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ALTERATIONS IN CALCIUM ION ACTIVITY BY ELF AND RF ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS
Citation:
Blackman, C F. ALTERATIONS IN CALCIUM ION ACTIVITY BY ELF AND RF ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS. Presented at Int'l Conference on Cell Phone Siting, Salzburg, Austria, June 7-9, 2000.
Description:
Alterations in calcium ion activity by ELF and RF electromagnetic fields
Introduction
Calcium ions play many important roles in biological systems. For example, calcium ion activity can be used as an indicator of second-messenger signal-transduction processes in cells. Intracellular stores of calcium are housed in the mitochondria, the endoplasmic reticulum and other membrane structures, and in calmodulin molecules, and are released upon triggering by signaling events that alter activities of various biochemical pathways and molecular events. Calcium ion activity also plays a role in membrane integrity and function, and is particularly critical for activity in both the central and peripheral nervous system, especially neurotransmitter release and action potential generation.
A number of studies of the action of electric and magnetic fields (EMF) on biological systems have used calcium ion activity as a monitor of effects. In one series of studies, calcium ion activity was initially demonstrated to be a surrogate for neurotransmitter release from the brain of cats (Kaczmarek and Adey, 1973, 1974). As a neurotransmitter surrogate, calcium ion activity was then used in a major series of studies by two independent groups (reviewed by Adey, 1992; Blackman, 1992) to characterize the effect of EMF on brain tissue removed from newly hatched chickens. Two other groups also used calcium ion activity to study the action of EMF on neuroblastoma cells in culture (Duffa et al., 1984, 1989, 1992) and on beating frog heart (Schwartz et al., 1990). The purpose of this presentation is to highlight the use of this chick-brain model system to identify critical exposure conditions that are required for EMF to influence nervous system preparations and to demonstrate similarities in biological response to EMF of widely differing frequencies.
This is not an abstract.