Hematological changes in rats exposed to weak electromagnetic fields.

Abstract

A number of experimental studies report that biological systems can be affected by in vivo exposure to low frequency and extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields. However, attempts to independently replicate some of these studies have shown the reported effects to be elusive. The difficulty in replicating results could be due to unidentified physical and/or biological parameters which may affect the response of a sample to electromagnetic fields. The present paper reports a failure to independently replicate a study showing that in vivo exposure to a pulsed magnetic field of 1.5 mT caused significant changes on plasma proteins in rats. Although the possibility has to be considered that the results from the seminal work were artifactual, substantial differences in levels of plasma proteins were observed between the control groups of the two studies indicating that the animals in the first study had an infectious illness. This observation supports the hypothesis that the state of physiological equilibrium of a biological system is crucial to its response to a potentially effective electromagnetic field.