Pineal melatonin level disruption in humans due to electromagnetic fields and ICNIRP limits

Abstract

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classifies electromagnetic fields (EMFs) as 'possibly carcinogenic' to humans that might transform normal cells into cancer cells. Owing to high utilisation of electricity in day-to-day life, exposure to power-frequency (50 or 60 Hz) EMFs is unavoidable. Melatonin is a natural hormone produced by pineal gland activity in the brain that regulates the body's sleep-wake cycle. How man-made EMFs may influence the pineal gland is still unsolved. The pineal gland is likely to sense EMFs as light but, as a consequence, may decrease the melatonin production. In this study, more than one hundred experimental data of human and animal studies of changes in melatonin levels due to power-frequency electric and magnetic fields exposure were analysed. Then, the results of this study were compared with the International Committee of Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) limit and also with the existing experimental results in the literature for the biological effect of magnetic fields, in order to quantify the effects. The results show that this comparison does not seem to be consistent despite the fact that it offers an advantage of drawing attention to the importance of the exposure limits to weak EMFs. In addition to those inconsistent results, the following were also observedfrom this work: (i) the ICNIRP recommendations are meant for the well-known acute effects, because effects of the exposure duration cannot be considered and (ii) the significance of not replicating the existing experimental studies is another limitation in the power-frequency EMFs. Regardless of these issues, the above observation agrees with our earlier study in which it was confirmed that it is not a reliable method to characterise biological effects by observing only the ratio of AC magnetic field strength to frequency. This is because exposure duration does not include the ICNIRP limit. Furthermore, the results show the significance of disruption of melatonin due to exposure to weak EMFs, which may possibly lead to long-term health effects in humans.

Melatonin Levels and Low‐Frequency Magnetic Fields in Humans and Rats: New Insights From a Bayesian Logistic Regression

“…Halgamuge [] compiled various studies on humans exposed to ELF published in the last 15–20 years where MLT levels—mostly 6‐sulfatoxymelatonin in urine samples (24 h)—were reported. These authors included both laboratory (short term) and epidemiological (long term) studies.…”

“…From their collection of 33 studies, we noticed that some were duplicates, which were removed (e.g., their entries 13, 24, 25 are duplicates of their 11, 13, and 23, respectively). We verified each entry listed in Halgamuge [] (their table 4) regarding MF field strength and exposure duration, leading to some differences between their listing and this work.…”

“…Table lists the studies from Halgamuge [] used in this analysis. Note that it includes the 14 studies listed in the review of Henshaw and Reiter [], and we included a few studies not included in the original review of Halgamuge [] but in the review article of Touitou and Selmaoui [], such as Griefahn et al [], Kurokawa et al [], Warman et al [], Cocco et al [], and Davis et al []. The only study we rejected is that of Touitou et al [], which is based on a small sample (30) of individuals/electrical workers pre‐selected not to have any sleep disturbances, i.e., is biased against finding any sleep/MLT perturbation from ELF‐MF.…”

“…However, the epidemiological and laboratory studies on MLT levels and ELF‐MF are often contradictory [see reviews by Henshaw and Reiter, ; Jahandideh et al, ; Touitou and Selmaoui, ; Halgamuge, ; Lewczuk et al, ]. In this paper, we use both a Bayesian parametric regression and a non‐parametric approach on a compilation of 62 studies that report the evolution of MLT levels on humans and rats exposed under weak ELF‐MFs.…”

The Analysis of Anticancer Drug Sensitivity of Lung Cancer Cell Lines by using Machine Learning Clustering Techniques

“…Besides, the melatonin has also been known as an effective agent that avoids both the initiation and promotion of cancer. Previous studies [4], [5] demonstrate the importance of disruption of melatonin due to exposure to weak electromagnetic fields, which may possibly lead to long-term health effects in humans.…”