  We work out in the forward limit and up to order $e^6$ in perturbation theory
the collinear divergences. In this kinematical regime we discover new collinear
divergences that we argue can be only cancelled using quantum interference with
processes contributing to the gauge anomaly. This rules out the possibility of
a quantum consistent and anomaly free theory with massless charges and long
range interactions. We use the anomalous threshold singularities to derive a
gravitational lower bound on the mass of the lightest charged fermion.
