The most important part? The damage is cumulative. So it adds up over time. Dry your hair day after day, and the damage keeps building up. The research also shows that electromagnetic fields from devices like electric blankets and electric razors can cause such damage.
Things bring up a question surrounding hybrid vehicles and electric cars: since they are powered by strong motors mounted on a few feet from the driver and passangers, it's only reasonable to consider the possibility that people riding in such vehicles would experience similar brain-damaging effects. After all: a motor that turns the wheels of a 2,000-lb. vehicle creates a far stronger magnetic field than a razor or hair dryer. And hybrid vehicles have four of them, of course. So the driver and passengers are getting quadruple the exposure.
Nobody's talking about this issue right now. Hybrid vehicles are on the streets, but they're very new. It will be decades, probably, before researchers can link electricity-powered vehicles to brain damage. Perhaps manufacturers can invent better shielding to protect passengers in the mean time.
Two brain cells from a rat exposed to a low-level electromagnetic
field show significant amounts of damaged DNA, seen exiting from the
cells.
Findings by UW researchers suggest that such damage is cumulative.
Prolonged exposure to low-level magnetic fields, similar to those
emitted by such common household devices as blow dryers, electric
blankets and razors, can damage brain cell DNA, according to researchers
in the University of Washington's Department of Bioengineering.
That indicates that the effects of exposure are cumulative, and
duration can be as damaging as intensity, said Henry Lai, a UW research
professor who conducted the study with fellow UW bioengineer Narendra
Singh.