

The health effects of electromagnetic fields are hugely controversial, whether it's power lines being linked to leukemia or the impact of mobile phone radiation on your brain. Which makes it particularly surprising that electromagnetic (EM) radiation is being considered as a possible terrorist weapon. A UNESCO Seminar last month considered the "Potential Threat as a Terrorism Agent" of EM fields:

The most obvious danger is use of electromagnetic pulses to disrupt communication. However EMF also pose direct threats to human health through mechanisms that are poorly understood. These involve different physical and chemical factors, as well as multiple effects on biological systems including humans. [my emphasis]

This seems a little unlikely. There's little agreement on the health risk of EM fields. So they would appear to be improbable terrorist weapons. Blowing up airliners is one thing; causing a fractional incidence in the rate of cancer over a period of months lacks the immediacy and obvious impact associated with terrorist actions.

I contacted professor Sinerik N. Ayrapetyan, who organized the conference, to find out more. Ayraptyan was polite and helpful, but stressed that his expertise lies in the molecular and cellular effects of microwaves on organisms. He would not comment on clinical studies, much less on large-scale applications like terrorist use.

It seems that the title of the conference was changed at the last minute to "Electromagnetic Fields: Mechanisms of Action And Health Effect," with no mention of terrorism. Ayraptyan explained that this was because the World Health Organization was one the main sponsor and requested a shift to focus on health effects, because "WHO is not a military organization."

However, scanning the agenda, there are still some signs of a military presence. The logo of the U.S. Office of Naval Research Global figures prominently. And it was interesting to note the presence of

Andrei Pakhomov, a familiar name in nonlethal weapon circles who carried out some of the basic research behind the Active Denial System — the U.S. military's "pain ray."

Pentagon interest in the effects of radio waves and microwaves goes way back. A recent article by John McMurtrey — who has amassed an impressive collection of papers on this topic -–

looks at declassified papers on the aptly named Project Bizarre. This was part of Project Pandora, which was started after the discovery in

1953 that the Russians were irradiating the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with low-power microwaves. Nobody knew what the potential health effects of this sort of low-level exposure were, but there was a suspicion that the Russians did not mean well.

The microwaves may have been to jam U.S. monitoring equipment;

they may have been a way of remotely powering Russian bugs within the embassy; or they may have had a more sinister purpose. Project Bizarre involved the controlled irradiation of Rhesus monkeys with microwaves to determine whether it had any effect on their behavior. The work was carried out by Dr. J. C. Sharp and H. M. Grove.

The monkeys were trained to get food by pushing a lever in response to lights and audible tones.

One tone frequency signaled a time out period where any response to gain food within ten minutes reset another 10 minute delay requiring non-response. When a red light came on food was available by lever pressing where each subsequent food pellet required a geometric increased number of lever responses. Subsequently another time out period was tone signaled, where on successful non-response, a different tone frequency signaled food availability only by the 50 second delayed response previously discussed.

Project Bizarre found that microwave exposure seemed to disrupt the monkey's perception of time, causing them to misjudge intervals and perform badly compared to monkeys that had not been radiated. Although these results have not been confirmed — and this topic remains controversial — McMurtrey has tracked down other studies at assorted military laboratories (mainly on rats) with similar results.

"Microwave exposure inter-response time and sequential task performance reports herein totaled 10 studies, fully half of which originated from military laboratories who solely conducted the pulsed investigations showing the greatest performance deterioration," he writes.

McMurtrey suggests that the Russians were essentially trying to drive embassy staff mad and that the effects of the radiation might produce symptoms similar to schizophrenia. The Moscow embassy was given electromagnetic protection in 1976, including wire-mesh "mosquito screens" on the windows.

It remains to be seen whether terrorists will try the electromagnetic approach. I suspect the White House already has quite good EM shielding (to block electronic eavesdropping rather than external zapping). And with all the other threats to worry about, this one surely does seem fairly remote for the time being.

But still ... "whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."

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