Posted by Ueli (195.162.173.67) on August 28, 2001 at 10:39:25:
In Reply to: EMF posted by M.I.K. on August 27, 2001 at 23:18:08:
I'm sorry to say, but what you quote here is pseudo scientific babble as used by the snake oil vendors.
We know two things about iron from every day life: it is attracted by magnets and it has a tendency to rust.
The magnetic property is a bulk property of iron in metallic form. If iron is incorporated into a chemical compound it responds the same way to a static magnetic field as any other element: not at all.
When metallic iron reacts with oxygen we get rust: Fe2O3 (there are other forms of iron oxide too). Hemoglobin is a huge molecule with a few iron ions. Although the iron is crucial for the binding of oxygen to hemoglobin, the chemical reactions involved are a bit more complicated than in the simple rust molecule.
EMF fortifies the polarity of iron molecules in red blood cells giving them a greater affinity for O2 sounds very scientifically, it uses a lots of words we remember from chemistry and physics lessen in school, but it is utter nonsense. In other words, it is a typical example of the pseudo-scientific hogwash the snake oil (or in this case wonder magnet) vendors spill over unwary people.
The electromagnetic field (EMF) is - by definition - a dynamic thing: the rapid exchange of energy between electric and magnetic fields. We know it from radio waves, heat radiation, visible light, X-rays and gamma-rays. A permanent magnet is surrounded by static magnetic field that can interact with bulk iron and electric currents, but not isolated iron ions.
If a small permanent magnet has such a large influence on our blood, how comes the blood does not start boiling in a MRI machine, where large parts of our body are immersed in a much stronger magnetic field ???