Do static magnetic fields of the intensity encountered in occupational settings show reproducible biological effects?
Possibly. A few biological effects have been reported in laboratory systems for fields as low as 8 milliT [130], and some organisms appear to be able to detect changes in the strength and/or orientation of the Earth’s static magnetic field (0.03-0.05 milliT) [1, 54]. In addition, the rates of some chemical reactions can be affected by magnetic fields as low as 1 milliT [56, 57, 71, 98, 129]. In 2004, Ye et al [130] reported that they could affect nerve conduction in crayfish with a field as low as 8 milliT.
