Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium, Beijing, China, March 2327, 2009 1109

The Research on the Harm of Biological Eect of Mobile Phone

Radiation to Human Body
Yang Li and Guizhen Lu
Information Engineering School, Communication University of China
Beijing 100024, China
Abstract This paper presents recent situations about the biological eect of mobile phone
radiation, and enumerates some relative investigations and experiments. The former theoretic
research has been reviewed, and then it indicates that classical theory may be not suitable
to explain microcosmic phenomena and the methods should be ameliorated. The viewpoint
that the interaction between the DNA molecule and adscititious electromagnetic wave can be
analyzed with the quantum theory in the microcosmic domain namely in the nucleus has also
been given. It is proposed that one reason of the electromagnetic biological eect is due to
that the DNA molecule is aected by adscititious electromagnetic waves and then molecular
energy level structure changes. The formula derivation of the quantum theory is listed and the
explanation of its quantum theory eects is put forward. Finally, the paper points out that the
results of action between microwave radiation and DNA molecule is probably belong to a kind
of biological eect which is long-time and slow-eect.
1. INTRODUCTION
As early as in 1975, when the mobile communication was still at the beginning in the Europe and
North America, some environmentalists predicted that the human beings would face the serious
problems about electromagnetic pollution in the 21st century. After many years, the prediction
gradually became the truth along with the development of mobile communication technology and
popularization of personal cell phones.
In 1982, the U.S government made a new standard of radiofrequency radiation. Although the
new standard was also established based on the thermal eect, it had dierence from the former
one for it had more experimental data from the animals and its main characteristic was adopting
the conception of dosimetry. It still used eld intensity and power density, but its standard was
calibrated by dose rate, namely specic absorption rate (SAR, which unit is W/Kg or mW/g) [1].
From then on, the SAR has been employed to measure the thermal eect of handsets and gradually
accepted by the whole world. There have been numerous papers which take FDTD as their primary
method to study the SAR and a lot of progress in experiments has been obtained since 1992. So
far many countries have pushed electromagnetic radiation standards according to the SAR value.
From the research papers in recent 10 years it can be concluded that thermal eects are relatively
simple and more popular to investigate. Almost all the papers of the IEEE start with the SAR
and use dierent electromagnetic calculational methods (but the most commonly used method is
FDTD) to obtain the theoretical calculation or computer simulation results about the SAR values in
the human head under dierent mobile phone radiation condition. The calculation and simulation
results make us know how the energy from mobile phone radiation distribute in the head. However,
it is very hard to validate the results in the experiments and the majority of the experiments are
just simulation ones with the phantoms or human body models. There are so many cases that
are correlated with the health if the mobile phone users use their phones for a long time and it
is dicult to explain with thermal eects. Therefore, the thermal eects and SAR actually cant
open out the biological harm to the human body and the brain tissue. Therefore, the research
of non-thermal eects especially biological eects with the characteristic of window eects [2] is
considered to be a hotspot about mobile phone radiation.
2. THE EXAMPLES OF BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS
The biological eect of the mobile phone radiation is that a human being has physiological changes
evidently when he is under the radiation of his mobile phone but the temperature of his body
doesnt change anything clearly.
1110 PIERS Proceedings, Beijing, China, March 2327, 2009
2.1. The Research of Epidemic
There was an investigation in Sweden, which indicated that the mobile phones of analog format
could be more hurtful to the users than the ones of GSM from the aspects of attention and mem-
ory [3]. Another investigation in Sweden was taken by Harrell and his workmates, which pointed
out that the users would have more chances to suer from the neuroma when they were using the
mobile phone of analog format [4]. Szmigielski also had a research in Poland, in which the soldiers
who were often irradiated by the RF were checked up and at last they were found to have 6 times
of probability of getting lymphoma and leukemia [5]. The literature [6] had a lot of tests from the
swatch of some people aged between 1850 in Chengdu China, which presented that the mobile
phone radiation would cause syndrome of nervous system.
2.2. The Animal Experiments in Microwave Frequency Band
The frequency band of electromagnetic wave from the mobile phone belongs to microwave band,
so plenty of animal experiments are done as analogs under microwave radiation. Salford and his
assistants put the rats to the exposure of electromagnetic eld produced by mobile phones, and the
SAR values were respectively 2 mW/Kg, 20 mW/Kg, and 200 mW/Kg. Afterward, they found that
blood brain barrier permeability increased under the condition of non-thermal [7]. The report [8]
gave us results of experiments about the damage produced by mobile phone radiation to the rats,
and told us that the radiation could reduce the activity of SOD and the content of NO in blood
serum and inducing apoptosis of hepatocyte.
In addition, some studies on the rodents show that RF elds can inuence the DNA molecules
directly. When the rats were put into the 2.45 GHz EM eld for 2 hours everyday, the researchers
discovered gene rearrangement in brain tissues or experimental cells after 120, 150 and 200 days [9].
Lai and Singh notied that single-stranded DNA and double-stranded DNA of some animals brain
cells were obviously destroyed after 2 hours when the animal were exposed in the EM eld of
2.45 GHz pulse wave or continuous wave [10, 11].
3. THE REVIEW OF FORMER THEORIES ABOUT BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS
At present, there are some old theories which were put forward before 1990s, such as coherent
electric vibrations theory, cyclotron resonance theory, ion channels of biomembrane theory, free
radical theory and so on [12]. But these theories and hypotheses have their limitations respectively,
only being able to explain partial phenomena, and some of them are oppugned by K. R. Foste, who
thinks that all these theories need to be improved further [13]. In recent years, there is a new theory
named adaptive resonance theory, which tries to explain the biological eects from the viewpoint
of quantum theory and considers the interaction between the microwave and the cell membrane [14].
As we all know that the quantum theory accords with all laws of movement, especially the problems
in the microcosmic domain in which classical mechanics and classical electromagnetics are not able
to resolve the phenomena. Adaptive resonance theory tries to explain the biological eects with
the assumption that the EM radiation can tamper with the original membrane construction. It
supposes that permeability of membranes to particles will be aected and place a premium on
the biological eects when the external EM led acts on the membranes to interfere the electric
potential dierence between both sides of them, with the status of resting, keeping the potential of
50100 mV from inside to outside of the membrane.
Besides the cell membrane, the aect to the nucleus and DNA should also be considered. Blank
and Reba Goodman has pointed out that microwave has the chance to change the DNA molecule,
because the frequency of the EM elds radiated from the mobile phones are very high and there are
charges shuttling on the DNA double helix, and the interaction between the microwave and charges
will disturb the genetic material, namely genes [15]. Of course, their explanations barge up against
diculties, as Robert. K concludes and gets his conclusions that due to the ingoing electromagnetic
wave energy is too weak even far less than the energy of particle vibration, and then he think that
the parlance about the direct interaction between the EM elds and DNA molecules is hard to
come into existence. However, the order of magnitude of DNA molecule is 10
8
m, and it is not
a macroscopic object, so the classic theory is apparently not suitable. It naturally takes trouble
when we use the classic electromagnetics to explain the microcosmic phenomena for the order of
magnitude of DNA molecules, but if we try to use quantum theory to solve this problem it is may
promising.
Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium, Beijing, China, March 2327, 2009 1111
4. THE INTERACTION BETWEEN ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES AND DNA
If we can see the DNA molecule as a microcosmic quantum system and also take the external
electromagnetic eld as a tiny disturbing, the action from the microwave radiation to the DNA
molecule can be ulteriorly studied with quantum theory.
It is supposed that the Hamilton functor of this system is H and it is time-independent, then it
can be written as
H = H
DNA
+ H
EM
(1)
where H
DNA
is the Hamilton functor of the DNA molecule and the H
EM
is the Hamilton functor
of external electromagnetic eld as a tiny disturbing. If the eigenvalue E
DNA
and eigenfunction

DNA
of H
DNA
are both known, and the eigenvalue and eigenfunction of H are separately E
n
and

n
, then
H
n
= E
n

n
(2)
If there is not the tiny disturbing, the H is the H
DNA
, E
n
and
n
just are E
DNA
and
DNA
. When
the external electromagnetic eld as a tiny disturbing is considered, the energy level will change
from E
DNA
to E
n
, which means the energy level take a move and the wave function
DNA
can be
turned into
n
.The energy level E
n
corresponds with H, and can be inferred by the known discrete
energy level E
DNA
derived from H
DNA
. Similarly,
n
can be get from eigenfunction
DNA
.
4.1. E
DNA
Is Non-degenerate
In this situation, there is only one eigenfunction relevant to the eigenvalue H
DNA
, namely
(1)
n
,
and it is the zero order approximation of
n
. The
(1)
n
satises the condition that
H
(1)

(1)
n
= E
(1)
n

(1)
n
(3)
On the assumption that the
DNA
has been normalized, then it can be deduced that

DNA
(H
DNA
E
DNA
)
(1)
n
=
DNA

H
(1)
E
(1)
n

DNA
(4)
It is can be noticed that the eigenvalue E
DNA
of H
DNA
must be real number, therefore the
H
DNA
is Hermitian operator. Make the spatial integral of the upper formula, and consider the
orthonormalization of
(1)
n
, we can get the equation
E
(1)
n
=

DNA
H
EM

DNA
d (5)
which means the second order correction of the energy namly E
(1)
n
equals to the mean value of
E
DNA
state. On the other hand, if E
DNA
is marked as
E
DNA
= E
(0)
n
(6)
and
E
DNA
= E
(0)
n
(7)
then E
n
can be written to be
E
n
= E
DNA
+ E
(1)
n
+ E
(2)
n
+ (8)
At the same time, E
(2)
n
=

l
a
(1)
l
H

nl
=
p

m
H

ln
H

nl
E
(0)
n E
(0)
l
=

m
|H

nl
|
2
E
(0)
n E
(0)
l
, if it is put into the formula (8),
and combined with formulas (5), (6), (7), the energy of the DNA molecule which is aected by the
tiny disturbing can be presented as
E
n
= E
(0)
n
+ H

nn
+

m
|H

nm
|
2
E
(0)
n
E
(0)
m
+ (9)
It can be educed with formulas (6) and (8) that

n
=
(0)
n
+
(1)
n
+
(2)
n
+ (10)
1112 PIERS Proceedings, Beijing, China, March 2327, 2009
and then take the
(1)
n
=

m
H

mn
E
(0)
n E
(0)
m

(0)
m
into the formula (10), it can obtain the wave function of
this system

n
=
(0)
n
+

m
H

mn
E
(0)
n
E
(0)
m

(0)
m
+ (11)
The condition of a tiny disturbing comes into existence given the series formulas (9) and (11)
both are convergent. If we want to judge whether the series is convergent, the general term must
be known rst, but both of these two series are unknown. Therefore, we only require that some of
the known terms ought to be much less than the foregoing terms. So it is concluded that

mn
E
(0)
n
E
(0)
m

(0)
m

1,

E
(0)
n
= E
(0)
m

(12)
As the expression of the formula (12) shows that if the condition has been satised, it not only
lies on the matrix element H

mn
, but also rests with the distance

E
(0)
n
E
(0)
m

between energy levels.

When the formula (12) is satised, a more accurate result is commonly able to be got in case of
having calculated the rst order correction.
4.2. E
DNA
Is Degenerate
If E
DNA
is degenerate, there is formula (6) E
DNA
= E
(0)
n
, and it is supposed that eigenvalue E
(0)
n
belonged to H has eigenfunctions:
1
,
2
, , then it will be induced that
H
i
= E
(0)
n

i
, i = 1, 2, . . . , (13)
In this case, it is necessary to choose zero order approximate wave function from these eigen-
functions, and make the equation (H
(0)
E
(0)
n
)
(1)
n
= (H
(1)
E
(1)
n
)
(0)
n
solvable. Based on this
condition, it is able to zero order approximate wave function
(0)
n
as a linear combination of
eigenfunctions:

(0)
n
=

i=1
C
(0)
i

i
(14)
In order to conrm the corresponding the zero order approximate wave function of the energy
E
nj
= E
(0)
n
+ E
(1)
nj
, we can put the value of E
(1)
nj
into the equation E
nj
E
(0)
n
=

i=1
(H

li
E
(1)
n

li
),
then solve a set of C
(0)
i
using the condition C
(0)
i
= 0, l = 1, 2, . . . , , and nally get the result if
only take the C
(0)
i
into formula (9).
Because the Hamilton functor of a DNA molecule system is complex, it is possible to obtain no
precise result but an approximate result, and then solve this problem with the approximate one.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The research about the biological eect of mobile phone radiation is of interdisciplinary subject,
and relates to microwave technology, biology, medicine and physics. Although there are many
experiments and theories, there is not any important breakthrough yet. There is still bifurcation
on the viewpoint, and the conclusions of the experiments are often poles apart. The causation
is likely to be ascribed to inconsistent experimental conditions, and for the complexities of the
organisms themselves, and then for the repeatability of experiments is not good enough due to
dierence among Individuals. Accordingly it makes the researchers of these experiments have
totally dierent conclusions.
It is well-known that ionizing radiation for its powerful ray energy has the ability to interact with
the DNA molecules directly and lead to chemical bonds fracture, which is how ionizing radiation can
scathe the human body. That is to say, ionizing radiation has the characteristic of short-time and
fast-eect to harm the human beings, so its biological eects are very visible. If electromagnetic
radiation in the microwave frequency bands is like the ionizing radiation to aect the DNA, to
result in rupture of the chemical bonds and bring on the DNA damage, according to the actual
situations, its eects should be of long-time and slow-eect. Whether or no, if the assumption that
Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium, Beijing, China, March 2327, 2009 1113
the electromagnetic wave really can make DNA molecules change in some condition, the mobile
phone radiation causing cancer will make theory become reality based on the hypothesis about
gene mutation inducing cancer [16]. Thus it can be seen that these problems are needed to have
more deep studies from the microcosmic domain.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported by Natural Science Foundation Program of Beijing (No. 4063039). The
authors wish to thank Kan Runtian, the Director of The State Radio Monitoring Center for his
help, and Li Shufang who gives us the chance to join in the research subject.
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