Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Phone radiation may push cells around

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:11:27 -0400

Phone radiation may push cells around
April 12, 2004 9:29am

CAN the radiation from mobile phones cause cancer or other health
problems? Many researchers fear the answer is yes, yet they have been
unable to come up with any plausible way that radiation from a phone
could affect, let alone harm, biological tissue. Now research from
Sweden suggests a possible answer: mobile phone radiation may cause a
massive increase in the forces that cells exert on each other.

The conventional view is that the only way radio waves could damage a
cell would be if they were energetic enough to break chemical bonds or
heat the tissue, like microwaves. Yet the radiation given off by
handsets is much too weak to produce either of these effects.

Finding an alternative mechanism is the "holy grail" for those who
believe the radiation is harmful, says Camelia Gabriel of Kings College
London, who is carrying out research into microwaves as part of the
Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research programme (MTHR) funded by
the UK government. Ideas have been put forward, she says. "But there are
no proven mechanisms."

Now Bo Sernelius, a physicist at Linköping University in Sweden, has a
new lead. He modelled the dielectric properties of cells. Water
molecules have poles of positive and negative electric charge that are
known to create attractive forces between cells, known as van der Waals
forces. These are normally extremely weak, typically around a
billion-billionth of a newton. Using a highly simplified mathematical
model of two red blood cells, Sernelius calculated what effect
electromagnetic fields created by different frequencies of radiation
would have on the forces.

He found that the water molecules inside the cells attempt to align
their positive and negative poles with the alternating field produced by
the radiation. They all end up pointing in the same direction, and this
strengthens the van der Waals forces.
According to Sernelius's figures, in fields of 850 megahertz – around
the frequency used by mobile phones – the attractive forces appear to
leap to micronewton strength. That is a huge jump of around 11 orders of
magnitude, and completely unexpected, says Sernelius.

Sernelius's investigation is only theoretical, and adverse effects from
cellphone radiation are unproven. But if the effect could be confirmed
experimentally it could form the basis of an explanation for tissue
damage: stronger attractive forces between cells might make them clump
together, for example, or cause blood vessels to contract.

The finding is important, says Katie Daniel, deputy editor of the
journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics , which has just published
the study (vol 6, p 1363). "It highlights the idea that electromagnetic
radiation might act on cells by affecting the attractive forces between
them rather than simply causing heat damage to tissue."

Gabriel agrees that the new mechanism is plausible. But she points out
that Sernelius's model is extremely simple, and what applies to two
cells may not necessarily apply to more. "It needs to be tested
experimentally," she says.

Sernelius suggests checking the dielectric properties of different types
of biological tissue during exposure to radiation across the range of
frequencies normally used by mobile phones, which is exactly what
Gabriel and her colleagues are working on for the MHTR. Their results
will be published in December.

http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR200404123021.17_398b000f55d70293

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