December 21... It's long been known that children with Down's syndrome have a much greater chance of developing acute leukemia —up to 20 times greater or even higher. Now, in the first study of its kind, a group of Mexican researchers have shown that Down's children exposed to magnetic fields of 6mG (0.6µT) or more had close to four times the risk of developing acute leukemia compared to other Down's children. (The analysis was based on spot measurements, rather than the more commonly used 24-hour readings.) Writing in the January 2007 issue of Epidemiology, Juan Mejia-Arangure and coworkers conclude that genetic susceptibility to leukemia may well modify the effects of EMFs.

This is only the latest indication that genetics plays a role in susceptibility to EMFs. Germany's Wolfgang Löscher was one of the first in a groundbreaking study of EMF-induced breast cancer in rats. The new Mexican study is the kind of work recommended by Martin Röösli and Nino Künzli in their commentary, published earlier this year, on how to make progress on understanding the link between EMFs and childhood leukemia. "[I]t's unlikely that all children are equally susceptible to EMF and interactions between genetic factors could be relevant," they wrote.

The Mexican approach is clearly more productive than industry's standard refrain that the EMF epidemiological studies are all tainted by some type of systematic bias or that some as-yet unrecognized "factor X" is responsible. It's time to leave these tired arguments behind and to start putting more genetics into the mix.

December 20... A Swedish research team led by Lennart Hardell and Kjell Mild has found no association between the use of wireless phones and testicular cancer. In a paper posted on the Internet today, and to be published next year in the International Journal of Andrology, they caution that they could not adequately evaluate possible long-term risks: Only 14 cases in their case-control study (888 men with testicular cancer and 870 controls) had used a phone for more than ten years. In addition, they note that none of the cases or controls had always used a hands-free set with the mobile phone near the testes during phone calls. In fact, only 11 cases and eight controls used a hands-free device some of the time. Hardell and Mild argue that these findings strengthen their previously reported association between cell phones and brain tumors because this latest study was conducted in a similar fashion as their brain tumor studies.

December 11... Electrical sensitivity continues to be a controversial subject. But as the number of Wi-Fi hot spots multiplies, the press is paying more attention to the possibility that it may be a real condition. A good example is Nicki Daniels's piece, “Wi-Fi Should We Be Worried?”, in today's London Times. Be sure to read it to the end so you don't miss Poppy Rhodes's case history, “I Felt Dizzy and Nauseous.”

December 8... Over the last few years, microwave researchers at the Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio have published a series of papers showing that 94 GHz millimeter waves have minimal effects on the eyes and the skin, and that current models are adequate for predicting pain and thermal thresholds. It has been no secret that this work was to support the military's development of a microwave weapon for crowd control — active denial technology. After all, how else would people be exposed to 94 GHz radiation?

This week, Wired News, with the help of the Sunshine Project, made public eight Air Force protocols for exposing volunteers to Active Denial radiation, which had been released under the Freedom of Information Act. The Brooks papers are cited in the protocols to justify the claim that none of the test subjects would get hurt.

The Air Force did acknowledge that some would find the experiment unpleasant. In one set of tests in which military working dog teams were going to be zapped, the human subjects were warned that, "you are at risk of being scratched or bitten by your dog."

Can the military really be trusted to do objective science when they are developing new weapons? We don't think so. We have long argued that this is a blatant conflict of interest.

Insiders have revealed why we should be wary. Back in February 1991, Dennis Hjeresen, then at Los Alamos National Lab, disclosed that, "pressure was applied [by Brooks officials] ... that we not report significant biological effects of low-power microwave irradiation." In a letter published in Health Physics, Hjeresen stated the problem in uncharacteristically blunt terms:

“The U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine has consistently suggested to us that there are no effects of low-level microwave exposure despite evidence to the contrary presented in the peer-reviewed literature. Empirical results from their laboratories would be helpful and might provide a more compelling for their position. Because the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine is one of the few remaining funding sources for research in the microwave bioeffects field, a more satisfying response would be sustained by financial support for unrestrained research in this area by independent laboratories.”

The only major change since then is that today, 15 years later, the Air Force is the only source of money for microwave health research in the United States.

December 7... Dariusz Leszczynski, of the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority ( STUK) in Helsinki, has been appointed Guangbiao Professor at China's Zhejiang University Medical School. Over the next three years, Leszczynski will spend one month each year at the university's Bioelectromagnetics Lab, where he will collaborate with Zhengping Xu. Together, they will focus on the effects of cell phone radiation on human proteins. At the same time, Leszczynski will continue to serve as the head of STUK's radiation biology lab, where he has been a leader in applying proteomic and transcriptomic techniques to the study of RF biological effects.

December 6...  IEI's John Boice, a member of the Danish-American research team that released the new cell phone epi study yesterday, told the Associated Press: "There's really no biological basis for you to be concerned about radio waves. Nonetheless, people are." We wonder why Boice discounts the many reports of RF-induced genetic damage. Surely they qualify as a justifiable reason to be concerned about long-term exposure to cell phone radiation.

December 5... The use of mobile phones is not linked to cancer, according to a new joint Danish-American study. "We found no increased risk of brain tumors, acoustic neuromas, salivary gland tumors, eye tumors, leukemias or overall cancer," report researchers from the Danish Cancer Society in Copenhagen and the International Epidemiology Institute (IEI) in Rockville, MD. This was the case for both short-term and long-term users. Their results appear in tomorrow's edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI).

The new study is a follow-up to a 2001 cohort study that also showed no elevated cancer risk. It extends the previous analysis through 2002 and covers 420,095 cell phone accounts, for which the mean use was 8.5 years. The maximum use was for 21 years but that is for a tiny minority of subscribers: As late as 1990 only some 31,000 Danes had signed up for cell phone service. (Corporate accounts were excluded because they could not be linked to individual users.)

The research team advises that their findings "suggest that the use of cellular phones does not pose a substantial risk of brain tumors among short-term or long-term users." They add, however, that "further follow-up [for long-term users] is required."

December 4... IARC's Elisabeth Cardis, who is running the Interphone study, gave an overview of the 13-country effort together with the results to date at an EC seminar in Brussels on November 21. Her PowerPoint presentation is well worth a look. Cardis places special emphasis on long-term (ten or more ten years) risks of brain tumors and acoustic neuroma. She also contrasts the findings of the various national studies that have already been published with those of Sweden's Lennart Hardell and U.S.'s Peter Inskip (though Inskip's participants had many fewer years of exposure). The final Interphone results are expected next year.

December 1... Four radio and TV broadcast towers will be moved out of downtown Beijing, the Shangai Daily reported yesterday. The radiation from the towers presents an unacceptable risk, according to Du Shaozhong, the deputy director of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau. Beijing is infamous for its foul air —it has been called the air pollution capital of the world— so it's remarkable that RF/MW radiation is considered an environmental priority. In the next five years, Beijing will impose strict rules on the location of new facilities that emit electromagnetic radiation, Du said.

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