In this section I will be posting research and articles about the problem of electrosensitivity and the effects of electro-magnetic radiation on our health.

About ElectroSensitivity

Electrical Oversensitivity or Electrical Hypersensitivity is a fairly new phenomenon, the first cases and discussions came to public knowledge in the early seventies.

The first signs of electrical hypersensitivity are often experienced as a minor irritation when working with VDTs (Computer monitors, surveillance monitors, common TV - Television sets). In severes cases the sufferer may not be able to tolerate being near any electrical apparatus that is plugged into the mains. A frequent symptom is that of warmth or a burning sensation in the face, not unlike a strong sunburn. Some people develop a reddish skin blemish or rash at the same time. These can also be accompanied by a tingling sensations in the skin, both facially and/or over other parts of the body. In addition eye problems can occur. You might get the feeling that the mucus membranes have dried.

These initial symptoms must be regarded as a serious first warning! Switch of the VDT when not in use, cut down time before the VDT, move the VDT far away from the user, buy a new low emission, grounded, monitor with a Cu-net embedded into the front glass (shielding glass).  Do not sleep with your mobile phone next to the bed and use it as little as possible.  Move all electrical apparatus away from the bed, and that includes bedside clock radios.  Do not use electric blankets that are designed to be on all night; switch them off before getting into bed and unplug from the wall socket.  Avoid use of any wi-fi technology.  Stay with a cord telephone the base station cordless phones emit high levels of e-m radiation.

Warning signs

These are symptoms that people experience with eg. VDT work. For some individuals the problem becomes gradually worse, the symptoms are sustained for longer periods.

• An unnatural warmth or burning sensation in the face.
• A tingling, stinging or pricking sensation in the face or other areas of the body.
• Dryness of the upper respiratory tract or eye irritation.
• Problems with concentration, dizziness and loss of memory.
• Swollen mucus membranes resulting in nonviral/bacterial swelling of nose, throat, ear and sinuses.
• Feeling of impending influenza that never quite breaks out.
• Headache and nuasea.
• Teeth and jaw pains.
• Ache in muscles and joints.
• Cardiac palpitations.
• Predisposition to getting static shocks
  

Naturally the differences between individuals are great, some may only have one or a few symptoms, some have many, some have light symptoms, some may have severe difficulties.

Mobile phones 'more dangerous than smoking'

Brain expert warns of huge rise in tumours and calls on industry to take immediate steps to reduce radiation

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.

It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October 2008 – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.

Earlier this year, the French government warned against the use of mobile phones, especially by children. Germany also advises its people to minimise handset use, and the European Environment Agency has called for exposures to be reduced.

Professor Khurana – a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years, has published more than three dozen scientific papers – reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has put the results on a brain surgery website, and a paper based on the research is currently being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.

He admits that mobiles can save lives in emergencies, but concludes that "there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours". He believes this will be "definitively proven" in the next decade.

Noting that malignant brain tumours represent "a life-ending diagnosis", he adds: "We are currently experiencing a reactively unchecked and dangerous situation." He fears that "unless the industry and governments take immediate and decisive steps", the incidence of malignant brain tumours and associated death rate will be observed to rise globally within a decade from now, by which time it may be far too late to intervene medically.

"It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking," says Professor Khurana, who told the IoS his assessment is partly based on the fact that three billion people now use the phones worldwide, three times as many as smoke. Smoking kills some five million worldwide each year, and exposure to asbestos is responsible for as many deaths in Britain as road accidents.

Late last week, the Mobile Operators Association dismissed Khurana's study as "a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual". It believes he "does not present a balanced analysis" of the published science, and "reaches opposite conclusions to the WHO and more than 30 other independent expert scientific reviews".

EU watchdog calls for urgent action on Wi-Fi radiation

Europe's top environmental watchdog is calling for immediate action to reduce exposure to radiation from Wi-Fi, mobile phones and their masts. It suggests that delay could lead to a health crisis similar to those caused by asbestos, smoking and lead in petrol.

The warning, from the EU's European Environment Agency (EEA) follows an international scientific review which concluded that safety limits set for the radiation are "thousands of times too lenient", and an official British report last week which concluded that it could not rule out the development of cancers from using mobile phones.

Professor Jacqueline McGlade, the EEA's executive director, said yesterday: "Recent research and reviews on the long-term effects of radiations from mobile telecommunications suggest that it would be prudent for health authorities to recommend actions to reduce exposures, especially to vulnerable groups, such as children."

The EEA's initiative will increase pressure on governments and public health bodies to take precautionary action over the electromagnetic radiation from rapidly expanding new technologies. The German government is already advising its citizens to use wired internet connections instead of Wi-Fi and landlines instead of mobile phones.

The scientific review, produced by the international BioInitiative Working Group of leading scientists and public health and policy experts, says the "explosion of new sources has created unprecedented levels of artificial electromagnetic fields that now cover all but remote areas of the habitable space on Earth", causing "long-term and cumulative exposure" to "massively increased" radiation that "has no precedent in human history".

It says "corrections are needed in the way we accept, test and deploy" the technologies "in order to avert public health problems of a global nature".

Electronic Smog

The curse of the mobile phone age: around your home there are countless gadgets whose electrical fields, scientists now warn, are linked to depression, miscarriage and cancer

Invisible "smog", created by the electricity that powers our civilisation, is giving children cancer, causing miscarriages and suicides and making some people allergic to modern life, new scientific evidence reveals.

The evidence - which is being taken seriously by national and international bodies and authorities - suggests that almost everyone is being exposed to a new form of pollution with countless sources in daily use in every home.

Two official Department of Health reports on the smog are to be presented to ministers next month, and the Health Protection Agency (HPA) has recently held the first meeting of an expert group charged with developing advice to the public on the threat.

The UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) calls the electronic smog "one of the most common and fastest growing environmental influences" and stresses that it "takes seriously" concerns about the health effects. It adds that "everyone in the world" is exposed to it and that "levels will continue to increase as technology advances".

Wiring creates electrical fields, one component of the smog, even when nothing is turned on. And all electrical equipment - from TVs to toasters - give off another one, magnetic fields. The fields rapidly decrease with distance but appliances such as hair dryers and electric shavers, used close to the head, can give high exposures. Electric blankets and clock radios near to beds produce even higher doses because people are exposed to them for many hours while sleeping.

Radio frequency fields - yet another component - are emitted by microwave ovens, TV and radio transmitters, mobile phone masts and phones themselves, also used close to the head.

The WHO says that the smog could interfere with the tiny natural electrical currents that help to drive the human body. Nerves relay signals by transmitting electric impulses, for example, while the use of electrocardiograms testify to the electrical activity of the heart.

Campaigners have long been worried about exposure to fields from lines carried by electric pylons but, until recently, their concerns were dismissed, even ridiculed, by the authorities.

But last year a study by the official National Radiological Protection Board concluded that children living close to the lines are more likely to get leukaemia, and ministers are considering whether to stop any more homes being built near them. The discovery is causing a large-scale reappraisal of the hazards of the smog.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer - part of the WHO and the leading international organisation on the disease - classes the smog as a "possible human carcinogen". And Professor David Carpenter, dean of the School of Public Health at the State University of New York, told The Independent on Sunday last week that it was likely to cause up to 30 per cent of all childhood cancers. A report by the California Health Department concludes that it is also likely to cause adult leukaemia, brain cancers and possibly breast cancer and could be responsible for a 10th of all miscarriages.

Professor Denis Henshaw, professor of human radiation effects at Bristol University, says that "a huge and substantive body of evidence indicates a range of adverse health effects". He estimates that the smog causes some 9,000 cases of depression.

Perhaps strangest of all, there is increasing evidence that the smog causes some people to become allergic to electricity, leading to nausea, pain, dizziness, depression and difficulties in sleeping and concentrating when they use electrical appliances or go near mobile phone masts. Some are so badly affected that they have to change their lifestyles.

While not yet certain how it is caused, both the WHO and the HPA accept that the condition exists, and the UN body estimates that up to three in every 100 people are affected by it.

Case History: 'I felt I was going into meltdown'

Until a year ago, Sarah Dacre reckoned she had a "blessed life". Running her own company, and living in an expensive north London home, the high-earning divorcee described herself as "fab, fit and 40s". Then suddenly the sight in her right eye failed: she first noticed it when she was unable to read an A-Z map. Soon she was getting pains and numbness in her joints. She could not sleep and spent nights "pacing about like a caged lion". Her short-term memory failed and if she took notes to remind her, she would forget she had made them.

The symptoms got worse whenever she was exposed to electricity. She could not use a computer for more than five minutes without becoming nauseous. Even using a telephone landline gave her a buzzing in the ear and made her feel she was "going into meltdown".

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.

Electro Sensitivity Recognised

A report by the Health Protection Agency (HPA), to be published in May 2009, 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.

 "Sweden has conducted a considerable number of investigations into the possible effects of electromagnetic radiation. Over 10 years ago they concluded a 20 year long research project investigating the possible increased risk of various diseases among electrical workers. The results of this lengthy study consistently showed that this particular group of workers had an increased risk of developing brain tumours or leukaemia. The research showed that there was a consistent response to the amount of exposure to Eelectromagnetic Radiation. The higher the exposure the greater the risk of developing one or the other of the life threatening conditions. For instance among electronic engineers the risk was 30% higher; those working on HVPL's (high voltage power lines) the risks were twice the normal (200%) but that among radio and television assemblers, whose exposure was likely to be to weaker radiation but which over time was likely to be much more constant, the risk rose to 300%.

Train drivers were also included in the study and it was discovered that 4 out of 5 (80%) of the drivers showed significant chromosomal abberation - thus emerged what is now known as the genotoxic potential of Electro-magnetic Radiation. Further investigation has shown that chromosomes may be adversely affected by very low Electro-magnetic Radiation levels.

The reseach in Sweden also identified a condition of 'Extreme Adverse Reaction' to electro-magnetic forces that could affect up to 3% of the population. The problem is one of Electrosensitivity (ES) which can result in severely disabling responses such as chronic and persistent headaches and/or chronic fatigue. In Sweden Electro Sensitivity is taken very seriously, unlike the medical establishment in most other countries, including the United Kingdom. Here the medical system often seems to regard such symptoms as expressions of hypochondria or malingering - but should not these symptoms give cause to pause for thought? They are, after all, very similar to the symptoms frequently associated with the condition ME - a condition still surrounded by an aura of doubt and uncertainty.

The Swedich knowledge and research, which incidentally is increasingly being backed up by research results from the USA, certainly deserves continued positive and open-minded investigation rather than the seemingly 'ostrich- like' approach to the problem that seems to be prevalent here and in many other countries."

(taken from J. Cragg, Electro-Magnetic Pollution, article in The Therapist, I.P.T.I. Magazine, Issue 18, Summer 2008)