Part 2 of 3 (Part 1, Part 3)
By John Ott
Earlier Studies With Laboratory Animals
Going back still further, the studies that led to the Sarasota school children project were done during the 1950s and 1960s and involved keeping laboratory animals under different colored fluorescent lights and natural outdoor daylight filtered through different types of glazing materials, with other laboratory animals kept under natural unfiltered daylight.
A number of doctors at different medical institutions had learned of the experimental work with light that was being done at the Environmental Health and Light Research Institute (formerly Time Lapse Research Foundation) and offered their assistance.
Carefully designed and controlled studies were undertaken at a number of top-ranking medical schools and research hospitals, including Bellevue Medical Center in New York City; The Ben May Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Chicago; Sherman Hospital, Elgin, Illinois; the Cancer Research Division of Evanston Hospital in Evanston, Illinois; and the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia.
All the results consistently showed that the laboratory animals under natural unfiltered daylight, or the closest to it, were much healthier and lived up to more than twice as long as those kept under pink fluorescent light which consistently produced the poorest reports. A number of different kinds of animals were used including mice, rats, some hamsters, and rabbits.
At the Cancer Research Department of Bellevue Medical Center in New York City, a group of 15 humans was studied. However, when the word got around that 14 of the 15 were responding unbelievably well to the natural outdoor light, Dr. Jane Wright, who was head of the Cancer Research Department at Bellevue, advised that so much pressure was brought against her for using human beings in such a study that she could no longer continue it, and, most unfortunately, it had to be abruptly terminated.
It was later discovered that the one person who did not respond had not fully understood the instructions and had stopped wearing deep colored sunglasses continuously, even indoors, but did wear regular glasses that would still block any ultraviolet light from entering the eyes.
The instructions given to the 15 human "guinea pigs" did not include taking any drugs or modern chemotherapy, no radiation treatment or anything else, but only recommended avoiding artificial light and especially fluorescent or other types of gaseous discharge light bulbs or tubes, such as mercury vapor or high intensity discharge lamps. Sodium vapor was not yet in use at that time.
In addition to recommending that the 15 patients should not wear any sunglasses, tinted contact lenses, or any glasses that were not "full spectrum," letting the ultraviolet through, the instructions did recommend spending as much time as possible on an open screened porch or under the shade of a tree outside and building up gradually to sunbathing for one hour, thirty minutes on each side, in the full direct sunlight. No suntan lotion was to be used, but care should be taken about not getting sunburned.
The abrupt termination of the Bellevue study was disturbing to other doctors who had become interested in studying the effect of light on laboratory animals. Six of them agreed to collaborate in a combined study to be undertaken at the EHLRI, and all individually assisted in preparing and signing a small grant application to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to finance the study.
The six doctors included: Robert Alexander, M.D., Chief Pathologist, Presbyterian St. Lukes Hospital, Chicago; Samuel Lee Gabby, M.D., senior member of the staff and member of the research committee, Sherman Hospital, Elgin, Illinois; Elliot B. Hague, Ophthalmologist and chairman of the New York Academy of Sciences Conference on "Photo-Neuro-Endocrine Effects in Circadian Systems with Particular Reference to the Eye" (1964); Irving H. Leopold, M.D., Ophthalmologist, director of Wills Eye Hospital, Philadelphia; Frank J. Orland, D.D.S., director of the Walter G. Zoller Memorial Dental Clinic of the University of Chicago, the clinic that had previously experimentally shown a relationship between the amount of tooth decay and the type of light environment in laboratory animals (mentioned in Annals of Dentistry, Vol. 27, No. 1); and Edward F. Scanlon, M.D., director of the Tumor Research Committee of Evanston Hospital.
Dr. James Shannon, director of the Public Health Service of the NIH, was also interested in this project and personally offered some guidelines in preparing the grant application. Dr. Roscoe Spencer, who had recently retired as medical director of the United States Public Health Service where he had been in charge of cancer research, wrote a strong letter of recommendation to the new director of the National Cancer Institute(NCI), urging that favorable consideration be given to this particular grant application.
Approximately one month later, a letter was received by the EHLRI from the NCI, stating that "Our reviewers carefully examined your proposal to investigate biological responses to specific action spectra. They observed that no details of the experimental design are given; current literature on photobiology is casually mentioned and pilot experiments are referred to but not adequately described.
Finally, this vague proposal gives no evidence of a basis in scientific fact or method." They further commented that "It is not known that the applicant has any specific background which would permit him to analyze physiological phenomena in a meaningful way, and that the six persons named as collaborators have impressive titles and affiliation, but nothing is offered in support of their competence to participate in the project."
Dr. Edward F. Scanlon, one of the six doctors previously mentioned, was a trustee of the EHLRI and also head of the Cancer Research Department of the Evanston Hospital. He also served as president of the American Cancer Society for the year 1981.
At about the same time that the grant application was being submitted to the NIH, Dr. Scanlon and his associates were doing quite an extensive study at the Evanston Hospital Cancer Research Laboratory in testing various anti-cancer drugs on their laboratory animals.
Dr. Scanlon asked if the EHLRI would take some of the animals and keep them under different types of light, including the special area where they could be exposed to unfiltered natural daylight. This was done, and again the results showed a very significant difference in favor of the unfiltered natural daylight.
With the unanimous approval of the entire research committee of the hospital, Dr. Scanlon wrote a report together with a request for a small research grant and forwarded it to the American Cancer Society. In due course, a reply was received quite severely criticizing Dr. Scanlon's application and ending with the following statement: "While there is every likelihood that exposure to different kinds of light will affect certain physiological response in the animals, they (sic) will only confuse the issue.
"Support of this proposal and project as presented is not justified on scientific grounds."
A Miami, Florida newspaper reporter called the NCI and asked why an application was so completely turned down when it had been signed by six such outstanding doctors at six leading cancer research institutions in the country, plus a personal letter from the recently retired medical director and head of Cancer Research at The United States Public Health Service so strongly recommending it. The reply was simply that nothing so unscientific goes on at the NCI.
Shortly after both the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society grant applications had been turned down, former representative Paul Rogers of Florida arranged for this author, as Director of the EHLRI, to make a full presentation of all the results of the light studies pertaining to cancer research that had been done at the EHLRI, including the joint studies with the six doctors. This was done in the main auditorium at the NO headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland (1972), and approximately 75 to 100 of the top ranking research personnel attended.
The result was a complete blank until several years later when a letter was received from Colin F. Chignell, Ph.D., Chief, Laboratory of Environmental Biophysics, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, stating that he had attended this seminar and was very interested in what I had said about the effects of light on tumor development.
He further explained that he had recently been transferred from the NCI in Bethesda to head up the Laboratory of Environmental Biophysics at the newly established National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences located in Research Triangle Park. He invited me to come there and make the same presentation to his entire staff, which I was very happy to do. Dr. Chignell soon invited me back again to assist in obtaining exactly the same lights and to set up the experiment exactly the same way it had been done at the EHLRI.
In due course, another letter was received from Dr. Chignell informing me that the final results of this study were in and that they showed decreases in cancerous cell proliferation and inhibition of tumor development in those laboratory animals placed under the radiation-shielded, full-spectrum lights, as compared to either the regular cool white or the "pink" (warm white) fluorescent lights.
Dr. Chignell's paper was published in the British Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology, Vol. 34, pp. 617-621, 1981. Another important paper was presented at the Fifth International Congress of Radiation Research, held at the University of Washington in Seattle, July 14-20, 1974. Abstract number A-10-3 is a paper entitled "Illumination and X-Ray Effects on Tumorigenesis in Rodents," by Drs. Kiki B. Hellman and C. David Lytle of the Bureau of Radiological Health, a division of the Food and Drug Administration, Rockville, Maryland.
Female weaning Osborne-Mendel rats were inoculated with an average of 5-10 x 105 cultured tumor cells; this resulted in 80-100 percent incidence of tumors by seven days after injection. This model was used to investigate the effects of light illumination or X-irradiation on tumor initiation and progression. The inoculated rats were exposed to a 12-hour cycle of overhead illumination from fluorescent lights that were filtered to provide broad wavelength bands of either red or blue light. Blue light illumination resulted in decreased tumor incidence that was not seen for either the control or red light illumination.
Recent Studies Of Human Subjects
A provocative study appeared in the August 7, 1982 medical journal, The Lancet. Conducted by researchers at the Department of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, England, and the University of Sydney's Melanoma Clinic, Sydney Hospital, Sydney, Australia, an investigation was made into the incidence of skin cancers among Australians. Challenged was the theory that sunlight exposure was directly related to the incidence of malignant melanomas.
Surprisingly, the researchers found that there was a much higher correlation between the incidence of malignant melanomas in the office workers than those occupationally and regularly exposed to sunlight! Understandably, the report provoked considerable consternation. Such findings break with long-standing traditional assumptions, such as that there is no threshold of safety, not even at the lowest levels, to ultraviolet light.
This initial report led to two separate studies at the New York University School of Medicine. The first study, in the University's Department of Environmental Medicine, supported by a grant from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), confirmed the report of the University of London and the University of Sydney.
In a case-controlled epidemiological study of malignant melanoma, exposure to fluorescent light was associated with a relative risk to melanoma compared to those unexposed to such lighting. The NIOSH study was careful to control for age, gender, sun exposure to work and during recreation, ability to tan, tendency to sunburn, average lifetime latitude of residence, other malignancies, freckling, solar keratosis, weight, height, eye, hair, and skin color, and exposure to fluorescent lighting.
Regression analysis of all these variables did not find any challenge to the Australian study. The second study in the University's Department of Dermatology found similar support to the Department of Environmental Medicine's report.
However, these findings have still left many confused. In a letter to the editor of The Lancet, Rigel and colleagues have dismissed the higher rate of malignant melanoma as possibly being due to the ultraviolet A (UVA, 320-400 nm) emitted by a standard fluorescent tube. They argued that the "UVA emitted from the fluorescent tubes was about 1/3000 of that of the autumn sun in New York."
They further calculated that the total UVA exposure from fluorescent lights over an average working year of 2000 hours would only be equal to about 40 minutes of direct sun exposure. Rigel and colleagues therefore contended that the factor that put the indoor office workers at risk was not their fluorescent lighting exposure, but rather "their weekends and holidays at the beach, which gave them intense sun exposure to normally covered body sites." Yet this very possibility was considered in the New York University Medical School's study and was found without merit.
Even today all ultraviolet light exposure by humans is seen as a risk. For example, all the fluorescent tubes in the research laboratories, administrative offices, and all other areas of the Bureau of Radiological Health, Division of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, are covered with a special ultraviolet filtering plastic sleeve. In addition, there is still the added protection from the standard ultraviolet absorbing plastic diffusers in every fluorescent fixture. In essence, these measures assure those working underneath that no trace amount of ultraviolet is emitted.
Yet the key point that is so often missed in these discussions is that there are two types of radiation that require shielding. This is far more important than the minute amount of ultraviolet being emitted from a standard fluorescent light. The new patented OttLitcs M fixture compensates for this by including these shields, while providing the desirable balanced spectra normally found in daylight.
For those interested in reading the above studies, here are the citations:
Beral, V., Evans, S., Shore, H., and Milton, G. Malignant melanoma and exposure to fluorescent light at work. Lancet, ii:290-292, 1982.
Pasternak, B. S., Dubin, N., and Moscson, M. Malignant melanoma and exposure to fluorescent light at work. Lancet, i:704, 1983.
Rigel, D.S., Friedman, R.J., Levenstein, M., and Greenwald, D.I. Malignant melanoma and exposure to fluorescent lighting at work. Lancet, 004, 1983.
A similar recent complete break from another long-standing traditional assumption that ultraviolet light is the principal cause of cataracts appeared in the Corning Dispensing Information, No. 5, November 1984, which states:
Part 3
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