I FIND few things more frustrating than the absence of
critical thought in modern society. Misinformation spreads like a plague in the
21st century, where we have sophisticated communication tools combined with a
lazy media. Information is accepted at face value all too easily, sacrificing
the truth for a good story. A recent example of this is rampant misreporting
of studies into the dangers of the electromagnetic fields used in
telecommunications.
It is also a sensitive topic, as it concerns people's
health.
Fear of adverse health effects from electromagnetic fields
are as old as the discovery of electromagnetism itself. When FM radio was first
introduced in the USA and Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, there were fears that
this mysterious, invisible force was going to mess with people's brains. Of
course, no sane person now fears FM radio signals. Now people are similarly
worried about radiation from cellphones and, once again, make claims about its
impact on our health without understanding the technology.
One of my favourite radio stations, Talk Radio 702, recently
hosted a show about a condition referred to as "electromagnetic hypersensitivity",
or EHS. Then, about a week later, M-Net's Carte Blanche apparently aired a
similar insert looking at the possible dangers of electromagnetic fields. I
listened to 702 in frustration as critical thought was once again sacrificed
for sensationalism. Fortunately I was spared the Carte Blanche offering, but am
told it was about the same.
Only one side of the debate was represented in the coverage
of the topic provided by these media entities. We heard pseudo-scientific,
spurious arguments of how electromagnetic radiation is harming us. We didn't
hear from real experts, which is inexcusable as our knowledge of radiation and
its effects is very advanced.
So if 702 and Carte Blanche had bothered to call a
scientist, what would they have said? Is your cellphone going to give you
cancer? And is it possible to be hypersensitive to electromagnetic fields?
To unpack the research on this subject, you must have a
basic understanding of the forces we are talking about. We must also establish
the difference between a real scientific study that uses clinical research and
control mechanisms, as opposed to pseudo-scientific studies that merely argue
by assertion and correlation and then look for validation from others to
make the report sound credible.
Everything we experience as reality consists of
electromagnetic energy at varying frequencies, with the exception of gravity.
Light, sound and your couch are all the result of electromagnetic fields
interacting with each other. So is WiFi and cellular radiation. In the case of
FM radio and other telecommunications, we refer to "radio-frequency
electromagnetism".
So to say that you have "electromagnetic
hypersensitivity" is semantically meaningless. It would require you to
have some sort of allergy to everything in existence, except gravity. No
credible health organisation would use such an ambiguous label - which should
be one of your first clues as to how valid claims of this condition are.
There have been many provocation trials carried out to try
and identify electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Over and over, these have found
that self-described sufferers of the condition are unable to distinguish
between exposure to the radio-frequency electromagnetic fields they claim to be
sensitive to and the absence of those fields. For this reason, it is not
recognised as a valid condition by medical or scientific communities.
However, this does not mean that people's symptoms are not
real. If you are suffering headaches, rashes or other aches and pains you
should work with a qualified doctor to try and establish the real causes of the
effects you are experiencing.
Of course, there are other forms of electromagnetic
radiation that are obviously harmful to us. In identifying these, we refer to
"ionising" or "non-ionising" radiation.
Ionising radiation is the bad kind - it is able to interfere
with the cells in your body at a DNA level, potentially destroying the bonds
between polymers in DNA strands, which in turn could lead to cancer. An example
of this is the radiation released by a neutron bomb.
Cellular radiation, however, is non-ionising. It is much too
weak to interfere with DNA or cause the kinds of symptoms related to
hypersensitivity claims.
If you're going to worry about radiation, you should start
with sunlight. It has a far greater measurable effect on your body than the
kind of radiation emitted from a cellphone tower.
But sunlight also has positive effects, stimulating the
production of vitamin D in our bodies, for example. I make this point because a
vital part of understanding clinical studies is realising that it is very
difficult to prove that something isn't bad for you.
Everything we interact with has various effects and
side-effects - some good, hopefully, and some bad. Anything we test will have
some negative effect, even if that effect is very small. For this reason real
medicine will always include a list of side-effects that could perhaps be
experienced.
When you eat a carrot you consume a variety of compounds,
including beta-carotene that is known to have positive health benefits. But
beta-carotene has also been linked to increased risks of lung cancer in extreme
cases. We know that carrots are "good for us", but it is
scientifically incorrect to say that they aren't bad for us too.
So to say "but you can't prove that electromagnetic
fields aren't bad for me" is a stupid statement. We are, after all, deteriorating organisms.
Technically speaking, life is "bad" for us.
What we can prove is that the dangers of cellular radiation
are negligible in the greater scheme of things. The World Health Organisation
(WHO) has previously quoted a 0.002% risk of cellular radiation contributing to
cancer. This isn't a conclusive number, however, but it gives you an idea of
the tiny scale of things we are dealing with.
What sparked the recent resurgence in public interest in the
topic was the reclassification of cellular radiation by the International
Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). A press release issued by the WHO that
summarised the move was entitled "IARC classifies radiofrequency
electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans".
The title is sensationalist and plays on the public's
general misunderstanding of what science means by "possible". In
science, anything is possible. Real scientists will never claim absolute
knowledge of a subject. There is always room for refinement or even for being
proven wrong. This is the major difference between real science and
pseudo-science - the latter claiming absolute knowledge of a subject while real
science is progressive.
If you actually research the IARC classification, you will
find that it is shared by coffee and the exhaust fumes of modern cars. It's a
very broad category that defines a list of things that have a very small
possible contribution to cancer.
Unfortunately I do not have enough space here to go into the
set of logical fallacies that allow for the kind of misunderstanding of
causality and correlation that have bred this inane fear of radio-frequency
electromagnetic fields. You don't need my help with this, however - if society
just applies some critical thought to things then columns such as this would be
unnecessary to begin with. In fact, I hope you won't take my word for any of
this and research the topic further yourself.
- Fin24