What’s the chemical mechanism causing this? I thought that because these RF photons don’t have enough energy to break any bonds (so-called non-ionizing) that they should generally be assumed to be safe.
1) we know DNA is an electrical conductor. This is work by Jackie Barton, et. al, Caltech, she's been talking about it on the talks circuit for about 10 years but the papers are now coming out.
2) it seems like DNA error correcting enzymes use electrical potentials and current (or rather lack of current due to mutations causing geometric disruptions in DNA and "opening the circuit") to reduce the search space and make mutation repair more efficient.
3) high frequency RF can induce current in DNA.
4) it's important to note that this mechanism (RF can jam error correction) does not itself cause mutations so standard tests like the Ames test, blasting mice with RF, or related, will miss the mechanism, especially in well-controlled lab environments. An experiment would need to be set up to directly test error repair. Yeast might be a good model species since there is a comprehensive knockout library so you could see if the relative repair rate is unaffected in repair-deficuent strains.
Anyways. It should be a relatively easy Nobel prize if someone wants it. I'm not a scientist anymore, so I don't really have access to what I need to do this.
Whether or not someone wants it is not the big question. The big question is if the theory verifies.
Sadly they are not giving out Nobel prizes for carefully and painstakingly disproving theories proposed in anonymous HN comments. So whoever embarks on such a series of experiments has to judge the probability of the theory being true in their decision making.
Besides it sounds like you are proposing a new and unknown chemistry effect. Why wouldn’t you go and try to investigate that proposed effect in a test tube first? Living things are super complicated. If you can find a chemical reaction which goes differently in the presence of non-ionizing radiation that alone could be interesting. (Of course the experiment better show that the difference is not due to simple heating.)
But I can't think what else could be involved other than thermal damage. Thinking about it, I also wonder how much thermal stress is required to produce damage. If only a small increment in thermal energy at a micro-level or at particular chemical bonds is what happens, it would be a challenge to detect and measure such tiny, localized changes. Then again if the effect (that is, RF agitating some chemical entity) is small enough maybe calling it "thermal" wouldn't be exactly right.
Will be very interesting to see how this line of research develops. In any case, a great question that requires a lot more work to decipher.
Contrast this with employees who worked closely with leaded gasoline, ionizing radiation, asbestos where the statistical signals are overwhelming.
For example, the mouse study showed alterations to myelin sheaths. Conceivably there could be long-term implications, as in leading to conditions like multiple sclerosis. Of course this sort of hypothesis remains to be tested. Late-appearing effects are notoriously difficult to establish as consequent to small insults years or decades before.
Remains to be seen where this line of research goes. I sure don't expect to see any outcome of it in the near future.
Could cell axons or other structures be acting like (very imperfect) antennas?
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09242...
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/news/...
This sounds wrong. It's been decades since my last chemistry class, so I sure could be wrong. But IIRC organic covalent bonds aren't particularly weaker than say ionic bonds, which obviously would be subject to ionizing radiation.
No argument with the other referenced effects. But AFAIK the key argument about non-ionizing radiation is specifically that it can't break covalent bonds.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/covalent-bonds-crack-und...
And there's always good old oxidation-reduction, where adding a little heat (from non-ionizing radiation) pushes the reaction in one way instead of another. And since with RF this heat will penetrate and concentrate into the places that absorb the given wavelengths (i.e.: average vs max), it isn't quite the same thing as being "just a little warmer."
There's also denaturation, where primary structure is intact, but secondary/tertiary/... are altered--which can significantly effect function.
I'm not advocating for or against RF here, as much as I'm pointing out that life is complicated, and maybe we should approach it with humility instead of the physics 101 midwittery that plagues this horrible PR board.
And if that doesn't satisfy, maybe John von Neumann will get through:
“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.”
changes to reaction kinetics and equilibria;
unfolding and denaturing of proteins;
unwinding of DNA and RNA in localised regions ("bubbles");
displacement of inter- and intra-molecular associations through hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces
As an example, the unfolding or denaturing of a protein may be transient or permanent, and it will often not have an obvious adverse effect. But if it's e.g. a critical regulatory protein, it may result in a cascade of events which might end up causing cancer.
DNA structure is tightly-controlled and is wound up to varying degrees to enable or prevent access to it. If it's transiently unwound by localised heating, it exposes it to the transcription machinery as well as other regulatory proteins. Again, it could have wide-ranging effects.
The probability of any one photon doing damage is low, but it penetrates deep and the heating would be very localised. The cumulative effect of exposure could well cause significant problems.
Biological systems are very complex, and many of the interactions do not involve bond breaking. The proteins and other molecules interacting within each cell exist in a delicate balance which often involves far weaker forces, including hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces. These are easily disturbed by heating.