Microwave tests on humans

[chewylord389]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm new to this site and am happy to have joined this as I love science--specifically--the study of electromagnetism and its role in our daily lives. In light of the debate as to whether radiation has health affects on humans or not, I came across some studies that were done by Dr,. Eleanor R. Adair. Not sure if anyone here is aware of her work, but she did experiments on animals as well as humans to test the effects that microwaves would have on them. It turns out that the only effects it has on human beings is mostly thermal, although it also affects human behavior in some ways at certain frequencies.

 

In any case, this may seem like a silly question but I recently came across one of her studies titled "Physiological and Perceptual Responses of Human Volunteers during Whole-Body RF Exposure at 450 MHz" and the "Methods" paragraph states the following:

 

"We have developed techniques and protocols to assess responses of heat production and heat loss in human volunteers exposed dorsally to RF energy to 450 mhz. These psyshiological measures included deep body temperature, 6 skin temperatures and *(upper and lower back, chest, forearm, thigh and forehead) and metabolic heat production form O2 consumption and co2 production, skin blood flow and local sweating rate (back and chest). We also obtained periodic judgments of thermal sensation and comfort, perceived skin wettedness and sweating, thermal preference and thermal acceptability. Seven adult volunteers served as subjects...Each subject was tested nine times using a protocol that involved 45 minute whole body exposure to 450 MHz CW-RF energy or sham exposure"

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4615-4867-6_146#page-1

 

My question is the following: did the authors of this experiment use the each subject 9 times per day, or 9 times throughout the entire period of the experimentation? I feel that this information should be important given that if you make the subject come back every day for 9 days the results would not be as accurate?

 

[fiveworlds]

My question is the following: did the authors of this experiment use the each subject 9 times per day, or 9 times throughout the entire period of the experimentation? I feel that this information should be important given that if you make the subject come back every day for 9 days the results would not be as accurate?​

 

 

I'm not buying the book to find out. As it is they only tested seven people.

[StringJunky]

They were tested 9 times for a period of 45 minutes. It would be better to do it 9 separate days because then you can see if the results are consistent and what effects other variables might have on the results.

[chewylord389]

Yes, but normally if that's the case, the variables would need to be identified and not up to the reader to make educated guesses. This seems to be recurring problem with these types of studies (maybe because there aren't that many of them in the first place?)

 

Let's take this paper for instance "Modeling thermal responses in human subjects following extended exposure to radiofrequency energy"

 

It states the following;

 

"All studies employed the same protocol. Each individual test session started with a 30-min baseline period, followed by 45 minutes of RF or sham (no RF) exposure, and concluded with a 10 minute post-exposure baseline period. This sequence was repeated for each subject at three ambient temperatures (Ta) of 24, 28 and 31°C and, at each ambient temperature, at different exposure levels plus sham exposure. In all experiments, the relative humidity was 50 ± 10 %, and the air flowrate in the chamber was 0.35 m/sec. The subjects were seated, with a measured metabolic rate of 1.2 to 1.4 W/kg (compared to a basal metabolic rate of about 0.8 W/kg).

 

In each study, physiological data (including core and six skin temperatures, metabolic heat production, skin blood flow measured by laser-Doppler flowmetry, and local sweat rate measured by changes in dewpoint temperature) were recorded at several locations on each subject. Measurements subject to modeling included skin temperature in left upper back and central lower back, blood flow measured in the left upper back, and sweating rate measured in the left upper back. The core body temperature was measured in the esophagus at the level of the heart."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC400246/#!po=27.1739

 

Since the temperatures and the humidity were fixed by the supervisors of the experiment, is it not possible that the experiments took place on the same day under 3 different temperatures and frequencies which were manually adjusted for the chamber?