TORTURE: ASIAN AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES | JUNE-AUG 2013
conclusion was that non-ionising EMR had no biological effects: “Classical concepts of physics simply did not allow for any meaningful interaction between any form of non-ionising electromagnetic radiation and living organisms.”132 In addition, since World War II, the Department of Defense (DoD) has heavily relied on radar and other EMR technologies. Some argue that to prevent lawsuits over possible health effects from exposure to EMR, the DOD maintain a policy that there are “no proven biological effects” from EMR; only heating effects.133 The electrical power line companies have also maintained that there are no proven EMR bioeffects.134 In both cases, an EMR bioeffects policy avoids large legal pay outs for possible health effects from exposure to unhealthy levels of radar or from living near power lines.135 For decades, the American Physical Society (APS) has maintained the policy that EMR does not interact with human biology including the brain and there are only heating
132 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website. ‘Radiation that has enough energy to move atoms in a molecule around or cause them to vibrate, but not enough to remove electrons, is referred to as “non-ionizing radiation”. Examples of this kind of radiation are sound waves, visible light, and microwaves.’ Available at: http://www.epa. gov/radiation/understand/ionize_nonionize. html. Robert Becker, Electromagnetism and life, in Andrew Marino, ed, Modern Bioelectricity (1988), 1. See also the website http://andrewamarino. com/. 133 Christopher Ketcham, Warning: Your cell phone may be hazardous to your health, Gentleman’s Quarterly, February 2010. Available at http:// www.gq.com/cars-gear/gear-andgadgets/201002/warning-cell-phoneradiation?currentPage=2. 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid. See also Marino, Going Somewhere, 73, n. 52 above.
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effects.136 The APS has stated that the scientific basis for the policy is that there is no proven physical mechanism to explain bioeffects of EMR so there can’t be any EMR bioeffects except heating.137 This reasoning has been criticized on the grounds that mechanisms to explain EMR bioeffects may exist even though physicists haven’t discovered them yet.138 Many experimental effects are shown in science without a theoretical background. For example, gravity remains an unexplained phenomenon although it obviously exists. Another example, scientists don’t have a theory for how the brain works but all know that the brain does work. More recently, some have argued that exposure to microwave radiation from cell phones and cell phone towers may be harmful to a person’s health. In 2012, a report reviewed 1800 new studies on EMR. The report referred to radio frequency radiation and wireless technologies and concluded: “Overall, there is reinforced scientific evidence of risk where there is chronic exposure to low-intensity electromagnetic fields and to wireless technologies (radiofrequency radiation including microwave radiation).”139 Cell phone companies also seem to have an interest in maintaining the EMR bioeffect
136 David Hafemeister, Resource Letter BELFEF-1: Biological effects of low-frequency electromagnetic fields, American Journal of Physics 64.8, 1996, 974. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ dhafemei/13. For a critique, see Lewis Slesin, The science and politics of the EMF puzzle: The missing pieces in the Frontline story, Microwave News. Available at http://microwavenews.com/ front.html. 137 Ibid. 138 James Livingston, Driving force, The natural magic of magnets (1997), 249. 139 29 authors from ten countries, BioInitiative Report 2012: A rationale for biologically-based exposure standards for low-intensity electromagnetic radiation (ELF and RF). Available at http:// www.bioinitiative.org/
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