfortunate users cooked their own kidneys by standing in front of a microwave oven operating with its door open.
The ICNIRP has therefore based its guidelines, quite simply, on whether the level of microwave radiation is more than the body’s own heat regulating mechanisms can deal with. In simple terms, can it cook you? Not surprisingly, radiation levels from any mast, at anything more than a few metres away, are many thousands of times lower than would be needed to experience a heating effect. We are not, at least, being subjected to living in a ‘microwave oven’ environment.
So why are so many independent scientists still so concerned? If it can’t break up your DNA (so they assume), and it can’t overheat you, what is there to worry about?
Basically, because microwave radiation, like all electromagnetic radiation, is vibrational – it carries information (quite apart from the phone conversation!). If you doubt this, just think for a moment about the phenomenon of sight. Visible radiation of different frequencies is translated by your eyes into different colours – it brings you information. Because this visible radiation – light – has been around since the dawn of life on this planet, at much the same level as it is now, living organisms have evolved in harmony with that radiation, have learned to organise it in their thinking processes and to make beneficial use of the information that it brings.
It’s worth taking a moment out here to observe that visible light is non-ionizing radiation, and at non-thermal levels it quite clearly affects living organisms. Usually in a helpful way, as noted above – but if a person whose eyes have got used to the dark suddenly has a torch shone in their face it can cause disorientation and loss of the night-vision they have been using to find their way around. The main point to note here is that a living organism is responsive to non-ionizing radiation at non-thermal levels.
OK, I hear you say, but the eye is supposed to respond to radiation, that’s what it’s there for. What’s that got to do with the rest of the body?
Brain cells, the ones that do our thinking for us, are neurons. The photoreceptors (light and colour sensors) in our eyes are also neurons, brain cells that have been externalized by the evolutionary process to perform a specific task. That same evolutionary process, over the millennia, has refined them to do that task ever more effectively. BUT that evolutionary process could never have got started without those cells having some sensitivity in the first place, to be made use of and improved upon. In other words, those neurons must have been responsive to light before this responsiveness led to formation and refinement of the eye – the eye is a result, not a cause, of that responsiveness.
The logical conclusion from all this is that neurons in general sense electromagnetic radiation to some degree. Evolution has caused bunches of neurons to be organized (i.e. put into organs – our eyes!) to make beneficial use of this facility. But, up until recently at least, the level of microwave radiation has not been such as to prompt specialized receptors to be evolved for this purpose. Now – in the last 20 to 30 years – our neurons have been swamped with a massive increase in microwave radiation that they cannot escape from. Our eyes have pupils that restrict the intake of visible light to manageable levels, eyelids to close off that light when we don’t want it. No such escape from microwaves: they are able to penetrate directly through the skull, where our neurons are bombarded with ‘information’ that they have not been educated to understand. ‘Sensing’ by definition means ‘responding’, usually by releasing chemicals that act as messengers in some form or another. The trial-and-error process of evolution (with its many failed attempts that have fallen by the wayside en route) has produced a system of meaningful responses to visible light. There is no reason that this should be so with this deluge of unfamiliar radiation; it is totally to be expected that this should lead to a confused and unstructured response by the brain.
Which is exactly what was recorded by the Stewart Committee, particularly in respect of pulsed radiation at around 16 cycles per second, and now seems likely to also apply to various other pulsed frequencies. And the NRPB Report on TETRA said “If this genuinely happens…the reason is unclear”. Unclear???
Long-term low-level exposure to non-ionizing radiation at non-thermal levels clearly also has cumulative effects. The ICNIRP don’t seem to have cottoned on to that, either. To get the inside information on that you’d have to ask a tree. Just mention ‘photosynthesis’. For a tree, the long-termness can be hundreds of years. We’re talking visible light again, and a well-evolved constructive response. Who knows what a totally unfamiliar form of radiation might do to a tree – or to you, or me? Nobody knows.
Biological effects of non-ionizing radiation at non-thermal levels are an established fact – they happen. This is not a subject that is open to dispute. Given this fact, and given both the research findings of the Stewart Committee and the overwhelming flood of so-called ‘anecdotal’ evidence of detrimental effects of microwaves on humans (including long-term cumulative effects), the only rational response is to call a halt to microwave irradiation of our living-space until the possible consequences are better known.
The ‘P’ in NRPB and ICNIRP both stand for ‘Protection’. Who is it exactly that is being protected?
Postscript
Since writing this article the latest issue of ‘Microwave News’ (http://www.microwavenews.com) has printed an article on this subject, of which the following is an extract (full article available free from above site). It makes very interesting reading.
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