Exposure of Human Cells to Electromagnetic Fields: Effect of Time and Field Strength on Transcript Levels

Abstract

Short exposure of cultured human cells to extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fileds causes a measurable increase in some transcript levels. The effect of varying field strength and exposure time on c-myc, β-actin, c-src, β-tubulin, and histone H2B transcript levels in human HL-60 cells exposed to continuous sine waves (60 Hz) is analyzed here. An increase in the basal levels of these normally expressed transcripts is observed with dependence on both field strength and time of exposure. A “window” effect is found for each transcript at 20 min exposure [magnetic flux density of 5.7 µTesla (rms)]. Alpha-globin, a transcript not normally expressed in this cell line, was unaffected by exposure to the field strengths used for these experiments.