Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

I agree with the assumption about the mechanism of influence of the EMF on biological matter via the metabolic mediated ionization.

Author Response

Response: we thank the reviewer for his/hers positive comment

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The manuscript addresses a very important topic. 

Good effort by the authors. In the current form thus article doesn't contain any novelty rather it's a review of the previous work. 

It needs to be improved language to make it more understandable for the universal reader and add some mathematical calculations to compare and elaborate the topic. 

Author Response

Response: we thank the reviewer for recognizing the importance of this study, and for the very useful recommended suggestions. Considering the complexity of the quantum physics-chemical arguments we advanced to support this study, combined with the new mathematical calculations we added in compliance with the reviewer’s request, we made an effort to make clearer those topics that are more familiar to the universal reader by rechecking the text for typos and sentence reformatting with an English native speaker and with the Grammarly software. Corrections and additions are marked throughout text in blue font).

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The aim of this paper is to confute the EMF exposure limits set by ICNIRP and FCC, which are based on a weight-of-evidence approach.

The main argument brought by the authors is that the natural level of microwave radiation present on Earth, which is due solar radiation, is several order of magnitude lower that man-made EMF and relative exposure limits.

The authors seem to have forgotten that modern science is based on observation, going from the particular to the universal through an inductive reasoning. The authors discuss their hypothesis without reporting any kind of observation or experimental data, and claim to disprove the genesis of exposure limits, which, instead, is based on extensive and critical analysis of several lines of evidence (in vitro, in vivo and epidemiological studies), available in the scientific literature.   

For the reasons above, the paper cannot be recommended for publication in this reviewer’s opinion.

Author Response

Please see attached "Response to reviewer 1" file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting study of importance for this issue.

There are some minor comments.

Line 93:

You may give W/m2 also as mW/cm2 since that is used in Fig 3.

Figure 1:

It takes some time to digest it so better legend to the figure would be needed.

Natural limit for...

Do you mean: Natural limit corresponding to frequencies for..

Figure 3:
This is a most interesting figure. However, it takes some time to digest.

It is based on the BioInitiative Report 2012 with 67 studies ('Reported biological effects from radiofrequency radiation at low-intensity exposure") as mentioned in the Table legend. It is fine to report that this evaluation was made already in 2012.

However, the table might be more clear if it was separated into three different tables, e.g.:

Cancer brain, Cancer other, Oxidation, DNA.

Heart, Metabolism, Calcium, Reproduction

Sleep, Stress, Immune

or similar.

It is fine to use the BioInitiative Report as a reference.

It would be of interest to add later studies in text but not in figures. It is optional to include a short discussion of these studies. They should not be included in figures that should only be based on the BioInitiative Report; thus to show that these results exist since more than two decades. The following later studies may be discussed in text, e.g.:

Oxidative stress:

Yakymenko I, Tsybulin O, Sidorik E, Henshel D, Kyrylenko O, Kyrylenko S. Oxidative mechanisms of biological activity of low-intensity radiofrequency radiation. Electromagn Biol Med. 2016;35(2):186-202. doi: 10.3109/15368378.2015.1043557. Epub 2015 Jul 7. PMID: 26151230.

Schuermann D, Mevissen M. Manmade Electromagnetic Fields and Oxidative Stress-Biological Effects and Consequences for Health. Int J Mol Sci. 2021 Apr 6;22(7):3772. doi: 10.3390/ijms22073772. PMID: 33917298; PMCID: PMC8038719.

DNA:

Smith-Roe SL, Wyde ME, Stout MD, Winters JW, Hobbs CA, Shepard KG, Green AS, Kissling GE, Shockley KR, Tice RR, et al. Evaluation of the genotoxicity of cell phone radiofrequency radiation in male and female rats and mice following subchronic exposure. Environ Mol Mutagen 2020, 61: 276–290.

Carcinogenesis:

National Toxicology Program. NTP technical report on the toxicology and carcinogenesis studies in B6C3F1/N mice exposed to whole-body radio frequency radiation at a frequency (1,900 MHz) and modulations (GSM and CDMA) used by cell phones. NTP TR 596, March 26-28, 2018. Available online: https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/about_ntp/trpanel/2018/march/tr596peerdraft.pdf (accessed on 24 March 2021).

National Toxicology Program. NTP technical report on the toxicology and carcinogenesis studies in Hsd:Sprague Dawley sd rats exposed to whole-body radio frequency radiation at a frequency (900 MHz) and modulations (GSM and CDMA) used by cell phones. NTP TR 595, March 26-28, 2018. Available online: https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/about_ntp/trpanel/2018/march/tr595peerdraft.pdf (accessed on 24 March 2021).

Falcioni L, Bua L, Tibaldi E, Lauriola M, De Angelis L, Gnudi F, Mandrioli D, Manservigi M, Manservisi F, Manzoli I, et al. Report of final results regarding brain and heart tumors in Sprague-Dawley rats exposed from prenatal life until natural death to mobile phone radiofrequency field representative of a 1.8 GHz GSM base station environmental emission. Environ Res 2018, 165: 496–503.

Tillmann T, Ernst H, Streckert J, Zhou Y, Taugner F, Hansen V, Dasenbrock C. Indication of cocarcinogenic potential of chronic UMTS-modulated radiofrequency exposure in an ethylnitrosourea mouse model. Int J Radiat Biol 2010, 86: 529–541.

Lerchl A, Klose M, Grote K, Wilhelm AFX, Spathmann O, Fiedler T, Streckert J, Hansen V, Clemens, M. Tumor promotion by exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields below exposure limits for humans. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 2015, 459: 585–590.

It should be noted that ICNIRP 2020 gives reference levels for whole body exposure 30 min and for local exposure 6  min in cotrast to ICNIRP 1998, 2009. Clarify in text. Further information can be found in Table 4 in: Hardell L. Nilsson M, Koppel T, Carlberg M. Aspects on the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) 2020 guidelines on radiofrequency radiation. J Cancer Sci Clin Ther 2021;5:250-283.

There are 67 references in Figure 3. It is not adequate to only refer to the BioInitiative report. These references should be included in the reference list.

Author Response

Please see attached "Response to reviewer 2" file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

1) Microwave adiabatic tunneling should be better connected to the cluster coherence theory exposed by Preparata, Del Giudice and better explained and referenced.

2) Liboff Zhadin and Giuliani  experiments could be useful to give  a better explanation of the interaction mechanisms between wave energy and living matter.

 

Author Response

Please see attached "Response to reviewer 3" file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

My opinion on this paper remains unchanged.

The authors present a reasoning that is not based on scientific evidence. The citation of literature is highly biased, since only papers supporting the hypothesis of the authors are cited, without any consideration about the quality of experimental methods adopted in many of those papers.