Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

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> and the same type voltage gated calcium ion channel is also affected by electromagnetic fields?

This is the kind of broad brush statement that makes people face-palm. A "voltage gated" anything is necessarily affected by electromagnetic fields, because that's what those words mean…

…but the character of that effect depends almost entirely on the specifics. Specifically, your brain cells do things at about 100-1000 Hz, whereas most of the new RF noise is about 6 orders of magnitude higher frequency. To understand why 6 orders of magnitude matters, if you go up a further 6 orders of magnitude you get slightly more than the entire range of visible light (red light is ~500e12 Hz, violet is ~800e12).

What might genuinely affect our brain chemistry is the 50-60 Hz range of the mains grid… except we've had that all over the place since electricity was introduced, so this trend wouldn't be new in developed nations, it would be a thing that shows up in the statistics from the interwar era when we got electricity, and the only places that would get this trend now would be places that are finally getting electricity for the first time ever.

If there is a signal for this, I've never heard of it. That doesn't mean there isn't one, but that's what you actually need to look for, not a statement that's technically so general it can be said about literally everything in the universe including spacetime itself, but even with more generous interpretations is still general to the point of trivially applying to basically everything you ever experience.

> This is the kind of broad brush statement that makes people face-palm. A "voltage gated" anything is necessarily affected by electromagnetic fields, because that's what those words mean…

It’s not a broadbrush statement, it’s a very specific statement. It’s a statement that this is how EMFs can affect our neurology and our biology. I don’t understand you’re complained about this at all.

> Specifically, your brain cells do things at about 100-1000 Hz, whereas most of the new RF noise is about 6 orders of magnitude higher frequency.

Why are you assuming there has to be some residence between the EMFs and the speed of the fire neurons for the voltage gated ion channels to be triggered or disrupted? This makes no sense.

There’s plenty of signal, you just don’t have the antennas to receive it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6513191/

There is considerable evidence that exposure to RF-EMF could cause various types of genotoxic effects in cells (Lai and Singh, 2004; Lee et al., 2005; Phillips et al., 2009; Ruediger, 2009; Xu et al., 2010). Exposure to RF-EMFs (1,800 MHz, SAR 2 W/kg) caused DNA oxidative damage in the mitochondria, DNA fragmentation and DNA strand breaks in neurons (Xu et al., 2010). This have been reported in lymphocytes exposed to various ranges of RF-EMFs (Phillips et al., 2009). In addition, RF-EMF exposure has been reported to cause chromosomal instability, alteration of gene expression and gene mutations. Such genetic toxic effects have been reported in, but are not limited to, neurons, blood lymphocytes, sperm, red blood cells, epithelial cells, hematopoietic tissue, lung cells and bone marrow (Magras and Xenos, 1997; Mashevich et al., 2003; Demsia et al., 2004; Zhao et al., 2007; Baan et al., 2011). It has also been found that exposure to electromagnetic radiation, a type of RF-EMF, increases the incidence of chromosomal aneuploidy (Mashevich et al., 2003). Genetic toxic effects, including aneuploidy, can lead to genetic disorders with abnormal gene formation, and can even lead to cancer (Hoeijmakers, 2009).

> It’s not a broadbrush statement, it’s a very specific statement. It’s a statement that this is how EMFs can affect our neurology and our biology. I don’t understand you’re complained about this at all.

That fact you think your statement isn't broadbrush suggests you don't understand the rest of my previous comment.

All interactions in your daily life are either the electromagnetic field, or gravity. Even though some of the radiation you're constantly experiencing is coming from the weak nuclear force, the radiation that does your chemistry any harm is the bit that interacts via electromagnetic fields.

It's EM fields that make lighting bolts work. It's EM fields that travel along your nerves. It's EM fields that stop you from falling through the floor, that keep the floor intact, and stop the Earth from collapsing into a black hole. It's EM fields that give you sunburn and vitamin D.

Saying "EM fields affects us" is as true as saying "chemicals affect us": Yes, light is an EM field, water is a chemical. You don't get to remove these things from our environment, they are our environment.

That is why it's such a ridiculously broad brush. Without specifying power level, duration, and frequency, one can get literally any result from no impact to you exploding (which would happen not only from too much, but also if one were to suppress every EM field in your body).

> Why are you assuming there has to be some residence between the EMFs and the speed of the fire neurons for the voltage gated ion channels to be triggered or disrupted? This makes no sense.

Because basically all electrical interactions depend on frequency. If I have a circuit with a capacitor in it, that acts as a high-pass filter; if I have one with an inductor in it, that acts as a low-pass filter. Almost everything acts a bit like both a capacitor and an inductor, including our bodies.

And the fact you think that makes no sense, suggests you don't know the absolute basics of electronics, because I managed to pick that up from 101 courses.

Likewise, basically all chemicals in your body have different responses depending on which wavelengths of EM field they're exposed to. Your brain is wired to respond strongly to extremely low frequencies.

> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6513191/

You should have led with that.

But…

…that quote was on the section about genotoxic effects, which have almost nothing in common with anything from the section of calcium channels, judging by the citations used.

A different quote from the same link:

> Thus, the vague fear for the many unknown effects of RF-EMF exposure is expressed as ungrounded negative effects not only to the scientific community but also to the general public. In addition to this, scientific data published by various researchers have been contradictory in their outcome.

You’re missing the simplicity of my point. Yes I said EMF affect us, and that was supposed to include everything. The fact that we’re adding new and different EMFs is the point. There’s a very fact that it’s highly unrecognized by psychiatrist that solar flares affect the rate of psychiatric hospitalization. We can’t even get it across to them that even natural occurring EMFs affect mood. If they won’t recognize that effect, why would they recognize RF – EMFs? What is not a broad statement is explaining how these electromagnetic fields affect us, that is by affecting voltage gated ion channels.

Also, you’re thinking as a technician, not as a biologist.

I encourage you if you’re so skeptical to keep reading the papers. I’m not going to post on hacker news anymore because my original comment was flagged and I think that’s censorship and bias in this community that I’m not going to tolerate.

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