Can EMF harm your health?

[Guest]

National, International, and California findings:

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/emfrapid

http://www-cie.iarc.fr/htdocs/monographs/vol80/80.html

http://www.nrpb.org/publications/documents_of_nrpb/abstracts/absd12-1.htm

http://www.nrpb.org/publications/documents_of_nrpb/abstracts/absd12-4.htm

http://www.dhs.ca.gov/ps/deodc/ehib/emf

http://www.dhs.ca.gov/ehib/emf/RiskEvaluation/riskeval.html

http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/static/industry/environment/electromagnetic+fields/index.htm

It is not known if lowering your exposure to EMF's will have any impact on your health.

 

[karl riley]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

"It is not known". An interesting summary of all those links. Is that your authoritative statement? Or are you quoting an authority? If so, please name him/her.

Karl

 

[Guest]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

Not quoting anybody in particular.

There are experts on both sides of the fence but I have not come across any definitive research proof yet. I'm always interested in hearing both sides of the argument. So far each pro or con argument seems to neutralize the other so I'll sit on the fence for now. When the EMF stories were hot and heavy I tended to find the negative ones more believable. At this juncture I'm not convinced about the health effects. In the absence of hard evidence I will strive to minimize EMF when I'm aware of it, and in a position to do something about it. I'd rather be safe than sorry

 

[karl riley]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

I think what you meant to say is that the health effects issue is controversial. Since I have been following it since 1989 (my first experience of sitting through 4 days of technical scientific papers and discussions, plus a couple hundred posters to peruse) it is clear to me that only some of the controversy is scientifically based.

Most is due to vested interests, which I guess is described as "political". Some is due to emotional reactions of professionals such as old time physicists and power utility guys who resent the implication that along with providing power and light to the country they may have dosed out some cancer along with it.

Some is due to scientific jealousy between disciplins. Electromagnetic effects on cells intrudes into the medical and chemical territories. I have seen all these human tensions. And I have seen a major study which supported EMFs as cancer causing at 3 and 4mG branded by the executive summary of the study as negative because the data for 2 mG were not significant. This was repeated by the NY Times and others as disproving the EMF cancer connection. The 3mG and 4mG data was intentionally ignored.

The California (Cagov) link above I think is the least biased if one wants to know which diseases may be affected by EMFs. However, after extensive study of the literature the World Health Organizations's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC of WHO) in 2001 concluded that at 4 mG (0.4mT) childhood leukemia is convincingly connected; hence they labeled it as a possible carcinogen. They are a conservative body and declined to pronounce on the other disease connections.

It will take years or decades before this issue is settled, but the research continues worldwide, so US vested interests cannot stop it.

Karl

 

[iwire]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

Karl I respect all the research you have done.

I have done no research on this issue so I think I qualify as the average American.

This type of news for me gets drowned out in the din of everything else the media reports that is killing me.

Drink and you will get liver disease, but wait you will reduce your chances of a heart attack.

Take an aspirin or two a day to keep you arteries clear, but wait you will get an ulcer.

Grilling meat will cause cancer, eating fish from such and such a place will cause cancer.

I will say all this doom and gloom is tough to swallow at the same time the human life span has done nothing but rise for century's.

 

[humble]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

We have experienced some pretty strange things in our line of work. I was repairing a generator on a 53 foot yacht when my partner they felt sick, dizzy, and had a headache. I fired up the generator and grabbed this new field strength meter we had just bought that tests to make sure radars are putting out, radios are transmitting, and that magnetic fields are present which is handy for finding out where battery chargers, water heaters and generators are and if they are working or not. Of course with generators it's easy to find them running with the noise but you can fire one up and test the field strength right where you stand to see how it's putting out. Anyway. The meter said that the genset was good to go. I clamped the lines with the Fluke 337 and checked the frequency with the scopemeter. Good to go. I shut er down and grabbed the meters to pack em up. The field strength meter was still on and the darn thing was going full scale and pulsing. I held it near the ceiling and it was going so crazy that I shut it off for fear it would break the needle. I started shutting things down on the yacht. There was nothing left running and I again turned on the meter. This time it was still. My partner came up top and said that they were feeling better. I Started turning things on and when I got to the inverter my partner stopped me and asked what I turned on because they immediately felt it. I called the customer and told them what was going on. The inverter was mounted under the dash which is just above the second level on the yacht where my partner was watching me in the generator spot under the floor. The customer said that ever since the thing was installed there that they had been getting bad stomach aches but until we mentioned it they had not made the connection. I have been in this field for almost 23 years and never had no problem. So I don't know what to tell you. I went online to see if it happened to anyone else. This fella wrote these books "Cross Currents" and "The body electric" so I looked him up with people finder at the "Alta Vista" sight and called him on the telephone. He lives in upstate New York and is retired now. His name is Dr. Robert O Becker MD. He said that I needed to read the last chapter of "The body Electric". I did so. I then called another guy named "Ed Leeper" he wrote some book called silencing the fields. Both guys say that this is for real. Everyone has their own opinion. A year or so passed and then just recently we found another inverter under someone's dashboard who had just bought a boat. We told them about what happened and they looked a little sceptical. I don't blame em. I'm not sure what to think myself. I asked them to go and stand by the inverter and let me know what they think. They started getting sick after about twenty seconds or so and I asked them to move away.
We all get to use electricity. Everything has a price. I'm not going to stick my head in a microwave oven but I warmed up some food with one today.

 

[roger]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

Nanotech, are you and awwt associated?

Roger

 

[Guest]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

Exqueeze me?

../Wayne C.

 

[roger]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

Let me rephrase my question, awwt, are you and Nanotech associated?

Roger

[ December 06, 2003, 10:13 PM: Message edited by: roger ]

 

[Guest]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

Nanotech?

 

[roger]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

awwt, let's try "Humble" who is "Nanotech".

Now, let's do this.

Go here and then click on "view recent post" then click on "Can EMF harm your health? (post #0)"

Hmmmmm.

BTW, I've taken a snap shot of the above (this) page.

Roger

[ December 06, 2003, 10:55 PM: Message edited by: roger ]

 

[Guest]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

State your case. What are you getting at?

Also, how do you mean "...Humble who is Nanotech..."?

[ December 07, 2003, 12:53 AM: Message edited by: awwt ]

 

[iwire]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

I know I would like to know why when we look at the member profile for humble click on "recent posts by humble" then click on post #0 of "Can EMF Harm Your Health" it is a post by awwt

Would that happen if awwt and humble where at the same ip address?

Or is this just a software glitch?

 

[roger]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

Bob, that is exactly what I was wondering.

Roger

 

[brian john]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

As I have stated before I would like to believe EMF is not detrimental to your health. For selfish reasons, cause I sure do not want to get any type of cancer, nor do I want my kids, associates or anyone for that matter getting sick off electricity, that for all intent and purposes has only improved man?s (PC wise ALL PEOPLE) lot in life by most accounts.

I think if anyone was to get sick it would be one of us, seeing the exposure we get. I?m in and out of high voltage substations, high usage low voltage electric rooms and do load test with temporary cables strung out like spaghetti. Much less all the net current investigations we do. I also think if EMF does cause health issues it will be the bad luck of the draw depending on one?s genes, life styles ect.

Like everything one must make their own decisions till the government takes over, with EMF and all the concerned parties it may take a while to shake out..

We do live longer now, for a variety of reasons one of those reasons is we look at the risk factors and try to minimize our exposure, and if EMF is harming some folks the risk factors should be taken into account, especially if design can minimize the risk factors.

Having said all this when I built my house I did make it EMF non-friendly and checked for net currents after completion. But haven?t checked the house in a few years, OPPS?

 

[tonyi]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

Being at the same IP address doesn't necessarily mean anything. If it were a proxy server, there could be thousands of people from all over the globe coming through it and they'd all appear to have the same IP - that of the proxy funneling all their traffic.

 

[karl riley]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

Brian, Bob and Humble:

Bob, everyone has to deal with the onslaught of health risks in our modern technological society. It is an emotional issue, and has nothing to do with the validity of the research. We pay attention to some and ignore others. It's a personal issue. Some people like to propogate their own personal way of dealing with it. Others just make their way through life as best they can.

Personally, I just happen to believe that the time of death is pre-ordained. This helps me not worry when I have to stand in hundreds of milligauss fields as I snake my flexible probe around a bunch of bus bars.

Brian, a large study done of Canadian utility workers did show some cancer connections among those with 20 years and more exposure. The interesting thing about this study was that a combination of high electric field exposure (from high voltage) plus high magnetic field average was most connected to cancer increase. It also included lung cancer, which was a new connection. Now only a small increase of cancer was shown, even if significant statistically. So most of these thousands of workers did not get cancer. The risk was just higher than for the general populace, that's all.

I think that those of us with not much history of cancer in the family would be less susceptible than those with a lot of it.

By the way, the utilities owned the health data, and refused to release it after the results were published.

Humble, I am at present dealing with the high fields from inverters. My Florida winter hideout is a little RV/trailer park. I stay in an RV. It is both 12V and 120V AC. The inverter is located between the two bunks at the head of the beds. The field of 5mG to 10mG at the pillow location may definitely be a health concern.

I sleep with my head at the other end (0.5 mG) and when I get some time I will try out some thin shielding material over the inverter. If it works I will be volunteering my (free) services to other RV owners here if they want their inverter checked out. Last year I rented an Airstream and the field from the inverter was more like 20mG. I solved it by putting a switch on the feed to the inverter so I could turn it off at night.

Karl

 

[Guest]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

Roger,
That is very curious. Please start a new thread, or unblock me from Private Messaging (so we can take this offline).

It is very curious, and I'd be interested in what's up with that.

Also (and please answer this in a new thread or by PM) what is "Nanotech"?

Maybe PM would be best as there is no category on this forum for "Other Stuff". I feel it would be helpful to add a category on this forum to discuss "Other Stuff". It could include "Tips & Tricks", "Quality Control", and "Other".

Thanks,
../Wayne C.
awwt

 

[brian john]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

Karl: Where are you in FLA.

As for inverters all our company trucks have inverters for charging tools ect. Luckily the inverters are mounted head high 6" from the driver right ear. Guess a little truck redesign is in order for next week.

 

[gwz2]

Re: Can EMF harm your health?

Just being inquisitive, What came first, cancer among people or XRAY, MRI, EMF, etc ?

I imagine I do not have the hours of many electrians, but have spent many a ( 1/2 hour ) lunch periods with my back against a nice warm transformer.

At the moment, I can not think of any that is "GOOD" for you in "bulk" proportions and what is touted this year as the greatest life extender is a life threat next year.

But, one must be on the alert for hazardous conditions.

gwz2