The San Francisco 49ers have been plagued by injuries again this season, and they’re serious. Among them, they lost quarterback Brock Purdy, wide receiver Ricky Pearsall, tight end George Kittle, defensive end Nick Bosa and linebacker Fred Warner for long periods of time.
But Dr. Allen Sills, the league’s chief medical officer, said it’s “simply not true” that the 49ers lead the NFL in non-contact and lower-body injuries.
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“This is wrong,” Hills said on the league’s health and safety call on Friday, NBC Sports Bay Area’s Matt Maiocco reported.
Additionally, Hills commented on a debunked conspiracy theory that tied the 49ers’ unfortunate injury history to the Valley Power Mission substation, which is located next to Levi’s Stadium — also the site of this year’s Super Bowl and six World Cup games this summer — and adjacent to the team’s training facility.
“I will tell you that I am not familiar with anything in the sports medicine literature that supports these associations, but I will also tell you that injury causation is very complex,” Sears told The Athletic.
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Hills added:
“If you think about biology and medicine, you don’t typically have a single factor that drives a biological system. So when we think about injury causation, whether it’s a lower-body strain, an ACL, or a concussion… it’s the equipment, it’s the training, it’s the prior injury history, it’s the exposure, it’s the type of play. There are so many factors involved. And, so, I think it’s rare in a biological system that you see one factor that does confer injury risk,” Dr. Sears said.
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The theory that a large number of the 49ers’ injuries are caused by electromotive force (EMF), which is characterized by invisible electricity from electrical equipment such as wires, has gained widespread attention online after it was proposed on social media by someone calling himself a “board-certified quantum biology practitioner,” The Washington Post reported.
His post has received more than 22 million views, and the theory has been discussed among NFL players. However, that theory had been rejected by medical experts in the weeks leading up to Hills’ speech on Friday.
It’s also important to note that the 49ers have practiced next to the substation since 1988 and have won three Super Bowls during that time.
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Frank de Vocht, a professor of epidemiology and public health at Bristol Medical School in the UK and described by The Washington Post as a leading expert on how electromagnetic fields affect humans, said the theory was “nonsense.”
Likewise, UC Davis radiology professor Jerrold Bushberg told Front Office Sports that there is “no conclusive evidence” to support this theory.
49ers general manager John Lynch discussed the substation theory during his end-of-season press conference on Jan. 21.
“Allegedly, as it relates to the health and safety of our players, I think you have to look into everything,” Lynch said.