In These New Times

The team exposed leukaemia cells to 900-megahertz radio waves at a power density level of 1 milliwatt per squared centimetre (mW/cm²).

After 24 hours of continuous exposure to the radio waves, the researchers found that certain ‘suicide genes’ were turned on in far more leukaemia cells than in a control cell population that had not been exposed, and 20 per cent more exposed cells had died than in the controls.

But after 48 hours exposure to the radio waves, the apparently lethal effect of the radiation went into reverse. Instead of more cells dying, the exposed cells were replicating furiously compared to the controls. Three genes that trigger cells to multiply were turned on in a high proportion of the cells. The cancer, although briefly beaten back, had become more aggressive.

Marinelli presented the results at the International Workshop on Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields on the Greek island of Rhodes.

He suspects that the radiation may initially damage DNA, and that this interferes with the biochemical signals in a way that ultimately triggers the cells to multiply more rapidly.

Meanwhile, a research team in the University of Florence reported that normal human skin fibroblasts, placed over an active cell phone for 1 h, also showed significant changes. The fibroblasts shrivelled up, and several genes indicative of stress response became expressed, that are involved in cell proliferation, growth inhibition and cell death. There was a significant increase in DNA synthesis and in key molecules that signal cell division. These findings are similar to those reported earlier from yet another laboratory.

Dariusz Leszczynski at the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Helsinki found that one-hour exposure to mobile phone radiation caused cultured human cells to shrink.

Leszczynski believes this happens when a cell is damaged. In a person, such changes could destroy the ‘blood-brain barrier’ that normally prevents harmful substances in the bloodstream from entering the brain and damaging it.

Radiation-induced changes in the cells could also interfere with normal cell death when the cell is damaged. If cells that are ‘marked’ to die do not, tumours can form.

This research is particularly important, Leszczynski said, because it demonstrates that mobile phone radiation too weak to heat up the cells can still affect them.

David de Pomerai, molecular toxicologist at the University of Nottingham, provided the first clear evidence on such non-thermal effects of mobile phone radiation. He found that nematode worms exposed to radio waves had an increase in fertility – the opposite effect from what would be expected from heating.

De Pomerai also insisted that a consensus is emerging that electromagnetic waves such as those used in mobile phones can indirectly damage DNA by affecting its repair system without heating the cell. “Cells with unrepaired DNA damage are likely to be far more aggressively cancerous,” he said.

Non-thermal effects due to weak electromagnetic radiation are at the heart of the debate on the health hazards of mobile phones and other electrical installations in the environment.

These recent results should be seen in the light of the report released in March 2002 by the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), which concluded that children exposed to high levels of electromagnetic radiation in the home could be doubling their risk of leukaemia (see “Electromagnetic fields double leukaemia risk”. This series).

One doesn’t have to be a cell-phone user to become exposed to the radiation. You could be living near a base-station that’s beaming the radio waves at you (see Box 1). Or you could be exposed as a passenger on a crowded train full of mobile phone users.

Tsuyoshi Hondou, a physicist from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, currently working at the Curie Institute in Paris, calculated that in a typical Japanese railway carriage with mobile phone users surfing the net, the radio waves rebounding from the metal wall of the carriage would give an electromagnetic field that could exceed the maximum exposure level recommended by the International Committee for Non-Ionising Radiation (ICNIRP), even when the train is not crowded…

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