49ers researching whether electrical substation near practice facility is increasing injuries

The San Francisco 49ers are looking into a theory suggesting that an electrical substation next to its practice facility is causing injuries.

The NFL team’s general manager, John Lynch, said Wednesday at a press conference, “What I would tell you, because it deals with allegedly the health and safety of our players, I think you have to look into everything. … We aren’t going to turn a blind eye. We’ll look into everything.”

The theory, popularized by an X thread from user Peter Cowan, is that the electromagnetic waves generated by the Silicon Valley Power Mission Substation by the practice facility in Santa Clara are weakening the soft tissue of 49ers players and leading to the injuries, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. 

The team had the fourth-most games of players lost to injuries in the league in 2025, according to RotoWire, the same rank as in 2024. In 2017 and 2020, the Niners ranked worst in that category, according to The Athletic.

Experts have expressed skepticism that the electromagnetic waves, a type of noniodizing radiation, could correlate with the team’s injury history.

National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements Board Chair Jerrold Bushberg, who is also a professor of radiology at University of California, Davis, told Front Office Sports that “there is no firmly established evidence” suggesting that low-level electromagnetic exposure from things like substations have any biological impact on people.”

“In the huge number of studies that have tried to look at the effects of nonionizing radiation on cells, there’s been no reported damage to DNA, proteins or other molecules that’s been identified,” Gayle Woloschak, a professor of radiation oncology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told SFGATE.

The 49ers have practiced next to the substation for decades. The power plant dates to 1986 while the practice facility dates to 1988 — prior to the team’s three most recent Super Bowl victories in January 1995, 1990 and 1989, according to The Athletic.

Lynch addressed some of the skepticism and the origin of the theory. He said that “we’ve been reaching out to anyone and everyone to see does a study exist other than a guy sticking an apparatus underneath the fence and by coming up with a number that I have no idea what that means. That’s what we know exists. We’ve heard that debunked. So yes, we will look into it.”