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Bioelectromagnetism

and environmental impact. Afer Project Sanguine, in 1975, the U.S. Navy proposed a new Project

called Seafarer (Surface ELF Antenna for Addressing Remotely-deployed Receivers) Project. Tis new

Project was smaller than Project Sanguine. Te opposition did not abate. Te U.S Navy established the

Committee on Biosphere Efects of Extremely-Low-Frequency Radiation to study possible health efects

of the signals emanating from the Seafarer system. A study of the environmental impact also started in

1975. On February 16, 1978, the 39th president James Earl Carter terminated the Seafarer Project. Te

committee concluded and recommended for biological efects the following:

Beginning with a decision to build Seafarer and continuing into the period of its operation,

research should be conducted to increase the knowledge of the basic efects of weak ELF felds

associated with Seafarer. Tis should include fundamental research concerned with the biophysics

and physiology of magnetic-and electric-feld detection and use, and studies of the related behavior

of birds, insects, bacteria, and electrosensitive fsh. In addition, research on the underlying mecha­

nism of cell division and on information processing and integration in complex nervous systems

in relation to ELF environments should be conducted and evaluated as part of the requirement for

continued monitoring of the operating Seafarer system for its possible efects on biologic systems.

NRC (1977, p. 53)

On October 8, 1981, under the direction of the 40th president, Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911–2004), the

U.S. Navy proposed a scaled-down ELF system with 76 Hz operation, called Project ELF. As a result,

Project ELF (a smaller version of the Seafarer Project) started. It consisted of two transmission facilities,

one at Clam Lake in northern Wisconsin and another at Republic, Michigan, with a total of 135 km of an

above-ground transmission antenna. Although opposition to its construction developed, its movement

gradually faded away and the ELF facilities at Clam Lake began operating in 1985 and in Michigan in

1989. During this period, monitoring of the impact on the ecosystem around the facility began in the

1970s, and since 1982 the distribution of arthropods, earthworms and amphibians in the soil was moni­

tored in addition to electric and magnetic felds. Te results were reported in 1997 (NRC, 1997b). Te

system operated from 1989 until 2004.

During the Cold War in the 1960s, Soviet Union investigators presented a number of reports concern­

ing the incidence of compliance in substation workers (Asanova and Rakov, 1966; Sazonova, 1967). In

1966, Asanova and Rakov reported neurological symptoms in workers at a high voltage power switch-

yard. It was shown that the analysis of the major causes was inadequate and that the health efects

probably did not originate from induced current fow. Spark discharges, low-frequency noise, and ozone

smell originating from inside substation and distribution equipment was shown to be more likely the

agents responsible.

Te above-mentioned original papers from the Soviet Union were written in Russian. Tese papers

did not attract the attention of Western people until a presentation at the 1972 International Conference

on CIGRE in Paris, where an overview of the problem was revealed to researchers in Western coun­

tries. At the conference, Korobkova and others examined the health of 250 workers who work at 500

and 700 kV switchyards and reported that prolonged work without protective gear against electric

shock impaired the central nervous system, the heart and the vascular system, and in young people

there was a loss of sexual desire (Korobkova et al., 1972). It was also noted that this tended to increase

with prolonged work in an electric feld. In response to this report, researchers from Western countries

questioned the lack of control over the study, and eforts were made in Germany, France, Canada, and

the United States to reconfrm the results from the Soviet Union. As a result of these eforts, the health

efects seen in the reports from the Soviet Union could not be replicated. In retrospect, the Soviet

report was important and signifcant in the sense that it was the frst to address the health efects of

electric felds exposure.

Up until the early 1970s, it was assumed that exposure to electromagnetic felds at environmentally

relevant feld strengths produced no harmful efect on humans. In the early 1970s, concerns about health