Posted on 09/29/2005 9:25:31 PM PDT by Coleus
Electrical fields can make you sick Sarah-Kate Templeton, Medical Correspondent
A GOVERNMENT agency has acknowledged for the first time that people can suffer nausea, headaches and muscle pains when exposed to electromagnetic fields from mobile phones, electricity pylons and computer screens. The condition known as electrosensitivity, a heightened reaction to electrical energy, will be recognised as a physical impairment.
A report by the Health Protection Agency (HPA), to be published next month, will state that increasing numbers of British people are suffering from the syndrome. While the total figure is not known, thousands are believed to be affected to some extent.
The report, by the agency’s radiation protection division, is expected to say that GPs do not know how to treat sufferers and that more research is needed to find cures. It will give a full list of the symptoms, which can include dizziness, irregular heartbeat and loss of memory.
Although most European countries do not recognise the condition, Britain will follow Sweden where electrosensitivity was recognised as a physical impairment in 2000. About 300,000 Swedish men and women are sufferers.
The acknowledgement may fuel legal action by sufferers who claim mobile phone masts have made them ill.
In January Sir William Stewart, chairman of the HPA and the government’s adviser on mobile phones, warned that a small proportion of the population could be harmed by exposure to electromagnetic fields, and called for careful examination of the problem.
The HPA has now reviewed all scientific literature on electrosensitivity and concluded that it is a real syndrome. The condition had previously been dismissed as psychological.
The findings should lead to better treatment for sufferers. In Sweden people who are allergic to electrical energy receive government support to reduce exposure in their homes and workplaces.
Special cables are installed in sufferers’ homes while electric cookers are replaced with gas stoves. Walls, roofs, floors and windows can be covered with a thin aluminium foil to keep out the electromagnetic field — the area of energy that occurs round any electrically conductive item.
British campaigners believe electrical devices in the home and the workplace, as well as mobile phones emitting microwave radiation, have created an environmental trigger for the syndrome.
There is particular concern about exposure to emissions from mobile phone masts or base stations, often located near schools or hospitals.
In January Stewart also called for a national review of planning rules for masts. The review was launched by the government in April.
British sufferers report feeling they are being “zapped” by electromagnetic fields from appliances and go out of their way to avoid them.
Some have moved to remote areas where electromagnetic pollution is lower.
The HPA report is eagerly awaited by campaigners. Alasdair Philips, director of the campaign group Powerwatch, said: “This will help the increasing number of people who tell us their GPs do not know how to treat them.”
Rod Read, chairman of Electrosensitivity UK, added: “This will be the beginning of an awareness of a new form of pollution from electrical energy.”
The reason your compass points north is the earth's electromagnetic field overwhelms local fields, so
This will be the new fad "disease of the week."
Junk science, psychosomatic bs
Give 'em a couple of months and they'll be complaining that the gas stoves make 'em sick...
Every manufacturer uses different antenna designs and signaling characteristics for this type of gear. Back in the early days of the company, they would program the units in the office. For a few manufacturers, when their unit was switched on inside the office everyone within 50 feet or so would immediately know it, even if you were in the next room over and could not see that someone was working on those units. Those units were promptly discarded in favor of other designs because people would be ready to throw them out the window or simply leave the office in short order.
As I stated, before this experience I would not have believed it, but when the worst of that 2-5 GHz RF gear was turned on, everyone within a certain distance immediately had an unpleasant experience. It is hard to describe -- kind of like someone was suddenly scrubbing the inside of your brain with sandpaper. An extremely irritating experience that definitely impairs cognitive function and is unlike any other experience I've had. Fortunately, most RF gear in that spectrum has no immediately discernable impact on people, though a larger group of devices has a subtle impact, mild headache being a common symptom of proximity to one of those devices.
There definitely is some kind of effect from RF gear in the 2-5 GHz spectrum, even at relatively low power, though it appears to be as much a function of the antenna design and signal characteristics as anything. The puzzling thing is that while the Europeans have done studies that show that exposure to these frequencies leaves only scant biochemical traces in people, in blind studies people exposed to the RF had clear psychological reactions to that exposure that has never been adequately explained.
A ping seems like a good idea. The whole concept of electrical currents making us sick is revolting.
[rimshot!]
I have some resistance to that... (Rimshot) ... but one does have to keep current.
Amp sure your correct about that.
"I used to believe this was a lot of nonsense, right up until the point that I was a principle at a startup that was doing Layer-2 fixed wireless."
Wireless phone technology is the exception to the rule - most of these complaints have little basis in fact - the people making the complaints have no concept of the 1/r^2 or 1/r^3 relationship that dramatically drops the fields over distance.
But people putting cell phones to their ear and people standing next to transmitters are getting significant effects.
Ah, yes, the "Mommies Against Microwaves" contingent.
As you point out, the effects only manifest in relatively close proximity to the radiator. We are talking 50-100 feet in the worst cases at the power levels commonly used for consumer devices in the microwave spectrum. Not that this stops the nitwits who are deathly afraid of microwaves at any distance.
The only weird thing out of the whole experience is that I am one of those few people who can detect when they are in proximity to microwave sources because I am very familiar with the effects even when they are subtle. For example, many WiFi units have a very subtle effect that most people probably would not notice unless they are familiar with the more extreme cases. Some of our field techs could actually identify the manufacturer of an unknown radiator with a moderate amount of reliability when they came near its field. Too much time immersed in it I guess.
Horsehockey!
junk science
yep, probably is.
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