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effects of one ELF magnetic field (200 gauss at 50 hertz) on the endo-
crine system. In addition to the "slow" stress response we've been dis-
cussing, he found activation of the "fast" fight-or-flight hormones
centering on adrenaline from the adrenal medulla. This response was
triggered in rats by just one day in Udintsev's field, and hormone levels
didn't return to normal for one or two weeks. Udintsev also documented
an insulin insufficiency and rise in blood sugar from the same field.
One aspect of the syndrome was very puzzling. When undergoing
these hormonal changes, an animal would normally be aware that its
body was under attack, yet, as far as we could tell, the rabbits were not.
They showed no outward signs of fear, agitation, or illness. Most hu-
mans certainly wouldn't be able to detect a 100-gauss magnetic field, at
least not consciously. Only several years after Friedman's work did any-
one find out how this was happening.
In 1976 a group under J. J. Noval at the Naval Aerospace Medical
Research Laboratory at Pensacola, Florida, found the slow stress response
in rats from very weak electric fields, as low as five thousandths of a volt
per centimeter. They discovered that when such fields vibrated in the
ELF range, they increased levels of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in
the brainstem, apparently in a way that activated a distress signal sub-
liminally, without the animal's becoming aware of it. The scariest part
was that the fields Noval used were well within the background levels of
a typical office, with its overhead lighting, typewriters, computers, and
other equipment. Workers in such an environment are exposed to elec-
tric fields between a hundredth and a tenth of a volt per centimeter and
magnetic fields between a hundredth and a tenth of a gauss.
Power Versus People
Because industry and the military demand unrestricted use of elec-
tromagnetic fields and radiation,
their intrinsic hazards are often
compounded by secrecy and deceit. I learned this lesson in my first en-
counter with the environmental review process.
As we were investigating the EMF-stress connection in 1969, the
Navy decided to build a giant antenna in northern Wisconsin. The plan,
called Project Sanguine, was to establish a radio link with nuclear sub-
marines at their normal depth of 120 feet or below. Conventional radio
signals couldn't pass through water, so the vessels had to surface or else
cruise very slowly a few feet
under and communicate by means of a
floating antenna at prearranged times. Since this made the subs tem-