More Reports on Developmental Disorders

The following section on developmental discorders and defects reports, related to EMF pollution, is an excerpt from Chapter 8, Man Made Electromagnetic Radiation Fields, of the book "Cross Currents: the Perils of Electrical Pollution" by Robert O. Becker.

More Developmental Defect Reports

While the New York State and Battelle studies were under way, Dr. Jose M.R. Delgado established a major laboratory for the study of the behavioral effects of ELF at the Centro Ramon y Cajal in Madrid, Spain.  Dr. Delgado is a world-class neurophysiologist, well known for his research on brain behavioral mechanisms and their control by electrical stimulation.  This time, however, he was looking for birth or embryonic defects.

Dr. Delgado exposed chick embryos to magnetic ELF fields of three different frequencies-10, 100, and 1000 Hz--and extremely low field  strengths. Embryonic malformations were produced with all three frequencies, with most occurring with the 100 Hz fields.  At this frequency, major developmental defects were produced by field strengths as low as 1 milligauss.  This report caused great consternation and resulted in a flurry of reports from other workers, some supporting Delgado and others reporting no effects whatsoever.  The research in Madrid was continued by Dr. Jocelyn Leal, who was able to consistently confirm the original findings.

In 1986, the U.S. Navy entered the picture again.  The Office of Naval Research supported an international study, called Project Henhouse, which involved six separate laboratories.  All would use identical equipment in an effort to duplicate de3lgado’s experiment.  In June of 1988, the results of this study were reported at a meeting of the Bioelectromagnetics Society.  Five of the six laboratories reported that “apparently, very low-level, very low-frequency, pulsed magnetic fields contribute to increased abnormality incidences in early embryonic chicks.

Despite uncertainty as to the mechanics involved, it is clear that ELF magnetic fields as small as 1 milligauss have the potential to produce developmental abnormalities in growing embryos. It appears that only two specific functional systems in the organism are primarily influenced by this type of field exposure.  These are the brain and the growing tissues of the body, including fetal tissues and cancerous growths.  The effects of the brain are mainly functional--for example, behavioral abnormalities, learning disabilities, altered biological cycles and activation of the stress-response system.  In growing tissues, field exposure promotes the growth of cancer cells and increases the incidence of developmental defects in newborns.  Strangely, even though there is little cell growth in the brain, cancers of the brain are definitely related to ELF field exposure.  

There is one system that appears to be possible related to many, if not most, of these effects, and that is the genetic apparatus. Because genetic alterations had already been shown with microwave exposure, it appeared possible that ELF-field exposure might have a similar effect.