Dose–response of electromagnetic field-enhanced ornithine decarboxylase activity

Alteration of ODC activity in animals or cultured cells exposed to extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields, or to modulated microwave fields, has been documented by several laboratories. However, an evaluation of the dose–response relationship in these experiments has not been done. We examined ODC activity in L929 fibroblasts exposed for 4 h to 60 Hz magnetic fields of different amplitudes. Our results show a clear threshold response which could be fitted to a sigmoidal function, with the 50% point occurring at approximately 5 μT. This sigmoidal response is characteristic of biological responses which are governed by ligand–receptor binding, and has been previously observed in the incidence of magnetic-field induced morphological abnormalities in chick embryos. The implications of this study are discussed in terms of environmental exposures to EM fields.