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The 49ers will take the field Saturday night against the Seahawks without star tight end George Kittle, who went down with an Achilles tear in the second quarter of the team’s playoff win over the Eagles on Sunday.
In the aftermath of his injury, a dizzying theory caught fire on social media.
A user named Peter Cowan, who identifies as “board-certified,” had posted on X/Twitter earlier in the week a map of the Niners’ stadium and practice facility located next to an electrical substation. “Low-frequency electromagnetic fields can degrade collagen, weaken tendons, and cause soft-tissue damage at levels regulators call ‘safe,’” Cowan wrote.
Cowan, who is not a doctor, went on in a series of posts and Substack articles to link the 49ers’ injuries in the past decade to the proximity of the substation. Star players including Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey, Nick Bosa, Brandon Aiyuk, and Fred Warner have all struggled with injuries, many of them major tendon and ligament tears.
The post picked up traction in the days before the game, but Kittle’s injury was gasoline on the fire. Niners wide receiver Kendrick Bourne joked “that power plant” is the source of the team’s injuries. Former NFL players promoted the theory on the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast. “We don’t know enough about it, but we know it’s 100% fact,” said cohost Will Compton. Other former NFLers like Taybor Pepper and Kurt Benkert also posted about the theory online. (Pepper was the 49ers’ long snapper from 2020 to 2024, and Benkert was briefly on the practice squad in 2022.) Cowan’s original post has around 22 million views on X.
Though the Kyle Shanahan–era 49ers have consistently been among the most injured teams in the NFL, there are two major problems with the substation theory.
First, 49ers players have been exposed to the substation for far longer than the decade since the team moved to Levi’s Stadium. The plant has been operating since 1986. The 49ers opened a new practice facility next door in 1988, and they won three Super Bowls in the next seven years. The team moved into Levi’s Stadium in 2014, something Cowan presents as an important development when in fact the team had been practicing near the plant for nearly 40 years. (Cowan did not immediately respond to an email from Front Office Sports asking whether the fact that the Niners had been exposed to the supposedly harmful radiation for decades, including when they were winning Super Bowls, had any impact on his theory.)
Second, according to a bevy of medical experts, the research doesn’t back it up.
Cowan’s theory targets extremely low-frequency radiation, or ELF, the kind produced by power lines and electrical equipment operating at frequencies around 60 hertz. He also suggests the guidelines for acceptable exposure are outdated.
For more on the viral injury theory and what experts say, read Margaret Fleming’s story here.
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