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320 microwatts for an hour a day, changed nerve cells in the hypo-
thalami of rats. During the first month of exposure, the neurotransmit-
ter-secreting portions of the cells connecting the brain to the pituitary
gland were enlarged. After five months they'd begun to atrophy. When
microwave dosage was stopped at that point, however, the cells re-
covered. J.J. Noval's finding that ELF electric fields changed brainstem
acetylcholine levels has already been mentioned. In similar experiments,
others have noted a rise followed by a drop to below normal in rat brain
levels of norepinephrine, the main neurotransmitter of the hypothalamus
and autonomic nervous system. In Soviet work, microwave densities of
500 microwatts or more, delivered in a work-exposure pattern of seven
hours a day, gradually reduced norepinephrine and dopamine (another
neurotransmitter) to brain levels that indicated exhaustion of the adrenal
cortex and autonomic system.
Two years after the Gordon-Tolgskaya report, Allen Frey, who has
studied bioeffects of microwaves for over two decades at Randomline,
Inc., a consulting firm in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, found an
effect on the blood-brain barrier, the cellular gateway by which spe-
cialized capillaries strictly limit the molecules admitted to the delicate
nerve cells' environment. Even at power densities as low as 30 micro-
watts, microwaves pulsed at extremely low frequencies loosen this con-
trol, in effect opening up leaks in the barrier. Since some barrier changes
occur in response to stress and mood shifts, this could be either a cause
or a result of the stress response, or an unrelated effect of pulsed micro-
waves. In any case, since the blood-brain barrier is the central nervous
system's last and most crucial defense against toxins, we must consider
this increased permeability a grave hazard until proven otherwise.
Researchers have noted
several
other potentially
dangerous
direct
effects of electromagnetic smog on the neurons. In 1980 a group under
R. A. Jaffe at Pacific Northwest Laboratories in Richland, Washington,
found a general increase in neural excitability, especially at the synapses,
in rats exposed to 60-hertz electric fields of only 10 volts per centimeter
for one month. That same year A. P. Sanders and co-workers at the
Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, reported
as follows on biochemical tests of rat brains subjected to microwaves at
two levels, one half and also slightly more than the U.S. safety standard
of 10,000 microwatts: "The results suggest that microwave exposure
inhibits electron transport chain function in brain mitochondria and re-
sults in decreased energy levels in the brain."
In a series of experiments spanning
mor than a decade, a group of
scientists headed by Ross Adey, first at UCLA and later at the Loma
Linda VA Hospital, have studied neuron response to ELF fields and