The final phase of this study will evaluate the significance of any cellular changes induced by EMF to the intact organism. Composite skin grafts will be constructed of human keratinocytes and fibroblasts previously exposed to EMF of field strengths that alter cell behavior in vitro. These skin composites will be grafted onto recipient nude, athymic mice, and their growth, differentiation and ability to repair cutaneous wounds will be monitored over time. This approach offers a considerable advantage in assessing the ultimate risk of very low EMF exposures in human skin without the need to employ human subjects directly.

The initial field condition to be used will be 20 Hz, 80 G fields as used by Rodemann, et al. (1989). We will use a similar solenoid coil exposure system that is cooled by circulating water and is housed in a 5% CO2 water-jacketed incubator at 37 oC. We will expand this exposure protocol to include 60 Hz fields and lower field strengths spanning a range of 3 mG-1 G. For the lower field strengths, we will use a Merritt coil system that is enclosed in a mu metal box to shield all transients. A DC magnetic field will be superimposed to mimic the earth’s static field in the enclosure. For every experimental series we will include EMF-exposed with sham-exposed as well as sham-sham controls, since two incubators will be used in most experiments.

We have attempted to replicate this study four times but have been unable to detect the substantial increase in protein synthesis described by Rodemann. Instead, we find no dependence on magnetic field exposure and a very small dependence on electric field (fig. 1). Specifically, after 14 days of 20 Hz EMF exposure, we can detect no significant difference in protein synthesis rates between controls and field-exposed cells. These studies were done blind so that the experimenter who made the protein synthesis measurements did not know which dishes of cells had been exposed.

Fig. 1. Results from our first experiment using dishes with an inner region (E=0) and an outer concentric ring (E=0.02 V/m).

After 21 days of 12h/day exposure, a small difference began to appear in those cells located in the outer well of the dishes where the induced electric field would be larger than in the center wells. We observed a 38% increase in the amount of 3H-leu incorporation in the exposed cells compared to the controls. Again, the center wells showed no significant difference.