Electromagnetic Radiation and Epilepsy

People report adverse health symptoms which they attribute to the radiation of microwave signals from mobile phone and TETRA masts. The validity of such reports cannot be safely rejected, either on the grounds of current safety compliance, nor on the grounds that such symptoms cannot be replicated in laboratory experiments in search of a simplified mechanism. Biological effects caused by such electromagnetic fields (EMF) are widely attested by research, but there is lack of clarity about how this occurs and why certain individuals should be more susceptible than others. In the case of electrical hypersensitivity, and in the particular, though more rare, case of exacerbated or instigated epilepsy, there are two candidate mediating factors: (i) the direct effects of coherent frequencies, and (ii) disruption of the nitric oxide synthesis process. This paper takes the second, and examines how the potential causal link is borne out by both likely and observed subject outcomes, and by observed EMF/nitric oxide synthase interactions. There is sufficient suspicion that a mechanism lies here to help validate the personal reports, and therefore action should be taken to verify that operation of such EMF sources is not the cause, rather than requiring the affected person to prove that it is. There have been many reports from people living in proximity to mobile phone and TETRA masts, of adverse health effects. One of these effects is increased incidence of epileptic seizures, and indeed onset of epilepsy. Many of these effects relate to what has come to be referred to as electrical hypersensitivity or EHS. These medical reports largely go uninvestigated, for two reasons: 1. the symptoms are wide ranging, from headaches and nausea to sleep disturbances and nosebleeds, but are categorised as common and minor complaints 2. there is no laboratory confirmed conclusion as to precisely why or how such effects should be induced at such low signal energies. On the first count, the complaints may appear to be minor, since many of us have one or another of them from time to time. This ignores that they may be unusual to the people concerned, or correlate to the onset of a transmitter’s operation, or relate to particular signal levels (Oberfeld et al., 1998; Santini et al.,2002; Navarro et al., 2003) or cease when operation is suspended. It also ignores the manner in which they suddenly become chronic and persistent for the people concerned, and the resultant effect on well-being.