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The Body Electric
appeals of this decision but won a lifting of the injunction in the third
appeal, so construction is, at this writing, going on.
Fatal Locations
Subliminal activation of the stress response is one of the most important
effects that EMFs and nonionizing radiation have upon life, but it's far
from the only one. These unfamiliar energies produce changes in nearly
every bodily function so far studied. Many of these alterations are associ-
ated with stress, but whether they're a result of, or an additional trigger
for, the adrenocortical reaction is an irrelevant chicken-or-egg question
at this stage of our knowledge. The most disturbing data come from
work on the systems that integrate other bodily functions—the central
nervous, cardiovascular, endocrine, and growth control systems. We'll
concentrate upon these in the following overview of the biohazards.
For the most part, no attempt will be made to identify specific effects
from microwaves, radio waves, and electric or magnetic fields, for sim-
ilar changes have been observed from all modalities. The major problems
come from extremely low frequencies, but higher frequencies have the
same effects if pulsed or modulated in the ELF range. This is very often
the case, for, to transmit information, microwaves or radio waves must
be shaped. This is done by interrupting the beam to form pulses or by
modulating the frequency or amplitude (size) of the waves. Furthermore,
today's environment is a latticework of crisscrossing signals in which
there's always the possibility of synergistic effects or the "construction"
of new ELF signals from the patterns of interference between two higher
frequencies. Therefore, experiments in which cells or organisms are ex-
posed to a single unmodulated frequency, though sometimes useful, are
irrelevant outside the lab. They're most often done by researchers whose
only goal is to be able to say, "See, there's no cause for alarm."
The Central Nervous System
Since our work on human reaction time, half a dozen other groups have
also found marked CNS effects from ELF fields. Most experiments have
shown a decrease in reaction speed, although one researcher noted faster-
than-normal reactions in humans exposed to very weak electric fields
vibrating at beta wave frequencies. The sensitivity of some animals has
turned out to be amazing. James
R. Hamer of Ross Adey's group at
UCLA reported changes in monkeys' response times from ELF electric