Hindawi Publishing Corporation Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity Volume 2013, Article ID 414393, 8 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/414393 Research Article 50 Hz Electromagnetic Field Produced Changes in FTIR Spectroscopy Associated with Mitochondrial Transmembrane Potential Reduction in Neuronal-Like SH-SY5Y Cells Emanuele Calabrò, 1 Salvatore Condello, 2 Monica Currò, 2 Nadia Ferlazzo, 2 Mercurio Vecchio, 2 Daniela Caccamo, 2 Salvatore Magazù, 1 and Riccardo Ientile 2 1 Department of Physics, University of Messina, 98165 Messina, Italy 2 Department of Biomedical Sciences and Morphofunctional Imaging, University of Messina, 98125 Messina, Italy Correspondence should be addressed to Riccardo Ientile; ientile@unime.it Received 29 May 2013; Accepted 11 June 2013 Academic Editor: Giuseppe Valacchi Copyright © 2013 Emanuele Calabr` o et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells were used as an experimental model to study the efects of 50 Hz electromagnetic feld, in the range from 50 T to 1.4 mT. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis evidenced a reduction in intensity of the amide A band and a slight increase of vibration bands at 2921 cm −1 and 2853 cm −1 corresponding to methylene groups. A further increase of the magnetic feld intensity of exposure up to 0.8mT and 1.4mT produced a clear increase in intensity of CH 2 vibration bands. Moreover, it has been observed some alterations in the amide I region, such as a shifed peak of the amide I band to a smaller wavenumber, probably due to protein conformational changes. Tese results suggested that exposure to extremely low electromagnetic felds infuenced lipid components of cellular membrane and the N–H in-plane bending and C–N stretching vibrations of peptide linkages, modifying the secondary structures of -helix and -sheet contents and producing unfolding process in cell membrane proteins. Te observed changes afer exposure to 50 Hz electromagnetic feld higher than 0.8 mT were associated with a signifcant reduction of cell viability and reduced mitochondrial transmembrane potential. 1. Introduction Although 50/60 Hz EMF seems to not directly lead to genotoxic efects, it is possible that certain cellular processes altered by exposure to ELF-EMFs indirectly afect the struc- ture of DNA, causing strand breaks and other chromosomal aberrations [1]. Several epidemiological studies reported a relationship between an increase of risk of cancer and the exposure to ELF-EMF. In particular three studies of the World Health Organization (WHO) on EMF evidenced possible health efects from exposure to static and ELF-EMFs [2–4]. Environmental Health Criteria (EHC) delineated the main objectives to review the scientifc literature on the biological efects of exposure to ELF-EMFs to use this health risk assessment to make recommendations to national authorities on health protection programs. EMFs are generated everywhere in our living environ- ment by modern electrical systems such as power lines, elec- tric generators and motors, electrical wiring, home electronic devices, and wireless communication systems [5]. Te electric feld inside the body is normally fve to six orders of magnitude smaller than the external electric feld, whereas the permeability of tissue relative to magnetic felds is the same as that of air, so that the feld in organic system is the same as the external feld. From this evidence many investigations emphasized the efects of magnetic feld component with respect to those due to electric component efects. In the close proximity of certain home appliances, the magnetic-feld intensities can be as much as few hundred microteslas, whereas in some workplaces they can reach 10mT, leading us to investigate the range of exposure to magnetic feld around a few milliteslas.