As a means of summarising the argument todate as it is emerging on this thread i have copied the letter I just wrote to Leeka Kheifets at WHO below:
Dear Leeka,
ELF Electric fields and childhood cancer epidemiology
As promised I am writing a few words regarding ELF electric fields and the importance I believe should be attached to making these a priority for epidemiological research in WHO’s EMF project.
Person not at WHO, probable lie
The basic situation in bioelectromagnetics research today as I see it is that we have found a persistent association between ELF magnetic fields and childhood cancer,
FALSE/LIE
as well as some evidence of association with other cancers and with non-cancer disorders,
POSSIBLE association
but no accepted mechanism of interaction between the ELF magnetic component and .organisms. By converse contrast, the electric component offers a goodly number of plausible biological mechanisms
FALSE for external fields
(depolarisation of the inner mitochondrial membrane thereby inhibiting ATP synthesis,
Unlikely
inhibition of melatonin synthesis,
Only possibly true for rodents in rotating fields, not humans
effects on lymphocyte competence,
Unproven in vivo
effects on enzyme activity, etc.) but little epidemiology has ever been done regarding residential electric field exposure.
When one examines more closely why this gap should be, (given there is no relation at ELF frequencies between the magnetic and the electric component,
FALSE/LIE
so no magnetic field study can say anything about electric field associations)
FALSE/LIE
the excuses one finds are not very convincing.
No proof of "excuses"
I won’t go back as far as the Wertheimer study, except to say that she made a fundamental mistake in assigning blame on the magnetic component when the overriding effect near downward transformers is the creation of large electric fields..
discredited study, 25 years old, irrelevant, study did not address ANY specific fields, no evidence of claim about electric fields, highly improbable in any event
This would be a plausible explanation of the sometime-called wire code paradox.
Nonsense
When David Savitz and Howard Wachtel came to try measuring electric fields they had to give up through an inability to collect good data, but even so there is an extrapolative hint in what they did publish that in full power conditions an elevation of around 1.7 times was discernable..
Nonsense, contradictory
Stephanie London and her colleagues at South California only reported spot measurements, which are of course of little representative value (see a typical 24 hours chart of electric field strength enclosed and how it varies over the course of a day).
No such thing as "typical" chart
Electric fields near appliances mean that locally the E-field can vary considerably in any room. Most studies take spot measurements at room centre, where the wiring is likely to be minimal,
Not true, most rooms have central light
as is the presence of appliances, moreover. Martha Linet‘s study for NCI offered an over-brief argument that the evidence for an electric field measurement was too weak to apply NCI funds in its collection during that study, but she really misrepresented the albeit scanty evidence erroneously in my view ( as well as mis-referencing our own study).
McBride and Gallagher could not properly capture electric field data with the portable instruments their subjects were wearing, and in any case the bedplace measurements were thereby diluted. So that only leaves the UKCCCR results, and our 1996 study, which found a five-fold elevation using an ELF electric field cut-off point at 20 V/m (not anything like as rarely found in homes as the 0.4 uT used for the magnetic field cut off point in other studies).
The UKCCCR electric field data were also not representative of bedplace exposure (arguably the site where children are most chronically exposed for long periods each night), because the UKCCCR statistician used spot electric field measurements during the day and 48 hours mean electric field levels for periodic analysis. This latter meant that there was a dilution to one third of the nocturnal exposure, so that too was unrepresentative, and unsurprisingly the UKCCCR study therefore found no elevation of incidence. It would be interesting to see the results of re-analysing their data to reflect only 12 hours of nocturnal exposure, say between 2000 hrs and 0800hrs the next day, as we did in our investigation.
The only other epidemiological study reflecting any kind of electric field metric was the large tri-utility occupational one from McGill which reported a high incidence when electric fields were incorporated into the argument.
Most epi studies show no association
Laboratory studies on melatonin also show the impact of electric fields. Kato has pointed out that circularly polarised fields have 40 percent higher induced current densities than linear fields, thereby also implicating the higher electric fields which arise from such current densities.
applies to ROTATING magnetic field in rodents, not humans, no evidence of E field involvement, E field argument predicated on contradictory circular logic
In general moreover, though there may be a net zero voltage electric fields are present in home wiring all the time, whereas magnetic fields are only present when the appliances etc are actually in use,
FALSE/LIE
which means more chronic exposure by far from electric than from magnetic fields.
Extremely unlikely
I do not wish to prolong this argument indefinitely,
FALSE/LIE
though there is much more evidence from cellular and live animal studies to support the idea of an electric field metric as a bioactive parameter in childhood cancers,
FALSE/LIE
such as Morris, Kendall et al’s 1989 statistical analysis of 40 experiments from 6 labs, where they found significant effects on lymphocytes exposed to ELF electric fields.
Old data, statistics alone not proof
And one should not forget Bob Liburdy’s exonerated 1992 FASEB study reporting the importance of an electric field metric,
FALSE/LIE
or Martin Blank’s work on electric field effects on HSP70 at Columbia.
In the 1980s I carried out a large study of infant death in central London in relation to proximity to sources of EMF, and found a statistically significant relationship.
Doesn't understand statistics, thinks n=1 is statistics
Subsequent measurements in locations where these hapless infants had died confirmed the finding, but I have never published these, hoping one day for a larger study. I was disappointed that Maria Feycvhting omitted this endpoint from her review of non cancer effects.
hype
The purpose of setting this down is to suggest to WHO, who have not updated their review of electric fields for some 17 years,
Suggest to WHO by writing to someone NOT at WHO? Probable lie
that such a review is now very overdue, and that moreover an epidemiological study concentrating on ELF electric field measurement in the bedlplaces of children (or adults for that matter) with cancer or related disorders might prove to provide a new and important insight into the issue of weak electromagnetic field effects.
Self contradictory, claims no relation between E/B now says "electromagnetic field"
That EMDEX instruments do not normally include electric field probes (I wonder why!) should not prevent such a study form being carried out.
After all, as Shandala pointed out in his 1988 review of the Russian literature in Andy Marino’s Modern Electricity, human beings live and have evolved in a large geomagnetic field, so if anything has changed with the advent of electricity it is the electric and not the magnetic component.
FALSE/LIE
With kind regards,
Roger Coghill
. (yes anybody can use it, heheh)
