A study funded by the European Union claims to show conclusively that the electromagnetic radiation emitted by cellphones and power lines can affect human cells at energy levels generally considered harmless. But despite the fact that the study was set up to settle this matter once and for all, most experts are still not convinced.
The four-year REFLEX project involved 12 groups from seven European countries, which all carried out supposedly identical experiments. Results were then compared to see if any consistent findings emerged.
The conclusion? "Electromagnetic radiation of low and high frequencies is able to generate a genotoxic effect on certain but not all types of cells and is also able to change the function of certain genes, activating them and deactivating them," says project leader Franz Adlkofer of the Verum Foundation in Munich, Germany.
But the project certainly has not achieved its goal of ending the controversy. Michael Repacholi of the World Health Organization in Geneva questions how standardised the experiments were and says the results are far from conclusive.
In one experiment, he points out, two groups reported that very low-frequency radiation (which is emitted by power lines) could produce double-stranded breaks in DNA - something most scientists consider impossible - while another group had the opposite results. "One has to question what went wrong, or was different, for them to get the results they claim," he says.
The experiments carried out by different groups were not completely standardised, concedes one of the project researchers, Dariusz Leszczynski of the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority. He says that, despite ¬2 million in funding, financial constraints meant different groups had to use different types of equipment.
