In 2019, I visited Australia and expressed interest in meeting with a number of scientists involved EHS/IEI-EMF issue. Of many approached, only Rodney Croft of ICNIRP agreed to meet. Our 2-hour discussion was, sadly, fruitless. In my blog post on ‘Influential Australians’, I wrote:
“…The idea, overarching the whole 2-hour discussion, was Rodney Croft’s opinion that: “…we cannot know everything, we cannot study everything…”. In principle, this philosophical viewpoint is correct, but… it is often used to dismiss the unwanted or inconvenient research suggestions. So, it is in this case, Rodney Croft used this philosophical saying to trivialize and dismiss the suggestion that EHS should be studied with methods of physiology instead of the currently used psychology…”
Therefore, I was somewhat surprised by his recent publication looking for biomarkers of EHS/IEI-EMF.
As the authors of the study dutifully admitted that the search for physiological biomarkers of EHS/IEI-EMF is justified even if such biomarkers will never be found.
The claim in the abstract is that:
“While no clear evidence links RF-EMF exposure to biomarker changes, research remains limited and largely speculative due to the lack of known bioeffect mechanisms.”
…is incorrect. The reason for the lack of data on potential human biomarkers of EMF exposures is the fact that such research is being actively prevented. There are generally two types of research: hypothesis-driven and a shotgun approach. The study by Verrender and colleagues is a hypothesis-driven study examining a single candidate molecule. This approach is justified when the scientific support of the hypothesis is solid and the research is largely confirmatory. The problem with such an approach is that there are thousands and thousands of biomolecules that potentially could be involved in responses to RF-EMF exposures, and their testing one by one would take the proverbial ‘eternity’. This is why current research looking to discover target molecules uses a shotgun approach where biological samples are examined with a variety of high-throughput methods commonly called ‘omics’. The advantage of using omics is that we do not need to know the mechanism of effect, but we can look for the effect.
On a personal note, I am curious that, while I have been for years talking about the need for biomarker research, publishing peer-reviewed articles, and criticizing the to-date performed biomarker research (see list at the end of this blog), any reference to it is missing from the article by Verrender and colleagues. The authors are familiar with my research; thus, omitting it completely is puzzling. It is unscientific.
Why bother? The basis for the hypothesis tested by Verrender et al. (emphasis added):
“…Given the demonstrated relationship between low-level RF-EMF exposure and the engagement of thermoregulatory processes (Loughran et al. 2019), and the relationship between heat and free cortisol concentration in vitro (Cameron et al. 2010), there remains the possibility that cortisol concentration may be influenced by exposure to RF-EMF. This potential physiological change may be one factor of a broad process of symptom development in IEI-EMF, where multiple sources of both cognitive and physiological inputs first generate somatic sensations, which are then subsequently taken over and fostered by expectancy or learning-based processes (Van den Bergh et al. 2021). However, while several studies have reported inconsistent, but mostly null effects of RF-EMF exposure on cortisol, these studies suffer from several methodological issues. The current study was designed with several improvements to determine whether exposure to RF-EMF increases salivary concentration, and to test whether any possible effect of RF-EMF exposure on salivary cortisol was related to sex differences.
The result of the Verrender et al. study was summarized in these sentences:
- “Despite implementing several methodological improvements, the current study failed to find an effect of RF-EMF exposure on salivary cortisol concentration. This study provides a valuable direction for future research and stresses the importance of establishing and testing theoretically plausible interactions between low-level RF-EMF exposure, the human body, and IEI-EMF symptoms.”
- “The current study failed to find an effect of RF-EMF exposure on salivary cortisol concentration, and there was no influence of participant’s”
Potential and real problems with the study:
- Yet again, a study where the authors knew beforehand that the results would be doubtful, no matter what the results were: “…one possible explanation for the lack of effect could be the assumed small-to-moderate effect size (f = 0.15) and limited power (0.8)…”
- Another problem was “the current study did not control for the possible effect of oral contraceptives. Given that women using oral contraceptives have been found to have increased CBG levels and lower salivary cortisol responses (Kumsta et al. 2007), it is possible that oral contraceptive use in the current sample may have decreased baseline salivary cortisol concentration and/or influenced the magnitude of any subsequent change in cortisol concentration due to RF-EMF exposure. However, as data on oral contraceptive use was not collected in this study, it is difficult to determine the degree to which oral contraceptive use increased error variance.” Why did the authors not control for contraceptives? The majority of participants were young females, and the use of contraceptives is common. Were the authors not aware of this problem before the data was analyzed?
- This seems to be a pretty ‘Eureka’ statement: “it may also be useful to replicate the current results in a sample of IEI-EMF individuals, in case they differ from a sample of young, healthy adults, in terms of their potential cortisol response to RF-EMF.” This should be obvious from the beginning, and self-declared EHS persons should have been included in the study. Observations that healthy young persons do not react to RF-EMF exposures and their cortisol levels are not changed are of very limited value for EHS/IEI-EMF research.
- Potential bias introduced by compensation of the participants. The participants, especially psychology students, knew what the opinions of their professors were on the matter of EHS/IEI-EMF, and compensation might have provided stimulus to be “helpful”. It is a potential source of bias.
- “To be eligible for the study, participants were required to be between 18 and 55 years of age, be sufficiently fluent in English, and report being in good health.” There were no self-diagnosed EHS persons. Even when self-diagnosis is unreliable, it is a starting point for making comparisons between exposures to self-diagnosed EHS and non-EHS persons. All persons were healthy, and therefore, why would any of them feel a reaction to RF-EMF exposure in the provocation study? Having solely healthy volunteers diminishes significantly the potential discovery value of the study.
- This is a very problematic conclusion from this study: “Rather than testing for mere associations between any possible biomarker and subjective reports of ill-health, it may be important to establish and test theoretically plausible interactions between low-level RF-EMF and the human body (i.e., known biophysical mechanisms).” This way of studying one-by-one and only hypothetically plausible endpoints is the way to stall the research on EHS/IEI-EMF. Progress can be achieved only by large-scale screening of all plausible and implausible endpoints. Currently available screening technologies permit it.
- Earlier, such small changes in temperature would have been considered non-thermal effects. Now, these are being finally pointed out as possible causes for some effects: “Given that low-level RF-EMF exposure has been found to trigger a thermoregulatory response (Loughran et al. 2019), it is conceivable that other physiological processes affected by heat may be influenced by RF-EMF exposure. In this case, further research is required to determine whether the heat generated by RF-EMF exposure is sufficient to influence other thermally mediated processes which could potentially trigger somatic sensations.”
In conclusion, the results and design of the Verrender et al. study are not encouraging. The EHS/IEI-EMF science will progress using such an ‘outdated’ approach.
Leszczynski: peer-reviewed publications dealing with the EHS issue (just for the record)
