WiFi in Schools is "Sheer Insanity" writes Biochemist Martin Pall to MCPS on the Health Risks of Radio frequency Radiation.

January 3, 2016

Dear Montgomery County COO Dr. Andrew Zuckerman, Interim Superintendent Larry Bowers, Board of Education and Office of Technology;

I have been asked to comment on the MCPS Statement Concerning Deployment of Wireless Computing Technologies.  I am happy to do so.

The first paragraph in that statement is not relevant to the issue at hand because it is perfectly possible to use wired communication for such education.  This document is being produced on a computer on which I only use wired communication, connecting to the internet, connecting to my printer and for other purposes, as well. 

The 2^nd and 3^rd paragraphs of your statement may well be technically correct.  However these give us no assurance whatsoever of safety of Wi-Fi fields.  The FCC guidelines as are many other such guidelines, are based on the assumption that only heating effects of microwave/lower frequency EMFs can have biological effects.  However that assumption has been falsified by thousands of studies published from the 1950s to the present, each showing that non-thermal levels of exposure often produce biological effects.  For example, in 1971, the U.S. Office of Naval Medical Research produced a document reporting over 100 different non-thermal effects [1], listing 40 apparent neuropsychiatric changes produced by non-thermal microwave frequency exposures, including 5 central/peripheral nervous system (NS) changes, 9 central NS effects, 4 autonomic system effects, 17 psychological disorders, 4 behavioral changes and 2 misc. effects [1]. It also listed cardiac effects including ECG changes and cardiac necrosis as well as both hypotension and hypertension, and also 8 different endocrine effects. Changes affecting fertility included tubular degeneration in the testis, decreased spermatogenesis, altered sex ratio, altered menstrual activity, altered fetal development, programmed cell death (what is now known as apoptosis) and decreased lactation.  Many other non-thermal changes were also listed for a total of over 100 non-thermal effects.  They also provided [1] approximately 2000 citations documenting these various health effects.  That was almost 45 years ago and is only the beginning of the evidence for the existence of non-thermal effects.   My own recent paper [2] shows that widespread neuropsychiatric effects are caused by non-thermal exposures to many different microwave frequency electromagnetic fields (EMFs). 

Tolgskaya and Gordon [3] in 1973 published a long and detailed review of effects of microwave and lower frequency EMFs on experimental animals, mostly rodents. They report that non-thermal exposures impact many tissues, with the nervous system being the most sensitive organ in the body, based on histological studies, followed by the heart and the testis.  They also report effects of non-thermal exposures on liver, kidney, endocrine and many other organs. The nervous system effects are very extensive and include changes many changes in cell structure, disfunction of synaptic connections between neurons and programmed cell death and are discussed in Refs. [2,3] and more modern studies reporting extensive effects of such non-thermal EMF exposures on the brain are also cited in [2]. There are also many modern studies showing effects of non-thermal exposures on fertility in animals.

The Raines 1981 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) report [4] reviewed an extensive literature based on occupational exposures to non-thermal microwave EMFs.  Based on multiple studies, Raines [4] reports that 19 neuropsychiatric effects are associated with occupational microwave/ radiofrequency EMFs, as well as cardiac effects, endocrine including neuroendocrine effects and several other effects.

I reviewed many other scientific reviews on this topic, each of which clearly supports the view that there are various non-thermal health impacts of these EMFs [5].   In 2015, 206 international scientists signed a statement sent to the United Nations Secretary General and to member states, stating that international safety guidelines and standards are inadequate to protect human health [6].  Each of these 206 scientists from 40 countries had scientific publications on biological effects of such EMFs and therefore each is well qualified to judge this.  It can be seen from this statement to the UN, that there is a strong scientific consensus that current safety guidelines and standards are inadequate because they do not take into consideration all of the non-thermal health effects produced by various EMF exposures.  

That scientific consensus also rejects, therefore, the FCC EMF guidelines, guidelines that cannot be defended despite your own attempt to do so in MCPS Statement Concerning Deployment of Wireless Computing Technologies.

It can be seen from the previous paragraphs, that the following non-thermal effects of EMF exposures are well documented:

1. Widespread neuropsychiatric effects
2. Several types of endocrine (that is hormonal) effects
3. Cardiac effects impacting the electrocardiogram (Note: these are often associated with occurrence of sudden cardiac death)
4. Male infertility
5. However, there are many additional types of biological changes produced by non-thermal EMF exposures (reviewed in 5,7] including:
6. Oxidative stress
7. Changes in calcium fluxes and calcium signaling
8. Several types of DNA damage to the cells of the body, including single strand and double strand DNA breaks and 8-OH-guanine in DNA
9. Cancer (which is undoubtedly caused, in part, by such DNA damage)
10. Female infertility
11. Lowered melatonin; sleep disruption
12. Therapeutic effects of EMFs when they are highly controlled and focused on a specific part of the body

The letter continues...

Read the full letter at http://safetechforschoolsmaryland.blogspot.com/2016/01/wifi-in-schools-is-sheer-insanity.html

Dr. Martin Pall  got his BA in Physics at Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD and PHD in Biochemistry and Genetics at the California Institute of Technology, CA. He is former Acting Chairman of the Program in Genetics, Washington State University, and has been a Professor of Genetics and Cell Biology and Biochemistry and Professor of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences.