Could wifi harm our health?
November 24 2014 at 06:00pm
By POLLY DUNBAR
INDEPENDENT
NEWSPAPERS
Up to 5 percent of the population - more
than 3 million people - believe they are affected by some degree of
electro-sensitivity, an allergy to the radiowaves and microwaves emitted by
devices. Picture: David Ritchie
London - The list of places off-limits to
Mary Coales is extensive. The 63-year-old can’t go to theatres, restaurants,
cinemas, airports, or parks.
If she has a hospital appointment, she has
to wait outside the building until the very last moment, while trips to the
supermarket are conducted at lightning speed.
Even walking down the road outside her
house can cause a terrible shooting pain in her mouth - which is why, whenever
she goes out, she wears a top made from a special gauzy silver and polyamide
material.
To passers-by, the Cambridge graduate and
former high-flying civil servant may look odd, but she insists that the fabric
- called Aaronia Shield - is the only way she can protect herself from the
radiation caused by wifi and mobile phone signals.
Like increasing numbers of people, Mary
believes she suffers from electromagnetic hypersensitivity intolerance syndrome
(EHS) - in other words, she thinks the electronic devices most of us rely on in
our everyday lives are making her ill.
Up to five percent of the population -
more than 3 million people - believe they are affected by some degree of
electro-sensitivity, an allergy to the radiowaves and microwaves emitted by
devices.
These range from cellphones to television
screens and even light bulbs. The waves are a form of non-ionising radiation,
designed to be too low in frequency to affect people.
However, EHS sufferers believe this
low-level radiation is capable of causing harm, and report symptoms ranging
from headaches, lethargy and nausea to breathing difficulties and even
paralysis. They also fear the radiation may cause cancer, autoimmune diseases
and neurological disorders in the long-term.
“Before I developed EHS in 2012, I
wouldn’t have believed the condition existed,” says Mary. “The idea of becoming
ill because of the technology I’d used for years without previously having any
problems is surreal.
“But the pain I’ve suffered is very real.
At its worst, it has felt like I’m being tasered inside my mouth.
“I’ve had to change my entire life to find
ways to avoid being exposed to wifi and phone signals. Wifi is everywhere now,
so it’s very difficult to avoid. It’s even more difficult to avoid people with
mobile phones.
“I hardly ever go to public places, and
only go to friends’ houses if they have switched everything off
beforehand.”
The highly controversial idea that
electromagnetic fields can affect our health was first raised in the Sixties,
when American doctor Robert O. Becker campaigned against electricity pylons, which
he believed were causing illness to those who lived nearby.
In recent years, as the telecommunications
industry has boomed, fears have also grown that the increased electromagnetic
radiation caused by cellphones and wifi waves could be dangerous.
The number of wifi hotspots in Britain is
set to rise to 21 million next year, and there are more mobile phone contracts
than people.
While there is no concrete evidence of
links between mobile technology and illness, studies have pointed to worrying
effects.
A 2011 brain-scan study found that, in the
presence of wifi radiation, male students’ brain activity was reduced in areas
associated with paying attention.
Other research presented to the American
Society for Reproductive Medicine in 2010 reported that wifi signals
significantly dampened brain activity in young women when they were trying to
repeat a series of numbers that had been read to them.
There has been enough anxiety to prompt
the European Assembly to call for restrictions on wifi in schools and the use
of cellphones by children.
But EHS is not recognised as a medical
condition in Britain - unlike in Sweden, where it is termed a disability.
Britain’s Health Protection Agency says
there is no scientific evidence linking ill-health with electrical equipment,
although it acknowledges people are reporting real and distressing
symptoms.
Some doctors are voicing their concerns.
Dr Andrew Tresidder, an NHS GP in Somerset, has seen many patients complaining
of symptoms of EHS. “Electro-sensitivity is a very real illness,” he
says.
“We don’t really know exactly how it
happens, but, given how sensitive the cells in our bodies are to other types of
energy waves, such as sound or light, it would be surprising if we weren’t
sensitive to other kinds of frequency - such as radio waves.
“I hope that, at some point soon, the NHS
and Public Health England will be able to reconsider their current stance and
start taking it seriously.”
When Mary Coales first began to experience
a sharp pain in her mouth in October 2012, she attributed it to a reaction to
chemicals in the flame-retardant foam material that her builders used to fill a
hole in the kitchen wall.
Three months later, after having the
material replaced, she suffered the same symptoms when she used her laptop,
cellphone and even television.
“I began to wonder if my reaction was
chemical after all, so I started to experiment on myself,” says Mary, who lives
by herself in London.
“I went out for lunch with my niece, who
had an iPad with her, and I held it close to my face. Immediately, I felt a
sharp sting in my mouth. Suddenly, I couldn’t watch TV, use my computer, use a
phone, or even switch on the lights in my house without pain. It was very
frightening.”
Through a friend, Mary met a man with
electrosensitivity, who introduced her to the society ElectroSensitivity UK,
which has 1 000 members.
Mary says: “I also went to see my GP, and,
although he took me seriously, he didn’t know what to do. I was offered
cognitive behavioural therapy, used to treat people with psychological problems
like depression, and it did nothing to address the actual sensitivity.”
Instead, she took advice from other
sufferers. “I changed my light bulbs from compact fluorescent tubes to old
incandescent or halogen bulbs, which emit lower levels of radiation,” she says.
“I had my wifi replaced with wired broadband, and a filter installed on my
landline to remove the broadband signal from my phone line.
“And I bought some Aaronia Shield fabric,
which protects against waves, on the internet. It’s made in Germany and costs
around £70 per yard.
“I was told that, as I had a lot of metal
fillings in my mouth, it would be a good idea to get rid of them, as they
conduct electricity. Over six months, I had them removed and replaced with
non-metallic ones. I also follow a very healthy diet.”
Mary believes she has reduced her
symptoms, but her life is very difficult. “I’ve had to give up a lot of things
I loved, including the tour-guiding I did around the city of London,” she
says.
“And my council is in the process of
launching wifi across my entire district. Its IT department can’t guarantee it
won’t appear on my street.”
Some experts, however, are sceptical.
Professor Malcolm Sperrin, medical physics director at the Royal Berkshire NHS
Foundation Trust, says: “There’s no evidence of a correlation between wifi and
mobile phone signals and illness.
“The level of radiation from them is very
low - in most cases, barely detectable. The intensity of wifi radiation is 100
000 times less than that of a domestic microwave oven.
“If electrosensitivity was real, we’d
expect to have been seeing it since radios were first used a century ago.
“My feeling is that the symptoms could be
the result of people worrying about this technology, rather than the technology
itself.”
But people with EHS say their distress is
very real.
Musician and sufferer Ricky Gardiner, 66,
who played guitar for Iggy Pop and David Bowie in the Seventies, now lives a
quiet life in rural Carmarthenshire, West Wales with his wife, Virginia. His
symptoms began in the late Eighties, and he believes they were caused by five
computers he used to produce music.
“It started as a strange warmth inside my
body, but, by the mid-Nineties, I was very unwell, with an irregular heartbeat
and breathing problems,” he says
For many years, Ricky says, he was unable
to work because of his illness.
“I’ve tried everything,” he says. “I’ve
slept inside a canopy made from fabric to block out the radiation, and painted
my house with a graphite paint.
“I still use a computer for my music, but
I don’t have wifi and I sit on the other side of the room from the monitor and
use binoculars to see the screen.”
Although Ricky feels he is managing his
condition, he is angry that EHS is not taken more seriously. “The telecoms
industry is the biggest money-spinner the world’s ever known, so it’s easier to
dismiss us as nutcases than question whether it’s right for us to be bombarded
with electromagnetic waves,” he says.
Sue Brown, 53, a married mother of two
from Gloucester, would agree. She resigned as a teacher at a prestigious
independent school three years ago after wifi was installed there, and has
taken early retirement.
“I’d always been very healthy, but then,
for no apparent reason, I started to find it difficult to sleep at night,” she
says. “I developed terrible pains in my head and sometimes I’d feel
nauseous.
“My doctor gave me strong painkillers, but
nothing worked. He wondered if I might have a brain tumour - but in the school
holidays, the symptoms would almost disappear.
“I loved my job, but had to resign. Later,
I discovered from the school’s IT technician that wifi had been installed at
the same time as my symptoms started.”
Sue’s symptoms eased after she left work,
but returned when she had a new broadband hub installed in her home.
“Now, I can hardly go anywhere, because
wifi is so widespread. The symptoms are horrendous, but, when I talk about
them, people look at me as though I’m mad.”
There may be no scientific evidence to
prove the existence of electro- sensitivity, but Sue speaks for the growing
community of sufferers when she says: “For us, this is very real.”
- Daily Mail
No comments:
Post a Comment