Is Dirty Electricity Making You Sick?
Too many electromagnetic fields surrounding us—from cell phones, wifi, and commonplace modern technology—may be seriously harming our health. Here's how to minimize your exposure.
By MICHAEL SEGELL
In 1990, the city of La Quinta, CA,
proudly opened the doors of its sparkling new middle school. Gayle Cohen, then
a sixth-grade teacher, recalls the sense of excitement everyone felt: "We
had been in temporary facilities for 2 years, and the change was
exhilarating." But the glow soon dimmed. One teacher developed vague
symptoms—weakness, dizziness—and didn't return after the Christmas break. A
couple of years later, another developed cancer and died; the teacher who took
over his classroom was later diagnosed with throat cancer. More instructors
continued to fall ill, and then, in 2003, on her 50th birthday, Cohen received
her own bad news: breast cancer. "That's when I sat down with another
teacher, and we remarked on all the cancers we'd seen," she says. "We
immediately thought of a dozen colleagues who had either gotten sick or passed
away." By 2005, 16 staffers among the 137 who'd worked at the new school
had been diagnosed with 18 cancers, a ratio nearly 3 times the expected number.
Nor were the children spared: About a dozen cancers have been detected so far
among former students. A couple of them have died.
Prior to undergoing her first chemotherapy
treatment, Cohen approached the school principal, who eventually went to
district officials for an investigation. A local newspaper article about the
possible disease cluster caught the attention of Sam Milham, MD, a widely
traveled epidemiologist who has investigated hundreds of environmental and
occupational illnesses and published dozens of peer-reviewed papers on his
findings. For the past 30 years, he has trained much of his focus on the
potential hazards of electromagnetic fields (EMFs)—the radiation that surrounds
all electrical appliances and devices, power lines, and home wiring and is
emitted by communications devices, including cell phones and radio, TV, and
WiFi transmitters. His work has led him, along with an increasingly alarmed
army of international scientists, to a controversial conclusion: The
"electrosmog" that first began developing with the rollout of the
electrical grid a century ago and now envelops every inhabitant of Earth is
responsible for many of the diseases that impair—or kill—us.
Milham was especially interested in
measuring the ambient levels of a particular kind of EMF, a relatively new
suspected carcinogen known as high-frequency voltage transients, or "dirty
electricity." Transients are largely by-products of modern
energy-efficient electronics and appliances—from computers, refrigerators, and
plasma TVs to compact fluorescent lightbulbs and dimmer switches—which tamp
down the electricity they use. This manipulation of current creates a wildly
fluctuating and potentially dangerous electromagnetic field that not only
radiates into the immediate environment but also can back up along home or
office wiring all the way to the utility, infecting every energy customer in
between. With Cohen's help, Milham entered the school after hours one day to
take readings. Astonishingly, in some classrooms he found the surges of
transient pollution exceeded his meter's ability to gauge them. His preliminary
findings prompted the teachers to file a complaint with the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration, which in turn ordered a full investigation by the
California Department of Health Care Services.
More from Prevention: 11 Ways to
Protect Yourself from Dirty Electricity
The final analysis, reported by
Milham and his colleague, L. Lloyd Morgan, in 2008 in the American Journal
of Industrial Medicine: Cumulative exposure to transients in the school
increased the likelihood a teacher would develop cancer by 64%. A single year
of working in the building raised risk by 21%. The teachers' chances of
developing melanoma,
thyroid cancer,
and uterine cancer
were particularly high, as great as 13 times the average. Although not included
in the tabulations, the risks for young students were probably even greater.
"In the decades-long debate
about whether EMFs are harmful," says Milham, "it looks like
transients could be the smoking gun."
The Case against EMFs
Cancer and Electricity—could a disease whose cause has long eluded scientists be
linked to perhaps the greatest practical discovery of the modern era? For 50
years, researchers who have tried to tie one to the other have been routinely
dismissed by a variety of skeptics, from congressional investigators to
powerful interest groups—most prominently electric utilities, cell phone
manufacturers, and WiFi providers, which have repeatedly cited their own data
showing the linkage to be "weak and inconsistent." Recently, however,
in addition to the stunning new investigations into dirty electricity (which
we'll return to), several developments have highlighted the growing hazards of
EMF pollution—and the crucial need to address them.
The Evidence showing harm is
overwhelming.
In 2007, the Bioinitiative Working
Group, an international collaboration of prestigious scientists and public
health policy experts from the United States, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, and
China, released a 650-page report citing more than 2,000 studies (many very
recent) that detail the toxic effects of EMFs from all sources. Chronic
exposure to even low-level radiation (like that from cell phones), the
scientists concluded, can cause a variety of cancers, impair immunity, and
contribute to Alzheimer's
disease and dementia,
heart disease, and many other ailments. "We now have a critical mass of
evidence, and it gets stronger every day," says David Carpenter, MD,
director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at
Albany and coauthor of the public-health chapters of the Bioinitiative report.
Fears about the hazards of cell
phones seem justified.
"Every single study of brain
tumors that looks at 10 or more years of use shows an increased risk of brain
cancer," says Cindy Sage, MA, coeditor of the report. A recent study from
Sweden is particularly frightening, suggesting that if you started using a cell
phone as a teen, you have a 5 times greater risk of brain cancer than those who
started as an adult. The risk rises even more for people who use the phone on
only one side of the head. While defenders of cell phone safety claim no
scientist can explain why EMFs may be harmful in humans, a body of reliable and
consistent animal research shows that electromagnetic fields, equal to those
generated by mobile phones, open the blood-brain barrier, causing blood vessels
to leak fluid into the brain and damage neurons. Ironically, that research (by
renowned Swedish neuro-oncologist Leif G. Salford, MD, PhD) began with the goal
of finding a way to deliver chemotherapy
to brain tumors. (See the worst
time to use a cell phone.)
Other countries are revising
exposure standards.
Members of the European Union,
which has led the way on EMF investigations, are moving quickly to protect
their citizens, particularly children and pregnant women. In the past 2 years
alone, France, Germany, and England have dismantled wireless networks in
schools and public libraries, and other countries are pressing to follow suit.
Israel has banned the placement of cellular antennae on residences, and Russian
officials have advised against cell phone use for children under 18.
Electrical hypersensitivity (EHS)
is becoming more widespread.
Symptoms of EHS, a recently
identified condition, include fatigue, facial irritation (resembling rosacea),
tinnitus, dizziness, and digestive disturbances, which occur after exposure to
visual display units, mobile phones, WiFi equipment, and commonplace
appliances. Experts say up to 3% of all people are clinically hypersensitive,
as many as one-third of us to a lesser degree.
Electrical pollution is increasing
dramatically.
"For the first time in our
evolutionary history, we have generated an entire secondary, virtual, densely
complex environment—an electromagnetic soup—that essentially overlaps the human
nervous system," says Michael Persinger, PhD, a neuroscientist at
Laurentian University who has studied the effects of EMFs on cancer cells. And
it appears that, more than a century after Thomas Edison switched on his first
lightbulb, the health consequences of that continual overlap are just now
beginning to be documented.
A History of Harmful Effects
Until Edison's harnessing of electricity, humans' only sources of EMF exposure were the
earth's static magnetic field (which causes a compass needle to point north)
and cosmic rays from the sun and outer space; over our long evolution, we've
adapted to solar EMFs by developing protective pigment. "But we have no
protection against other EMF frequencies," says Andrew Marino, PhD, JD, a
pioneer in bioelectromagnetics who has done extensive EMF research and a
professor in the department of orthopedic surgery at the Louisiana State Health
Sciences Center. "How quickly can we adapt our biology to these new
exposures? It's the most important environmental health question—and problem—of
the 21st century."
Research into the hazards of EMFs
has been extensive, controversial—and, at least at the outset, animated by
political intrigue. A sampling:
•
The Russians first noticed during
World War II that radar operators (radar operates using radio frequency waves)
often came down with symptoms we now attribute to electrical hypersensitivity
syndrome. In the 1960s, during the height of the Cold War, they secretly
bombarded the US embassy in Moscow with microwave radiation (a higher-frequency
RF used to transmit wireless signals), sickening American employees. Radio wave
sickness—also called microwave sickness—is now a commonly accepted diagnosis.
•
When television (also radio wave)
was introduced in Australia in 1956, researchers there documented a rapid
increase in cancers among people who lived near transmission towers.
•
In the 1970s, Nancy Wertheimer,
PhD, a Denver epidemiologist (since deceased), detected a spike in childhood leukemia
(a rare disease) among kids who lived near electric power lines, prompting a
rash of studies that arrived at similar conclusions.
•
In the 1980s, investigators
concluded that office workers with high exposure to EMFs from electronics had
higher incidences of melanoma—a
disease most often associated with sun exposure—than outdoor workers.
•
In 1998, researchers with the
National Cancer Institute reported that childhood leukemia
risks were "significantly elevated" in children whose mothers used
electric blankets during pregnancy and in children who used hair dryers, video
machines in arcades, and video games connected to TVs.
•
Over the past few years,
investigators have examined cancer clusters on Cape Cod, which has a huge US
Air Force radar array called PAVE PAWS, and Nantucket, home to a powerful
Loran- Cantenna. Counties in both areas have the highest incidences of all
cancers in the entire state of Massachusetts.
•
More recently, the new findings on
transients—particularly those crawling along utility wiring—are causing some
scientists to rethink that part of the EMF debate pertaining to the hazards of
power lines. Could they have been focusing on the wrong part of the EMF
spectrum?
Transients: The Post- Modern
Carcinogen
Some earlier, notable—albeit aborted—research
suggests this may be the case. In 1988, Hydro-Quebec, a Canadian electric
utility, contracted researchers from McGill University to study the health
effects of power line EMFs on its employees. Gilles Theriault, MD, DrPH, who
led the research and was chair of the department of occupational health at the
university, decided to expand his focus to include high-frequency transients
and found, even after controlling for smoking, that workers exposed to them had
up to a 15-fold risk of developing lung cancer. After the results were
published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, the utility decided
to put an end to the study.
That research commenced at a time
when energy-efficient devices—the major generators of transients—were beginning
to saturate North American homes and clutter up power lines. A telltale sign of
an energy-efficient device is the ballast, or transformer, that you see near
the end of a power cord on a laptop computer, printer, or cell phone charger
(although not all devices have them). When plugged in, it's warm to the touch,
an indication that it's tamping down current and throwing off transient
pollution. Two of the worst creators of transient radiation: light dimmer
switches and compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs). Transients are created when
current is repeatedly interrupted. A CFL, for instance, saves energy by turning
itself on and off repeatedly, as many as 100,000 times per second.
So how does the human body respond
to this pulsing radiation? "Think of a magnet," explains Dave
Stetzer, an electrical engineer and power supply expert in Blair, WI.
"Opposite charges attract, and like charges repel. When a transient is
going positive, the negatively charged electrons in your body move toward that
positive charge. When the transient flips to negative, the body's electrons are
pushed back. Remember, these positive-negative shifts are occurring many
thousands of times per second, so the electrons in your body are oscillating to
that tune. Your body becomes charged up because you're basically coupled to the
transient's electric field."
Keep in mind that all the cells in
your body, whether islets in the pancreas awaiting a signal to manufacture
insulin or white blood cells speeding to the site of an injury, use
electricity—or "electron change"—to communicate with each other. By
overlapping the body's signaling mechanisms, could transients interfere with
the secretion of insulin, drown out the call-and-response of the immune system,
and cause other physical havoc?
Some preliminary research implies
the answer is yes. Over the past 3 years, Magda Havas, PhD, a researcher in the
department of environmental and resource studies at Trent University in
Ontario, has published several studies that suggest exposure to transients may
elevate blood sugar levels among people with diabetes and prediabetes and that
people with multiple
sclerosis improve their balance and have fewer tremors after just a
few days in a transient- free environment. Her work also shows that after
schools installed filters to clean up transients, two-thirds of teachers
reported improvement in symptoms that had been plaguing them, including
headache, dry eye, facial flushing, asthma,
skin irritation, and depression.
Transients are particularly
insidious because they accumulate and strengthen, their frequency reaching into
the dangerous RF range. Because they travel along home and utility wiring, your
neighbor's energy choices will affect the electrical pollution in your house.
In other words, a CFL illuminating a porch down the block can send nasty
transients into your bedroom.
Something else is sending
transients into your home: the earth. From your high school science texts, you
know that electricity must travel along a complete circuit, always returning to
its source (the utility) along a neutral wire. In the early 1990s, says Stetzer,
as transients began overloading utility wiring, public service commissions in
many states told utilities to drive neutral rods into the ground on every
existing pole and every new one they erected. "Today, more than 70% of all
current going out on the wires returns to substations via the earth," says
Stetzer—encountering along the way all sorts of subterranean conductors, such
as water, sewer, and natural-gas pipes, that ferry even more electrical
pollution into your home.
A Pragmatic Proposal
Of course, these small studies—from
Milham, Hydro-Quebec, and Havas—hardly constitute a blanket indictment of
transients. "We're still early in this part of the EMF story," says
Carpenter. Does that mean as evidence of their harm accumulates, officials will
raise a red flag? Not likely, if past EMF debates are any indication. Power
companies have successfully beaten back attempts to modify exposure standards,
and the cell phone industry, which has funded at least 87% of the research on
the subject, has effectively resisted regulation. One good reason has had to do
with latency—how long it takes to develop a particular cancer, often 25 years
or more. Cell phones have been around only about that long.
But does that mean we avoid any
discussion of their possible dangers? Again, if the past is a guide, the
answer appears to be "probably." American scientists worried about
the hazards of smoking, the DES (diethylstilbestrol) pill (given to pregnant
women, it caused birth defects), asbestos, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls)—the
list is lengthy—but officially warned about exposure only after they could say
with absolute certainty that these things were harmful. As for protecting
ourselves from toxic radiation, we have a lax—and laughable—history. In the
1920s, just a few years after medical imaging devices were invented, physicians
were known to entertain their guests by x-raying them at garden parties. In the
1930s, scientists often kept radium in open trays on their desks. Shoe stores
used x-ray machines in the 1940s to properly fit children's feet, and
radioactive wristwatches with glowing hour hands were popular in the 1950s.
All of which means that, absent
prudent safety standards from both public officials and manufacturers (adding a
protective filter would add 5 cents to the cost of making a CFL and $5 to the
cost of a laptop), you'll have to protect yourself from EMFs. Here's a
reasonable proposition: Practice what is known in Europe as the precautionary
principle, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Don't expose yourself
unnecessarily to EMF hazards. Don't buy a home next to a WiFi tower. Get a
corded telephone instead of a cordless one. Don't let your teenager sleep with
a cell phone under her pillow. Don't use your laptop computer in your lap.
Treat your EMF-emitting devices with the same cautious respect you do other
invaluable modern devices, like your car, which is also dangerous—and can kill.
You don't drive in an unnecessarily risky fashion—at high speed or while
talking on a cell phone (right?).
The sad truth is that until we have
more epidemiologic evidence—whether from disease clusters like the ones at La
Quinta and on Cape Cod or from long-term analyses of the health of the world's
4-billion-and-growing cell phone users—we won't know definitively whether electrical
pollution is harming us. And even then, we are unlikely to know why or how.
"In this country, our research dollars are spent on finding ways to treat
disease, not on what causes it—which is to say, how we can prevent it,"
says Marino. "And that's a tragedy."
But that's also another story.
The Opposing View: "No need
for regulation"
In 1993, the National Institutes of
Health and Department of Energy began an extensive review of all studies on the
possible health effects of electromagnetic fields. six years later they
completed their project, called the Electric and Magnetic Fields research and
public Information Dissemination (EMF RAPID) program, and reported their
findings to Congress: scientific evidence of human health risk from EMF
exposure is "weak," they concluded.
While acknowledging a link between
both childhood and adult leukemias and EMFs, the researchers' laboratory
studies with cells and animals failed to identify a mechanism—that is, how EMFs
might cause cancer. (read the EMF RAPID report at prevention.com/links)
To longtime EMF investigators such
as David Carpenter, MD, the NIH dismissal of EMF hazards was patently absurd
then and even more so now, given the spate of new findings. "We don't know
the mechanism for most carcinogens," he says. "there's this idea that
anything that causes cancer must directly damage DNA, which is nonsense because
most carcinogens don't directly damage DNA. and physicists are adamant that the
energy in everyday EMF exposure is so low, it couldn't possibly do anything to
biological systems. It's like saying the Earth is flat because you can't see
over the edge."
In fact, biological impacts of
EMFs—therapeutic ones—are well known. Low-level frequencies are commonly used
to promote healing of wounds and bone fractures, and experimental studies show
positive effects of pulsed EMFs in treating pain and depression. recently,
Michael persinger, PhD, a cognitive neuroscientist at Laurentian University,
found that pulsed magnetic fields also halted the growth of melanoma cells in
mice.
In a neat twist of logic, many
scientists believe that the more we document beneficial effects of EMFs, the
better we'll understand their hazards. "If EMF at low intensities can
heal," says environmental consultant Cindy sage, "then when we are
constantly and randomly exposed to it from multiple sources, it may also be
harmful, like any medicine used indiscriminately."
What was wrong with the La Quinta
School?
According to epidemiologist Sam
Milham, MD, the middle school was rife with the usual suspects—fluorescent
lighting, electronic devices—whose toxic effects were exacerbated by an
electrical supply overloaded with high-voltage transients.
Substandard wiring in the new
school also undoubtedly played a role; officials have since added protective
shielding to the electrical room. Milham also measured transient pollution
along the transmission lines that fed power to the school. "I found it all
the way from the substation to the school—more than a mile," Milham says.
"There are three other buildings along the route that also serve children.
I've reported it to the FCC and the utility, but they ignore the problem."
How electrical pollution harms
Here, a partial spectrum of the
electromagnetic fields that surround us, from strong (waves of extremely high
frequency and short length) to weak (waves of extremely low frequency and long
length). In each category, you'll find sources that generate the EMF, and
associated health risks from overexposure.
X-Ray
[medical imaging devices]
Used to diagnose illness
|
RISK
Damages tissue and organs by
breaking bonds
|
VISIBLE LIGHT
[SUN]
The only visible EMF
|
RISK
Ultraviolet light can burn skin
and cause cancer
|
MICROWAVE (a higher frequency RF)
[CELL AND CORDLESS PHONES AND
TOWERS]
Can heat tissues and penetrate
blood-brain barrier
|
RISK
Increased risk of brain cancer, dementia,
and heart disease
|
RADIO(RF)
[RADIO AND TELEVISION SIGNALS]
Can disrupt body's cellular
interactions
|
RISK
"Radio sickness" and
electrical hypersensitivity syndrome
|
EXTREMELY LOW FREQUENCY (ELF)
[POWER LINES]
Can cause weak electric currents
to flow through the body
|
RISK
Exposure is associated with
childhood leukemia
|
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